The leaves above me ripple as an eagle swiftly flies across. I momentarily pause wondering what it must've laid its eyes on. The eagle was flying to hunt. Then I look ahead of me, at Roger's tall and broad shoulders as he's walking away from me. On any other time or place I would've enjoyed that view of Roger but now I'm too mad at him to even appreciate his sexy back. I resume my walking.
"That's the wrong way," I say to Roger. "It's not," he says. "We're supposed to go towards east. East is over there," I say, pointing to my left. "We're also supposed to look for a pine tree for the next clue. There are no pine trees in that direction," he says.
"What? Now you know where every single tree in this forest is?"
"I've always known where every single tree in this forest is," he says.
If I could drag him by his ear towards the left, I would. We're going in the wrong direction, and we're going to lose, just like every time. We're currently in the middle of an HSD game/training/competition. HSD stands for Human Sensory Development. The goal of this exercise is to help us develop our human senses by channeling in our wolf senses while still in our human forms.
I think it's total BS.
But I can't say that to our instructor, Mr. Bosworth, who also happens to be our pack's chief trainer and Kara's dad. I'm legit scared of Mr. Bosworth, like most people in our pack are. He's a very strict instructor. And it doesn't help he likes to focus his energy on Roger, Dalton, Kara, and me, and continues to train us personally. For different reasons, of course.
He focuses on Roger and Dalton because they will be this pack's future leaders (cue eye roll) and hence, they've to be the best of us all.
He focuses on Kara because as his daughter he would like her to set an example for the others.
He focuses on me because he's completely ashamed of the fact that one of his trainees could be as weak as I am.
Another scary thing about Mr. Bosworth is that he likes to pair weaker members with the stronger ones in exercises like HSD. He does it because he thinks the weaker members will learn something from watching the stronger ones. Pfft. He couldn't be any wronger. What ends up happening is the weaker members get dragged on by the stronger ones.
Like I currently am.
"That's it. I'm not following you anymore. That's the wrong way," I say, putting my foot down when Roger and I reach the end of the path we're following and it forks two way, and he takes the right one. "If you want to take the other one. Go. No one is stopping you," he says and continues to walk at the path on the right.
He's right. No one is stopping me. But walking alone in the forest in my human form is dangerous. There are predators in this forest – besides us werewolves. In my wolf form, the predators will leave me alone, but not in my human form. Nah, uh. I'll make a nice lunch for them. The animals, however, recognize Roger even in his human form and stay away from him. That's why even if he's leading me into the wrong path I shadow him like my life depends on it. Cuz it literally does.
This isn't the first time I've been paired with Roger. Unfortunately, I've had to endure his bossiness multiple times before. Mr. Bosworth must really think I amount to nothing because he keeps pairing me with the strongest trainee there is, hoping that somehow being near Roger is magically going to make me stronger. If it's not Roger, I get paired with Dalton. And Dalton is a worse partner than Roger. I got stranded multiple times when I'd to do this exercise with Dalton.
"There," Roger says, stopping.
And indeed there it was. A pine tree. The forest we're currently in is weird, even by werewolf standards. Random species of trees are scattered here and there, and the density of the forest also changes steeply at multiple places, which makes this a perfect place to put our training in practice, according to our ruthless chief trainer.
