by RJ Blain
The sandy-haired male was my prey, but I allowed the two new males of our pack to prove their worth by hunting the lesser wolves. While keeping careful guard over Wendy, we prowled through the ship in search of those who would pay for our captivity with their lives.
“This is a terrible idea,” Wendy informed me, shaking her head. “I hope you know how to sail this stupid boat because I don’t.”
Tyrant queens were above reproach, so I chose to ignore my Alpha female’s criticism despite its accuracy. I would clear the boat of the rival pack. It would be Wendy’s job to figure out how to keep us from sinking.
Three Fenerec, all wolves, waited for us on the deck. I snarled, lowering my head and raising my hackles, staying back so I could protect Wendy and her puppy. My wolf watched the largest of them move, a black male with white spots splattered all over him.
A single sniff identified him as the sandy-haired male.
“I’m generous, and while my mate may not be pleased with me for offering this to you, I’m doing it anyway. You can choose to join our pack and return home with us, or you can die,” Wendy said, her voice soft. “We’ve already taken two. The three of you are of no consequence.”
The black and white wolf jumped for us. Whining, the two new members of our pack flinched away. I crouched and darted forward, ducking beneath his snarling maw to snap at his throat. My fangs closed over fur, and I ripped out several tufts in my fury. Snapping at my flank, he yanked away from me. We separated.
Beneath the light of the full moon, my wolf’s rage ignited in a conflagration I couldn’t resist, and the taste of fresh blood on her tongue erased her need for anything other than the hunt. The wildness crept in, and she succumbed to her desire for violence.
I sank down into the quiet dark.
Astonishment broke my wolf’s control over me. It took me a moment to realize what caught and held her attention. Sharks circled the boat, their dorsal fins slicing through the moon-touched water. My wolf remembered how many teeth Dustin’s shark had, and with a frightened yip, she recoiled from the ship’s railing.
My prey mocked me with a snarl, lowering his head. Blood dripped from both of us, though I had taken more than my fair share of gashes. I had no idea how long we had been fighting, but my paws were unsteady beneath me. My wolf retreated, her exhaustion bleeding into me. I panted to catch my breath.
Disgusted with my wolf for abandoning the hunt and leaving me to deal with our prey, I bared my fangs and wondered how I could beat such a large wolf.
A splash frightened me into hopping back a pace, and once again, the black and white Fenerec mocked me with a lolling of his tongue. The great, water-slicked body of a shark rocketed from the ocean below, thrashed in the air, and snatched my prey in its toothy jaws. In one bite, the male was gone. The shark landed on the deck, opening its mouth to reveal a few tufts of black and white fur. I yipped, tucked my tail, and retreated to Wendy, who gawked, her mouth hanging open.
It hadn’t even chewed before swallowing.
I turned in a tight circle, but saw no sign of the other wolves except for a few clumps of bloodied fur on the wood. In my head, my pack howled.
“The sharks ate them as an appetizer while you were dancing with their dinner,” Wendy informed me.
I shuddered.
Whether it decided it was too much work to cross the deck to eat us or it was full from eating my prey, the shark slipped back into the water. The ship rocked, and with a startled cry, Wendy staggered. I scrambled to break her fall, and her weight drove me to the deck. The pain of my gashes and bites surged, and I yipped and yelped my protests.
“Sorry!” she gasped, getting off of me. With gentle hands, she poked and prodded at my fur. “He really ripped you up.”
I turned my ears back and whined.
“Inside. I’ll treat you in our cabin.”
The cabin was our territory, and eager to be away from the sea full of sharks, I allowed Wendy to lead me down below the decks. I stood in the shower while Wendy washed the blood out of my fur. Each time she touched the deeper gouges, I snarled, earning a rebuking but gentle tap on my nose from my Alpha female.
“I will make certain Sanders knows you truly are a little hellcat. It’s in his better interest to teach you how to fight or next time you’ll be the one eaten by sharks. You are not invincible, Sara,” she scolded.
I huffed and stared at the wall, pretending she didn’t exist.
