Running Free (Northern Shifters)

by Jorrie Spencer

  That should have reassured her, but then again, if wolves were here, they’d be on the move. It didn’t mean much.

  About an hour later, the silence of the night was broken, but not by a horse. By a wolf. Iain’s howl rose to the moon, was repeated, and when the third came, Rory answered, starting low and going high, anger in his response. Because three calls meant Iain needed help, and Rory would berate himself for not being there at once.

  Sally hesitated, she didn’t want to leave Zach, well, leave his trail. However, he had left them behind first, and when Rory faced her, his dark gaze demanding her obedience, she gave way. They turned their backs on Zach and ran towards Iain.

  It had been his brother’s scent, Zach knew it, understood it in his bones, where memories lay in ways his brain didn’t understand. All he could think was his brother was in danger and Zach needed to find him, needed to rescue him, needed to run. He called again, a third and fourth time, until he finally stopped, having run out of the horse scent.

  He didn’t know where to go next.

  He slowed in order to pace himself and began to feel like he was following a mirage. The scent had been so real. The memories were pressing down on him. His brother, a black horse, hadn’t wanted to go out one night, but Zach had insisted. Zach had believed he had friends. They’d gone out as boys and had never returned.

  A shudder ran through him. He’d had no friends then. That had been a mirage.

  He couldn’t make sense of his thoughts or the images. He had to focus on what was real.

  Sally wasn’t a mirage, neither was Storm. But a memory of betrayal, of violence, the pictures flashed by him, a fucked-up movie he couldn’t interpret.

  All he knew was he had to find Sally, make sure she was safe. His brother and his scent were gone. Zach’s calls went unanswered.

  When the howls went up, he couldn’t identify who it was, friend or foe. He chose to retrace his steps, return to the spot where he’d left Sally, and find her from there. He might be confused, he might be fucked by these memories assailing him, but he was still fast.

  The wolf’s howl came again, and it could have been Zach’s imagination, but it sounded more frantic. Ominous. When he reached Sally’s tracks, he turned and followed them, picking up speed.

  He’d done something wrong so many years ago, something which had harmed his brother, and now the same thing was happening with Sally.

  Her lungs burned, and she could barely keep up with Rory. He didn’t pull away from her, though. As anxious as he was to come to Iain’s aid, he wouldn’t leave her on her own. No male wolf would leave a female unattended under these circumstances.

  She pushed harder, refusing to be the reason Rory didn’t get there in time, refusing to heed her body’s demand she give herself a break. She wasn’t her mother, she didn’t run herself ragged on principle. But right now, she forced herself onward. She would think she couldn’t continue, and then she’d go on. When it came to the very end, when they reached the hill, only then did Rory bolt from her, racing upwards.

  One wolf was down, and Iain was fighting for his life.

  She followed, unwilling to stand by, although she wouldn’t make it worse for them either, become a target they had to protect. She stared at the downed wolf, Mic, and feared the worst, not understanding how one wolf could have taken on two.

  It didn’t make sense unless there were more.

  The back of her neck prickled, her fur ruffed as she backed away, following her sixth sense. Something more was going on than a one-wolf attack. The wind came to her, and she whirled around even as she identified the scent—stranger, wolf, male.

  She still saw nothing as she faced into the breeze that carried the smell, and a second wolf’s scent followed. Nevertheless, she stepped towards what she feared. It might be a mistake to retreat, to be chased, when she was supposed to have Rory’s back. At her growl, a large male wolf stepped out from between two bushes, a second right behind him.

  He was grinning, mouth wide, as if she was the prize. His entire body said threat to her. Her heart began to beat out of her chest. For the first time in months, she was thrown back to the time when she’d been attacked. Last year, she’d turned tail and run for her life; now, she had the same choice. She was a very fast runner, she could lure them away and give Rory time to win his first battle.

  But not yet, not yet. Keep their attention. Her ears went flat and she snarled. Back the fuck off.

