by Viola Rivard
“Okay,” the girl responded, relief evident in her tone.
Harper twisted her hair, tying it in a knot behind her head, and then started up the tree. The lower branches were easy enough to clear, and from there she was able to crawl along the thick central branch, which stretched out towards one side.
“So what brought you up here?” Harper asked as she climbed.
“I was trying to go up high, to see if I could find home. I can't smell it anymore.”
“What were you doing so far from home?”
The girl didn't answer right away. After a few more sniffles, she said, “I ran away.”
“Don't worry. I'll get you back to...”
Harper trailed off as she got her first good look at the girl. It was as if she were glimpsing through time at her childhood self, right down to the dimpled chin and the cut of her hair. Suddenly, a psychotic break was seeming like a very real possibility.
I'm hallucinating.
“I didn't mean to run away,” the girl said. “I want to go home, now.”
The girl's voice even sounded similar to hers, and the way her bottom lip puckered when she sniffled, it was identical to what Harper did when she was having one of her private, ugly crying sessions in the bathroom mirror.
Once Harper got over the initial shock, she could see minute differences between them. The girl's eyes were darker and her hair was a little lighter. There was also a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Snap out of it.
She continued making her way up the branches, noting that one of the girl's legs appeared twisted at an irregular angle.
“Is that the leg you hurt?” Harper asked.
Her head bobbed. “Uh huh. It hurts a lot.”
“Don't worry. We're going to figure out how to fix it,” Harper said, hoping she wasn't lying.
As Harper reached her, the girl stretched her little arms out towards her. Harper lifted her up into her arms. Though she was careful not to jostle the injured leg, the girl still scrunched her face and whimpered.
Up close, Harper could see that she looked to be about five or six, though given how quickly some shifter pups grew, she could have easily been much younger. She could only imagine how worried her parents must have been.
“How long have you been out here?” Harper asked as she scanned for the best route down.
“Since nighttime,” she said.
Harper figured she must have meant the previous night.
“So, you ran away, huh? I used to do that a lot when I was a kid.”
You're still running away, she thought.
The little girl rested her head on Harper's shoulder. “I just wanted them to remember me.”
“Who, your parents?”
She nodded.
“Well, you're sure showing them, aren't you?”
Harper saw that getting down would be possible, but it would require a combination of good balance and traction. She gripped a branch to steady herself as she kicked off her boots, and then used her toes to peel off her socks. Letting them fall to the ground, she put her bare feet to the bark and spread out her toes.
“What makes you think that your parents forgot you? New baby?”
There was a lapse in the girl's pained expression as she looked at Harper in wonderment. “How did you know?”
“I've been there many, many times,” she said. “My mom, or at least the one I grew up with, she'd have a new baby every year. Sometimes, two.”
“My mama had two last year, my brothers, and now she just had a new baby and they're always with him all of the time.”
“New pups are a lot of work. I bet that when you were born, your parents were with you all of the time.”
The girl turned to wipe her face against Harper's top. “Before my brothers were born, everyone played with me all of the time.”
Harper could have unloaded years worth of big sister wisdom onto the little girl, but as she made her way down the tree, certain pieces began to fall into place.
They were in the Lazarus territory, which stretched at least forty kilometers in any direction.
The girl had left her home the night before, which meant that unless she'd managed to travel that far in a day, she was most likely the daughter of the Lazarus alpha.
The one that Shan had come to execute.
After rescuing the girl, Harper could very well be returning her just in time to watch her father bite the dust.
Fuck.
“Hey, kiddo,” Harper began as she started down the centermost branch. “What's your name?”
“Dawn.”
Harper's legs locked up mid-step. While her mind spun beyond her control, her reflexes tried to recover and her hand shot up to grab at a branch. All she ended up with was a handful of leaves and a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach as she began to fall. Her arms closed around the little girl just as her head slammed into a branch. An instant later, she crashed onto the ground.
For a while, all Harper could hear was a loud ringing sound. She had to try twice before she was able to lift her head. It felt as though an invisible hand was pushing down on her, trying to keep her in the dirt. She blinked several times to clear her vision, but her surroundings remained blurry and jumbled. When she swallowed, she tasted blood.
She tried pushing herself up, and then she felt the girl, still wrapped in her arms. Her head felt as if it had been split in two, and all she wanted to do was pass out. If it weren't for Dawn, she might have.
After spitting the blood from her mouth, she tried saying the girl's name. Her vision cleared enough that she could see the girl lying prone and unresponsive.
“Dawn? Hey. Hey!” Harper smacked the sides of Dawn's face. “Wake up. Please. You have to be okay.”
When Dawn didn't respond, Harper staggered to her feet and screamed Shan's name into the forest. There was no answer, and why would there be? If Shan had been close enough to hear her, he would have already come to her aid when he'd heard her scream.
Knowing she couldn't wait for him to show up and fix everything, she fell back down to her knees. She thought she could see Dawn breathing, but to be certain she put her ear to Dawn's chest and listened. There was a beating heart inside and at the moment, that was all that mattered.
