Human Shifter (Book Three: A Werewolf BBW Shifter Romance) (9 page)

She gasped as she regained her balance. The moon shone brightly, full and near. She saw why she had not been able to catch it before—it was just now edging up over the black edge of the mountain, its pale circle swollen with perspective, and the rays of its light broke through the branches sideways on either side of her. She stood frozen on the edge of the cliff.

Dream, was this a dream? Something in the valley called her name, and she strained to see down through the blue moonlit trees. There it was. Julia saw light reflected back at her, twinkling and sparkling like a shooting star. As her eyes adjusted, she saw more of the sparkling lights floating through the woods below, a wide swath of lights carried through the trees.

Maybe it was a change of the wind that brought the rushing sound to her ears, or maybe it was the peculiar taste of the air, but the lights below came into focus all at once when Julia realized what she was seeing.

A stream. Or no, many streams. The light was the moon reflected on the surface of the water, the rippling sparkles moving as the river moved. She let her gaze sweep across the valley, following the lights backward to a single point in the middle of the forest. The wind blew from behind her, pushing her forward and she stepped back quickly, reaching out with one hand to grasp the branch of a nearby tree. She let out her breath, unaware that she'd been holding it while she looked at the moon. A strange chill of fright and disappointment swept through her body. The danger she'd been in, standing right at the edge so high up! And stranger yet—as she'd stood there, she thought that the wind would blow her out towards the streams.

It was beautiful. The moon danced over the branches below, and she followed the wind with her eyes as it brushed its way across the valley floor. Beautiful, so beautiful ... Her eyes opened wide, and she stepped forward again toward the edge. Maybe if she leapt, the wind would catch her and carry her down and make her beautiful. Beautiful like the moon.

A howl behind her broke the spell.

Julia spun around. Another cry joined the first, and then both were strangled. Julia's feet moved of their own volition, but it was not fast enough. She was awake now, and certainly not dreaming. Stumbling through the trees, she arrived at the cluster of boulders. Mara and Dee were gone.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Damien

Damien sat on the porch, listening to the branches of the forest whisper in the distance. A late summer storm was gathering, the electricity in the air crackling across the hairs on his arms.

He smelled something. He wanted to shift into wolf form so that he could scent out what it was, but Jordan would have to reset the splint on his leg. He pushed himself out of the chair and leaned forward onto the rail, his nose lifted. The wind blew the wrong direction, but a sudden gust brought a smell to his nose that was unmistakable. Wolf, yes. But more than that, blood.

His heart beat fast as he limped over and down the porch stairs. The smell was strong, now, and he recognized Dee's scent. Before he could even take a single step into the meadow, she had broken through the treeline: he could hear her paws now on the grass.

"Dee?"

The wolf bounded forward as Damien struggled to stand, and then the wolf scent was gone and it was just Dee.

"They took Mara," she said, her voice hoarse and panting. "I escaped."

"Where's Julia?" Damien asked, his stomach turning.

Behind him, Jordan pulled open the screen door.

"What's going—Gods, Dee, you're bleeding everywhere!" Jordan hurried down the porch steps to help Dee.

"Damien," Dee said. Her hand touched his arm and he pressed his own hand on top of hers. "I tried to track her, but the scents were all mixed up. I was already too weak."

"Did they take her?" In his mind, Damien saw Trax and the rest of his pack, saw Julia bound in their den.

"She was gone before I could see," Dee said. "She may have escaped. I don't know."

"You need to lie down," Jordan said, an urgency in his voice. "I need to stitch up this wound soon. You've already lost a lot of blood."

"Then where is she?" Damien said, not letting go of Dee's hand.

"I believe she's still in the territory somewhere. I couldn't—I couldn't find her." Her voice broke at the admission.

"Damien, she needs to lie down," Jordan said. Damien let go of Dee's hand. Julia ...

Jordan carried Dee inside. Damien hobbled in after them.

"Jordan, can you splint my leg again if I shift?" he asked. Jordan helped Dee lay back onto the couch, giving her a towel to staunch the flow of blood.

"Damien, what would you do? Limp your way into Trax's territory?" Jordan asked.

"Trax is dead. He has no territory," Damien said.

"There are still wolves there," Jordan said.

"The ones that took us captive were prepared," Dee said.

"Were they purebred?" Damien asked. It would make it harder if he couldn't sense them.

"No. They came in human form, though."

"As humans? How did they fight?"

"They used snares on us." Dee coughed, her voice choking. "While we slept."

"You were asleep?" Damien could not believe that Dee had not sensed them coming.

"Mara was on lookout. She must have fallen asleep, too. They separated Mara and me after they captured us."

"Captured
you
, you mean."

"What are you driving at?" Jordan asked. Then, to Dee: "Tilt your head back. This will only hurt a little."

"Could she have betrayed you both?" Damien said. "If they were prepared, maybe—"

"I thought the same, but they dragged her away howling. If she wanted to betray us ... " Dee's words trailed off, and she gasped as Jordan snipped off the excess cord for the first stitch.

"We'll find her, Dee," he said.

"Jordan can take Kyle and Katherine along with me once I'm all patched up," Dee said.

"Not until tomorrow," Jordan said. "It'll be better to go then."

Blind and broken, Damien wanted to howl in frustration. He could not find her like this. His arms ached to hold her, to protect her. She was out there, somewhere ... alone.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Julia

Julia heard yelps and barks reverberating through the trees. She tried to follow the noise, but it quickly faded—whether from distance or because they'd stopped yelping, she didn't know. She hoped that they were both alive.

"Dee?
DEE
!" Forgetting to be cautious, Julia screamed aloud as she ran toward where the sounds had come from.