  The intruders trotted forward confidently, and she backed down the hill, keeping pace with their advance. When they chose to speed up, Sally flung herself around and took off at top speed.

  Zach had run too far and too hard this evening, and by the time he reached Sally, it was going to be too late. The thought galvanized him, and he pushed on. But he didn’t trust his body to not give out. It had happened before. It had all happened before.

  A long time ago he’d collapsed after running and running and running.

  Then he’d been running as a boy. He’d been running away from…men, wolves, he didn’t know.

  His brother had been with him. Where was his brother now? He didn’t understand how he’d smelled him and now he was gone.

  Gone, gone, gone.

  He was angry, old anger and new. Too angry. A red haze assailed him. Safety was an illusion. There was just violence and running and survival.

  Sally. She couldn’t run, not like he did. He should never have left her. He was never going to leave her again.

  A horse called out then, and Zach almost stumbled, not sure what was real and what was in his head. It was too late for an answer. He could only focus on Sally, find her, make sure she was safe. He pushed further, pounding into the snow. The noise of wolves snarling and growling coming to him now. It wasn’t far.

  Sally kept just outside their reach, leading them farther and farther from Rory. Her speed didn’t fail her. Her second wind gave her all she needed. Rory would come to her aid if he could. Otherwise, she would run. Somewhere in there she’d heard a horse bugle, perhaps Zach, and she raced towards the call.

  Zach wasn’t the only one who could run, she thought grimly. Though a part of her wanted to stop, turn around and attack these assholes. Even if she couldn’t win, she was feeling violent enough to do damage. She was angry, so angry, at being chased by fucking violent male wolves. Who the hell did they think they were? She wanted to kill them; the desire became a real, living thing. Enough that anger seemed to thunder through her, pounding. Like a beat. It took her another moment to realize the noise she had thought of as thundering rage was actually the sound of Zach’s hooves hitting the ground. He broke out of the trees and screamed.

  She had never been so happy to see him.

  Zach bore down on them, and Sally scrambled out of the way. He came at the first wolf with heavy hooves, fast and furious, and it didn’t escape. The high-pitched whine of wounded wolf, though, was drowned out by a second, louder scream, Zach’s scream. Sally had never heard anything like it, and she cringed at the primal, raw force of his rage.

  The wolf limped, teeth bared, while trying to stand its ground. Zach rose on his hind legs and plunged down atop the large furred body that could not outrace him, would never outrace him. Again and again, Zach attacked, until what was left lay bloody beneath him, blood seeping into the snow, a mess of fur, bone and blood.

  She’d barely caught her breath when two more wolves emerged from the trees, and Zach turned to Sally in question. He wasn’t on some kind of rampage, despite the killing. She could read his body language, and he was asking, Are they your pack? In answer, she snarled at the strangers who growled back.

  Where were they coming from? She didn’t understand these numbers. Dana had talked of one wolf. Sally had been chased by two, and now a third had appeared.

  One of the wolves was bleeding. It might have escaped Rory. Sally refused to entertain the possibility it had bested Rory, who would choose to stay and protect Iain and the downed wolf over chasing this on
e down. Rory must have let him go.

  The two wolves moved in concert, the bleeder cutting her off from Zach, as the second, a brown wolf, went full-bore after Zach, going for his throat.

  She didn’t see much after that, because the bleeder wolf loomed above her, just as one had a year ago.

  This time, she refused to run. She watched him, and before he could make his move, she went at him first, hit at the male from the side. Fast. In and out, drawing more blood before she pulled back and let herself cower, ears down, teeth bared, growling. Let him underestimate her even if he was the one bleeding.

  He growled but didn’t attack. It was always the same. They never wanted to kill her. They couldn’t mate with her then. But he planned to hurt her. Punish her for her insubordination.

  She whined. Let him think she was afraid, because she was going for his throat next.

