Page 21 of Wolf Forgotten

We left the cover of the trees and approached the house I had run to for help.Sara.I should have known something was up when she hung up the phone on the police.

I went slack over his shoulder, conserving what little slice of energy was left in me. My entire body ached, and bile was swimming in my stomach as I tried to calm my breathing down.

As we got halfway across the yard, my anxiety and fear bubbled over again, and my body was plagued with the pain of a million broken bones and fire. I had felt this before as much as I wished I hadn't. I'd just blacked out and couldn't remember what came after the pain.

I screamed and thrashed against Cole. My scream turned garbled and escaped as a howl as Cole lowered me to the ground.

“Fuck!" Cole backed up. "Eli! Sara!”

My body felt like it was being pulled in a million different directions as I rolled over onto my stomach, trying to crawl back toward the trees. I felt like I was outside of my body watching this tragic scene play out; A woman clawing at the dirt, trying to escape the muscled predator.

Two wolves appeared at the edge of the trees. One was the female missing a leg, and the other looked like the wolf I had petted when I had first escaped.

A final wave of pain took hold before an intense calmness washed over me, my body relaxing and warmth filling me. I heard popping behind me and jumped up on four legs.

Wait, four legs?

I was ninety-nine percent sure I was losing my mind. I had paws. I looked down at them and blinked. Had there been psychedelic mushrooms in that stew I'd eaten? Yes, that had to be it. Sara had poisoned me and now my brain was reverting to an ancestorial state when we used to have hair covering our feet.

I felt something brush my butt, and I turned around quickly in a circle, trying to get to it.A tail?Okay, a fucking tail. And paws. Where was theJumanjiboard? I needed to roll again.

One hundred percent sure I was having a break with reality.

I turned toward Cole, and instead of a person was a wolf, shaking shredded clothes from his body. Did he just turn into a fucking wolf? Did I?

I scrambled backward and looked down at the shredded clothes under me. I knew weird things happened to the body and mind when you panicked, but this was a whole other level of crazy.

Cole tilted his head back and howled, and the other two wolves did the same. I felt moved to join in, but the lucid part of me stopped me from doing so. Howling would be the icing on the crazy-town cake.

I took off, my instincts taking me to the trees on the other side of the property. Trees surrounded the whole house, but something told me that was the direction I needed to go in.

I heard the others behind me but tried to ignore them. I had a slight lead and was just as fast, if not faster than they were. I was a damn wolf and so was Cole.

Fuck.

I was battling with myself; the wolf part of me tried to get me to stop, but the human part of me urged me to keep running. The feeling was freaking me out, and I whimpered. The sound was foreign to my ears and sounded weak.

No more whimpering. Be strong.

My wolf had a mind of her own.My wolf.I felt that I could reign her in to an extent, but she tried pushing me out of my own head. I couldn't let that happen.

Oh, God, I'm going to be stuck like this. I'll never stand on two legs again. Never drive a car. Never feel a man's touch. Holy shit, I'm going to have to use the bathroom like a dog.

I was nearing a clearing that was just turning green after the winter. A scent hit my nose, and I stopped abruptly. Near the opposite tree line there was a deer standing in the path between me and another patch of trees.

It was beautiful, but not in a human seeing a deer kind of way. In a wolf seeing a meal kind of way. My entire body was attuned to it. I heard its breath that stuttered at the realization it was in danger. Its eyes widened, and its muscles twitched under its tawny coat.

It was frozen, its eyes locked on me and assessing its best hope for escape. The entire scene lasted a second. I tried to stop myself, but the wolf won, and in two giant leaps I didn’t even know were possible for a wolf, I took down the deer.

Kill.

I bit down instinctively on the deer’s neck as it thrashed beneath me, trying to escape. It was bigger than I was, but that didn't matter. I was the predator and my teeth ripped into it.

I tried to pull my wolf away from it, but hunger had taken hold. I feasted on poor Bambi until my stomach felt bloated. I knew without seeing myself that I was smaller than the other three wolves, and I'd probably just eaten what three of me could have shared.

My wolf was insanely satisfied. On a scale of cheap hot dogs to Japanese Kobe beef, the deer was a solid New York strip. I was disgusted at the thought.

I looked down at what I had done. It was an image I wouldn't soon forget. It had lost its life because of me. What if it had a family of little fawns? I was a murderer.

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