Feral

by Nicole Luiken

  Although her dad was a vet, he often dealt with broken limbs within the Pack, both saving his Packmates the 100 km trip to the nearest hospital and preventing the human doctors from noticing just how fast Pack healed. She vividly remembered a time Nathan had limped into their house on a leg that had broken and healed crooked during a hunting trip. When human bones healed wrong they could have surgery to correct it—the subject was put under with anesthesia, the orthopedic surgeon cut the bone with a saw and used steel pins and plates to hold it in place. Nathan hadn’t wanted to risk revealing his super-healing to a regular doctor and her dad’s veterinary practice wasn’t equipped to use anesthesia on humans, so Nathan had ordered her dad to rebreak it with a maul.

  The maul … Shudder. And breaking a healed bone was tricky, because the healed spot became stronger than the rest of the leg, and the bone could break in a second spot.

  She appealed to the strange werewolf. “I need you to Change back to human and fetch my parents.”

  He whined, hunkered down beside her and licked her hand.

  “Please? You don’t have to show yourself, just howl at them or ring the doorbell. Wake them up so they realize I’m gone and start searching for me.”

  The wolf didn’t move. He wasn’t going to help.

  Chloe swore. She made an imprudent movement, and a wave of pain rolled back over her. Greasy sweat popped up on her forehead, and she grew lightheaded.

  She kept from screaming by force of will, counting in her head.

  When she reached thirty she could talk again. “Okay, if you don’t want to show yourself to my dad, why don’t you transform into human and set my leg yourself?” As options went, it sucked. Setting bones wasn’t for amateurs, and it would mean more pain for her and less chances of success, but it was still better than the maul.

  The wolf whined and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  Her temper surged like hot lava. “So who are you anyway? Are you a runaway? If something is really bad about your home Pack, we won’t make you go back. But if it’s something small … well, think of this as your chance to go home a hero.”

  No response.

  She shivered, which triggered another spike of pain. The wolf nestled closer to her, and she buried her cold hands in his fur.

  At least she wasn’t alone.

  The wolf’s presence was oddly comforting, curiously like Pack. His smell wasn’t quite right—both wilder and muskier than Pack—but usually when Chloe met a werewolf who wasn’t part of Pine Hollow, they smelled wrong. The feral didn’t raise her hackles like those wolves had.

  Once again, Chloe found herself ticking off Pack families, trying to come up with a name. She was quite familiar with Dean and Kyle’s wolves. Dean’s dad was too old. Could Dean’s sister have brought home a werewolf boyfriend from college? But Chloe hadn’t seen Heather at the deathwatch. The feral wasn’t part of the Alphas’ family. Not Brian or his two younger sibs. Not her aunt or cousins. Definitely not Coach Wharton, whose wolf was pure white.

  She was missing someone … but who? She counted Pack families in her head. Aha. The number only seemed low because of the hole left by the death of the Jennings family—

  Chills cruised down Chloe’s spine. Her eyes widened, and she stopped petting the wolf. It couldn’t be. Could it? The wolf had pale blue eyes, just like Abby, just like—“Marcus?” she whispered.

  The wolf pushed his head into her hands, tongue lolling. His blue eyes asked why she’d stopped.

  She cautiously sat up straighter, wincing at the stab of pain caused by the motion. “Marcus, is that you?”

  He stiffened.

  Chloe breathed through her mouth, trying to think.

  Holy crap. Abby’s brother, Marcus, was—or had been—ten months younger than Chloe. At the time of the plane crash he hadn’t had his first Change yet. This could be Marcus. If he’d somehow survived the crash.

  Werewolves could heal almost anything, but they burned a lot of energy doing it. The Jennings’ plane had gone down for unknown reasons in the Northwest Territories, almost 1000 km from Pine Hollow, over a year ago. Chloe supposed a wolf could have travelled all that distance, but why do it as a wolf instead of Changing into human form and using the telephone? Her dad would have hopped a plane in a flash and brought him home.

  The answer came at once: because he can’t Change.