“Well done, even if the shark took your kill. I’m never going into the ocean ever again,” she confessed in a whisper. “I think it was still hungry.”
Shuddering, I sat down, lifted my paw, and licked my wounds. My cuts healed while I watched, bemused.
It took three days for all of my injuries to heal. The sharks circled the entire time, watching and waiting for one of us to venture too close to the edge of the deck. Wendy growled under her breath at them.
The yacht had a kitchen, and I had no idea what powered the refrigerator, stove, and freezer, but it took one look to realize there wasn’t enough to feed a wolf and barely enough to feed Wendy.
“Fuckers.”
I bobbed my head in agreement, and leaving Wendy to fend for herself, I investigated the boat, which only reinforced the fact we were up a creek without a paddle, and the creek happened to be the Pacific Ocean. Warbling my disgust, I headed above deck, flopped on the wood, and sighed my disgust, watching dorsal fins cut through the water.
There were more of them than I remembered.
Without the sharks waiting for their next easy meal, I would have whined at Wendy to fish for me. Creeping forward, I watched them swim, wondering why they were so interested in our boat. Turning my ears back, I barked at them once.
One shark lifted its head above the water and showed me its teeth.
The second one slapped me in the face with a fish. It hit me with enough force to send me reeling backwards, yipping from astonishment and pain. The fish flopped on the wood planks. Salivating, I pounced on it, pinning it with my paws. The fish reminded me of a large version of a trout, and the shark had left a ring of bite marks around its middle, cutting through its scales enough I could rip off the skin and get at the meat beneath. I choked several times in my hurry to ease my hunger.
Dragging the offal and bones I didn’t eat to the railing, I tossed them overboard. Perking my ears forward, I watched the sharks, drooling in hopes of another fish.
Wendy came on deck, frowning at me. “What are you doing? Get away before one of those sharks eats you,” she ordered, her voice sharp with concern.
As though waiting for me to be distracted, a shark smacked me upside the muzzle with a small fish, and yipping my excitement, I chased it down. It was small enough to swallow whole, and it was halfway down my throat before Wendy grabbed it by its tail and held on. I snarled and gagged on it, fighting to keep my dinner.
“Damn it, you are not a shark; you can’t eat them whole. Let go! You’ll choke, and then I’ll have to shove my fist down your throat. Let it go, Sara!”
Bracing her foot against my chest, Wendy yanked the fish out of my mouth. I howled my anguish. With a flick of her wrist, she slapped me with my snack. “I will clean this for you so you don’t die.”
A huge splash drew our attention, and my fish forgotten, I hurried to the rail. The sharks were in a frenzy, and the largest one I had seen yet surged out of the water with something huge in its mouth. The shark thrashed, angled its body, and crashed against the side of the boat, rocking it with enough force I fell over. Wendy shrieked, dropped my fish, and grabbed hold of the mast to stay upright.
When the seas settled, the shark had left a bloody present on the deck. The tuna was larger than I was, and I immediately started drooling.
“Dustin’s sharks,” Wendy muttered, shaking her head. “These have to be Dustin’s sharks. That freak. Sharks don’t give up a tuna like that.”
I picked up my small fish, carried it to my tuna, and flopped onto the deck. Pinning
it with my paw, I ripped it to shreds, careful to avoid the bones. I tossed the offal to the sharks, and licked my chops as I tried to decide how best to approach eating my tuna.
“Gross,” Wendy grumbled, shaking her head. “I don’t suppose you’ll share, will you?”
I shot her a reproachful look, turning my head away from my tuna until she brought a knife to take meat suitable for her human palette. Despite how much she claimed, there was so much left over I couldn’t finish it all. It took both of us to shove its remains off the deck to feed the sharks.
The days slipped by, and our escort of wolf-eating sharks kept pace with our boat as it drifted on the tides. When I saw land in the distance, I was so excited I forgot the sea was full of carnivorous predators and jumped in, swimming for the beach. Wendy cried out behind me and cursed at me from the rail.
They didn’t eat me.
Still spitting curses at my idiocy, Wendy dove in and followed. She was a far better swimmer than I, catching up while I paddled for all I was worth for the beach.
