He is Ghost

Shade

Neira thought the next time she saw Judd she might bite his fingers off. That way he couldn't put them where they didn't belong while she was intoxicated with the heat. Maybe then he would keep his dirty fucking fingers to himself.

She hated him. Not in the general way you hate a person, but a much more twisted way. Normally hatred comes from acts that displease the other party. Like Hitler and every other person on the fucking planet. But she didn't hate Judd because he committed acts that displeased her. His actions pleased her very much. That is why she hated him. Pleasure holds power, and right now the ball was in his court.

She hated to think about it. His ability to use his body against hers in a way that only he could do. That was power, power over her body and power over her head. And she hated him for making her like it.

Damned bite. Damned heat. Damned all of this.

She dashed out the door, Judd's eyes on her back as she didn't even bother to take her newly adorned clothes off before shifting midair and falling from the one-story deck. Her paws hit the earth, hard, the bones in her forelegs rattling on the impact. She shook her head and dashed into the tree line.

Neira kept running until she couldn't run anymore. She ran so far she knew it would be well past dark by the time she got back to her little shack Judd had let her use. Like hell, she would be going back to his anytime soon, no matter if that's where the food is.

Fuck it. She wasn't going to go back at all. She would catch a hare or two for supper, and maybe breakfast too depending on how cranky she was in the morning.

It wasn't hard for her to hunt. She had practice, many, many hours of practice.

She never caught a hare though. Instead, her teeth found the body of a rather small deer. It wasn't much, but it would last her through supper and breakfast in the morning.

With her belly full and mind at ease, she scoped out the area for a place to rest. The forest was dense in this part, thicker than the trees in the center of Judd's territory. Neira peered up through the canopy above. The sky was almost wholly dark, the last remnants of light falling away to the west. A puff of air rushed out of her nose.

She circled back and took one more bite of fresh meat before trotting under a fallen pine. Neira curled her body around and collapsed in the dirt. It only took minutes for her eyes to close and sleep to take over.

That was the thing though about sleeping as a wolf. The animal instincts were so close to the surface that Neira could never truly sleep peacefully. Every crack in the brush, every whistle of the wind, every shake of the overhead branches caused her eyes to flash open.

The morning was still far off, and with the wind whistling like it was there was no way her body would let her sleep soundly. The noise of the wind hid many things, even the sound of leaves cracking.

She heard it then, what sounded like a paw in the brush. Leaves crunching. And then the wind stopped howling through the trees. Neira's hackles raised, on her still curled up body. She didn't dare move. She couldn't show the slightest inclination that she had heard whatever it was approaching.

Air whooshed in through her nose, tasting it for something, anything.

Nothing.

Crack.

Neira's eyes flew wide. There was no mistaking it now; something was here - watching her.

Slowly, she lifted her head. Her eyes scanned the brush, the carcass of the deer, the shadow behind the-

It wasn't a shadow.

Crack.

To the right, something moved.