Ethan groaned louder and started struggling to get up. Lucas and I were back in the shadows, but it wouldn’t be long until Ethan was aware of us.
Lucas apparently had reached the end of his patience, because he dipped down, picked me up, and slung me over his shoulder. Before I could even catch my breath to voice a protest, he was running. Fast. His feet, as always, were silent.
How could he be so strong, so quick, so quiet when I was draped over his shoulder? What was he? Superwolf?
I was still clutching my flashlight. I thought about swinging it between his legs. That would stop him and dump me on the ground at the same time. But I didn’t. I just hung there with trees rushing by in a blur.
You’re one of us.
I’m one of them.
I thought about this strange fear that had been circling inside me—the fear with origins I couldn’t figure out. I considered all the strange inner sensations I’d had, the feeling that I was changing in ways I couldn’t comprehend.
I told myself they were normal teenage fears, normal teenage changes.
I wasn’t one of them. Lucas was wrong. Maybe he wanted me to be like him.
But he was mistaken. I wasn’t like him. I was normal. I was Kayla Madison, confused teenage girl.
I was not about to become a werewolf.
I don’t know how long or how far Lucas ran before I finally yelled, “Okay already, stop!”
He didn’t listen. He just kept going.
I hit his butt with my flashlight. “Stop! I mean it! Stop or I’ll—”
I’ll what? He’s bigger, tougher, stronger.
Maybe he heard something in my voice, or maybe he was just worn out, but he came to a halt and let me down. My feet hit the earth, but my legs were wobbly and I collapsed onto the ground.
He crouched beside me. He was breathing heavily, like I did when I ran up stairs. But it seemed like after all that running with me over his shoulder, he should be panting, gasping. I’d never in a million years be so in shape.
The moonlight was breaking through the branches, but I wanted more. I wanted sunlight, but it wouldn’t be here for a few more hours. I turned on my flashlight. I didn’t shine it directly into his face. I didn’t need to. Just having it on was enough.
“You didn’t run into anything,” I said. It was a mindless thing to say. I guess he thought so, too, because he looked a little surprised.
“I have really good night vision,” he finally said.
“Is that because you’re a—”
“Yeah. Vision, hearing, smell—they all improve after the first transformation.”
I nodded and swallowed. “So what are you…exactly?”
“Technical term is lycanthrope. We refer to ourselves as Shifters. People who don’t know any better call us werewolves.” He glanced around. “We need to start walking, put more distance between us and the Statics.”
“Statics?” I asked.
“Those who never change.” He said it with a hint of sadness. I didn’t know if he was feeling sorry for those who didn’t have the ability to shift or those who did.
He took my hand and pulled me to my feet. I swayed. If I hadn’t knocked against him, I probably would have hit the ground again. His arms came around me and he held my gaze. “I know it’s a shock, everything you’ve learned tonight.”
Ya think? I shook my head, then nodded. I was still so confused. My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. “What did you mean when you said ‘if I wanted to survive’?”
Gently, he touched my cheek with his fingertips. They were rough and callused. I didn’t want to think that earlier in the night they’d also sported claws that could rip my face apart. “The first time you shift it’s painful, like childbirth. In a way, I guess that makes sense. You’re giving birth to your inner wolf. So you need your mate there to coach you through it.”
“My mate?” Is he for real?
“Don’t you feel it?” he asked. “This pull between us?”
Was he talking about this thing that terrified me?
I stepped away from him. “I don’t want this!” I stalked around in the little bit of area we had between the trees. “I didn’t ask for this!” I came to an abrupt halt. “So what? At some point in my life I was bitten?”
“It’s genetic, just like Keane said.”
“You’re saying that I inherited this ability to shift? What? Like from my parents? That they were”—I stuttered and stopped, trying to wrap my mind around the ramifications—“that they were wolves?”
He just looked at me.
“That’s insane! They would have told me.” I had this flash memory of wolves. I ignored it. “And you’re wrong. I’m not one of you.”
His large shoulders rolled into a shrug. “Okay, you’re not. But you’d better stick with me—just in case I’m right. Besides, Evil Scientist will know you helped me escape and he’s not very forgiving.”
My brow furrowed so deeply that it hurt. “How did you know that I call him that?” I backed up a step. “Oh my God! You can read minds?” My voice shimmered with outrage and accusation. He didn’t bother to deny it. Did he know everything I thought?
“Only when I’m in wolf form,” he said. He took the flashlight, clicked it off, and handed it back to me. “No sense in broadcasting where we’re going.”
He grabbed my hand and tugged me deeper into the woods. I didn’t want to go, but he was right. Unfortunately. I was stuck with him until I could figure out my alternatives.
My eyes adjusted to the wilderness bathed in moonlight. I was following so closely behind Lucas that I pretty much stepped where he stepped. His hand held mine firmly. He was so tall and broad, and his fingers felt so strong wrapped around mine, that I wondered if he was naturally this way or if it came about when he first shifted into wolf form. Of course, I guessed that naturally was the wrong word. On the other hand, for him shifting was natural. Not to shift was weird.
It was an upside-down, insane world that I was suddenly part of.