"MARA
!
DEE
!" Struggling forward in the darkness, she soon lost her path. The thin moonlight filtered through the tree branches above was not enough to light her way, and she tripped over roots and fallen branches. She called for Mara and Dee until her voice was hoarse, walking for over an hour before giving up. There was no light and she had no way to know which direction she should go, and her eyes were closing even as she walked forward. She stopped, finally, and collapsed next to a tree, her sobs quietly dying down. An owl called overhead. There was no energy left in her body; she did not even care about the pine needles jabbing into her skin as she fell to the forest floor. Before she faded into sleep, she drew the wolfbone knife Damien had given her and clasped it in her hand for comfort in front of her.

Then there was only silence and she was alone.

When she woke, she didn't remember for a moment where she was or what she was doing. She rubbed her bleary eyes and then it came to her like a slap across the face: Dee. Mara and Dee were gone. Someone—wolves, maybe—had taken them. How did they get to Dee? Why hadn't she woken them up last night instead of wandering off in a half-sleep?

Shaking the regrets from her mind, she stood up. She was thirsty, and hungry, but the capturers had taken the pack along with Dee and Mara, and she had nothing. Nothing except the knife on her belt. She began to walk forward, with no aim but to go somewhere, anywhere. At least she'd been going in the right direction—from the rising of the sun, it seemed as though she was still headed out to Trax's territory. But should she go that way or back toward Damien?

Damien. He would know what to do. She couldn't even find the werewitch or any of the shifters without Dee and Mara. It only made sense.

She turned and kept walking, trusting that she would find something to guide her. She'd explored the territory back here many times when she was young, had made a lean-to in every part of the forest, but nothing looked familiar.

Hours passed. Her mouth was dry with thirst; she was going to overheat if she didn't drink soon. From all her walking, she
must
be closer to her grandmother's house She wondered if it was because the trees grew or because she'd grown up herself that she didn't recognize anything.

It was pure luck, then, when she heard a soft hiss and made her way toward it. The trees opened up across a stream of water, maybe the same one that went past her grandmother's house, but this one didn't look familiar either. Regardless, it was water, and she was grateful. She bent and drank, cupping her hand to her mouth. The water was icy cold, and she gulped it until she was no longer thirsty.

With her thirst slaked, the hunger in her stomach came back with a vengeance. Ignoring the rumbling of her stomach, she began to jog downstream as fast as she could manage along the stream bank. At least she knew she was going the right way now, and she would end up at Dee's house. She would tell Damien what had happened. And Jordan and Kyle would go and find Dee, and save her. Yes, it would work. She just had to keep going.

She stopped twice more to drink, hoping that she would reach the house before sundown. Her legs ached sorely from two full days of journeying, and her breath came harder and harder. It seemed that she had been running forever. She bent once more to drink, and when she stood up, she stumbled back dizzily.

Her stomach rolled again as it had the day before, and she fell down on her hands and knees. This time she was not able to hold it back and vomited, retching until only air came from her guts. When she finally thought she was finished, she sat up. Her hands were trembling.

This was wrong. This was all wrong. The water was bad, maybe. Maybe the water had made her sick. But this was not the right part of the forest. Had they gone over a crest? She felt as though this was the wrong side of the mountain, the growth around her denser.

She got up and struggled on. The sun was overhead but the forest was so dense that the light only came in through the crossed branches. Sometimes she was forced to walk in the stream because the forest on either side blocked her way. It was hard to get through now without running into branches, and when she did walk along the bank, spiderwebs caught in her hair. She was thirsty but feared to drink.

The water.

She couldn't stay here. She had to go upstream. But she'd already spent a day walking this direction. By the time she got a safe distance back, she ... well, she wouldn't. She would collapse well before then, Julia was sure of it. And upstream was a hard climb. Downstream—she had no idea what was this direction. Maybe the house, maybe not. She knew only that she had to keep going. The sun faded; the day gave way to darkness, and still she walked.

As she walked, she sang the rhyme Dee used to sing to her when she was a little girl:

Keep on, keep on moving; the last wind, it's-a blowing,

The moonlight now is showing you the way.

Keep kind, my dear, for kindness is the salve to all your troubles,

The brook that bubbles past you won't obey.

Her head spun. Her whole body ached—from hunger, from exertion. She walked on, up the middle of the stream, and the water rushed past her at her feet. If she watched the current, she had the odd sensation that she was moving backwards. It was night now, and she could not tell how long she had been going, one foot in front of the other.

There, ahead. There was light. She saw the stream meet up with another, and the stream was not one stream but three, and all three spurted out of a spring in the ground. But she'd been going downstream ...

The banks opened up, and so did the trees: moonlight streamed through to light up the fountain of water from which the streams flowed. Julia walked alongside the stream and tried to understand its motion. She watched the stream, but could not tell where the water stopped moving down and started moving up. It was all very strange and Julia wondered if she would die soon. Or if she were dreaming. Either way, it wouldn't hurt to drink. She was so thirsty, after all ...

Julia bent down to the side of the stream near a pool of water, but before she could reach her cupped hand in, she gasped. A wolf's reflection stared back at her from the pool of water, and she scrambled backward, falling and kicking out her feet. Her gaze met the gaze of the large white wolf standing on the other side of the stream.

At first she thought it was Dee, but then Julia realized that the eyes of the wolf were not white and black, as Dee's were, but a bright red. Glowing red, like embers in a dying fire.

Julia held her breath, waiting for the wolf to spring across the small stream and attack. The wolf walked forward and turned into its human form, becoming slim as she stepped across the stream. She shifted, her body not twisting as Damien's had, but
pouring
itself into a different shape so fluidly that Julia did not know what was happening until she saw the shifter stand up in human form, her hair in white knotted braids hanging down to her toes. She was young, maybe ten years old. So young.

"You're ... "