by J. L. Wilder
“I could really use something to eat,” Sophie said hopefully. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“We’ll talk here,” Lou repeated, his voice firm. “Take it or leave it.”
“Okay,” she said meekly. “We’ll talk here.”
“Josh already called us,” Lou said. “He told me what you did. How you disgraced yourself in front of your entire pack. How you proved yourself feral and untamable.”
Sophie felt a shudder pass through her. She hadn’t anticipated that Lou would have heard the story already. “That’s not what happened,” she protested.
“You’re saying Josh is a liar?” Lou raised his eyebrows. “What kind of omega calls her alpha a liar?”
“I’m just saying he’s lying about this,” she said. “And I understand why. It probably made him look bad, right? Me refusing the mating ceremony the way I did? He’d rather say that I’m feral than admit that I just don’t want him. That he wasn’t able to force me to submit.”
Lou showed his teeth. “So you got the best of him, did you? I always knew he was riding for a fall. I’m glad it was an omega who got him. What a jackass.”
“Right,” Sophie said, relieved that the conversation seemed to be going a little more smoothly now. “So he sent me away. Probably hoping I’d die on my own. At the very least, he didn’t care whether I lived or died. But I’ll never survive in the wild.”
“No, probably not,” Lou agreed. “Omegas don’t have what it takes to live feral. That’ll end badly.”
“Which is why I’m here,” she summed up. “I need to belong to someone. I need to be a part of a pack. And I know you don’t have an omega, and that you’d like to see Josh brought low.”
She looked up at him, trying to make her eyes as big as she possibly could. She lifted her chest so that he would have to look at her, take in the pretty and vulnerable way she looked in this insipid dress. “I’m all alone,” she said. “If you make me yours, it will show Josh that he can’t do whatever he wants all the time. That the world isn’t going to bend to his will just because he’s big and strong.”
Lou cocked his head and smiled at her.
“I’d like to,” he said. “The two of us could be quite a pair, I think. And God knows we could use an omega. But I can’t, Sophie. I’m sorry.”
Her heart dropped. She felt sick to her stomach. “Why not?” she asked.
“Josh guessed that you’d come here,” Lou explained. “He knew you’d try to find a home with us. And he warned me that if I let you, his pack would attack. We can’t stand against them. They’d kill us.”
“We...we could leave,” Sophie said. “We could go live somewhere else. We wouldn’t have to stay here. They wouldn’t follow us.”
“They might,” Lou said. “Besides, I’m not going to force my pack out of our home just for you. I don’t want you that badly.” He shook his head. “You can stay tonight in the shed if you want to. But you’ve got to be off our land first thing tomorrow morning, or I’ll have to call Josh and report that you’re here. I can’t have him finding out about it from anyone other than me.”
“Are you serious?” Sophie asked. “You’d call him? But he doesn’t want me back.”
“He wants you to live wild,” Lou said. “Listen, I don’t think we’re the only pack he called. I think he called everyone in the area. You’re not going to have better luck anywhere else, so you’d better get used to the idea of trying to make it on your own.”
“It’ll kill me, Lou,” Sophie said quietly. “You said it yourself. Omegas can’t live in the wild.”
“I said it would end badly,” he said. “I didn’t say it would kill you.”
She was silent for a moment, contemplating the implications of that.
“Do you want to sleep in the shed tonight?” he asked. “That’s the best I can offer.”
Wordlessly, she nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Take off in the morning. If I see you again, I’ll contact Josh and tell him where you are.” He turned and went back inside.
Shaking, Sophie descended the porch steps and went over to the shed. It looked as if it might fall over in a strong wind. She opened the door and looked inside. It was musty and dirty in there, but at least she would be safe from the elements. Maybe that was the best she could hope for tonight.
“Sophie.”
She turned. Marcie was standing behind her.
“I heard about what happened to you,” Marcie said.
“Oh.” Sophie wanted to lay down and die. She couldn’t stand to talk about it a second longer. Not with these people who were unwilling to help her.
Marcie held out a backpack. “I put some food in there,” she said. “And a water bottle that you can refill when you get to water sources. And there’s a change of clothes, too. You can’t keep wearing that.”
Sophie took the backpack, feeling surprised and grateful. “Thank you,” she said. “That was really thoughtful.”
Marcie dragged her toe in the dirt. “I don’t know if the clothes will fit,” she said. “They’re mine. You and I might not be the same size.”
“We might not be,” Sophie agreed. “Anything’s better than this dress, though.” She managed a little smile. “Seriously, Marcie, thank you. It means a lot that you would try to help me.”
“Lou doesn’t know,” Marcie said. “Maybe don’t tell him?”
“I won’t,” Sophie agreed. “I don’t need to tell him anything.”
“I hope you do okay,” Marcie said. “I really do.”
“Thanks,” Sophie said.
The two women regarded each other for a few moments longer. Sophie wondered, as she looked at Marcie, what her life here was like. Maybe it was no better than Sophie’s had been with Josh’s pack. Marcie was a beta, not an omega, but she was one of only a few women who lived there. Maybe she understood what Sophie was going through.