I had a gazillion questions, but since we were trying to be quiet until we reached wherever we were going—I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t said, but his strides definitely had a purpose—I kept all my questions to myself. Besides, he was moving fast and I was having a difficult time keeping pace. I had thought I was in decent shape, but I was breathing like a dog after it chased a Frisbee. Dog, wolf—I needed to stop thinking about animals.
I didn’t have a lot of time left to figure out how not to shift into a wild creature—if I truly was about to shift. I still had doubts about that. Wouldn’t you know, deep down, if you were part wolf or had any bit of wolf in you? It just all seemed inconceivable. But if it was about to happen, surely there was some way to prevent it. If I fought it…mind over matter. Or in this case, mind over wolf. I just wouldn’t accept it.
Because if I accepted it, did I have to accept Lucas as my mate? Shouldn’t I have a choice in the matter?
He’d asked if I felt the pull. I couldn’t deny that I did. And that it terrified me.
It wasn’t like a crush. It wasn’t like seeing a guy and thinking I’d like him to take me to the prom. It was soul-deep, as though he was everything, the one, forever. I had to remind myself that I barely knew the guy. But still I couldn’t shake the feeling of being meant for each other—as corny as that sounded.
We were going into a part of the wilderness that I’d never been to before. The brush was thick, the trees growing closely together. The thick canopy overhead nearly blocked out every drop of moonlight. He was dragging me up an incline and then stopping me from skidding down on the other side.
I remembered that he was barefoot. His feet would be a bloodied mess of scrapes and cuts. He never complained. He never grunted. He just kept going as though the hounds of hell were on our tail.
Only he was the hound of hell.
I was completely lost. My movements were robotic, made without thought.
Eventually we were scrambling up the sid
e of a rocky, forested slope. I knew instinctively that Lucas could have shifted and been far away by now. He could have traversed the rugged terrain easily. Instead, he had to keep reaching back for me.
“You should go on,” I insisted after sliding down a couple of feet and skinning my elbows.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“But you’re the one in the most danger. They won’t harm me.”
He stopped and gave me a hard look over his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you, Kayla.”
Stubborn. So what if Mason and his “friends” found me? They’d just keep trailing after Lucas, and I could drift away. But it was obvious that Lucas wasn’t going to listen. I put some extra muscle into my efforts.
When I finally caught up to him, he said, “Okay, just keep climbing. I’m going back to erase our trail. I won’t be gone long.”
In a panic, I grabbed his arm. “You’ll lose me.”
“I can track your scent.”
“Really? Do you need to take a piece of my clothing or something, to remind you?”
“No, but—” He leaned in against my throat. I heard him inhale. “You smell so good. I’d find you anywhere.”
Was that his idea of romance? I couldn’t deny that it did warm me. Before I could respond, he was gone.
I wanted to sit down and think about all this. I wanted to try to make sense of it. Everything had started to get weird after the river. Maybe I’d really drowned. Maybe I was in hell. But that didn’t make sense either. What I did know was that Lucas was in danger and if I didn’t start moving, Keane and his group might catch up with us. I wasn’t worried about me. I wasn’t the one they wanted to study. But I didn’t want anything to happen to Lucas.
My worries for him gave an urgency to my movements. I was determined not to be the reason that he ended up back in that cage. Being studied, like an animal in a lab. An animal. That word resounded in my head. When I looked at Lucas now, I saw a human who transformed into a wolf. Mason and his dad saw a wolf. They didn’t see the human anymore, the person. They saw only the unusual creature whose existence defied logic.
Their view of him justified putting him in a cage. My view had compelled me to set him free.
I slipped, caught hold of a sapling, and clung to it, catching my breath while trying to figure out how I could go farther. Everything suddenly seemed crammed together. Small crevices and rocks. Which way would keep him safe?
“You made better progress than I expected,” he said as he approached me.
I nearly screamed at the unexpectedness of his arrival. He needed to wear a collar with bells or something so I’d hear him approaching.
He sat beside me. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Just taking a minute to catch my breath.”
“It gets harder from here,” he said.
“Oh, great.”
“But I have a plan.” He got up, moved away, and ducked behind some brush.
“What are you—” Something landed on my face. I pulled it away. His pants. “Uh, Lucas?”
“It’s okay. I’m going to shift. I’m more surefooted as a wolf. You’ll climb on my back, and we’ll make better time.”
“You’re not a horse.”
“Trust me. This is the only way to get where we need to be.”
I couldn’t see him clearly. “I do trust—”
He was gone and the wolf stepped out.
“We should take this show to Vegas,” I mumbled.
He released a tiny growl that sounded more like a chuckle. Could wolves laugh?
He nudged my thigh.
“I don’t think I can.”
He licked my hand.
