Call Of The Wolf #The Full Moon Challenge

Call Of The Wolf

Lanna was running, the forest thick around her. She was in the heart of it now, where witches built gingerbread houses and ate small children for breakfast.

Trouble. It was brewing all around her. Thick and heavy. She needed to run faster, but she couldn't. The change had its claws well into her.

She'd fought desperately to pull it in—tried to prevent the change, but she failed. The wolf wanted to come out, and even all her warrior's strength couldn't hold it back.

It came. Her body shifted, pulled, ripped itself out of her control, muscles stretching, bones elongating. Pain so vivid it seemed alive.

She screamed, writhed to the icy soil, trying to gain control of the wolf. She watched through an animal haze as her skin festered and bled.

A raffle of panic welled inside her, along with hunger so intense that every cell in her body screamed for blood.

Her blood felt like liquid metal as it coursed through her veins, ripping her up from the inside, making her dizzy, making her sick. Making the world swim with opaque colors, that shifted to a fiery red as her wolf came forth in full force and power.

The world fell away from her as she slid down into the dark embrace of pain. It held her, fed her, kept her. Pulling her in, embracing and keeping, until—, Something changed.

Lanna opened up her eyes, feeling reality curl around her like a warm blanket. She had lived through her first wolf transformation.

She had to find the renegade. Had to prove to the pack, she could be an asset in the field. That she could be Kyne by action, if not by the bond.

He would be angry, of course. Ryan. Her mate. Her friend. Her love. She'd gone out alone tonight to hunt for the renegade.

For years, he'd refused to send her into the field, without her wolf, and that one small point was creating a hard knot of dissension between them. Tonight, she would prove herself worthy.

Around her, the forest hummed with life. The wind whispered through the leaves, its music her anthem.

Indigenous animals watched with glowing eyes, her witnesses to the renegade's inevitable apprehension.
He'd been clever enough to elude her for a time, but she'd found him. She was closing in on him.

The bent branches and footprints lightly dusted with snow testified that the gap between them was closing.

A sharp crack sounded to her left, and she froze, momentarily confused. Her quarry was in front and to her right—of that she was certain. So what had she heard? An animal?

She sniffed the air, drawing in the sharp green scent of the pine needles, and the pungent smell of the decaying undergrowth.
There was something else. A heavy musk hanging in the air. A feral smell that she didn't recognize.

Trap!

The word ricocheted through her, torn from her wolf's instinct. But it came too late: The arrow pierced her shoulder. Silver? No, steel.

Her wolf howled, brought to the surface by the heady combination of anger and fear. She let it rise, using its strength to speed her actions, and trusting that it wouldn't rise so far and so fast that it punched through, leaving the wolf in charge rather than Lanna herself.

Moving to the radiating pain from her shoulder, her mouth reached back to remove the arrow, but the angle was awarded. Instead of freeing the arrow, she merely clamped her teeth down and snapped off the shaft.

The arrow tip was still inside her, and there was no way it was coming out. She forced herself to remain calm, to keep her focus so she could keep her head. If they'd wanted her dead, a silvertip arrow would have been the way to go. So that meant she had the advantage.

Her attacker wanted her alive; she didn't hold the same compunction. Whoever put an arrow in her was a dead man.

Above her, a flock of birds took off with a flurry of wings and claws. She ran. The arrow tip-in her shoulder slowed her a bit, snapping her strength, but not so much that she couldn't fight.

Lanna heard the soft whoosh of a net being released from its anchor in the trees. She darted to the right and the threads of the net fail to the earth.

Her attacker was approaching. Tall and dressed in fatigues. His face was hidden by a mask. His body shapeless under the loose-fitting clothes. In front of her, he raised his weapon--a tranquilizer gun.

A hint of fear ripped through her, an emotion she hadn't felt with such force since the Rondo pack had killed her father eight years ago. And she didn't like feeling it now.

He fired, and missed. The dart grazed her right leg as she darted into the thick foliage.

The time had come for this man to pay for his sins, she stepped forward, out from the brush, no longer caring about stealth.

She wanted to fight. Craved it, in fact. Her wolf wanted to play. And as long as the man ended up dead, she was more than happy to let her wolf get out and stretch its legs.

He tossed the useless tranquilizer gun to the ground and reached into his coat and pulled out a handgun. His finger moved on the trigger, and in that same instant, she launched herself sideways.

The bullet sang out, burning through her plush chocolate coat, slicing into the flesh of her upper, left front leg, raising a line of crimson that bubbled past her pelt.

He'd hurt her, but he hadn't killed her. He'd just screwed up, big-time.

The wolf within her wanted blood, wanted to destroy him. She lunged forward and attacked. Knocking the man back into the snow and when he came up with the gun in hand, she buried her razor-sharp teeth into his throat.

He thrashed. His gurgling cries ripped through the night air, as if, echoing her own need to rend and tear.

She watched his dark eyes glaze over, and his body still. Breathing in the aroma of his death, before unclasping her steel jaws away from his throat.