Shifted (Book 1 in the Legacy Born Series)

CHAPTER THREE

"You are insane. There is no war!" My legs burned, trying to keep up with the guy on a meandering forest path. I considered running again. This guy was crazy, but then, I couldn't explain the guy's inability to see us. We were right there, under his nose.

A sarcastic chuckle escaped his lips, as if he could hear my thoughts. "Suit yourself, but remember, people are looking for you. The Guild of The Primal Cross knows about you, and they know you didn't die in that hospital as they ordered."

"The Guild of what?" I swear this guy was smoking something.

"The ones that tried to kill you. They are part of a secret organization that thinks they are protecting the humans from our kind. We are not a threat."

Secret organizations, human clones, and doctors wanting me dead all scrambled inside my thoughts, killing the conversation.

He strode down a trail, passing between sheer rock faces and crisscrossing tree roots. It was hard to keep up, so I stopped.

He kept walking, and escape was still a priority. I turned around slowly and walked back in the direction I had come from.

I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following. The guy could make himself invisible, but I still heard the rustling of his footsteps in the direction I came.

I made a run for it.

Tall trees and thickets whizzed past me, and layers of dead leaves and twigs crunched underneath my feet. My foot struck a rotten log. I fell forward, hitting the ground. Pain seared through my palms, and my knees were probably skinned. A shriek escaped my lips as thin, biting vines pulled me off the ground by my ankles, hurtling towards the treetops.

Now the forest is attacking me!

The hauling came to a stop, and a burning sensation exploded from my ankles. Vines twirled around my feet, encircling my skin and squeezing tight. Creeping plants attacked like angry, slithering snakes curling around my body.

"Help!"

Moss slapped over my lips.

Eugh!

The vines squeezed harder. I couldn't breathe. I kept squirming, refusing to give up getting back to my parents.

Drake's footsteps stumped on the ground.

My heart stammered. I didn't ask to be different; I didn't want a life running away from some secret cross organization, and I didn't ask to be this idiot's prisoner.

I rotated in the air and a guy with floppy brown hair and green eyes leaned with folded arms against a fat, burly tree. He wore the same ops uniform as Drake.

"Drake didn't kid when he said she was feisty." A second man with a dark face, piercing blue eyes, and dreadlocks came closer as I grunted. He had a posh British accent.

"Aye, lose a lass, Drake?" Floppy asked in a Scottish drawl.

"I'm done." Drake's voice came from behind me. "If she wants to leave, let her leave."

Hanging upside down, rotating slowly, Drake came into view, walking away. A migraine brewed, as all the blood flooded to my head. But not as much as my ankles and body where the vines cut into my skin.

Indistinct mumble came from Drake's direction and both men laughed as I circled my way back to them.

Floppy came into view first. "Thir's nothin' wrong with a bit of feistiness, Drake."

"Get her down, Mav," Dreadlocks ordered.

Mav lifted his hand, and the vines cutting into my skin retreated, slithering back to their proper places. I fell with a thud on the ground. An ache rushed up to my back and head.