  “Oh, no, no, no…” she breathed. All Pack kids were warned, over and over, of the dangers of remaining in wolf form for days on end. Stay too long and the werewolf went feral. Wild. Dangerous.

  Tears pricked her eyes. “Marcus? Is it really you?”

  Another whine. She resumed petting him. Soon, the cream and black wolf was snuggled up against her side. Chloe kept stroking his head, near tears, as she thought of how far he’d come, of what he’d been through.

  She hated to ask, but she had to know. “Did anyone else survive?” Abby …

  The wolf whined. The pain in his blue eyes was far too human.

  On to the next obvious question. “Can you Change back? Try, Marcus,” she urged, holding his head between her hands. He couldn’t have gone fully feral, not if he allowed her to get this close.

  The wolf closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders. She held her breath, but nothing happened. Just like nothing happened every time she tried to Change to a wolf. She laughed bitterly. “Well, aren’t we a pair?”

  The wolf whined. She’d called him Marcus, and the name felt both terribly right and terribly wrong. Marcus was the name that had belonged to him before, but he was a wolf now, not a boy. The boy was gone forever, lost.

  Part of him wanted to do as she asked and Change back into a two-legged human. She was injured, and it hurt something deep inside him to see her in pain. He would have run to the moon and back for her. But this he could not do.

  A shudder ran through him. Become a boy again: a creature with soft, vulnerable skin, no fur to keep warm at night, and useless, too-blunt teeth? No.

  The wolf was better, stronger, than the boy.

  And he needed to be strong, because he now remembered why he’d crossed hundreds of miles to come back home.

  There was something Evil here in the heart of his former Pack’s territory, something that had killed his family. Something he needed to protect the girl from.

  chapter

  4

  How the heck was she going to get out of here?

  The walls of the gully were too steep. Even completely healthy it would take a bit of a scramble to get out. With a broken leg? Not happening. Which meant waiting until her leg healed crookedly or hoping to find a gentler bank.

  Even with better than human night vision, she couldn’t see more than five feet ahead of her. She squinted. Okay, the ground sloped slightly uphill in that direction.

  Sitting up, she leaned back on her arms, then used her arms and her good leg to lift her bum and ease backward a foot. Her breath hissed in as her broken leg dragged on the ground.

  The wolf whined at her distress, as if wanting to help her. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the materials to make a travois.

  “You want to make yourself useful?” she asked him, hitching herself a second time. Ouch, that hurt. “Scout me a way out of here.”

  She wasn’t sure if he understood, but he trotted up the gully and disappeared in the dark.

  With her cell phone gone, she had no way of telling the time, and she began to regret speaking so harshly—she hadn’t meant to drive the wolf away—before the shine of animal eyes in the dark announced Marcus’s return.

  Monstrous relief swamped her chest, making it impossible to speak for a few moments. She blinked back tears. He’d come back. She wasn’t alone.

  The wolf nosed her chest. She hugged him, then said briskly, “So did you find a way out of this hole?”

  He whined, took a few steps down the ravine, then returned for her.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” She started hitching along again.

  After another tim
eless period, the wolf jumped onto a sort of ledge. Chloe groaned. The ledge appeared to wind out of the gully, but getting herself onto it was going to be a Grade A pain.

  Hitching or crawling simply wouldn’t work. But the ledge was only four feet high. If she could stand up, she could roll herself onto it.

  Her leg already blazed with pain. Her skin crawled at the idea of trying to put any weight on it or worse, falling again.

  Harshly telling herself that if she rebroke the leg it would just make it easier for her dad to set, Chloe maneuvered herself next to a tree and tried to stand. Bolts of agony punctuated each small movement. Roll onto her good knee—gasp, twitch—grab the tree trunk and pull—wheeze, moan—lurch into an upright position—curse, pant for breath.

  Clinging to the tree trunk, Chloe tried to gauge how far away the ledge was. Two hops or three? No point in waiting. She took a deep breath and started hopping.

  The jolting sent lightning streaking up her leg, so bad she almost passed out. She stumbled and automatically tried to catch herself on her bad leg. It folded under her. She screamed and would’ve fallen if Marcus hadn’t seized her jacket sleeve in his jaws. Growling, he exerted a steady upward pull.

