Avoiding Alpha

Chapter Fourteen

The blood was Ashton’s. There really was no mistaking it. There was so much blood almost dried on the general debris of the forest floor. Ray could have smelt Ashton’s scent from at least half a mile away before getting to the scene. The puzzle however, was why the body wasn’t here.

                In the form of a wolf he began walking around. The wolf gave him even better sense of smell but right now he needed to communicate and he needed to be in human form for that. He changed back quickly, forgetting the feel of his bones changing.

“Why is there no body?” Was his first question. He was hoping one of them had moved it to save the distress of one of the women or children finding it but Turner shock his head. The four other wolves surrounding him bowed their own heads and he felt like a brick just dropped into his stomach. “Taken?”

“The blood isn’t just here, they moved his body but then the scent just disappears.”

                He didn’t wait for any more of an explanation; he simply changed back into wolf form. He sniffed around the blood and then traced it to where splatters of ruby red liquid had coloured leaves and trees trunks. And when he walked for maybe three minutes, the scent just disappeared. Just like they said. He sniffed and sniffed trying desperately to get the scent into his nose and for the longest of time he didn’t smell anything, until… he did. But it was elusive, it was such a faint trace he couldn’t pinpoint it’s direction.

                The frustration of it all had him pacing frantically to and fro, determined to pick it up. To find a brother. He began to get agitated and Turner tried to join him; to take away his frustration with logic. That was Turner job, to keep the Alpha grounded when emotion sometimes got too high but today Turner’s presence was only a nuisance. Ray wanted to be frustrated, he wanted to be angry and he wanted to howl to the moon.

                He could not pick up on the scent and instead he vowed that tonight he would see Tendra’s father. He wanted to take out his anger on something and a good for nothing werewolf that couldn’t look after a woman and child classed as ‘something.’

“Ray.” Turner was saying to him. “Ray!”

                He heard the voice but he neither recognised it nor understood it, he was frantic still. That elusive scent, it was there but he just couldn’t get a direction on it and it was making him whine. The wolf instinct strong. “We are all worried Ray, we need you to lead us now. What do we do?”

                Turner who had seen his Alpha in many a wolf trance, taken over by instinct and trapping his human self inwards, tried desperately to bring him back to reality. To talk to him and try to synch his human ear and thoughts with Turner’s own human voice. But today it wasn’t working. To be fair it hadn’t worked very well on the other wolves who also had paced restlessly and tried to find their fallen brother even when they could pick up on the scent as Ray had done. Ray however, as Alpha, had far more animalistic instincts in him than anyone else. It would be that much harder to get through to him. But he would try.

“Alpha.” He started to use the term of address to a leader rather than a friend. It was a term of respect to try to get through to the leadership skills of the Alpha wolf. “Think of you mate. You need to get back to her.”