4. Bexley

4

BEXLEY

“Get the kids in the trees, now!” I barked.

I heard them before I saw them. The snapping of twigs and the gnashing of teeth. I scooped little Billy into my arms and threw him into the tree where his mother grabbed him with outstretched arms. I heard the trees bending and snapping with the weight of them as they scaled the trunks of every tree they could leap into. Usually, coyotes didn’t stand a chance against a band of people like us. But, with our strength and energy waning from meandering in the woods for weeks, I wasn’t sure that we could take on a pack of coyotes without losing someone in the process.

And they lost enough.

“Aaaaall right,” I drawled as I released Annabelle to her grandfather in the tree, “who’s first?”

“Alpha! Come on!” Greg hissed from his treetop.

I turned and faced the four coyotes staring at me from the other side of the meadow. Their beady eyes locked with mine as the two middle ones moved first. I inched toward the fire that housed the food we were about to eat. I wouldn’t dare let those animals get near our feast. My pack needed that energy if we were going to continue out of that naked fucker’s territory before sunrise like I said.

I was shocked the coyotes allowed me to reach my purse before the first one sprang.

“Alpha!” Annabelle exclaimed.

I ripped my knife out of my purse just as the coyote leapt into the air. It soared toward me, baring its teeth as its jowls flapped in the wind that kicked up. I heard scrambling around in the shadows. I slipped the knife out of its sheath and held it out in front of me. And as the first coyote slammed down onto me, I shoved my knife deep into its gut, twisting and throwing the dead animal off my body.

“Who’s next!?” I called out.

With the coyote bleeding out at my side, I watched as the other three gathered into a group maybe twenty feet ahead of me. The two animals on either side of the middle one branched out, slowly wrapping around me and keeping their distance. I reached down for a thick stick I felt my foot knock against. I grasped it in my free hand, wielding two instruments of death at once. Spittle dripped from their bared teeth. Scars ricocheted across their fur, boasting of the fights for survival that brought them to my doorstep.

If they thought for one fucking second that they were getting toward our food or those trees, they had another think coming.

“Who’s next?” I asked as I tossed the stick into the air and caught it in my hand again.

As I figured they all would, they charged at once. The middle animal, heading straight for me, and the other two attempting to encircle me. My mind went into overdrive as I took off to my right, clocking the speed at which that coyote moved. He headed straight for the trees, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.

So, I sprinted as quickly as I could and forced that fucking animal to look me in the face.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” I growled.

When I was about fifteen feet from the animal, I dropped the stick and picked up a rock. One flick of my wrist slapped that rock right into that fucker’s forehead, and it turned toward me on a dime. With two coyotes coming at me from behind, I only had seconds to react. So, with the shift of the wind, I crooked my knife as best as I could and threw it right at the animal.

I watched it pierce its eyeball.

“Hell, yeah,” I said with a grin as I pushed off toward the nearest tree.

“They’re still coming!” someone exclaimed from a treetop.

I clamored up the nearest tree, shimmying as quickly as I could. I felt that coyote snapping its jaws at me, with the wind from its teeth whipping against my ass cheeks. I lunged toward the nearest tree, grabbing on as I continued to shimmy myself up. And as the coyotes barked and scratched at the trunk, I managed to plant my feet onto that bark and shove myself toward yet another tree.

I jumped down onto that dead wolf and pulled my knife out.

I didn’t have time to rest, though. No rest for the weary, or in the case of my life, no rest for me. I spotted a coyote attempting to get into the tree where Annabelle and her grandfather were, and I knew that if he shifted, the entire tree would break. I saw his hand swipe down from the leaves as I took off running. With my knife poised and my hand reaching down for that stick I abandoned, I wielded the only two instruments of destruction that I had.

I slipped my knife into my back pocket and slammed that stick into the coyote’s ribcage like a goddamn baseball bat.

“Get outta there,” I snarled.

The coyote whimpered and howled as it tumbled to the ground, but I wasn’t about to let that motherfucker live. If nothing else, this was more food for us to carry around with us, and we couldn’t let that go. I mean, the bodies of four wolves? That was a lot of meat.

A lot of meat that we could use.

I wasted no time plunging my knife directly into that coyote’s body. It whimpered and cried out, but I didn’t stay there for long. Before I knew it, I was knocked off my feet and rolling on the ground, away from the coyote I just killed.

And my knife.

“Alpha!” Greg exclaimed.

I scrambled to get back onto my feet as I stared down the fourth wolf. “Don’t! I’ve got this!”

Greg sighed. “Alpha, you know we can?—”

I pointed at him, but I didn’t dare move my eyes away from that coyote. “None of us have enough sustenance right now. Just stay put, Greg.”

“Neither do you, Alpha.”

“And yet, that’s why I’m Alpha. Now, stay put and keep an eye on these carcasses. They’re gonna be good meat to haul around with us.”

When Greg stopped talking, the coyote lunged. I jumped, barely missing its attack, but I didn’t turn around quickly enough. I felt the animal snap its jaws at me before it slammed into my back, taking me to the ground. And the only recompense I had was to roll over in an attempt to pin it.

Which didn’t work.

“Alpha! No!”

“Everyone! Get higher into the trees!”

“What about Alpha!? We can’t just leave her!”

“Come on!”