  Swearing continuously, Chloe ignored the pain messages flashing up her nerves and awkwardly rolled her upper body onto the ledge. Her broken leg dangled painfully, and again the wolf came to her tugging on her pants until it had support.

  She lay on the ledge, kissing dirt, waiting for the shrieking agony in her leg to fade. She started to count to one hundred, lost count and made herself start again. By her third attempt, the pain abated enough for her to breathe better.

  The wolf whined at her.

  “I know, I know,” Chloe snarled back. “Not a good place for a nap.” She started crawling the rest of the way up the path to the top of the gully.

  By the time she pulled herself over the top, dirt crusted under her fingernails and streaked across her face, and she trembled in every muscle. She lay on her back and rested again. Her leg throbbed.

  The feral lay beside her, offering his warmth to share.

  She wished she had fur. In desperation, she tried again to Change—Changing sped healing, but right now she was willing to risk the maul if it meant she made it home faster and less painfully. But nothing happened. The moon looked down on her from above, aloof and judgmental.

  “I’m Pack,” Chloe whispered to herself. “Pack are tough.” Groaning, she resumed hitching along.

  The wolf stayed at her side the whole time. He gently corrected her course a few times; Chloe followed him without question. It still took forever before her house came in sight; thank god she’d left the porch light on.

  Ominously, by then her leg had gone from a jackhammer throb to a mere dentist’s drill of pain as her werewolf-assisted healing kicked in. If she’d gone through all this and still had to face the maul, she was going to scream.

  At the edge of the forest, Marcus whined and pulled away from her.

  “Come to the house with me,” Chloe pleaded. “My dad’s a vet. Maybe he can do something. Help you.”

  No response. The wolf just looked at her.

  It was Marcus though. Chloe was sure of that now. She would never have made it without him.

  She started across the yard alone, then looked back and lifted a hand in farewell. Marcus yipped once, then faded into the forest.

  Chloe curled her lip at the stretch of lawn separating her from the house. Yes, she could probably drag herself over there, but her body ached with exhaustion, and it wasn’t like she could hide this little adventure from her parents anyway. Time to face the consequences. She sucked in a lungful of air and bellowed. “Mom! Dad! A little help here!”

  Within moments a light switched on and her mother called, “Chloe? Where are you?”

  “Outside! I need help!”

  Her parents appeared at the door together, her mom wrapped in a housecoat, auburn hair all tangled, her dad in pajama bottoms and glasses. Her mom gasped and rushed toward her. “Chloe! What happened?”

  “I fell into a gully and broke my leg.”

  “Why on earth—?” her mom started.

  “That can wait.” Her dad carefully picked her up and carried her inside. Yay for werewolf strength. “How long ago did you break it?” he asked, laying her down on her bed.

  Chloe grimaced. “I sneaked out for a run at midnight. I fell probably twenty minutes later. What time is it now?”

  “Almost three.” Her mom abandoned her questions, falling into crisis mode. “It’s already been healing for two and a half hours. Is it too late?” she asked her husband. She worked at the vet clinic with him and often assisted in surgeries.

  “I don’t know. Let’s get those pants off.”

  Fortunately, Chloe had chosen a comfortable old pair of sweats to run in, so her mom could pull them off without resorting to scissors. She covered Chloe’s lap with a blanket. Chloe bit her lip and squeezed her mom’s hand while her dad examined the break.

  “We’ve got to convince the Pack to spring for an X-ray machine,” her dad complained.

  “What about the one in your office?”

  “It’s a fifteen minute drive, which will just give the bone more time to heal. I’d prefer to rebreak and set it now if I can. Plus, Mickey said he’d do a kennel check on one of our patients.”

  Mickey was another of her dad’s employees, a patient, gentle giant of man who was awesome with animals but wasn’t Pack.

  “Okay,” her dad said after a moment. “I don’t think it’s as healed as I feared, probably because you’ve been moving and stressing it out. You shouldn’t need surgery. Do you want me to try to rebreak it now, or wait until we have an X-ray and I can get you a local anesthetic?”