“Stupid Sara,” Wendy grumbled. She squeaked when a shark slid through the water beside us. “Just had to jump into shark-infested water.”
I glared at her, wishing I could point out she had done the same.
Twenty minutes later, with the help of the ocean currents and a couple of nudges from sharks, we reached the empty, white-sand beach. Warbling my delight, I shook out before running along the surf. I darted back to Wendy, trotting around her in circles until she laughed at my antics.
“Now all we need to do is dry out, find a phone, and call Charles,” she said, whistling as she headed towards where the sand ended and the grass began.
It didn’t take long to realize we hadn’t found the actual coast, but rather an uninhabited island. I howled my frustration, turning in a circle before howling again. Wendy sighed, shook her head, and ran her hands through her hair. “Okay. I suppose we can dry out and figure out what to do now. At least we aren’t on the boat any more. Maybe someone lives here.”
I sniffed, but I couldn’t detect any of the usual signs of human habitation: no oil, no gasoline, no smoke, and nothing even remotely artificial. Drawing a deep breath, I howled again.
“Howling your head off isn’t going to help matters any,” she informed me. “Let’s hope there’s fresh water on this island. After that, we’ll figure out what to do.”
Since my nose was far more sensitive than Wendy’s, it fell to me to sniff out the water. There was some, and its sweet scent lured me deeper onto the island. An ancient trail guided me through a gray, dead forest, up onto the island’s short plateau, and to a decaying ranger station.
There was a spring nearby, its stream flowing to the sea below. I crossed to it and drank my fill.
“Maybe they left a kayak or a raft,” Wendy muttered, heading to the door. She tested the knob, and when it was locked, she growled her frustration and kicked it open. “I’m starting to get really, really annoyed.”
Something crashed inside the ranger station, and moments later, a chair flew through the window. I yipped, tumbling into the spring. I submerged until only my nose and my eyes remained above the surface, my ears pinned back. A lamp and a phone followed the chair, each accompanied by Wendy’s snarls and curses.
I whined, and finding a shallow enough spot I could lie down without emerging from the water, I watched and waited. What the rotting ruins of the couch had done to anyone would remain a mystery; it joined the rest of the debris, taking a chunk of the wall out with it.
When she emerged, she flexed her hands, breathing heavily. “Someone’s going to die for this.”
I hoped she didn’t mean me, and deciding it was in my better interest to stay where I was, I froze. With narrow eyes, she glared at the pile of wreckage she had left on the ground before her gaze turned to me. “What are you doing, Sara?”
I closed my eyes and lowered my head until all but my nose was submerged.
“I can see you, Sara.”
When I didn’t move, Wendy stomped to me, grabbed me by my scruff, and hauled me out of the spring. “Find. Me. A. Boat.”
I fled.
The sail boat broke apart on rocks hidden below the water’s surface near the island, and I watched pieces of it wash in, wondering if it counted. It was a boat, and I had found it. The sharks lurked in the water, and I swore they were laughing at me while I contemplated whether or not Wendy was secretly a carpenter capable of building a new boat from a destroyed one. Grabbing a plank in my mouth, I sighed and hauled it back to the ranger station.
Several more chairs and a table had joined the couch on the ground. Waiting until I had her attention, I dropped the piece of wood in front of me.
“Do not tell me the boat sank.”
I turned my head and stared at the spring, feigning interest in the flow of water.
Stomping inside, Wendy screamed and another piece of furniture crashed into the pile. She emerged, pointed at my piece of wood, and snarled, “Bring every last piece you can find.”
I cringed, tucked my tail, and shuffled to the shore to gather wood as directed. Dragging planks up to the station in an endless stream, I was careful to avoid making eye contact with my infuriated Alpha female. Her eyes blazed yellow, and my wolf warned me her wolf was in control. My wolf wasn’t as worried about it as I was.
So long as Wendy remained in human form, my wolf did not care who was in control. I, however, fretted.
