Page 15 of Cruel Mate

She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head, standing her ground.

“Better a live messenger than a dead one,” the injured wolf snarled, and the two men looked at each other, their malicious intent clear. Layla gulped. This was about to get even hairier than it had been before.

She was more convinced than ever that these guys weren’t Pine Valley wolves. And from their asking about the correspondence and the fact they knew she was a messenger, she was almost entirely sure that they were enemies of the town’s pack, if not her own, too.

Though she didn’t recognize them past having met them that afternoon, there was something awfully familiar about them. Perhaps it was just that their attitude stank and reminded her of Karl and his gang, or even her ex. Or maybe it was something else. She couldn’t be sure. But one thing she was sure of was that she needed to get the hell out of there, and fast.

Another thing she knew was that she needed to get them away from their bikes. She could run like hell, but even in her wolf form, she was no match for a motorbike, no matter how hard she tried.

She glanced over her shoulder at the alleyway close by and cleared her throat before she looked back and hissed under her breath, “Not here.”

She glanced back again, over her other shoulder this time, hoping that the two idiots would be fooled. And as luck would have it, they were as dumb as they looked. At least, they appeared to be, exchanging a look and slipping off their bikes when she inclined her head toward the alleyway.

She pulled off her bag as she headed into the alley, hoping to really sell it to them. She even lifted the flap that covered the zip to keep everything inside dry as the two men followed her. At the far end was a chain-link fence, one she had already climbed a couple of times in her years as a messenger. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to run from Pine Valley, though it was definitely the first in a few years.

In wolf form, she’d manage it in a single bound, hopefully giving her enough time to get away during the confusion.

“Maybe we didn’t give her enough credit before,” one of the men suggested. “She’s clearly smarter than we realized.”

He held out his hand as if to take whatever she had to offer.

Being a keen gardener and trader, what she was about to do was going to hurt her soul like hell, but it was her or the seeds.

She reached into her pocket, grabbed a handful of seed bags and threw them as hard as she could at the two men.

Then in the very next second, she twisted on her heels and started to run for the far end of the alley.

Dangling her bag by the strap between her teeth, she took a flying leap at the chain link fence and clambered up the final couple of inches, throwing herself over the top before the two men had even recovered from the packets that had been thrown in their faces.

Hell, they were slow for werewolves. Luckily for her, they were much heavier than she was, and their feet slapped the ground hard as they started to follow.

Bile rose in the back of her throat when she glanced over her shoulder to see that they were shifting in mid-run.

If they shot over the fence in wolf form, she was done for if she remained human.

All she could do was shift herself. And so she did, shaking off her human skin as quickly as possible. She grabbed her backpack firmly between her jaws and darted off down to the far end of the alleyway.

The fence rattled as the two huge wolves flung themselves over the top of it.

Their pounding paws remained hot on her heels even as she threw herself full force in the direction of the town gates.

She was a Nightstar wolf. If these guys weren’t Pine Valley wolves, she had no idea if the other pack would be willing to help her. Though they were allies, without a witness to say what had happened, who was to say they hadn’t tried to help before she was ripped to shreds?

No. Her only hope was to outrun them or hope she could make it back to Nightstar before they managed to catch up to her.

It was only a few miles, but after having walked it already that morning, she was exhausted. It took every ounce of adrenaline she had to keep her going forward.

Just get home, she kept telling herself. Just make it home.

She wasn’t about to be the first Nightstar messenger ever to get caught on a run. Nor was she about to let herself get torn to shreds. Besides, she knew the landscape like the back of her hand. She knew every hill, every furrow, every little hidey-hole.

If it weren’t for their keen sense of smell, she might have found a place to hide and lie low until they had passed, but with so much open land, field and forest between Pine Valley and Nightstar, there were very few places to hide that a werewolf wouldn’t be able to sniff out its prey.

With the sun beginning to go down and the moon coming out, they were only growing faster and more dangerous.

Though she felt the strength coursing anew in her muscles thanks to the energy of last night’s full moon and the silver light that began to shine down upon her, she still felt the exhaustion of a day’s travel gnawing at her.

Two wolves who clearly traveled on motorbikes were far more likely to catch her than she was to get away.

---