  “Do it now,” Chloe said.

  No mauls, no saws. Her dad simply had her mother hold onto her upper body while he grabbed hold of her lower leg. “This is going to hurt. Try not to kick me in the face. Ready, baby?”

  Chloe nodded. He yanked.

  The crack of breaking bone wasn’t quite as loud this time, but the pain still struck swift and hard. Tears poured from her eyes, and she bit her lip bloody. Her mom braced her upper torso while her dad carefully straightened the bone. Agony sizzled up her leg. She clenched her jaw, her fists, willing her body to stillness.

  “Almost … There.” The pain eased off. “It should be set,” her dad said briskly. “Though we’ll still need X-rays to verify.”

  Chloe lay back on the bed, gasping and trying to recover.

  Her mom felt her forehead. “She’s cold.”

  Splints, aspirin, hot chocolate and even a rag to wash the dirt off her face and hands followed. But all too soon Chloe was in the back seat of the SUV on the way to the vet office and the inquisition started.

  Her mom: “Why were you outside running at night?”

  Her dad: “Why didn’t you let one of us know or take the cell phone?”

  “I did take the cell phone, but I dropped it when I fell into the gully.” Explaining her superstitious theory about moonlight spurring the Change made her cheeks hot with humiliation. And then came the question she’d been dreading.

  “How did you break your leg?” Her dad was watching the road and didn’t make eye contact.

  “I got disoriented in the dark and fell in the gully.”

  Until the words came out of her mouth, confident and smooth, Chloe hadn’t decided if she would tell them about the feral or not. She was ninety percent sure that the feral was Marcus and thus didn’t pose a threat, but the second she mentioned that a feral had been hanging around, her parents would go into a flap.

  She had no proof that the feral was Marcus, only his eye colour and intangibles like the way he felt like Pack and had tried to help her. Her parents might believe her, but his identity wouldn’t outweigh the fact that he was a feral—and Pack Lore considered ferals deadly dangerous. Her parents would feel obligated to notify the Pack, and the Alphas would be
a lot less willing to take the word of a Dud about the feral’s identity.

  They would hunt him down and shoot him on sight.

  Chloe shuddered. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow that to happen. How could she give up on Marcus without giving up on herself first? She had to believe it was possible for her to Change, and if she believed it for herself then why not for Marcus, too? How was being stuck as a wolf that much different than being stuck human the way she was?

  A year had passed since the Jennings’ plane went down, but it didn’t necessarily follow that Marcus had been trapped in wolf form for the whole time. Maybe he’d managed to Change a few times, but hadn’t been close enough to civilization to phone for a rescue. There were lots of possibilities, but if she told anybody, the Alphas would take action to protect the Pack, and Marcus, after all his suffering and long journey, would be just as dead as Abby.

  Not. Going. To. Happen.

  So Chloe lied. She held her breath. Lore held it impossible to lie to a more Dominant Pack member. But in the dark they couldn’t make out her face, and the lie passed.

  By Sunday evening Chloe wanted to climb the walls. She’d slept through most of Saturday, but her dad insisted on complete rest for the weekend, either in her room or on the living room couch. The enforced inactivity was driving her mad.

  She desperately wanted to know what was happening. If anyone else had seen Marcus. If the Alpha had fallen into decline. Who would be the next female Alpha.

  Neither a family movie marathon of The Lord of the Rings, nor the good news that her dad recovered her cell phone, unbroken, could distract her.

  On Sunday evening, her dad said she could go back to school the next day if a second X-ray showed the bone to be healed. After supper, the three of them bundled out to the SUV to drive to his office.

  A cold, relentless drizzle smeared the windowpanes. The ceaseless motion of the SUV’s windshield wipers hypnotized Chloe.

  Did Marcus have a den somewhere out of the rain? She was impatient for her leg to heal so she could go back to the woods.

  There had to be a way she could help Marcus Change. “Dad, can the Change be triggered by adrenaline? Would a traumatic event”—like a plane crash—“trigger it?”