Page 39 of Captive Wilderness
The more we fought, the deeper we went into the woods, away from human eyes. Emily kept yelling at us to stop.
Partially shifted now, Tom swiped, scratching claw marks into my back. The pain came swiftly, and I gave in to the rage. As soon as I shifted, everything turned red. Roars and movement, that was all I could remember until much later. I’d been winning, nearly ripped his arm off, when Tom’s friends joined the fray. I tore into them mindlessly. I knew nothing but blood and flesh in my mouth, nothing left inside me but rage.
Through the red haze, through my tunnel vision, I saw Emily standing close by. The expression she wore stopped me. She was scared, horrified, of me, her brown eyes pleading for me to stop. I hesitated. What the hell was I doing?
That one-second hesitation almost meant my death. Bloody and enraged, Tom went for my throat. I felt his teeth rip through me before I could fend off the attack.This is bad.The next instant, I was down, incapacitated. If he’d wanted to go for the kill, he could have. The world stopped around me.
My body returned to human form, but my throat kept bleeding. A shift couldn’t heal what didn’t exist anymore. Emily was there, fear in her eyes, but this time it wasforme, not of me. She pressed her hands against the wound, hers on top of mine. Sirens. I heard them wailing in the distance.
I tried to tell Emily it was going to be okay, but all that came out was a gurgling noise. I was so fucked. I knew it even as death crept toward me, the red haze receding to submerge me into black.
I sobbed, heartache threatening to suffocate me.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked, leading me to the couch in the living room, a comforting hand rubbing up and down my spine.
The whole story came out in between tortured sobs. Dating Troy for the last few weeks, finding him today making out with one of the cheerleaders behind the bleachers. How he’d just smiled when I’d confronted him. How I wanted to plot his murder.
“Oh, honey. Don’t do that.”
For a moment, I thought Mom was talking about the murder, but then she went on. “We don’t let a guy hurt us like this. We don’t give them our heart, because if we do, they’re guaranteed to break it. We don’t commit. We have a few nights of fun, then we move on. Men are bound to betray us. It’s in their nature.”
The words didn’t comfort. My chest hurt so much, maybe my mom was right. If I hadn’t thought Troy would be my boyfriend forever, then I wouldn’t be suffering right now.
My mom’s face changed, her hair shortening into a close-cropped style that Landon preferred. I should probably get a haircut. Emily had told me the shaggy look was “out.”
Landon, Walker, and I walked along the rough shoreline of the lake, heading to higher terrain. Walker was a senior now and talked about joining the army. We told him not to, but with his family situation, he felt like it was his only choice.
We picked our way through the trees and brush. This path wasn’t one of the main ones meant for humans, but it was known by shifters. The scent of shifter was everywhere, mostly bear but some deer, fox, and lynx as well. We trekked deeper into the forest. Landon had taken the last couple years off from school to work but had been accepted into the commerce program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He’d be moving away soon. I tried not to feel defeated by the fact. He’d suggested I join him, but living in a big city held no appeal.
The sound of a woman’s scream ripped through the forest. We all stopped, alert, and listened.
Another scream, this one cut short. We ran toward the sound. This offshoot of the trail was narrow, and the branches from the trees snatched at us.
No sounds followed that last one, and we stopped, listening. The faint sound of movement came at us from the other side of the hill. We ran upward, wading through the bushes until we broke over the crest. The sight before us had my thoughts stuttering to a stop, my mind trying to process the scene.
A woman, a human, was being dragged, unconscious, deeper into the forest by a bear shifter. I recognized him in an instant. Tom. Another human, a male, lay mauled and dead on the ground, his eyes unseeing, his throat ripped out.
“Jesus,” Landon breathed, taking a step back.
Red filled my vision. There’d been reports of bear attacks in the area, hikers going missing. Reports that kept campers on alert and made the national and provincial parks put out warnings to those using tents.
Tom let go of the woman’s body, snarled, then roared at me. My body shifted before I could think not to. The red haze, the beast, took over. I charged, Walker in his cougar form right beside me. I shouldered him out of the way to attack.My kill. My kill. My kill.
When the haze cleared, I was already back in my human form. Landon’s face filled my vision, and I heard his voice. I took a step back, then another. The scent of blood filled my nostrils.
A death scene lay before me, violent and bloody. Tom was dead, but so was the woman. I wasn’t sure if she’d been alive when I’d attacked Tom, but she was definitely dead now. Had our fight trampled her prone form? Regret stabbed me. I should have made sure she was out of the way before I attacked.
I wanted to ask if I’d done it. Beside Landon, Walker stared at me with a hand to his head and resentment in his eyes. I had a vague memory of pushing him into a tree to keep him out of the way. Maybe if I hadn’t done that, he would have been able to help the woman. Another stab of regret.
“You need to get out of here,” Landon said to me, his eyes holding the severity of the situation.
I understood. Two dead humans and a dead bear shifter. If I was found like this, the authorities wouldn’t listen to reason, not with my history. Tom’s dad was the fucking mayor now. The shifter side of City Council would petition to have me put down. And if that happened, there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. I’d have a death warrant hanging over my head. Anyone could take me out by any means necessary. I’d killed, and they’d have me dead as compensation.
Landon’s face turned hard, harder than I’d ever seen it. “Go.”
I ran. Right into the bedroom of my apartment. A different time. A different place.
“You’re making a mistake.”
