PROLOGUE
801 Words
PROLOGUE
Jared's P.O.V.
I growled painfully as blood pours from my hind leg in a hot, steady rush. I stay on all fours anyway. Black dust clings to my white fur, and beneath it, two elst already lie destroyed. One remains.
I gather what strength I have left and howl at the full moon, praying to our moon goddess that my brothers will hear me and come.
Then I strike.
I move faster than the wind should allow, teeth sinking deep into the dark being's flesh, tearing an arm from its body. It doesn't go down easy. It never does. Instead it screams and unleashes its power on me , a spell that steals my sight and leaves me blind momentarily, even as it flinches from the wound I've given it.
By the time my vision cleared, it had vanished, leaving a reddish smoke around.
I figured it went back to their lair, found deep in the evil forest.
But that isn't my problem right now. My legs are shredded, and every step I take feels like walking through hell itself.
I wander, searching for anywhere to catch my breath, anywhere I might hunt. I don't realize, not until I'm already inside it, that I've crossed into the human world. There's a barrier separating three worlds, the supernatural, the evil forest, the human.And somehow I've slipped straight through it without meaning to.
Something is wrong here. My wolf senses it immediately, a wrongness in the air, in the ground. Still limping, barely able to trust my own legs, I drag myself deeper into this unfamiliar forest.
I howl again, longer this time, praying my brethren will hear me, or at least catch my scent on the wind.
Nothing answers.
I focus instead on the silver necklace resting against my throat, willing it to carry my voice to them. I push everything I have into it,strength, will, desperation.Until finally, a voice answers.
"Jared? Brother, where are you?"
Rex. I'd know his voice anywhere, edged with fear I've never heard from him before.
"I'm well, brother. I seem to have crossed into the human world."
This is strange, why can't I concentrate? What are all those siren sounds ringing in my ears?
Is the human world so different from ours? Confused at most I hear my brother's voice again.
"The human world? How?" Rex sounds stunned. Afraid, even.
"I don't know. I think the fight with the elst,it led me here."
"Great goddess help us," he breathes.
"You have to leave, brother. It isn't safe. The humans will kill you if they find you."
I know he's right. I know I should already be running. But I can't make myself move, not yet,because some part of me has been waiting for this my whole life. As a cub, our pack's elders warned us constantly to stay far from humans, to never so much as look toward their world. They told us stories of humans cutting down entire forests, destroying the land beneath our paws just to build their world bigger. Those stories were meant to plant fear in every cub who heard them.
They never planted fear in me. They planted questions.
Why should we fear the very people we exist to protect? Do they even know what we sacrifice to keep their world safe? I asked my pack these questions more times than I can count, and I always received the same answer:
"We protect them from evil they cannot see. That is why we exist. We, the werewolves, stand between them and the dark."
We protect them. And still, if one of them ever sees us, we die for it.
That answer never sat right with me. It still doesn't.
"Brother, I—"
"Alpha Don came to me," Rex cuts in before I can finish. "Asking where you were. I told him you were still fighting the elst. I lied for you, Jared."
"I can't come back yet, brother. Not until I have the answers I need."
"What are you talking about? Stop this, and come home. If Alpha Don finds out I lied to him, I'll answer for it, you know that."
And then, silence. Total, sudden silence, as if my own mind has slammed every door between us shut.
Pain lances through me, sharp enough to steal my breath, and still I force myself forward,hungry, exhausted, bleeding from wounds that haven't stopped weeping since the fight. And still, somehow, determined to understand this world I was never supposed to enter.
Following the sounds of the the sirens I heard,I found my way to a place where I saw different kinds of things moving all at once,with two blinding lights in the front.
I dragged myself to
one of the light and then…CRASH…
I was hit and lost consciousness.
- Writer
