Natalia’s P. O. V
Moments passed, Candy and I watching the surroundings with weary suspicion.
She was laying on her side, her unconscious form heaving with laboured breaths. We moved closer to her, and used our muzzle to nudge her, feeling her unusual warmth that told of a fever.
Closer to her now, I noticed the scent and stain of berries around her mouth. My guess was that she’d eaten something poisonous that had started taking effect. As for her ankle wound, that was a question to be answered later.
‘Nat, what do we do?’
Shivers were beginning to wrack her body as I weighed our options. Her scent was a question mark, as newly shifted wolves sometimes are, not clearly defining her rank or potential, just that she wasn’t a regular member. We could either take her to the Claw Moon Pack, which, based on the direction she’d stumbled from, was where I assumed she was from, and hope they’d have something to counteract the poison, or I could take her back to Kaesha to have her heal her with magic.
But I’d strayed far from our place, and I didn’t want to risk exposing Hailey and Kaesha, lest something go wrong. Plus, to get there, I’d still have to pass a few homes with regular humans and I didn’t want them freaking out at the sight of an abnormally large wolf carrying another one. But going to their territory with her would be a bad look, and if they assumed I had something to do with her injuries, it would be a challenge to prove otherwise if she remained unconscious. Plus, I had no clothes.
She shivered again and I made our choice.
It was a struggle to get her on our back, and she whimpered softly with every movement, and once we did, we had to take care not to jostle her around too much or move so fast that she slips off. So painstakingly, and as quickly as we could manage, we trotted till we got there.
‘Are you sure this is a good idea? Can’t we just leave her here for someone to find?’ Candy was nervous, but even as she gave her suggestion, I knew she wouldn’t do it.
‘Let’s just get this over with.’ I sighed.
We moved forward, hindlegs trepidatiously following our forelegs onto the territory. Patrols and guards were around, but none explicitly close enough to warrant wasting time waiting to be discovered, so we pressed on, till someone eventually came to deal with the intruder.
It wasn’t long before I was confronted by four Werewolves, two shifted and two in human form. They approached, ready to attack as recognition and worry filled their expressions at the sight of me and the wolf on our back.
We halted, and carefully slid her off our back and to the ground. Then we nudged her with our muzzle and took a step back with our head lowered in a show of non-aggression, giving space for them to come check her.
Two rushed forward, a shifted wolf and a man with wavy brown hair and soft eyes filled to the brim with worry to match.
“Carla!” He reached out to stroke her head, “Luna, what happened to you?”
Shivering and feverish in her sleep, she couldn’t answer. Then his soft brown eyes turned on us, hard and accusatory.
“What did you do to her?” He hissed.
The two wolves moved closer, teeth bared and ready to strike. In response, we stiffened, muscles taut and ready to either fight or flee.
The other man spoke up, his words cutting the agitated atmosphere, “Taz, wait. If she did something to her, do you think she’d waltz in here with Carla on her back? Besides, she’s obviously an Alpha. Harming her will most likely piss her pack off and you don’t want to be responsible for that, do you?”
Taz’s eyes narrowed at us, but another shiver and whimper from Carla drew his attention and he huffed. “Fine. If she really didn’t do anything, Carla will be able to tell us the truth. Till then, she’s coming with us.”
The other man shrugged his agreement, and the two wolves moved behind us, ushering me forward as the Taz and the other one shred the weight of carrying Carla’s unconscious wolf. The distance was far, but with the urgency of tending to Carla, we basically jogged deeper into the territory. The farther we went, the more wolves and people were present, milling about and stopping to gape and gasp at the sight of an intruder being led in behind an injured one of theirs. Several jumped to the obvious conclusion and glared daggers at us or bared their teeth, but asides from the two more wolves that joined our little procession to keep me from escaping or harming someone, nobody else approached.
The Claw Moon Pack was a functional town. As we moved deeper and deeper into the territory, stores and shops cropped up, selling everything ranging from flowers to food to clothes, without the scent of a human around for miles. The faint smell of raised earth and fresh vegetables from a distance, along with the distinct smell of raised animals, told of their self-sufficiency. From one of the edges of town, the steady ring of metal against metal rang out, faint against my ears at this distance, and my thoughts went to an anvil, imagining the sound to be the rhythm of a weapon being formed.
We came to the main house, a hulking structure that blocked out the afternoon sun and stretched so wide that it looked awkward. News of our arrival must have gone ahead of us, because two people came out with a stretcher, which Carla’s wolf was loaded onto and taken in the direction of a building that had the harsh scent of sterilisation and looked too big to be just a clinic, but too small to qualify as a hospital.
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Taz moved to follow the ones taking Carla to get treated, but one of them reassured him that she was in good hands, so he instead headed inside with up, face steely and eyes glaring daggers and murder at Candy’s wolf.
Shortly after entering the building, I was taken to a wide room, two women entering with me on my tail, and given underwear, shorts, a sports bra and a large t-shirt, with the obvious order being for me to shift and get dressed.