“Oh, okay, when you put it that way.” I tied the pants around my waist. I straddled Lucas and dug my fingers into his fur to hang on. I bent my legs back and put my feet on his backside so they weren’t dragging the ground. I clung to him when he started moving. I could feel his muscles bunching and stretching beneath me. He was so powerful. I wondered if I would be as well. Did he work out or was his physique related to his genes? He had such a hot bod—
I shut down the thought, remembering that when he was in this form, he could read my thoughts. I worked to make my mind go blank. It was an invasion of privacy, this ability he had, and we were going to have to set up parameters, but until we did, I started mentally arranging the shoes in my closet back home. My mom was a shoe-aholic, so I had at least fifty pairs that I could think about while Lucas clambered over uneven terrain. We went through narrow crevices. Eventually he stopped and gave his body a little shake. I climbed off him. He wandered over to a bush and went behind it.
“Throw me my pants,” he said, standing up so his head and shoulders were visible.
“You do that really fast.” I tossed him the pants.
“You will, too, once you get used to it and learn the tricks.”
Number one: I’d never get used to it. Number two: I wasn’t convinced I was going to go furry. Number three: I didn’t want to learn any tricks.
Lucas came out from behind the bush. “Shoes? You really own that many pairs of shoes?”
I released a self-conscious laugh. “Can you turn that off? Getting inside my head?”
“There’s a way to mute your thoughts. I’ll teach you.”
“Good, because it wouldn’t be fair if you knew everything I was thinking but you were screening your thoughts from me.”
“There isn’t anything I’d think that I wouldn’t want you to know.” He took my hand again. “It’s just a little farther.”
We went down a little bit and took a turn. In the distance I could hear the rushing of water.
I stumbled over something, lost my balance—
Lucas caught me before I could do a face-plant. How did he move so fast? If he was right about me, would I have reflexes that quick? Did I want them?
“Almost there,” he said as he helped me to regain my balance.
“Where’s ‘there’?”
“A hiding place.”
When I thought of a hiding place, I thought of someplace small and dark. A place where you crouched and quaked. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Especially since I’d be cramped into and nestled right up against Lucas. Would I be able to resist my urges?
We stepped out of the woods and into a small clearing. Moonlight spilled around us. The rushing water I’d heard was a waterfall cascading down the side of the mountain. Lucas let go of my hand. I was stunned to realize that I suddenly felt bereft. I almost reached for his hand. Not because I was afraid, but because I didn’t want to break the connection between us.
“Wow, this is awesome.” For a minute I forgot that we were being hunted by Evil Scientist and his crew. “I didn’t know anything remotely like this existed around here.”
“We have a lot of similar places in this forest.”
“‘We’? You say that like you own the forest.”
“Technically it’s federal land, but yeah, it’s ours.”
“What? So there’s really a village hidden away out here, like Mason said? Are there really others like you?”
He got eerily still, as though he was trying to decide how much he could trust me. I guess my attitude about not wanting to be whatever he was caused doubts about my sincerity. If I was going to reconnect with Mason’s group, I figured the less I knew the better.
“Go ahead and turn on your flashlight,” he said, totally ignoring my question. “You’ll probably need it where we’re going.”
“And where is that?”
“Into the waterfall.”
THIRTEEN
The waterfall cascaded into a pool. Lucas told me there were some underground streams that fed into a river farther down. Of course, there was also a river high above that furnished the water for the waterfall. I thought maybe we would see it the next day.
But for now, Lucas was holding my hand again and leading me around the edge of the rippling pool. The grass eventually gave way to rocks, pebbles, and smal
l stones that were as slippery as glass. I lost my footing. If Lucas hadn’t been holding my hand, I would have tumbled into the pool. Instead, with a tug of my arm, I was tumbling into him, against his warm skin. The shock of it should have had me pulling back, but I found myself melting into him. He felt so good, his skin smooth, his muscles firm.
His arm came around me, holding me in the shelter of his embrace.
As we got closer to the waterfall, it was like walking toward thunder. The rushing water echoed around us and blocked out any other sound. It was disorienting and almost frightening. In contrast, a delicate mist tickled my face. But I knew it was an illusion. Getting caught in that waterfall could kill a person.
Lucas pulled me behind it. I had only a second to run my flashlight over the curtain of rushing water before Lucas drew me into the black abyss.
He released his hold. I shored up my courage and didn’t release an embarrassing screech begging him not to leave me. It was quieter in here, the waterfall muted but still present. I swept the beam of the flashlight around the cavern. Someone had been here before us.
“This is one of our lairs,” Lucas explained as he crouched to switch on a battery-operated lantern. It provided more light than my flashlight did, so I turned mine off to preserve the batteries. I planned to keep it with me. I felt safe with it. Maybe because my adoptive dad had given it to me. It was like having him here with me. Suddenly I desperately wished he were my real dad. Then all of this might not be real. What was I thinking? It wasn’t real anyway.
If it was genetic, then I had to have inherited it from my parents. And they certainly weren’t wolves. They didn’t heal the way Lucas did when Mason shot him. They died.
“Hungry?” Lucas asked, bringing me out of my morose musings.
“No. Thirsty, though.”
He tossed me a bottle of water. The cave was cool. So was the water. Clear plastic crates containing provisions were stacked along the walls. Lucas grabbed a granola bar and started chomping away while he opened another crate and took out a blanket. He walked over to me and draped it around my shoulders.
“You need it more than I do,” I said. “At least I’m wearing a shirt.”
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