Feral

by Nicole Luiken

  Ironically, if Marcus had actually been feral, he would have run. Instead Marcus circled around and drove Dean off of her. Dean fought back and in moments the two wolves were wrestling on the forest floor at her feet, snapping and snarling.

  Dazed, Chloe pushed herself to her feet. Drying mud flaked off her arms.

  Coach jogged into sight, raised the rifle to his cheek then swore. “They’re too close together. Chloe, move back.” His voice rang with such authority that Chloe involuntarily took a step back.

  Marcus snarled. Though smaller, he was holding his own against Dean, nipping and then retreating, with no wasted motions.

  Not that it would matter in the end. If Dean won, Marcus would be dead. If Marcus snapped Dean’s neck, he would cross the line and become a true feral and Coach would shoot him like a rabid skunk.

  She clenched her teeth until her jaw ached, the rage flaring up like a smoldering fire doused in gasoline. Rage that this was happening at all. Rage at her inability to Change. Rage that the Jennings’ plane had gone down in the first place. Fury at her own helplessness to save Abby’s brother scorched her bones.

  Anger and adrenaline stormed her body. Desperation seized her: she had to help Marcus! For the first time she didn’t merely want to Change, she needed to Change.

  Fur prickled her skin, and Chloe’s back bowed on a wave of pain as she collapsed to the ground.

  Suddenly, the night transformed to almost daylight brightness. Her hearing sharpened, and smells exploded in her nose like a bomb. She sawheardsmelled her Pack under attack.

  Clothing tangled her front legs, the constriction unbearable. She ripped at the cloth with her teeth, squirmed free of her pajamas.

  While she Changed, Dean had gained the upper hand. Marcus was down. Chloe threw herself into the fray, growling. Mine! Stay away!

  Surprised, Dean retreated. Chloe stood over Marcus’s fallen body. He lived, but the rich scent of his blood permeated the air.

  “Chloe?” Coach smelled shocked for a moment. He kept talking, but she couldn’t focus on the words when all her other senses were demanding her attention; they became noises without meaning. Chloe waited for him to Change and attack, but he only raised a long stick to his shoulder, pointing it at Marcus.

  No. Not a long stick. A gun.

  Crack. Another bullet hit Marcus, in the leg this time.

  Instinct took over. Chloe charged. She hit Coach’s torso with her whole weight. He fell on his butt.

  Coach bared his teeth and swung the rifle at her head. She dodged the blow and seized the wooden stock in her teeth, ripping it free from his grip. She threw the rifle into the forest and stood guard, blocking his path toward it.

  She spared a brief glance at her Packmate. Marcus licked at his rear leg, though the bleeding had already slowed. He yipped a warning.

  Coach had begun to Change. Already, his nose had pushed forward into a snout, and a rash of black fur broke out on his back. A silent snarl of pain formed on his now-black lips as his tail sprouted, bones popping and rearranging themselves… . Then it was done. A white wolf twice as heavy as Chloe faced her.

  The other wolf—Dean—hung back, content to let the more Dominant white wolf handle things.

  Arrogantly, the white wolf stalked toward Marcus, expecting her, the lesser wolf, to get out of his way.

  The white wolf was fourth in the Pack hierarchy. Chloe didn’t have a chance, but she could give Marcus a few extra moments to heal. She blocked the white wolf, growling.

  He snapped his teeth in warning. She flinched, but stood her ground, legs trembling with the effort of protecting her Pack.

  The white wolf lunged forward and bit her haunch, drawing blood. Her flank burned, but she didn’t show her belly, didn’t back down. She growled her defiance.

  Behind her, Marcus climbed back on his feet, partially healed but moving stiffly. He tried to stand by her, but she snapped at him. Run! She wasn’t in danger, he was.

  Again, the large white wolf tried to go around her. Again, she blocked. His scent changed from impatience to puzzlement. He loomed over her, growling, but this wasn’t about being bigger or even stronger. Dominance was about will.

  Maybe if her Change had come easily two years ago she wouldn’t have been able to do it. Maybe those months of being called a Dud, of persevering, had all led up to this moment. Chloe stared him down.

  He dropped his gaze—only for a second, but everyone knew what it meant.