Wendy’s wolf enjoyed breaking things, and I didn’t want to be added to her growing list of smashed items. I hauled wood until I couldn’t take another step, flopping on the beach to catch my breath. A shark washed up on the shore nearby, swishing its tail at the surf. I stretched out a paw and batted the water. It showed me its teeth, twisted around, and returned to the ocean.
Wise wolves and women feared large sharks, but when the great white surged up on the beach, dragging a tuna with it, I rose to my paws, play bowed, and warbled to it. It twisted around, lashing its tail so hard water sprayed in my face. It left the tuna, which was still alive although dying. Grabbing it by the tail, I dragged it up the beach. It took full body jerks to move the large fish. It died before I made it up to the plateau, panting from my effort of dragging our dinner.
Wendy narrowed her eyes as I hauled the fish to her, dropped it at her feet, and collapsed in an exhausted heap. “The sharks are still around.”
I turned an ear back, stretched out my paws, and groaned.
Drawing a deep breath, Wendy let it out in a long exhale. “Okay. My daughter likes to say all problems can be solved with a clever application of fire. Let’s find out if she’s right. Fortunately, I found matches. They left the dumbest assortment of shit in this station.”
Included in Wendy’s collection were a knife and a sharpening stone, which kept my Alpha female occupied for an hour as she removed rust from the blade. By the time she was finished, I worried what would happen if she snapped and used the weapon on me. Carving the tuna with more enthusiasm than I liked, she set aside enough for herself before gesturing to me with her blade. I took the fish a safe distance from Wendy and settled to eat, keeping a close eye on my Alpha female.
I suspected the only reason she didn’t burn the ranger station down was so she would have somewhere she could take shelter to avoid the incessant wind sweeping over the plateau. The sun was setting when she finished gathering dried seagrass, clumped it around the base of her pile of wood and other flammables, and burned it.
As I had while at sea, I took the leftovers of the tuna to the water. Instead of dragging the corpse into the surf, I tore off scraps and tossed them to the waiting sharks until I bored of watching the smaller ones jump to catch my offerings. I left the rest of the carcass within their reach and trotted back up to the ranger station.
Wendy poked at her bonfire with a stick, growling with each breath. “If I had been smart, I would have done this in the morning. You know, when someone might see the smoke.”
; When I saw no sign of the knife she had spent so much time sharpening, I flopped beside her, stretching my paws across her lap. Resting my muzzle on her knee, I yawned, closed my eyes, and basked in the warmth of the fire.
The following day, Wendy’s foul mood soured further. With a maniacal grin, she set the ranger station on fire. I considered myself fortunate she did not do so while I was in the doomed structure. My wolf retreated, leaving me to deal with our Alpha female’s erratic behavior. I sighed and watched the flames, wondering what to do.
If there was anyone nearby, they’d find us. The station put off an oppressive amount of smoke, which stretched to the cloudless sky in a dark pillar. I tugged on Wendy’s worn jeans to catch her attention.
Sinking to the ground beside me, she wrapped her arms around my neck, and as she had on the boat, she cried, her thin frame shaking. I sat quietly, turning my ears back at my inability to do anything for her. If she was anything like me, she wanted Desmond.
I wanted Sanders. I wanted him to tell me everything would be all right even though I knew it wasn’t the truth. When Wendy cried herself to sleep, I pulled free of her arms and returned to the beach.
Dustin’s sharks were either far smarter than I gave them credit for or they were really bored. Instead of fish, I found salvage from the boat piled in the surf. Soaked clothes, once property of the Fenerec we had killed, littered the sand along with pots, several large knives, and coils of rope. The sails were tattered and shredded, but I took pieces I thought were large enough to be useful. More wood washed up, and I busied myself ferrying everything up onto the plateau while Wendy slept. With the ruined scraps of sail unfit for anything else, I made a nest for myself.
By the time Wendy woke up, I had piled wood into a stack near the stream, offering a buffer against the wind. The larger pieces of the sails I left beneath several pieces of wood to keep the thick fabric from flying away.
Instead of tuna, the smaller sharks tossed smaller fish onto the beach for me, which I dutifully carried up to Wendy. She regarded the collection with a scowl. “More fish.”