Page 18 of Tracking the Alpha
She should probably try and sleep but couldn’t. Something told her to stay awake. Despite keeping her eyes opened, she wondered if she dreamed when the attack came. The coyote emerged from the forest at a speed that shocked. Tanis never even had time to lift her bow when the creature, running full speed, hit the tree and climbed it!
To those who claimed coyotes couldn’t climb, while rare, if determined, they damned well could, and this one did. The leap brought it high enough that its front paws found purchase and it heaved itself to the bough across from Tanis. It immediately lunged, and Tanis leaned back to avoid the snap of its jaw. In doing so, she lost her balance. As she felt herself falling from her perch, she dropped the bow and latched her legs around the limb. She ended up dangling upside down with a view of the coyote standing on her branch, giving her a mad glare.
Before it could chomp one of her legs, she let go and did her best to tuck and flip. She didn’t quite make it, and rather than land on her feet, she ended up thumping hard on her ass. That would bruise and hurt later. Assuming there was a later.
She sat up as the coyote barked before scrabbling down the tree, aiming right for her. A huge thing of snarling teeth and glowing, rabid eyes. Tanis didn’t have time to grab her bow, and her gun remained slung in the tree. There wasn’t even time to get to her feet as it coiled its hind legs preparing to launch.
The sheath by her side yielded a knife, the blade on it only a few inches long but better than nothing. The coyote launched itself and hit her hard, drawing a grunt. They both went down, her under it, arms up and blocking the snapping teeth from her face.
If she’d not seen it clearly, she’d have thought she fought a wolf, given its size. Coyotes usually weighed around thirty to fifty pounds—the size of a medium-ish-to-large dog. At her current weight of 120 pounds, she should have been able to easily fling it. Only this coyote, much like the wolf, was much larger than it should be. Another of the general’s experiments?
No time to ponder, as it tried to literally eat her face. Snarling and snapping. Straining to sink its canines. Tanis felt herself weakening and tiring, the mad frenzy of the attack taking all her strength to defend.
The beast was suddenly knocked off her, and she scrabbled backwards while staring in wide-eyed shock at the wolf that had come to her rescue. It crouched low and growled at the coyote, who suddenly decided it didn’t want to fight. The creature darted into the bushes, the wolf hot on its tail.
Tanis blinked at her near-death. How wild that her target had saved her. But then again, not too surprising. The wolf most likely protected its territory.
A knife-clutching Tanis rose to her feet. A glance around showed no movement, at least in the areas where the moonlight shone. She couldn’t tell if anything hid in the shadows, but she certainly heard the rustle and snap of animals ploughing through shrubbery. The sharp yips and guttural growls of the two beasts fighting. Who would win? Didn’t matter. Both wanted her dead.
Be ready.
She retrieved her bow and readied an arrow before she closed her eyes and listened. The battle appeared to have ceased, and the forest went still. Even the wind didn’t blow. Not a bough creaked. When the battle of the beasts resumed, it proved startling and easy to pinpoint. She pivoted with an arrow drawn back and ready to fly.
The tussling wolf and coyote emerged from a bush in a tumble of fur and vicious snarling. The pair of them rolled and grappled for supremacy. For all its large size, the coyote lacked the power and strength of the massive wolf, and only sheer feral adrenaline kept it in the fight.
When the wolf finally latched onto the neck of the wild canine, the coyote couldn’t escape. The shaggy beast closed its mighty jaw, crunching the neck it held, practically severing it in half. Amidst the spurting blood, the coyote squealed, a wheezing death cry that came with spasming limbs that lasted only seconds before it went limp. The wolf dropped the carcass and shook its big body before lifting its head to howl.
The eerie sound brought a shiver, but it was those eyes fixing on Tanis when it finished its victory cry that snapped her out of her trance. Rather than wasting too much time aiming, she let the arrow loose. This close, the wolf couldn’t entirely evade, although it tried, turning sideways so fast she feared she’d missed. To her surprise the tip of the arrow sheared through the meaty part of the wolf’s shoulder. Not a kill shot, just a bad wound that led to the beast bolting. In its panic, it didn’t pay its usual attention and stepped into one of Tanis’ snares. The rope tightened around its limb, and with a yelp, the wolf went flying into the air.
Well, damn. She’d caught the wolf. Her lips curved in relief and pleasure. She’d done it. Time to call the general and tell him to bring a cage so she could get out of this place.
Awoo. The wolf expressed its displeasure as Tanis turned her back to dig through the leaves at the bottom of the tree looking for her pack with the walkie-talkie.
The wolf went quiet. The whole forest did, but for the creak of the rope as it swung slightly with its catch. With the walkie-talkie in hand, she pivoted to admire her hard-earned catch. With no phone to capture the moment, she’d only have her memory to recall the size of the beast.
What she saw fried her brain and dropped her jaw.
“Impossible.” She whispered the word, and with reason, because the wolf and coyote were gone. Where the coyote used to be lay a bare skinned almost decapitated woman, and as for the snare that caught the wolf, it now dangled a naked man.
Chapter Six
Dangling upside down didn’t help Barrett’s seesawing emotions. First and foremost being the shock that he’d been captured. After weeks of evading and outsmarting hunters, he’d been snared.
Despite his predicament, he also felt profound relief, because, hello, he was a man again! Since the change, he’d lived with the fear he’d be a wolf forever.
Being back in the flesh suddenly meant dealing with embarrassment because his dick and balls waved around as he hung from the ankle, weaving back and forth. The humiliation when the woman he’d been spying on the past few days stared wide-eyed. Guess it must be a bit of a jolt for her to realize the wolf she’d been hunting was, in reality, a man.
As Barrett bobbled around, his rotation gave him a view of the body on the ground, which turned out to not be a coyote, but a person. Thankfully not someone he knew, but that didn’t ease the nausea churning his belly as he saw how her head remained attached only by a sliver of flesh because he’d chewed through her neck.
I’m a fucking monster. The evidence lay there in a pool of blood and in the memories of his past kills.
“What is going on?” whispered the woman who’d been hunting Barrett—not very successfully, he should add. He’d been stalking her pretty much since her arrival, unable to help himself, drawn to her for some reason. So many opportunities he’d had to take her out. When she’d crouched by the creek to splash water over her face and wash her hands. As she knelt in the brush watching squirrels at play. Yet, he’d found himself unable to attack and couldn’t have explained why. He’d had no such qualms with the previous hunters.
“I’m afraid the situation is a tad bit complicated,” was his reply to her question.
She recoiled as if he’d slapped her. Her mouth rounded. “You can talk!”
“No shit. So can you.”