  And then another two-legs—Dean’s Dad—jogged up, Kyle at his heels. The man also held a long stick, but he pointed it at the ground. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “That’s not a feral, that’s Chloe. Can’t you tell from her scent?” The Beta moved between Chloe and the white wolf.

  The white wolf growled in frustration.

  “Why isn’t the feral attacking?” the Beta asked.

  “I told you. It’s Marcus,” Kyle said.

  Silence, then: “Run that by me again. Marcus Jennings?”

  Talk, talk, talk. Chloe took advantage of her enemies’ confusion to retreat into the shadows. She nipped Marcus’s flank, urging him to escape with her. She started to stretch out her legs and run, but Marcus fell behind, still wounded. She slowed until they could run shoulder-to-shoulder.

  No one pursued them.

  Marcus howled in triumph. Mine!

  Mine! She howled back.

  The two of them ran together through the dark pines, paws hitting the earth in tandem, hearts beating as one. They were Pack!

  The she-wolf was beautiful, just as the wolf had known she would be: a creamy gold wolf with amber brown eyes and a gorgeous flirty tail.

  They ran together beneath the starry sky, and happiness burst inside him, a feeling so much greater than the absence of pain he’d mistaken as contentment before.

  He had a Pack again, was alone no more. He lifted his voice and howled his triumph to the moon. The she-wolf lifted her head and howled, too, creating a melody.

  Another wolf howled in the distance. She turned her head and fear speared through the wolf. Would she return to her old Pack?

  But then she nuzzled his nose and took off after some mice scurrying under the leaf litter. She was a naturally quick hunter, but neither of them was truly hungry. They played, then let the mice escape.

  She danced and frisked with him, filling his heart with pure joy.

  Then her nose lifted, and he smelled it, too. The stink of bad magic and rank fowl.

  The wolf had smelled the Evil in the Forest before and followed it to the house as its source. When the she-wolf tried to track the stench, he nipped at her in warning. It was a place to be avoided.

  She took a few steps toward it, but stopped when he whined his distress. She tilted her head, then acceded to his wishes. They ran through the night once more, away from the Evil.

  Hours later, panting and happy, they denned together in the hollow he’d made underneath the root of a large tree. Noses touching, soothing warmth, smell of Pack.

  The tantalizing odour of apple pie drifted out into the forest.

  Chloe’s wolf self didn’t find the smell appetizing, but it brought forth strong memories of home and warmth and love. Marcus nudged her, puzzled, but she trotted towards the scent, compelled.

  The house was stuffed full of important smells and so was the fox-haired woman who stood in front of it, another werewolf in human shape. The house and the woman and the smells both drew Chloe and made her uneasy. She hung back at the end of the driveway.

  The woman spoke in a low voice. “It’s time to Change. Come back to me, Chloe.”

  Change? But she’d only just found her wolf form. Chloe wanted to run some more on four legs. She wanted to pounce on a pile of fall leaves and hunt squirrels and howl at the moon with Marcus. She whined.

  “It’s dangerous to stay wolf for too long, especially the first time.” The woman held out her hand. No, not the woman. Her mother. “There will be plenty of time to run as a wolf later, I pro
mise. Please, Chloe.”

  Chloe’s wolf had only a dim understanding of ‘later’, but she wanted to please her mother. Chloe hunkered down and started to Change. Her fur rippled.

  Marcus whined and pawed the dirt, morose.

  Acting on instinct, she flirted her tail over his muzzle, giving him her scent, then Changed.

  Despair threatened to drown him. He was losing her.

  He ought to have known the she-wolf wouldn’t abandon her family, but in the joy of her Change he’d forgotten.

  All his dreams of running through the forest with her, of being her mate, of being free and wild, crashed and burned.

  The she-wolf was his world. The thought of being shut out when she walked through the door to the wooden house gutted him. He howled, but his anguish remained. A balance tipped inside him. The pain of remaining a wolf outweighed that of becoming a boy.

  So he threw himself into the Change and mirrored her, Changing from wolf to boy, pulled along by a mating instinct even stronger than the call of the wild.