She lifted Dawn up into her arms, hugged her to her chest, and then stood. Her head was still pounding and her surroundings continued to go in and out of focus.
Which way?
She tried to listen for the sounds of the river, but before she could move one way or the other, she heard a howl.
Shan?
Harper had never heard him howl and had no way of knowing if the sound belonged to him, one of his wolves, or a stranger. She listened again for the water, knowing that her best bet was to go back the way that she came.
She couldn't hear the river, but she moved in the direction of the frog hums. Her left ankle must have been sprained, because on the first step, a sharp pain shot up her leg. It hurt just as much on the second and the third steps, but she kept on limping forward.
Harper had just caught sight of the moon reflecting off the water when she heard the wolf, its claws tearing up the earth as it charged at her from behind.
She came to an abrupt stop and laughed. She knew all too well what was happening now.
This was her nightmare.
The one she'd had every night before she'd discovered liquor, and then pot. The one that still resurfaced whenever she lapsed in her self-medication.
It changed a little each time, masquerading as a normal dream at first. But no matter where she was or who she was with, the scene would peel away like old, stiff wallpaper. Suddenly, she was no longer in her apartment or her classroom at school. Her friends, family, or the vague cast of participants in her dream would vanish. She would be alone in the woods, and somewhere in the distance, she would hear it howl.
Then, it hunted her.
As a teenager, she'd figured out how to wake herself from the nig
htmares, most of the time. It seemed to get harder the older she got, and some nights she didn't realize she was dreaming until the wolf was already tearing her apart.
Tonight, it had felt so real, but as she thought back on what had happened, she recognized how dream-like it had all been. Finding a little girl in a tree, a girl that looked just like her, who was running away from her family, and just happened to have her mother's name. It was just the sort of nightmare her mind might conjure in response to the stress of returning to the reservation.
She wondered how long she'd been dreaming. How much of the past week had been in her mind? When she woke, would she be catapulted back to the night she'd fallen asleep in the tree, with Ian and Jo sleeping in the tent nearby?
She looked down at Dawn, half expecting her to burst into butterflies and disappear. She remained a heavy weight in her arms. Perhaps it was her mind's way of telling her that she was still holding onto the past.
Knowing what she needed to do, Harper turned to face the wolf.
“This isn't real. This is just a dream. I can wake up now.”
The wolf continued its advance, and Harper that something was different. The wolf was large by shifter standards, but still smaller than the one in her dreams. It was also darker in color and charged in a straight line. In her nightmares, the wolf was pale white and its movements were abrupt and discordant with reality.
“This isn't real,” she said again, just as the wolf lunged.
It went for her injured arm, its teeth slicing through her buckskin shirt as if it were sandwich bread. His bite made Harruth's seem like a puppy's nibble. He wasn't trying to posture or to scare her. His intent was to hurt her, badly.
The pain was blinding. Even if she'd been in her right mind, it would have hobbled her. In her current state, it sent her into a full-on panic and she reacted like a frightened animal, crying out and trying to pull her arm free. The wolf's teeth were still embedded in her arm, and her efforts only served to injure her more.
He jerked her around violently, moving so fast that she could barely process what was happening. She began to flail, and in the process, Dawn slipped from her arms and slumped onto the ground.
She was reaching down for the little girl when the wolf suddenly released her. She fell to the forest floor, aware of the sounds of yelping and snarling from somewhere beyond the sound of her hammering heartbeat.
Her arm felt numb. The only awareness she had of it was that it was trembling uncontrollably. With her usable arm, she dragged herself towards Dawn and pulled her into her lap. Only then did she turn to see what was behind her.
Harper hadn't known she was expecting to see Shan until she turned and found that he wasn't there. Instead, a large black wolf had the tawny one pinned to the ground, its mouth clamped on her attacker's neck.
When he released him, the lighter wolf immediately shifted, taking the form of a tall, sinewy male with blonde hair and a bloodied neck.
“What the fuck, Caim?” he snarled.
Harper let out a choked sound and then squeezed her eyes shut. The ringing in her ears was back, and she no longer felt as if she could catch her breath.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the black wolf shift.
If it were a dream, he would have still looked the way he had the last time she'd seen him. Long and lithe, his hair a scraggly mess, and his shoulders too broad, even with his recent growth spurt.
He was so much larger now. He looked just like his father, yet also like her.
Caim sneered at the other male. “Stay the fuck back.”
He came to them, crouching down beside Harper. At first, his attention was focused solely on the little girl. He put his hand on Harper's wrist, gently removing it, and lifted the girl into his big arms.
“She's just unconscious, I think.” Harper's voice sounded disembodied to her ears, as though it were coming from somewhere outside of her. “I found her in a tree. Her leg is hurt. But she was talking. She talked to me. She was okay.”
“Stop,” Caim said, putting a hand to her face. “What are you doing here? And why do you smell like that?”
