Page 50 of The Last Sanctuary
She was trapped.
Finally, her muscles started to work properly. She crawled backward, her pack cumbersome, the grass slick against herpalms. Creeping between the enclosures, she slithered on her stomach until she reached the gate for the hybrid wolves’ enclosure.
Rising onto her knees, she opened the outer gate with cold fumbling fingers, slipped inside, and locked it. Crossing the no man’s-land barrier, she repeated the same motions on autopilot, hardly realizing what she was doing. Her mind was numb, frozen with horror.
Mist curled around her legs. Everything had taken on an eerie, silvery glow. The fog crept closer and closer, swirling and shifting, almost like it was a living thing. Like it would take everything she cared about and devour it, one murky, malignant mouthful at a time.
More gunshots split the air. She flinched.
Another wolf screamed in agony. She wasn’t sure which one. Suki or Shika? Her mind churned with revulsion and helpless fury.
She had to keep moving. She couldn’t think about what was happening to the timber wolves. She couldn’t focus on the horror, or it would destroy her. She managed to stagger inside the hybrid enclosure. Her thoughts came frantic and furious. Panic turned her brain to mush. Was she safer? Or was she putting herself in even more danger? The frog jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The hybrids might be so frantic at the gunshots, they could tear her to pieces where she stood.
Still on her hands and knees, she crawled into the enclosure, through the trees and underbrush, and entered the clearing near the den. Shadow’s great head appeared. He whimpered, his beautiful amber eyes brimming with apprehension and bewilderment.
Head down, Raven crawled to the edge of the den. She shrugged off her pack and the rifle and collapsed on the cold damp ground, shivering uncontrollably.
Shadow stood over her. He nosed her trembling shoulder with his muzzle. He licked her cheek. Luna appeared at his side.
She’d heard them discussing pelts, but it hadn’t truly registered through her fear and panic. Now it did. Now she truly understood the horror of what they meant to do with the animals she’d resented and loved her entire life, the creatures her father had so adored. The Headhunters would slaughter them, one by one, butcher each animal for their own sick entertainment.
A terrible sense of helplessness overwhelmed her. Shame and regret burned bitter in the back of her throat. Surely, she should have done something to stop this, to prevent it.
You planned to do the same thing, a wretched voice whispered in her mind. But it wasn’t the same thing. Hers was an act of mercy, tranquilizing the animals first so they’d never feel the sting of the bullet, so they’d pass in peace, not with violence, terror, and suffering.
The way her father had spared Zachariah days of anguish. The way he’d wanted her to spare him.
And besides, she wasn’t convinced she would have gone through with it, anyway.
The white wolf stepped over Raven’s body like she wasn’t there and paused in the center of the small clearing. She tilted her head, ears pricked as if listening to the horrible things happening in the next enclosure.
She growled. Her lips peeled back from her fangs, and her ears flattened against her skull. Instinctively, she understood something terrible was happening, and she was angry. Luna wanted to fight.
Raven sat up. She wiped dirt from her cheek and brushed pine needles from her clothes. Her bones vibrated beneath her skin. She tasted her heart in her mouth. A chill crept over her, filling her veins with a cold, crystallized anger.
She desperately wanted to live. For as many days or weeks or years as she had left. Even if the Hydra Virus had breached her immune system. An insidious invasion replicating itself, ravaging her organs, plundering her bones, her flesh, assaulting her from the inside out, cell by infected cell. Even if she was sick, she would fight to her last breath.
At the same time, Raven was done hiding. Done allowing fear to rule her.
She couldn’t run, not from this. Refused to run.
She was all alone in the whole wide broken world. It was up to her. The only one who could do something. The only one who could try to stop this.
Haven washerhome. The wildlife sanctuary washerrefuge.
It was her job to protect it, to defend it.
There were nine Headhunters to her one. And tomorrow night, an additional thirty men would arrive to further desecrate her sanctuary.
She couldn’t take the Headhunters on by herself.
She couldn’t defeat them, but neither could she let the Headhunters win.
They would take Haven from her, but they couldn’t have the animals, too. Raven wouldn’t let them.
There was only one option left. One chance to save what she could.
The choice she should have made from the beginning.