  They finished Changing at the same moment and lay panting together in the dew-wet grass, almost nose-to-nose. And then mouth-to-mouth, lips meeting in a flurry of wildness.

  chapter

  10

  Although only their lips touched, the kiss engendered heat deep in Chloe’s body. The kiss could easily have turned into something more if her mom hadn’t rushed up just then.

  Instantly, Marcus rolled into a crouch, as if expecting an attack.

  “It’s just my mom,” Chloe soothed.

  His eyes remained wary.

  Her mom stopped several paces away and held out two blankets. Chloe wrapped one around her nakedness, then draped the other over Marcus’ shoulders. When she stood up, he copied her. She linked hands and smiled triumphantly. “Mom, you remember Marcus.”

  “Thank goodness you’re all right.” Her mom gave her a swift hug, then turned to Marcus. “Marcus, welcome home.”

  She didn’t try to hug Marcus, fortunately. As it was, a quiver ran through him, like a wild animal in the presence of dangerous humans.

  Chloe kept tight hold of his hand and held the blanket together with the other.

  “Let’s get you two in the house before you get chilled,” her mother said.

  Chloe tugged on Marcus’s hand. “Come on.”

  Silent, wide-eyed, he let her pull him up the driveway.

  “What happened after I left with Marcus?” Chloe asked. “Did they cancel the hunt? Mom, you have to call them and tell them Marcus isn’t feral.” In case he bolted and Changed back to wolf.

  “I will,” her mother said steadily. “First things first. Clothes and hot food.” They entered the kitchen, and Chloe’s mouth watered at the cinnamon smell of apple pie. Her stomach growled. No breakfast, and she’d expended a lot of energy last night, playing and hunting.

  She frowned, trying to remember. She hadn’t eaten any little critters, had she? Gross.

  “So where’s Dad?” Chloe asked.

  “Out searching for you, where do you think?” her mother said tartly. “And he’s in wolf form, so I can’t phone him. Hmmm.” Her mother studied Marcus. “Chloe, you stay with him. I’ll bring the clothes here. I suspect Marcus will be more comfortable if the room has an exit.”

  Marcus watched her leave, then sniffed around as if—Chloe’s stomach curdled—he’d never been inside a house before.

  As if he were still feral.

  He had yet to speak a word.

  No! She shoved the fear down. Marcus had Changed back to a boy, that meant he wasn’t lost, wasn’t feral.

  It just might take him a while to lose the habits of a wolf, that was all.

  Her mother returned with jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, underwear and socks for her. For Marcus she offered some drawstring sweatpants and a large T-shirt of her dad’s. “Those are fresh from the laundry, so I’m hoping they won’t have Curtis’s scent on them.”

  Feeling awkward, Chloe dropped the blanket. Marcus whined when she tugged her hand free. She dressed quickly, not looking at him, aware that her cheeks were flaming. Werewolves aren’t embarrassed by nudity.

  Some day she’d get the hang of it.

  “Your turn,” she told Marcus. She held out the sweatpants, keeping her gaze on his face.

  His top lip wrinkled in disgust, but he took them and put them on.

  Chloe breathed out a sigh of relief. Mute or not, he at least remembered clothes. She held out the T-shirt.

  He ignored it.

  She didn’t push it. Maybe the shirt smelled like her dad’s property.

  Now that he had pants on, her gaze slipped down to his chest. She blinked. He was lean to the point of gauntness, his belly concave, but, wow, what flesh he did have was ripped. He put Dean to shame, and Dean did serious weight training.

  Then there were the scars. Most noticeable was the puckered red wound where the rifle bullet had hit his shoulder—thankfully there was an exit wound on the other side. But there were a lot more white marks, some in the shape of teeth and claws, most burns. Because of their amped-up healing ability werewolves almost never scarred. Only massive trauma left marks.

  Her breath caught. It was driven home again: the plane crash had almost killed him.

  She bit her lip on a sudden wave of emotion. Abby.

  Sensing her distress, Marcus moved closer to her so that their sides brushed. Chloe gave his fingers a quick squeeze, then sat down at the kitchen table. “Can I have a slice of pie? I’m starving.”

  “Under the circumstances … ” Her mother smiled tenderly. “Congratulations on your first Change, darling. We knew you could do it.”

  The relief of not being a Dud, of being Pack, made Chloe grin like a dork.

