Lost II - The Royal Hybrid

Chapter four

Cassie’s POV

Everything was brightened. The trees were clearer, their leaves rattling in the wind like tiny bells. The grass stood out in so much detail that I could see every single strand and the way they moved with the wind even when I looked towards the edge of the forest. The grass beneath my feet felt strange and then I remembered that it wasn’t my feet, it was my paws.

“Cassie?” a small voice came from behind me, and I remembered Kathleen who had dragged me most of the way.

I turned to her quicker than I had intended, completely forgetting about my increased speed, and looked at her very shocked face.

“You…” she breathed blinking furiously. “Your fur.”

I looked down at myself as much as I could and saw nothing out of the ordinary. My fur was black, but that was normal considering I was an alpha’s daughter so the shock in her face and voice did not make sense to me. I looked at her with a tilted head and let out a small whimper of confusion.

“You are silver,” she explained and took a few steps towards me her face still shocked but very sorrowful.

Silver? I wasn’t silver? I looked at her even more confused when she pulled her phone from her pocket.

“Stand still,” she said as she snapped a photo.

She, with hesitant steps, almost as if she was scared of me, walked toward me and flipped the phone just enough for me to see what she was talking about and there it was.

My front paws were completely black, as I had already seen, along with one half of my head and body. However, the right side of my face along with the right side of my body and my back paws were completely silver and from the sight of it I whimpered out again, this time not because I was confused, but because I was scared.

I knew of the silver wolves, the ones touched by the moon, and seeing as I had the powers that I did, I wasn’t completely shocked to discover that my fur was black, but that it was silver I had not expected.

That gene, the touch from the moon goddess herself, only ran in one family and it was not mine. I now understood that it wasn’t me that she was scared of, but my reaction.

“There must be an explanation for this,” Kathleen tried to console me as she noticed my change of behavior.

I shook my head and started to back up when she held her arms up.

“Cassie, don’t run,” she begged. “Please. This is your home.”

Despite her wanting me to run less than an hour ago, she was now begging me to stay where I belonged.

But she was wrong. This wasn’t my home and all I could think about was that everything I had known, the people who had raised me, the people whom I had been living with and walking amongst, weren’t my family. They weren’t my pack. I had been lied to, led on, been bullied, and kept away under lock and key for that one exact reason. This wasn’t my home and my parents… They weren’t my parents.

With a quick flip, I turned and ran. My paws carried me over the pack land faster than I had thought was possible. In the distance, I could hear Kathleen yelling at me before I heard her bones crack as she shifted to catch up to me.

I always knew that I didn’t belong, that something was off, but I never in my wildest imagination would have thought that this was why. How did I end up here? Was I kidnapped? Did they adopt me? Did they use me for my powers? Was that why dad was so rough on me all the time? I had a million questions and even though I knew I was running from the only two people who had the answers, I also knew that they were the only two that, to their benefit, could keep lying to me if they wanted to.

It wasn’t long before I heard howling in the distance and I knew at that moment that someone, probably the border guard, had spotted me, and seeing as no one knew of my shift, they must have seen me as a rogue. Now it was only a matter of speed and time before someone would catch up to me and either kill me or take me back. And to be honest, I didn’t know what would be worse at that point.

I converted my hurt and anger into focus as I continued to run. I needed to disappear, and fast, and the only way to do so was to use my power. A power I did not have control over yet.

I tried to focus all of my energy to my core where I had previously felt my power erupt from, but nothing happened. It was then I heard the sound of paws hitting the ground behind me at a fast pace and I knew my time was up. I needed to do it and I needed to do it now, but how could I? I was now on my own, I was basically a rogue, and I had never done this before, let alone on my own.

‘You are not alone,’ a voice in my head said and as it first spoke, I got so startled I nearly tripped over my own paws.

‘Who are you?’ I asked as the growling behind me got louder.

‘I am your wolf, Tatiana,’ the voice said again. ‘My name is Amara.’

‘Tatiana?’

‘That’s your name.’

Another growl, this time from right behind me, kept me from stopping completely at what my wolf had just told me, and then, as if it didn’t take more than that, I felt the power from me surge, sending a blast behind me knocking down the two wolves that had caught up to me. I stopped, shocked and surprised at what had just happened, and looked behind me, only to see the wolf that belonged to no other than my father, get back up on his legs, shaking his head before howling to the moon. A furious howl that within seconds made five more wolves appear from behind him before they ran past him straight at me at full speed.

I instinctively began running again as the panic rose in me. There was no way I would be able to get away from all of them and when one of them, one I recognized as none other than Chad, got close enough to launch at me with his claws, I let out a howl, a desperate cry so powerful that I felt my all of my energy return and my paws move faster than they did only a second ago increasing the distance between us.

‘How do I do it?’

‘You just did,’ she said in a proud tone. ‘Now shake them off.’