  The wolf could not possibly reach his throat. Not when Zach rose on his back legs, turning into the wolf’s attack. His chest was scoured by teeth, the damage superficial, and the wolf fell, rolled and jumped to his feet again.

  Zach glanced towards Sally, saw her cowering, and fury rolled through him. He ignored his attacker and ran towards the second wolf.

  A horse screamed. Not him.

  It became hard to follow the next sequence of events, the past and present colliding. Zach had heard his brother, close by, but he kept his focus on Sally, on saving her. As he bore down on the wolf near her, he almost stumbled, feeling the gnash of teeth tear into his side before he trampled Sally’s attacker.

  Bone crunched beneath Zach, and the wolf squealed in pain. It still launched itself at Sally, and instead of zipping out of the way, she lunged, going under him so her jaws clamped down on his throat. Zach’s sides heaved as he could only watch, unable to take it in, unable to attack the wolf with Sally so close to him. She held on, refusing to release the strange wolf as he struggled to extract himself from her teeth.

  A noise came from his left, not a growl, the second wolf was too smart to actually warn of his next move. He wasn’t going for Sally, but Zach, for his side, where blood was flowing freely, he realized dimly. The blood loss must have been more than he’d realized because Zach stumbled, unable to rise in time to block the wolf. It occurred to Zach the wolf might do him real damage and his ability to protect Sally would be compromised.

  Focus. He tried to step into the next attack.

  Then out of the night came black movement, silent but lethal, as his brother’s hind leg snapped backwards, just missing Zach. The hoof connected with the wolf’s head, a precision move.

  The noise resounded in the field, and the sense of déjà vu disoriented Zach as he watched the wolf crumple to the snow.

  It was over.

  Nothing quite made sense. Storm was safe, with his grandparents, not here, not in danger. This was not last month’s dead wolf. It was now. Sally was the one he had to protect. His vision found her again, safe. She had risen, leaving a dead body behind her, and Zach leaned down to blow on her, check her vitals. She was whole, bloody but whole, and that’s all he needed.

  There was noise coming from her, hard to interpret, a whine, a whimper? A grunt followed, but it didn’t belong to Sally, didn’t belong to a wolf, and Zach lifted his head to look into a face so utterly familiar it rocked him.

  His brother, Ri. They had been here before, together. A long time ago, they had fought…something. And lost or won, Zach no longer knew. But now they touched noses, and Ri let out a long, heartfelt coming-home nicker while he put his neck against Zach and rested his head on him. Their embrace. He hadn’t known until right this moment how much he missed Ri. He wanted to stand with him, take his presence in, reacquaint himself with everything he should never have forgotten.

  But Ri pulled away, and they separated, still staring at each other. It came to Zach then, Ri’s nicker followed by a brief stamp. The cue he himself used for Storm, an old code that rose up from the murky depths of his unreliable past.

  Ri wanted him to shift to human.

  And Zach’s human was doing the equivalent of shouting at him to do just that. Sally continued to plead with him, maybe the same message. He had to shift, and he had to shift now. He was injured, and he needed to heal.

  He moved away from Ri, looked between Ri and Sally, and had so much to say to both of them. But speech was impossible. He could only trust them to watch over him as he pulled himself inwards and looked for the shift.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sally thought the night would never end. By the time they all stumbled into Zach’s house, she could barely keep her body moving forward. Rory had foreseen something like this could happen, and Zach’s fridge was filled to the hilt. Iain took anything edible out and threw it on the table.

  Human Zach had ridden partway home on his brother, until the cold had threatened him and he’d had to shift again. She felt like muscle was being leached from his body by these multiple shifts, and she threw a blanket around him when he sat down even as he began to methodically eat himself back from the brink.

  Mic was in bad shape. Iain feared internal bleeding and was on the phone to Teo while Aubrey set up a makeshift IV in the living room. Sally was vaguely aware the goal was to keep Mic still so his body could heal.