  Her mom set a scoop of ice cream on top of the still-warm apple pie and served it to Chloe. “Marcus? Would you like ice cream on yours?”

  He didn’t answer, but gazed out the window at a bird chirping.

  Brow creasing, her mother set down a plain slice on the placemat beside Chloe.

  His nose wrinkled, and he made no move to sit and eat.

  “Maybe something with meat in it?” Chloe suggested.

  “I’ll warm up some leftovers,” her mom said.

  Marcus flinched at the noise of the microwave buzzer, but sniffed appreciatively at the beef stew when it came out.

  “Sit,” her mom said firmly.

  Marcus perched on the very edge of his chair.

  See? He does remember being human.

  “Use the fork, or you’ll burn your fingers,” her mother cautioned.

  Marcus picked up the fork correctly and began to shovel down the food. He finished his heaping plate at almost the same time Chloe finished her smaller piece of pie—and she’d started first.

  At least he knows how to use a fork.

  A noise from outside startled Marcus. He popped up from his chair and backed against the nearest wall. A moment later, Chloe heard it, too: paws on gravel.

  Her mother went to the window. “It’s your father. I’ll cut him off and bring him around the back so Marcus doesn’t feel trapped.” She hurried out.

  Chloe got up and reached for Marcus’s hand. She smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay. It’s just my dad. Dr. Graham. You remember him, right?”

  Low voices in the yard, then grunting as her dad Changed. Marcus tensed.

  “It’s okay,” Chloe repeated. She tried to catch his gaze. “Marcus, it’s okay. There’s no danger.”

  But when the back door opened, Marcus stripped off his pants and Changed. By the time her parents reached the kitchen, Marcus was once again a cream and black wolf. He growled. Chloe threw her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Stay with me.”

  Her father stopped at the sight of them together. He crouched down to their level, making himself less threatening. “That’s the feral?” His voice was low and soothing, the voice he used with injured animals in his clinic.

  “He was a boy a moment ago,
” her mother said anxiously.

  “Marcus Jennings, you said?”

  “Absolutely, without question,” her mother confirmed.

  Her father rubbed a hand over his face. “Well, there’s no doubt that this is an unholy mess, but I swear to you, Marcus, and you, Chloe, that I’ll stand by Winston and Karen’s boy. Make sure he has every chance to recover. Welcome back, son.”

  In the circle of her arms, Marcus relaxed a fraction. She stopped worrying that he was going to escape into the forest. She didn’t let go, but arranged her legs in a more comfortable cross-legged position.

  “Now that your father is here, I’d like to hear the full story, please.”

  And after that would no doubt come the lecture. Chloe cleared her throat. “I already told you about the first time I saw the feral. I didn’t realize it was Marcus until the night I broke my leg … ” Chloe related everything that had happened.

  The lecture that followed was stinging. Chloe winced through parts of it, but her parents didn’t yell and they didn’t make her grovel like the Alphas had when she did wrong.

  “All right,” her father said, when they finally wound down. “It’s time to take this to the next level. I’ll phone Nathan and call off the hunt.”

  Chloe waited tensely through that phone call. Her dad eventually hung up and announced: “The Alphas will see you both tonight after Scout has left.”

  Chloe let out a slow breath and turned to Marcus. Still a wolf. “You’ll have to Change back for tonight, but you can stay as you are for now. Mom? No school?”

  Her mother gave a short laugh. “You’ve already missed most of the morning. No school. And Mickey is covering for me at work so I’ll stay home, too.”

  “Marcus and I will go watch a movie in the den then.” The sofa there was long enough for a wolf to sit beside her. If she picked the right movie, maybe she could induce some nostalgia.

  Her mom paused in the doorway. “Chloe? Did I mention how very proud your father and I are of you for going to bat for Marcus?”

  They shared a warm smile.

  Chloe held Marcus’s furry head cupped in her hands and stared into his pale blue eyes. “It’s time to see the Alphas. It’s very important that you Change back into a boy before we go.” Should she tell him why? Yes. He wasn’t a child. “If you don’t, they can declare you a feral and kill you. You have to prove that you’re still civilized, that you’re really Marcus Jennings.”