Page 61 of An Uncertain Claim

Those weren’t my hangups.

The truth was, I was worried about where my wolf genetics came from. Would Nathan still accept me if he knew which pack I’d been born into? Raised by them for the bulk of my childhood? The Alpha—my grandfather—was the devil incarnate, and I understood why people might be wary of someone who shared his blood. Would the pack still welcome me if they knew? Never mind having me as their Alpha female. I was nothing like my sadistic grandfather, but I hadn’t had enough time to prove it to them.

I’d been mulling over why it mattered to me. It was more than just wanting my child to be a part of a large family who would make them feel loved and cherished. It was more than not wanting any negative attitudes toward me to spill over onto my daughter, though those were both concerns.

No, I worried about their opinion of me. Because, to my shock, I’d begun to seriously consider staying with Nathan. Making a life with the Silver Lake pack.

But then the same old thing butted its head in and cast a shadow on the idea. I wasn’t convinced I could change the very core. And this wasn’t a choice I could make more than once. How did I know if I could do it? Did I want to in my heart?

It was a little ironic when I thought about the wolf side of my genetics being both the reason I could consider staying and the reason I needed to leave.

If I had any hope of being happy in this life, I would have to do something I’d fought not to do my whole life. I’d have to explore the part of me that was a wolf, the part that longed for a pack, stability, a mate…

But it was the wolf blood that ran through my veins that could make people despise me. That would keep them from fully trusting me. Without that, it wouldn’t matter how much my wolf instincts told me to stay. There had to be trust between a pack and their alpha female. I’d have to shove the desire to make a home here away forever and answer only to the instincts of my panther.

So now what? How did I face either of those decisions without talking to Nathan?Son of a bitch, this is such a fucking mess. I didn’t like messes and—

My panther came to a screeching halt and her memories invaded my mind. The smell of blood reached my nose and my own visions of the night we’d faced off with B in that alley mixed with my cat’s.

I felt the inability to breathe from being pressed into the cold, wet ground. The pain from my flesh ripping, the sound of my screams, the evil in the eyes of my attacker. My hands flew up to cover my ears and I thrashed and cried inside my panther. She wasn’t faring much better, except, like a magnet, she changed directions and ran straight toward the copper smell that strengthened with every pound of our paws on the ground. She was going fast, faster, until we maxed out at our top speed, one not many animals could match. Certainly not wolves. But while I tried to hide from everything and wipe my mind clear, my panther had one goal, one I didn’t understand—she only wanted to get to the source of the smell.

I barely registered the sound of howling all around. I was overtaken by the vivid memories of blood and pain.

Suddenly, my panther came to another skidding halt. On the ground, about ten feet in front of us, was a big gray wolf.

His fur was matted with blood, and he wasn’t moving, but after a beat, I thought I saw a movement. An attempt to breathe? I battled with the trauma trying to overwhelm me until I drowned in it. I needed to keep my head above water because I needed to help him. My panther’s desperate need to find the blood made sense now. I had to do everything I could to save him. I had to save this one.

My panther retreated, letting me take the lead since I could do more to help the wolf as a human.

I slowly approached the injured animal and gasped at the sight of the two wounds on his chest, both bleeding profusely. I silently cursed not having an ankle pack with a T-shirt and shorts with me. I rarely did, but this would have been an excellent time to have them, when I needed them to stem the flow.

I scanned the area, looking for something, anything I could use. That was when I spotted the gun. It was lying a half dozen feet from the wolf and my eyes filled with tears when I put it together. Someone had shot this shifter, trying to make it look like a hunting accident. It was the monsters who’d been murdering shifters all over the area, trying to disguise them as “hunting accidents.” It hit me then, why I smelled so much blood. The wolf had obviously gotten in a few good bites, because there was a good deal of blood caked all around his mouth.

I looked at the gun again and briefly wondered why they would choose that one. It would never be used for hunting because the bullets, while large, splintered apart to make a blast of shrapnel versus a single, clean hole. They’d been going for maximum damage.

Taking a deep breath, I wiped the tears from under my eyes. Now wasn’t the time to wallow in the sadness of the situation. I spied some large leaves that I might be able to pack over his wounds. I quickly gathered as many as I could hold, then I slowly began to walk to the animal. When I was barely a foot away, his eyes opened and what I saw had terror ripping through me.

There was no humanity in them. He’d gone rogue. There was no way he’d let me help him. Not without tearing me to pieces.Fuck. Okay, he was injured. If I backed up at a snail’s pace, I might be able to get far enough away that he wouldn’t try to come after me when I started running.

I wasn’t even sure if he could move, so—“Shit!” I shouted when he tried to lunge at me, nearly getting a chunk from my leg. So he could move somewhat. My heart was beating a mile a minute, and my chest was heaving with my uneven breathing. I tried to focus on calming down since the sound of my heart and the scent of my fear would only feed his adrenaline.

He lunged again and this time, when I backed up, I tripped over something. I landed hard on my ass, but my ankle was throbbing because I’d twisted it. The skin was already turning purple and swelling, I was unsure whether it was sprained or broken. Either way, it was useless at the moment, and it ruled out my best option for survival. I couldn’t climb a tree with my ankle so damaged. Some people might have given up right then, succumbed to their fate. But my eyes dropped to my belly, showing more and more every day. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him hurt my baby girl.

My eyes darted around frantically, for what, I had no idea. The wolf was trying to lumber to his feet, and I scrambled back a little, crying out when something cut the skin of my rapidly swelling ankle. I looked down to find out what had caused the laceration.

Gun.

I’d tripped over the gun and then dragged my foot over it. A rustling sound drew my attention back to the wolf who’d managed to get to his feet. His eyes were wild and devoid of anything except the instinct to protect himself, which meant killing anything they rogue were put down. Clearly, this wolf was fixated on me as his current danger. He took a step toward me, and I reached down to grab the handle of the gun.

His lips curled back, exposing his sharp teeth, already covered in blood. What would they look like after he’d ripped me apart?

No! I wasn’t going to let him hurt my cub.No!

The wolf took another step, and I raised the gun, cocking it in preparation—though I kept trying to come up with a way out of this that didn’t require using it.

When he leapt toward me, I hesitated. Could I kill this poor man? He was obviously being used in some sick ploy and he didn’t deserve to be put down. I knew he’d gone rogue, but… Just one moment with a crisis of conscience and the wolf had his mouth around my foot. His teeth pressed into my flesh, and I knew, if I didn’t do something, he would rip it off and finish me.

He whipped his head and I screamed in agony as I pulled the trigger.

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