Claimed (Werewolf boyxboy)

Chapter 23

ORTIZ

The bones in my feet dug into the earth through my shoes and I shivered, frozen to the bone as I trudged through the rain. I had been walking for God/dess knows how many hours through the mountain, and my much shorter legs could barely keep up with the fast pace.

I was beyond exhausted. I barely got any sleep last night, forced to stay awake until dawn if I wanted any hope of finishing my homework since my training went so late into the night. Doing math equations for two hours and writing a five-page paper on 'The Great Wolf War', all the while nursing a newly broken clavicle left my brain completely useless, and my body was quickly pursuing its example as I traipsed along.

My father was so far ahead that I could barely see him, the rain and the fact that he demanded we go off-trail making visibility even worse. I blinked rapidly as I squinted through the fog, fruitlessly attempting to rid my lashes of the copious amounts of water that clung to them. My leg muscles burned with the fire of a thousand suns, but still I forced them to take yet another trembling step, knowing that the consequences of not doing so would undoubtedly be much worse than even the most intense next-day soreness.

The backpack on my back - filled with bricks - probably weighed half of my own weight, which honestly wasn't much considering my young age of 16, as well as the fact that I was chronically overworked and underfed.

My father absolutely hated that I wasn't big, tall, and muscular like him, and he quickly decided that these weekly, day-long hikes were a necessary addition to my training schedule in a last-ditch effort to finally pack some muscle onto my lanky frame.

I didn't know much about growing muscles, but I had a feeling that his method would never work. Not when my body was stuck in a constant cycle of utilizing all of its excess energy to heal whatever broken bone I'd sustained in any given week.

My breaths were coming out in short spurts at this point as I finally began to catch up a little bit, no doubt assisted by my father's figure, which was now still and turned back in my direction. He was staring back at me with a look that made my knees tremble even more than they already were, dark eyes as clear and piercing as ever through the heavy rain despite the fact that I struggled to see everything else around me.

'Why is he waiting?' I wondered, my brain running through eight-thousand different scenarios in a single second.

Did I do something wrong?

Was I in trouble?

Was he going to hurt me again?

A wheeze of air slipped between my lips at the thought, the sound more of a whimper of dread than anything else. There had to be a reason he was waiting. Usually, he was more than fine with leaving me behind to slip and slide in the mud until I figured out a solution on my own.

But this... it was completely out of character for him, and I shivered with fright as I neared him.

I was getting so close that I could see his black curls, wet, plastered down to his forehead and so similar to mine that I couldn't help but be reminded that I was undeniably of his blood.

It took a few more slips in the mud and a few more wheezes before I was finally within 25 feet or so of my father, my entire lower body and hands caked with muck. My head whipped around, surveying the area as I simultaneously searched for any tools that could help protect me from what I knew was to come.

We were in... a clearing?

No, not just a clearing.

The other side was void of not only trees, but also a ground.