Marcie turned suddenly and ran across the lawn and back into the house.
Sophie slung the backpack on her shoulder and turned away.
There was no reason to stay. There was no reason to sleep in a terrible shed on the land of people who didn’t want her there. There was no reason to delay this.
She was going to have to live feral.
If Josh really had put the word out with all the other packs, there was no avoiding it.
She didn’t know how she was going to survive. She had never been in the wild before. She had never been on her own.
But she would have to figure it out.
Chapter Four
RYKER
Ryker and Kate sat several feet apart as they ate their fish. Ryker could tell that Kate didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her.
Maybe she was right not to trust him. It wasn’t as if he had any particular interest in her wellbeing.
But it’s not like I’m out to hurt her either. It wouldn’t kill her to sit a little closer to me.
He had to acknowledge, though, that she had no way of knowing that. There were plenty of shifters out there—particularly alphas like him—who probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. Could he really fault her for looking out for herself?
“I want to know about the bears,” he said.
She eyed him cautiously. She knew about the bears, he was sure. Everyone did. “What about them?”
“Do they live around here?” he asked.
“They’re everywhere,” she said. “They’re like an infestation, this far north. You can’t get rid of the bears until you go so far south that you’re in the pack lands, and the packs are just as bad as the bears. It’s just a matter of which enemy you want to deal with.”
That was the most she’d said to him since they had met. He would count it as progress, he decided. Maybe she had picked up on the fact that his wariness of the bears meant he didn’t see her as his enemy.
“Is that what you’re doing?” she asked him. “Trying to find a place to live that the bears haven’t gotten to?”
�
��Maybe,” he said.
“Well, you won’t find it,” she said. “They’re everywhere. There is nowhere above the 66th that’s free of bears. And below the Arctic Circle, it’s all organized packs.”
“How do you know they’re everywhere, though?” he asked. “If you just stay in one place all the time, how could you possibly know that?”
She glowered at him. “I didn’t always live here,” she said. “I used to range around, like you’re doing now. I stopped when I found my cave, that’s all.”
“Is that the only reason you stopped? Because you found a cave here?” There had to be more to it than that. There were caves everywhere. He had never had too much trouble finding a place to sleep.
“It’s a nice cave,” she snapped. “And I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I was only asking,” he said. “There’s no need to get defensive.”
“It’s my territory you’re in,” she said. “Of course I’m going to get defensive. You would get defensive too if a stranger came onto your land.”
“It’s not your land,” he pointed out. “Nobody owns the land up here.”
He was teasing her, mostly. She was so easy to provoke, and he couldn’t pretend it didn’t amuse him. At the same time, though, he did wish that she was a little more reasonable. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in so long. It would have been nice to have a productive conversation with someone friendly, rather than this battle.
She had no sense of humor. “It’s my land because I live here,” she said. “It’s my land because I defend it. Which is something you should take into careful consideration. I defend this land. What happens here happens because I allow it to happen. If I don’t want it to happen, it doesn’t happen.”
“Christ,” Ryker said. “I already told you I’m not planning on staying in your territory. Are you always this hostile to people who catch fish for you?”
“In the ordinary course of events, I catch my own fish,” she said.
“Really,” he replied. “I never would have guessed from your technique. You’d still be trying to get something to eat if I hadn’t intervened.”
“You know, you’re the reason I hate alphas,” she said. “Every alpha I’ve ever met is exactly like you. You all think you hung the moon. You think you’re God’s gift to the Earth. As if nobody ever caught a fish without your generosity. I do manage to fend for myself, you know. I wasn’t dying before you showed up.”
“Wonders never cease.”
“Asshole.”
“Look,” he said. “I want to know where the bears are because I’m trying to track the pattern of their movements. I want to know which way they move in the spring and which way they move in the fall.”
“So you can move in the opposite direction?” she asked.
“Well, I’m not trying to travel with them.”
“What have you figured out so far?” she asked.
He thought about refusing to tell her anything. She had been difficult with him, after all. There was no reason he had to share his information with her.
But they were both wolves. There was a bond there, a kind of family, a remnant of pack mentality that Ryker had never quite been able to shake loose. Regardless of how he was supposed to feel about the other feral wolves with whom he shared this land, he couldn’t help feeling tied to them in a way. If he could help Kate, he wanted to do it.
“It seems like what you would expect,” he said. “They go north when it’s warm. They go south when it’s cold. But it doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of commonality of thought about it. They’re not planning it together, any more than you and I plan our movements together. It’s just happening by instinct.”
“Wolves do that too,” Kate said. “Travel south when the winter sets in, I mean.”
“Some of us do,” Ryker agreed. “I always have. But do you? It sounds to me like you stay here through the winter.”
Kate nodded. “Travel never really worked for me,” she said. “I need to be somewhere I can familiarize myself with the land. I need to know where all the food and water sources are so that I can find them at a moment’s notice. I need to know what the normal sounds and scents are so that I know how to get the hell out if something goes sideways.”