Seeing the clothes on the ground, my mind raced a mile a minute, filling with dread.
Obviously, I was meant to shift back so I could explain my side of the story and wait for Carla to wake up and confirm my innocence, which was all well and good. Shifting back and getting dressed should have been no issue.
The problem was my hair.
One thing I’d learnt in the past few months was that, any time I shifted into a wolf then back again, my hair reverted to its natural colour, black roots, flaming red, white tips and all. My eyes went back to their shifting, fiery colour too, but I was certain that I could keep attention off them if I kept my eyes low and avoided speaking.
It was my hair that’d steal the show.
My spray bottle was miles away, tucked neatly into my folded clothes where I’d left them when I shifted. And I couldn’t count the veil – what I’d started calling the ability to remain unseen till people noticed me – to hold up, what with them already on high alert with me.
‘What are you gonna do, Nat?’ Candy asked as I was mentally beating myself up for not considering this factor before deciding to carry Carla back here.
‘I have no idea…’
Unless it was a special dye, Werewolves usually left their hair natural, because anything we did to it usually reverted back to its original state after shifting. And from what I’d seen of the few that had gotten their hands of the special dye back in the Lightwood pack, the colours were single toned and oftentimes left their hair looking limp and dull, so the vibrance and sheen of my hair would give me away if I tried to claim that.
I contemplated wrapping my hair in the shirt and just wearing the sports bran and shorts. It might work, but I had a feeling it would only serve to draw more attention to me, both to my body and to my hair.
“Shift!” One of the women ordered, dagger clutched with her growing impatience at my hesitation.
The other was much softer when she spoke, “Hang on, she might just want some privacy.”
“Intruders get no privacy.”
The nicer one couldn’t argue with that, the corners of her hazel eyes softening as she shot me an apologetic look.
I could no longer delay.
‘We have to do it. Let’s just hope none of them know what the hair actually means.’
Not a minute passed and I was me again, donning the clothes under the thinly veiled fascination of their gaze. The impatient one’s unease only grew as she watched my every move like a hawk, while the nicer one’s face announced her desire to ask questions.
The best I could do was to throw my hair into a hasty braid and wrap it around itself in a makeshift bun.
They opened the door and I braced myself for the stares and glares I would no doubt get on my procession to the Alpha of this pack. And I was right to expect it, because they were trained on me as we moved. The now six people guarding me doing nothing to obstruct their looks. One of them even shoved me forward in a wholly unnecessary effort to get me to move faster.
‘Wow, they’re giving you the full prisoner treatment.’ Candy scoffed.
Eventually we came to a massive oak door that did nothing to block the presence of the Alpha inside from spilling out in waves. The ominous swinging open of the door only made his presence more prominent, and had I been anyone else, I would have been bowing my head from the hallway.
When we stepped in, there were two people present, the Alpha, a greying man with sharp eyes and features, seated behind a glossy desk with neat piles of papers and who I assumed was his son from the resemblance standing off to the side behind him.
The doors shut behind us and silence reigned.
They studied me, the son with conflicting expressions of deep distrust and attraction which combined and sparked into frustrated confusion, but the Alpha with something else. Their combined hostility, along with the added intrigue and vague recognition of the Alpha made my already buzzing discomfort grow into alarm bells in my head.
The spark within me that I’d come to recognise as a prelude to my fiery outbursts went off, and I took a breath as inconspicuously as I could to smother it before it could get the chance to manifest on my hands.
Finally, he uttered a single word, “Leave us.”
My guards, or jailers, briefly exchanged looks, but none of them said a word as they trooped out, leaving me alone with two of their most important members.
More pungent silence. This time, the son’s growing puzzlement at his father’s words began to show on his face as he glanced as his father between glares at me.
“Speak.”
When I opened my mouth, I was surprised at the fact that I found my voice at all, and much more at evenness of my tone, “I was in the forest, at a river far from your territory, when a wounded wolf approached and collapsed in front of me. She had come from this direction, so I brought her back here to get treated.”
He nodded once, curt and short, “You realised who we are before you made this choice?”
I nodded.
I could tell that his son didn’t believe me, but his own face was unreadable, “And who are you?”
“I’m a Lone Wolf just passing through the area.”
His eyes narrowed, “I’m not asking for the story you tell those more foolish and less experienced.”
I blinked. Once I’d Uncovered, my physique and abilities hadn’t been the only things to change. My scent, according to Timothy and Hailey, and aura, according to Kaesha, had too. So, while there wasn’t much she could do about my aura, Kaesha had spent a week finding a way to make me smell like a regular Werewolf through trial and error, and not like the weird mix of feral wildfire and regal sweetness that Timothy had described my scent as. And even if the strangeness of my scent was noticed, Werewolves didn’t interact with many other species enough to accurately pinpoint all their scents, much less Syrens who were notably more elusive.
“I will not ask this again, intruder. Who are you, Syren or Wolf?”