Her head was too messed up to answer either of those questions. All she could do was put her hand over his and say, “I thought you were dead.”
“What are you talking about? You left.”
She shook her head even though it hurt like hell. “No. I came back. For three years, I came back. You were gone. No one had heard from you. Nobody would, but they didn't have to. We all thought you were dead.”
He glared at her. “And what do you think your father believes of you? I found him just last year, and he hadn't heard from you in nearly a decade.”
The other man spoke up, his tone urgent. “Caim. I don't know what is going on here, but we have to leave, now. They're coming.”
Just as before, when she'd plucked Dawn from the tree, the pieces started to arrange themselves in her mind. Her panic was peaking again as she gripped Caim's wrist.
“Caim, is this your pack? Are you the alpha of Lazarus?”
Ignoring the question, Caim lifted her into his other arm.
She pushed against his chest. “No, you have to put me down.”
“You are bleeding very badly, Snow.”
Caim started to say something else, but the other male interjected. “You can't bring her with us. That's his scent on her. Fuck!”
They were being surrounded. Viper, Cade, and Yorick closed in on them from all sides, trapping them on the water's edge. Even if they could have managed to flee across the river, somehow able to outrun the beta wolves while carrying Dawn, once Shan stepped from behind the trees, it was all over.
He was in his human form, but it didn't matter. He could shift and clear the river in a single leap while the other wolves were still wading across the deep water. Caim and the other wolf must have known what he was, because they both went still at the sight of him.
“Put her down.”
Shan sounded calm, but there was something off about his demeanor that she couldn't place. Whatever it was, her instincts screamed at her to defuse the situation, and fast.
“Caim, put me down.”
Either the years had made him less obstinate or he saw the same thing that Harper did. He let her down without protest, though he kept his hand on her shoulder, gripping it tightly.
Harper looked into Shan's eyes as she spoke. “They have a child that needs medical attention. You have to let them go.”
“They can give the child to you.”
Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.
It would be so much easier if she could stop shaking.
“Shan, please. Just let them go. Let them go, and you and I can leave here. We'll go back to your territory and you can deal with them in the springtime, just like you planned. Please.”
Shan took a step forward, prompting Caim to take a step back. He pulled Harper with him, and as she stumbled back her weight settled on her damaged ankle and she let out a shaky cry.
Shan's next words were sharp and issued in the span of a breath.
“Keep your hand on her another second and it will be your last.”
“No!” Harper staggered forward, holding her hands up as if they could somehow block him when it felt as though a strong breeze might cause her to collapse.
Shan's eyes narrowed in the way they did when he was reading between the lines, hearing the words she wasn't saying and glimpsing the cards tucked away in her sleeves.
“You know him. How?”
There was no point in lying. Even if a lie would have served her, with the similarities in their scents, Shan could have parsed out the truth in minutes.
“He's my brother.” Her voice cracked. “He's my brother and I think he's also the alpha of this pack you're after and I think that's my niece that he's holding in his arms right now and you can't hurt them. You can't.”
Her view of Shan's face was distorted by her tears. They wouldn't stop coming, no matter how many times she blin
ked. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so utterly out of control. She began to hobble towards Shan, certain that if she could just put her arms around him, she could hold him in place long enough for Caim to escape.
Shan met her halfway, catching her as she collapsed against him. His arm went around her back, holding her up, but not quite holding her.
“Let them leave,” she heard Shan say. If he hadn't been holding her up, she would have sank to the ground with her relief.
She looked back at Caim. He was hesitating, his daughter clutched to his chest, his eyes wild.
“Go.” She could barely get her voice above a whisper, but she knew that he heard her. “I'll be okay.”
She was very not okay. Okay was speck in her rearview mirror and she was still rocketing away from it, but she didn't know how much longer her brother had before Shan's generosity expired.
Caim passed his daughter to the other male, and then shifted. The man climbed onto Caim's back with Dawn, and then Caim started across the river.
She was anxious for the entire crossing. Even once Caim reached the far bank, she half expected Shan to give the order for his wolves to run them down.
He didn't.
A moment after the trio disappeared into the forest, Shan dismissed his wolves. He had to give the order twice before they fell back. When they were alone, she felt Shan's hand in her hair, but it wasn't to pet her. He twisted her hair around his wrist, pulling her head back so that she was looking up at him.
“Let's get you cleaned up, Snow.”
Chapter 16
At the river, Shan removed her shirt and Harper got her first look at her damaged arm.
She promptly vomited.
“Move your fingers,” he instructed.
She obeyed, or at least, she thought she did. She couldn't bring herself to look at her arm again.
“Now your wrist.”
The lack of feeling she'd experienced earlier must have been shock, because now she was intensely aware of how much pain she was in.
“I can't. It hurts too badly.”
He didn't press the issue. Using fabric that he'd torn from her shirt, he slowly cleaned the blood from her arm. She could tell that he was being careful, but it still hurt like a bitch.