Page 284 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

My calves are screaming. The slope is steep enough that I have to grab a low branch to haul myself over a shelf of exposed rock, my boots scrabbling for purchase. The bark bites into my palm and I don't care.

I stop at the top of the shelf, chest heaving, and listen.

Wind through pine needles.

My own ragged breathing.

That's it.

I scan the trees below me. Moonlight cuts through the canopy in silver slashes, illuminating patches of forest floor. My eyes have adjusted enough to make out dead leaves, exposed roots, the pale trunks of birches further down.

Empty.

All of it.

I turn and keep climbing.

For another three or four minutes, there's nothing but the sound of my own movement and the hammering of my pulse. The path narrows to almost nothing up here, just a game trail threading between boulders. My boots slip on loose shale and I catch myself against a pine trunk, the bark rough and cold under my fingers.

I press my back against the tree and hold my breath.

A pebble shifts somewhere to my left.

Could be an animal.

Could be an alpha who moves like smoke.

I peel off the tree and cut left, abandoning the trail entirely. If he's tracking me by the path, going off-trail buys me time.

The undergrowth is thicker here. Low bushes catch at my jeans and dead branches crack under my boots no matter how carefully I step. Every sound I make feels amplified in the silence, a neon sign pointing at my position.

Here she is. Come and get her.

My heart is in my throat.

I duck behind a cluster of boulders and crouch, tucking myself into the gap between two of them. The rock is ice cold through my jeans. I pull my knees up and press my back flat against the stone, making myself as small as possible.

Which, being me, is pretty fucking small.

I wait.

One minute.

Two.

The forest settles around me. Somewhere far off, the owl calls again, and I strain my ears to listen through the breeze whispering through the pines overhead.

There.

The faintest shift in the darkness, a shadow moving in a way animals don't, passing between me and the moonlight maybe twenty feet away on the other side of the boulder cluster.

I cover my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing.

The shadow stops.

We're both motionless. Me crouched in the gap, him somewhere just on the other side of the rocks, the flickering edge of his neon mask barely visible through the leaves.

I don't move.