Shadowed

Chapter 26

Kale’s POV!!!! :D

I was hot on her trail, and I could smell her a mile away.  Damn it Jace I’m gonna kill you. I’d stumbled across the rest of the guys, after asking Ben and Dan for a little favour, to find that everyone was present apart from Jace and Kaela. Yeah. That’s what I thought. And yes, I’m already planning Jace’s death.  ‘Long and painful..’ I muttered to myself. My body was driven at a speed that was being fueled by anger, as I ploughed through the bush. The muscles under my black coat of fur tightened into a tight coil and then loosened in release as I leapt clean over a large fallen tree trunk. Every so often I’d catch the scent of Jace and then the light sweetly spiced scent of Kaela. It was then that I caught faint fragments of thought projections that sounded very much like Kaela. I couldn’t work out what she was saying, but I knew for a fact that she was distressed, angry, and shouting. The thick mane of fur that ran from just behind my ears right down to the tip of my spine was beginning to raise as it always did whenever I began to feel moody, furious or worried and right now it was more so then it usually was and this was without my hackles raised. Some of the other male shifters had rarious areas where there was bits of fur that were longer than the rest. It was pretty much in place of a wild mane like that of lions. But of course it wasn’t too rare for some of us to get that length of fur around our heads making it look like a mane anyway. My farther had had it.

Me and Ryan hadn’t really known our father that well at all. He was always at work and we were kept home with our mother, attending lessons from private tutors and mucking about being the boys we were oblivious to the genes we and our parents were carrying. It was me that was let in on the family secret first since I was the eldest. Surprisingly it was my father that had informed me not long after my fourteenth. It had been hard to accept, but I was forced to understand and believe when only three days after being told my first shift took place. That was also the day that my mother died.

Ryan and I weren’t told quite how she died, only that it hadn’t been quick. Father then you would have thought would have spent more time at home with us after that but it was quite the opposite. He spent more time away from home then he ever had before. He left us at the house with the butler Tom who thankfully we had known since we were very young and we seemed to accept him as more of an alternative father then our real one. Our tutors were sent away and we were kept indoors at all times, only having Tom and Mary the house maid as company. Father was at work from six till ten at night. We barely ever got to see him. In fact we never saw him.

“Father....?”

I stood outside his room nervously the door only partly open and bright light flooding out of the room and into the dark hallway. “Father....I..Father?” There was no answer. I gently placed my hand on the mahogany wood door and pushed it open shielding my eyes from the sudden brightness. I squinted into the room able to make out the large siluette of my father sitting on the edge of his bed his back to me and seeming to be looking at something in his hands. “Father..?”

He jumped slightly and quickly opened the bed side draw and put in it what he’d been looking at before slamming it shut. “What is it boy!?!”He asked gruffly standing up from the bed and walking towards me. His eyes were red rimmed and sore looking, he’d been crying, but I dare not ask why. “I..I was just wondering, if ...if I could come to work with you tomorrow.”I said fighting to control my voice and keep it strong and determined without nerves getting the better of me. My father was a very intimidating man and could be easily angered. Yeah I got my short temper from him.

“No. You’re to stay at home with your brother. I don’t need your trouble at work.” He said dismissing me with a wave of his hand.”