That made sense to Ryker. He had always supposed that feral life must be harder for betas, and for female betas in particular. As an alpha, Ryker was built to stand and fight. But Kate didn’t have that advantage.
Suddenly, he wished he had given her less of a hard time when they had first met. It had been unfair of him to try to provoke her the way he had. Of course she had been defensive about having a stranger on her land.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, getting to his feet. “You’ve been very hospitable. I don’t want to impose. I’ll go ahead and get out of here now. I can be miles away by sundown. Then you won’t have to worry about me anymore, and you can go back to living your life.”
“No tricks?” Kate asked.
“No tricks,” Ryker agreed. “You’ll never see me again, I promise.”
Kate nodded. “Okay,” she said. “And thanks for the fish, by the way. I really did appreciate you helping me with that. I would have gotten my own eventually, but you’re faster. I can admit that.”
“It was no trouble,” Ryker said. “Thanks for the talk.”
He waited until she had gathered up the remains of her food and disappeared into the woods before resuming his animal form. Even though they had parted ways on good terms, it was possible that she would see his shifting in front of her as a threat. Meetings between feral wolves were always a hair-trigger away from turning into a fight. Ryker had gotten too many broken ribs that way, and he didn’t want a fight with Kate. Not after things had gone relatively smoothly.
Once she was gone, though, he sank back into the body of the wolf. It was a relief to do so. Everything about being human was complicated and confusing, and his conversation with Kate had been a perfect example of that. It had felt like playing a game of chess, trying to get information from her, keeping his eyes on her to make sure she wouldn’t attack.
As a wolf, he could forget the analytical part of his mind and rely on his instincts. And right now, his instincts were telling him to get out of Kate’s territory and find a place he could call his own for a little while.
He ran west for a while, as he had planned, but he allowed his path to take him a little bit to the south as well. It was heading toward the peak of summer, and if the information he and Kate had discussed was correct, most of the bears would be farther north right now. The safest place for a wolf looking to stay off their radar would be to the south—but above the 66th parallel. He would never go below the Arctic Circle.
He’d rather meet a wild bear than risk running afoul of the packs.
All these years after having left his home and his family of origin behind, it was sometimes strange for Ryker to think that he had ever belonged to a pack. It seemed so unnatural to him now. Had he really allowed someone else to have dominion over him for the first twelve years of his life? He remembered the feeling of chafing against the orders he had been given—it had been maddening—but the fact that he had stayed so long seemed surreal.
How did any alphas remain with their packs long enough to reach adulthood?
For that matter, how did betas like Kate ever find the strength to leave? Surely, they felt more at home in the fold of the pack, with a strong alpha to watch over them?
But having met Kate, he had to say that he couldn’t exactly imagine her choosing to live within the confines of a pack.
He picked up speed, letting the ground fly away beneath his feet with every stride. It felt good to run with no particular destination in mind, to know that wherever he decided to stop would be the right place. There would be no over-expenditure of energy, nor would he stop while he was still yearning to go. When he was tired, he would be finished for the day, and that would be the place where he would s
pend the night.
He just hoped that he would be able to find a place to sleep that would feel safe and out of the way.
After some time—it was hard to keep track of the passing hours as a wolf—he came across a river. Perhaps it was the same river Kate had told him about. He had no way of knowing. He hadn’t run in the direction she’d indicated, but rivers could go on for a long way.
But it was wide and deep here, and the water looked fresh and clean. He could see fish below the surface, and on the far shore was a bush that held a wealth of berries.
This would be a fine place to stop and rest for a few days.
He loped along the water’s edge for a while, looking for a likely place to make camp, until he came to a relatively large cave in the side of a rock face. It was small enough not to be a potential home for bears—the ceiling was too low for a bear to stand up—but large enough and deep enough for Ryker’s comfort.
He went inside and made his way to the back, checking as he did to make sure that there were no other animals. Once he’d determined that the cave was empty and relatively clean, he went back out and down to the river.
Even though he was tired of fish after his meal with Kate, he didn’t have the energy to hunt large game or rig a snare for a rabbit right now. He caught two more trout instead and carried them back to the cave. He returned to the river and drank until his thirst was sated, then resumed his human form and began to gather sticks and twigs.
Twenty minutes later, he had a fire going and the fish had been cleaned. He speared them and held them over the flames until they crisped up, then pulled the meat apart with his hands and ate them slowly as the sun went down. It was a relief to be on his own again, and he was glad that he and Kate hadn’t ended up sleeping together, even if he was a bit lonely for female company.
The sky was dark now, and the fire was beginning to burn low. Ryker allowed his eyes to drift closed. He listened to the sounds of the forest around him. There was plenty of movement—the kind of movement he associated with small animals, scamperings and scufflings—and that was a good thing. That meant game. In the morning, he would set some traps, or maybe he would stay in his wolf form and go hunting like this.