Sacrificed Soul

Chapter Sixteen

Parking the jeep besides Aunt Marsha's gold mini-van, I let my smugness saturate my body language as I leap from the cab. The feeling of winning a bet is emphatically good and I now understand why Dodger and Lenora like to do it so much. It's not so much that they're seers and more that they have of an adept understanding of the stakes being played.

The family welcomes me as I join them where they loiter around the coolers in the bed of Uncle Jonny's Silverado, all of them joining in on the laughter when Junior makes a flourishing bow towards me, a ten dollar bill in his hand.

"When did you know you?" I ask him as I snatch it into my own.

"I was in town when you were leaving work last night. Didn't even stall at the stoplight," he says, managing to be proud of himself.

He should be, too. He was a good teacher despite the growling and terse silences I'd been rewarded with during. He hugs me to him, and I listen to the tidbits of chat that I can make out in the midst of Orion conversation.

It's the night of the pack run, and I am both excited and fearful. For a few short weeks almost two years ago, I'd run across another wolf in the military. We'd quickly fallen into both bed and a minor pack of sorts, and even though Captain Thompson had put an end to it as soon as he'd discovered us, I still remember some of what he'd told me.

"Why are pack runs so important?" I'd asked him after we'd lazily chatted about our packs to each other.

"You don't know?" He asks.

"I was a late bloomer," is what I supply.

He shrugs. It's not unknown for some of the shifter population to not have their wolves until after their eighteenth birthday. We wolves have a painful understanding of our human's limits.

"Well," he'd started, shifting over me carefully so as not to twist his knot painfully inside of me, 

"It's hard to explain. You see, it's different for every pack. Ours is small and extremely close, but we're also poor because of it. Not a lot of opportunities, you know? Especially when we don't have access to national parks."

I nodded, transfixed.

"Anyway, I digress. You know how sometimes you and your wolf can feel the earth speaking to you through the soil?"

"Yes," I say. I had felt it before. It was a high I'd always chased but never often received. Thompson liked to withhold me from my true form.

"With the pack, it's like there's a dial that turns it up a thousand fold. Like you're in true communion with Mother Nature."

If I'd never wanted to run with pack, and I had, desperately, I would have wanted to then.

"Alphas are here!" Larry says, bringing me back to earth.

The Orion's are a flutter of motion as we all escape out clothing. I'm far more circumspect, dodging back to the jeep where I store everything. Only Lenora gives me a look of understanding, the rest scrutinizing the fact that I hide away from them. When I return, most of them are already shifted. It's only when Larry finally stretches into his second soul's form that they look to their leader for the next move.

I'm shaking. I have no idea what the reaction of the pack will be upon seeing me for the first time since that devastating night so long ago. But I am surrounded by the fur of Lenora and David and Lori's kids who tackle me all at once. When I am on the ground, I surrender to their yipping question.

It's a good feeling, the fur pushing through my skin, the weight of my muscles settling onto my long, strong legs. My teeth feel right, for once. Long and sharp and deadly. My paws settle into the earth, and I feel Mother Nature's rejoicing claim of me. Even if the pack is afraid of me, I know that She accepts me. Only when I am on four legs, the pads of my paws digging into the precious dirt of the earth do I even come close to understanding Gods and their fables.