Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 1

A/N: This story is a sequel and/or spin-off of "Heart's Blood," featuring Noah. It's a stand-alone story, but builds off the previous characters and world. ('^_^). 

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Thump.

Shit.

It's 1 a.m., I've been driving all day, I'm so tired my eyes hurt, and I'm almost home.

And I just hit a dog.

Shit.

~ ☾ ~

I pull to the side of the road, the gravel crunching beneath the tires of my trusty Honda Civic, and park. The engine cuts as I turn the key, and with it the strains of classic jazz I'd been using to keep myself awake on my long drive through the night.

The silence it leaves is like a vacuum—cold, empty, dark, and strangely deafening. It rings in my ears, and I have a sudden urge to talk to myself just to break it.

"Why me?" is all I can think to say.

My destination, the remote mountain town of Spring Lakes, is only a few dozen miles further on. There, my brother is waiting for me, waiting to welcome me to a new home and a new pack; a promise of a fresh start that is the only thing sustaining me right now. And it's so close.

I could keep going. I could pretend I didn't see the dog.

"Who am I kidding?" I whisper to myself and sigh. "No, I can't."

I lean across the boxes piled in the passenger seat (my car is full of boxes—my possessions, such as they are—the remnants of a life undone) and open the glove compartment.

Rummaging through the assorted crap I keep in there (among which is, in fact, a pair of gloves) I find the flashlight.

When I bought it, it was a very bright flashlight.

That was some time ago.

I switch it on and swear as a weak yellow beam illuminates a tiny area and fails to penetrate more than two feet into the dark.

"Useless piece of shit," I say, unsure whether I'm talking more about the flashlight or myself.

I turn it off and return it to the glove-box, smack the compartment shut with the palm of my hand, and then press myself back against my seat and close my eyes.

"You're a werewolf, Noah," I tell myself. "Stop being such a wuss."

Easier said than done.

Carefully, I open the door and get out, biting back a groan as my legs take my weight after nearly six hours behind the wheel.

Not that I have a lot of weight for them to take. At all of five feet and six inches tall (with a very straight spine) I'm a shrimp. The runt of the litter, as my sisters like to say. Combined with the metabolism of a racehorse, I'm lucky when a strong gust of wind doesn't knock me down. Not that anyone would notice. My small stature makes me easy to overlook, and rather than compensate with a big personality and a loud voice, I've gone the other way.

Quiet as a mouse, as they say.

Although 'they' have clearly never lived with mice.

Bracing myself, I removed my glasses, tucking them carefully in the pocket of my vest, and let my eyes adjust to the dark.

It's a trick I've learned, over the years, and something not many of my kind can do—to shift only my eyes to those of a wolf. If anyone passed me on the road right now, as I walk back towards where I hit the dog, they would see my eyes flare with uncanny brightness in the headlights' beams.