Page 7 of Captive Wilderness
Slowly, the world around me stabilized. My insides calmed but my skin felt like it belonged to someone else, itchy, tight, and sore.
Lifting my head, I scanned the cabin. I was alone. The bed was snugged up against the wall. A series of bookshelves hung above me. They were packed with books of all sizes, and on the far end of one sat a small stereo and some CDs. One dresser blocked out a portion of the window to the left of me, a lamp with a white shade on top. Everything was made of wood, nothing modern about the place in the least.
A rustic couch sat in front of the fireplace. It had the same look as that chair out on the porch but was covered in blue cushions. The kitchen was a row of cupboards against the far wall with a window overlooking a sink in the middle. There weren’t any other doors except the one at the front, the one I’d come in.
In the middle of the small dining table sat two apples. My stomach squeezed in remembrance of throwing up the other. I wasn’t sure if I was hungry or sick. I felt a little bit of both, but mostly just empty.
Swinging my feet to the floor, I realized the man put socks on me. Band-Aids covered my knees. Underneath the one sock, a tensor around my ankle made the sock bulge. My foot throbbed, a steady low bass of a beat in sync with my heart. A medicinal fragrance, an ointment, wafted up to me.
My ballet flats lay next to the bed, and I winced at the sight of them. There was no way I could put those on again. My toes ached with the memory of being squished and rubbed raw, my skin being torn off.
I stood, my legs shaky. As soon as I put weight on my bad foot, pain shot up my shin and calf. I gasped, reaching out to steady myself on the dresser, and shifted my weight so I was mostly using my good leg.
My jean skirt had ridden up, and I tugged it back down to cover my ass and thighs. As soon as gravity kicked in, I needed to go to the bathroom so bad my eyeballs burned. I glanced around, searching for the elusive door that would point me in the right direction. There was none.
No bathroom.
Boot steps echoed on the porch outside. I stilled, my whole body going on alert. The fine hairs on my arms stood on end. The person moved toward the door. My heart pounded. Unable to move, I gripped the edge of the dresser so tight my fingers ached.
The door opened, soundlessly swinging inward. The same man who’d found me earlier strode inside, the shotgun in his hand. His scruffy good looks made me inhale once, quickly, then I held my breath. He froze when he saw me, his eyes assessing and slightly wary— wariness that made me exhale slowly between my teeth. He wouldn’t be wary if he was going to hurt me.
With his focus entirely on me, my nerve endings hummed. He turned and put the gun in the rack by the door. Beside it hung a whiteboard with a few words written down: bread, potatoes, turnips.
My gaze flicked back to the man. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but scars textured the skin of his throat where his beard tapered off. The sight of a scar on a shifter made me tense. I’d never heard of it. Shifting took away injuries, healing them as the muscle and tissue morphed from one form to another. The regeneration was the reason we could live so long. The scar took up most of the space on his neck, disguised in part by his beard.
I tensed when I thought he would shut the door, trapping us together, but he left it open. Cool air swirled and mixed with the heat of the cabin. The visible escape route made the tension in my shoulders ease a bit. He turned to me but stayed put. We stared at each other, him with curiosity on his face, me full of caution. I didn’t know if I could trust him. After everything that had happened last night, the big shifter made me nervous.
There were questions in his eyes, but he didn’t speak them. The silence between us stretched. The fact that he didn’t have an agenda, that he wasn’t pressuring me for anything, made me relax a fraction more. I loosened my death grip on the dresser.
When I could take the silence no longer, I cleared my throat. “Hi,” I managed to say, my throat scratchy. Introductions were probably in order, but I needed to use the toilet so bad I couldn’t see straight. “Where’s the bathroom?”
He continued to stare at me, but after a moment, he stepped to the side and gestured to the great wide world beyond the front door.
“You can’t be serious.” I was supposed to find a tree?
A fleeting smile quirked the corner of his mouth so fast I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching him.
He was laughing at me? Fine. I could find a tree. I’d been wilderness camping before. Straightening my spine, I took a small step forward and winced when I put weight on my bad foot. The pain shooting up my calf snatched my breath. It would take a while before I could make it to a tree, and the pressure in my bladder intensified with each passing second.
How was I supposed to do this? A strange sort of embarrassed panic overtook me. I’d already thrown up on his floor, I didn’t want to pee on it too.
Bracing myself, I took another measured step.
A strangled sound came from the man by the door. In the next instant, he moved toward me. Every muscle in my body bunched to run. A very large predator was headed straight for me, and my instincts told me to flee.
The three steps it took him to cross the distance between us gave me no time to react. Then I was up in his arms, thick muscles supporting my legs and back. My arm became squished between his chest and my ribs, the other hanging free. I had no time to protest before he strode out the door.
The cool air slapped at me as birds chirped happy tunes in the distance. The bare skin of my legs prickled with goosebumps, but wherever his body pressed against mine, his heat warmed me. I’d never felt as small as I did right then. With his muscles surrounding me and the soft fabric of his flannel jacket pressing against my cheek, the sudden sensation of safety I felt surprised me.
He walked a steady pace up a slope and along a worn path through the trees. About twenty yards away, a little brown shack hid nestled among a circle of pines.An outhouse.Embarrassment burned my cheeks, my fingers flexing involuntarily where they rested against my ribs.
The wind picked up around us, rustling my hair as he set me on my feet in front of the door. I couldn’t stop my shiver at being separated from his warmth. After a moment of hesitation, he took off his flannel jacket and settled it over my shoulders, then turned and left me there.
I stared after him. More tension eased from my body. He was helping me, not hurting me. His distinctive scent wafted off the jacket, filling my head. I tipped my nose down and inhaled deep. It held notes of earth and spice and shifter and man. When he disappeared from sight, I felt strangely bereft but turned and opened the door of the outhouse.
The tiny building had only a few things inside, and it smelled like…outhouse. A bench with a white plastic toilet seat in the middle took up the biggest part. A roll of toilet paper hung on the wall beside a bottle of hand sanitizer. There were two red coffee cans, one upside down and one holding three magazines. I lifted the other revealing an extra roll of toilet paper hiding inside.
When I closed the door, only a slice of light came through the mesh windows running along the top of the shack. Without further delay, I took care of business. The magazines turned out to beAfar,Maclean’s, andMen’s Health, all the dates on them from months ago. After a few minutes, I finished up with the hand sanitizer and gingerly stepped outside, keeping my weight off my bad foot as much as possible.