  She couldn’t process everything, especially when the man from the photograph—tall, skinny, dark—entered the kitchen, and Zach and he locked eyes.

  “Sally,” said Zach, between mouthfuls, “this is Ri.” He pointed to a seat with a plate. “Ri, eat.”

  She nodded, unable to speak, and now was not the time. She was eating too, hardly aware she was doing so, her own body well depleted by the night, if nothing like Zach’s or Mic’s.

  Ri joined in the feast.

  It was half an hour later before Zach reached over and took Ri’s arm, a welcoming gesture, yet he demanded: “What are you doing here?”

  Ri looked away, his eyes shifting as if he’d done something wrong.

  “I put you in danger. Again.”

  Ri frowned, as if Zach’s words didn’t make sense. “I had to make sure you were safe, Zach. I could only do that from afar because I was told you had amnesia and weren’t ready to meet me.”

  Sally cleared her throat. “Thank you for helping us. It’s only that we didn’t expect Trey to tell you about Zach.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Zach’s brow furrowed.

  “I, uh, investigated. My ex’s ex lives in Wolf Town.”

  “Huh” was Zach’s response.

  Ri gave a helpless shrug. “I couldn’t stay away once I knew you were here, once I knew there were wolves who might harm you.”

  The brothers stared, drinking each other in. Their expressions were similar, that of disbelief, though there was a lightness to Zach’s face she hadn’t seen before, as if a burden had been lifted.

  “I hurt you in the past,” said Zach, his voice flat.

  Ri pulled back a little at the statement, then responded with his own. “No you did not.”

  “I did something…wrong.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “It’s all confused. It’s a mess. My head’s a mess.” Zach paused. “I brought wolves to our door.”

  “You made a friend,” Ri corrected. “Had a girlfriend. Like you, she was sixteen.” His face warmed with affection, as if that could soften his next words. “Her father was a wolf and found out.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She betrayed you,” Ri explained.

  Zach glanced at Sally, and for reasons beyond all comprehension, even if the story upset her, her eyes welled up. Abrupt and swift, the tears began to fall.

  “Sally?”

  She was quiet, made her tears as silent as possible, but Zach muttered something to his brother and rose from his chair to scoop her up and hold her against him. She clung.

  He escaped the kitchen for some privacy and whispered, trying to evade wolves’ ears, “Why are you crying?”

 
; She just shook her head. Here he was being reunited with his brother, and she was making it about her. Which was all kinds of wrong. But the night, it had been too much, she had reached the end of her resources.

  He sat on a big chair in the alcove. “You did it.”

  She got herself under enough to control to ask, “I did what?”

  “You killed a wolf.”

  That stopped her for a moment. She had forgotten everything that had happened since, in her worry about Zach and his bleeding, which was thankfully more superficial than Mic’s. But, yes, with Zach’s help, she hadn’t had to run.

  “I did.” She wiped her face and tried to get herself under control. “I don’t know if it makes sense, but it was such a relief not to turn tail and run. I sank my teeth into him. Because of you, because you hurt him, I could.” A wave of satisfaction at the kill rolled through her, not as intense as the first one out in the snow… Well, she’d never considered herself bloodthirsty, but that side of her wolf had come out.

  “I’m glad he’s dead,” said Zach. “You didn’t need Mala.”

  She looked at him. All night he’d been so lost in his horse and himself and his brother, as if there might be little room for her in his life. The uncertainty had unnerved her. Nevertheless, he had paid close attention to her. She had not spent a lot of time talking about Mala and her dreams, and the god-awful rescue—of Sally’s helplessness. Yet Zach understood it all.

  He tucked hair behind her ear. “I, on the other hand, brought harm to my brother.”

  “No, Zach.” She wanted to shake this idea out of him.

  “Yes. I’ve known for many years, in my dreams and in my nightmares. It was always my fault, though it was never clear what I’d done.”

  “Ri survived,” she pointed out. “And you were a boy, probably with a big crush on a girl.”