"It's like he's a different breed of werewolf. Something... beyond us."
• • •
Adrienne Gage has spent her entire life being shunned and punished for her mouthy attitude, and being loyal to a pack which doesn't deserve her loyalty.
It's been a year...
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My head jerks back up, something feathery and wet hitting my cheek. I brush away the fat snowflake and blink the sleep from my eyes.
It's had to of been at least an hour by now. Nathan's a persistent bastard but he won't hold out for this long, surely.
A sharp pain is shooting through my tailbone from sitting on the hard tree branch for so long, and the rest of my body is excruciatingly stiff. I grimace as I throw a leg over and sit up further to begin the climb down. It doesn't matter how ceased up or sore I am, anything out here is better than that cell.
My claws scrape into the bark as I slide down the trunk of the tree, groaning deeply as soon as my feet hit the ground and gravity becomes more of a reality. Giant flakes of snow float down around me, landing in my hair and sticking to my clothes as I stretch. The atmosphere has darkened, the sky turning a dreary grey.
Maybe he went back to his daddy with his tail tucked.
No more than a whole five seconds later and the loud snap of a stick snapping comes from the direction I had.
Of course. Daddy would be mad if he went back. And we can't have that, can we?
He won't leave me alone. Nathan may be a pompous ass, but he's a persistent one.
It becomes clear to me what my options are. I either stay here and get thrown back in that hellhole, or I leave. The only way I escape is if I start walking now and never turn back.
But there's nowhere to go. I'm oblivious to the world outside of Visari. I know that there's other tribal packs: Oarca, Bastieel, and Talonia. But I don't know their customs. I don't know their people or their land or their way of life. Everything is foreign beyond here.
Another sound, like a body pushing through vegetation, is closer now. Panic starts to set in, the tingling in my limbs urging them to take action.
He's getting closer. Quickly, undeniably, and terrifyingly closer.
I run. I run for all my miserable, wasted life is worth without any fucking idea where I'm going to. I just run.
Twigs snap at my ankles and my bare feet are yet again cold and pained on the frozen ground. But I'm not stopping. I don't care if I leave a trail of blood in my path.
It irks me that I can't shift, since four legs are infinitely faster than two. But shifting now would be like sounding the alarm for him to come find me. For whatever reason, a werewolf can sense whenever another one shifts nearby. It's a strange feeling, like a presence over your shoulder except the presence comes from the shifting wolf's location.
The next thing I know my shoulder is being plowed into the hard ground as a giant furry mass hits me from behind. I can feel the skin being scraped off my arm and elbow and the bloody wounds being filled with dirt and snow.
