“William, I’m joking with you.” Her eyes hid a sense of mischief that he didn’t trust. His eyes must have betrayed him because Tasha laughed out loud again. He remembered why he hadn’t spoken to anyone for two years. He pulled his arms up and crossed them over his chest.
Tasha stopped laughing. “Wow, paranoid much? You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Her expression changed from one of mirth to disbelief. She jerked her head down to the mostly black furred wolf sitting next to him. His companion let out a series of barks and whines, different from her last outburst.
Tasha looked back at the brown wolf standing behind her. The wolf turned around and melted back into the forest. She looked down for a moment and she raised her eyes to meet William’s. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You really don’t have any idea why you’re here.”
The sudden change in her attitude from one of mocking laughter to almost pity made his hackles rise. He took a deep breath in through his nose as he tried to control himself. No, he didn’t know what was going on, not really. He wanted some answers.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Tasha of the pack. I’m the alpha of those you see around you.”
William looked around. The guy to his right was human while there was a female grey wolf off to his left on the other side of his companion. He looked over his shoulder to see two human females one was white with waist long brown hair; the other was black with short black hair.
Tasha shook her head and breathed a deep sigh. “I know you must be confused. Unfortunately, I’m not the one to answer your questions.” She looked down at the she-wolf. “You should have told him why he was here.”
William looked back and forth between the two females, his guide and Tasha. He wasn’t sure what he should do. He thought about just sitting down in protest until somebody told him something that made sense. He thought about waving goodbye and taking his chances with those federal agents that were hunting him for some reason.
As he stood there Tasha looked over at the guy standing next to him. She locked eyes with him and jerked her head toward the forest. The guy folded his arms in front of him. Tasha’s look hardened and the guy unfolded his arms and disappeared back into the shadows of the forest. Tasha looked past him at the two girls that were standing behind him. She nodded once and the girls disappeared back where the guy had gone. He looked to his left and the wolf that had been standing there had also disappeared. The three that remained stood there in the clearing as the sky above them began to turn from black to dark blue as the morning approached.
Tasha looked between himself and his companion. Seeming to have made up her mind about something she looked at William. “Look, I can’t answer all your questions, but I can answer some of them. Come with me. It’s not safe to talk here.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Tasha turned and he and his guide followed her back into the strange forest. As they passed through the trees the sky brightened as the morning seemed to come a lot faster than usual. He couldn’t see the sky through the dense forest canopy, but the world was getting brighter around them. He was able to make out the shapes of the trees and the underbrush. The greens and the browns of the woods came into sharper relief, and he didn’t see any more moving shadows.
Tasha moved through the trees though she didn’t run. Her blonde hair streamed out behind her as she ducked and moved under the low hanging branches of her forest. She was attractive and willful, he guessed she had to be to be a pack alpha. William stopped and shook his head. This whole thing was crazy, how could a woman call herself an alpha of a pack of only two wolves? You’re an alpha, aren’t you? Only when his lunar mother was full in the night sky and he sure as hell didn’t introduce himself that way.
Tasha led them to a massive rock formation in the forest. It looked natural but somehow, he knew that it was manmade. The rocks rose above his head by at least two stories, about twenty or thirty feet. There was a moderate sized opening in the rocks that formed sort of a cave. It couldn’t be very deep and even with the brightening of the world around them with the sun rise his eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness of the cave.
Tasha sat down on a log that was not unlike the log he had prepared at his kitchen clearing back in his valley. He looked around this area of the forest. The trees were less dense than the areas they passed through to get here but they were not sparse. He looked around and saw evidence of human craftsmanship. He saw a rope tied to the trunk of a tree and disappear into the higher branches. He saw sort of a wall that had been built off to his right. There were gaps and crevices in the wall. If this was the eighteen hundreds that would have been a perfect barrier for Union or Confederate soldiers to hide behind and shoot at the enemy with almost no fear of being hit by enemy fire.
There was a large fire pit in the middle of the area. The dirt was brown and dry with use. Nearby in between several small trees that had grown very close together there was rope that was tied between them. The rope had been crisscrossed and wood lay on top of the rope to keep the wood that had been stacked there off the ground. Whoever these people that Tasha led were they had done a lot of work and by the look of things they had been here a while.
Tasha motioned for him to sit down on a small round log on the other side of the fire pit. He sat down very cautiously. Tasha rolled her eyes at the apparent mistrust of her guest. “If I had wanted to hurt you in any way, I would have done it by now.”
William could see the logic in it but he wasn’t about to lower his guard. Come what may he had chosen a long time ago, about the time he had moved into his valley, that he would meet his death fighting. He locked eyes with Tasha.
His companion was sitting an equal distance between both of them forming a triangle between the three of them. He didn’t see anyone else. He noticed that even here he couldn’t smell anything. It was like he was in a hospital, not the middle of a forest.
Tasha studied him for a moment. She turned back to his companion. “What happened and how much does he know?” The wolf looked at Tasha and made a few soft barks and whines. After the wolf fell silent, Tasha nodded her head, took a deep breath, and shooting a vicious look at the she-wolf she started talking. “Look, all this must seem extremely overwhelming right now. You must know that you’re a werewolf, right?”
William feigned shock at the revelation. “No, I had no idea. I’m a… a… a WEREWOLF?, Jesus, and here I thought everybody changed into a monster when the full moon was in the sky.”