We rolled around on the ground while I barely missed its talons and teeth. I had to get that fucker out from behind me. It would kill me in a heartbeat if I couldn’t see it. Darkness draped over us. The fire started dwindling. Dead carcasses littered the meadow as I finally tricked the animal into rolling one way while I rolled the other way. It moved like lightening, however, because before I knew it, I had that wolf right in my fucking face.

And the only thing I had to fight was that damned stick I shoved into its mouth.

The wolf chomped on the stick as its spit dripped onto my face. I rolled it over, kicking its legs out from beneath it and praying with all my might that I missed its sharpened claws. I finally got the animal onto its back, but with one last chomp, the coyote broke the stick in half, giving me two beating sticks to absolutely go to town with.

“You! Will! Leave! My! Pack! Alone!”

Pretty soon, the panic in my pack’s voice exchanged itself with glee. The yelling turned to cheers, and it was all of the fuel I needed for every ounce of my survival instincts to sharpen. They clapped and hollered. Greg and Little Billy roared above the chaos, chanting the title they gave me.

The title I somehow convinced them that I deserved.

“Alpha! Alpha! Alpha! Alpha!”

With each chant, I slammed a stick into that animal. With each cheer, I picked up those sticks and plunged them into the animal’s gut. Over and over, one at a time, interchanging the sticks as blood splattered and anger rushed through my veins. My vision tunneled. The anger and fear I held onto for weeks poured forth.

Anger at losing my partner.

Anger at being hunted by my boss.

Anger at knowing things that I simply shouldn’t.

Anger at no longer having a home…

“Alpha! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! It’s dead, it’s dead.”

I heard Silvia’s voice, but it sounded so far away.

“Alpha, can you see me?” Silas asked as he scooted in front of me.

I blinked a few times as the frenzied fury I experienced slowly dwindled. “The—the coyote.”

Greg snickered. “I think you got that coyote just fine. Silas, step off to the side.”

And when he did, I found the mutilated corpse of that coyote lying there. Its stomach, bared open to the elements. Its face, unrecognizable.

I looked down at my blood-soaked body and groaned. “Jesus.”

“You should’ve let us help,” Greg said as he placed his hand on my shoulder.

I looked over at his bony, malnourished hands. “With what strength?”

And when he didn’t answer, I took a few steps away from them and put on my best commanding voice.

“I know that you guys want to help! Trust me, I get it!”

My pack climbed down out of the trees before Annabelle’s grandfather rushed over to the fire.

“But,” I said as I shook my head, “you guys know as well as I do that even general healing mechanisms aren’t firing off the way they should be. It’s taking days, not moments, for healing to start for any wound. We’re sleeping longer, and yet it still doesn’t feel like enough. We hunt and we feed, but we never quite feel one hundred percent. Am I right?”

The fire came back to life and even I noticed how hungry my pack had become.

“Just let me take care of you guys for now,” I said as I walked toward the fire. “Just for now, until we find a new place to settle. A safe place. Okay? Can everyone at least be okay with that for now?”

“Alpha! Look out!”

Another shifter in my pack, Terraria, slammed into me as a coyote lunged from out of nowhere. I gasped as my side hit the ground with a thud, but it was the shadow that leapt out of the woods that stunned me. I watched as it soared through the air, tackling the coyote right out of its midair flight. My eyes widened as everything seemed to move in slow motion. The two animals hit the ground. I craned my neck back as I watched them squabble, with growls and grunts and whimpers as far as my ears could hear. Panic filled my veins. Were there more coyotes than the ones I had originally pinged? I mean, we were surrounded. Or, at least, I assumed we were. But then, there were only the four of them, and?—

“Come with us,” a familiar voice said.

Terraria scrambled off me as a face emerged. A very familiar face. I furrowed my brow as I stared up at him. The naked man from the woods.

He wasn’t naked any longer, though.

“You can talk, I see,” I said as I laid there on my back.

“Come on,” he said with a grunt as he bent down and took my arm, “we’ve got food, water, and shelter. You and your pack will be safe for?—”

I yanked out of his grasp and scrambled to my feet. “Get your hands off me.”

He growled in my general direction, which only made me snarl right the fuck back.

“You’re coming with me. You and your pack will be wasted before morning if you don’t,” he snapped.

I straightened my back. “And just who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that?”

He towered over me by at least a foot as he held his head high. “You really are stubborn, aren’t you?”

I felt my knife still in my back pocket and I slowly pulled it out. I held it at my side, gripping the handle with the blunt end of the blade situated against my wrist. If that man tried grabbing me again, I’d slice his arm open and watch him bleed the fuck out.

Maybe.

Shifters had this healing thing, after all.

Though, I had to admit, I was almost sorry to see the man in clothes. His bulging muscles from earlier were like music to my eyes. A soothing way to end a horrendous last few weeks. And don’t get me started on that massive cock I knew he had dangling in between those thick thighs of his.

I couldn’t help but rake my stare down his body the way he did with me back in the woods.

“Come,” he said as a grin spread across his cheeks, “like I said. Food, water, and shelter.”

“Yeah,” I said with a soft nod of my head as I watched him walk away.

“Or,” he said as he picked up a coyote carcass and tossed it over his shoulder, “you can take your chances with the pack of coyotes my scouts spotted two miles out.”

Fucking Christ, the further he walked away from us, the bigger he seemed.

“Alpha?” Annabelle asked as she slipped her hand into mine.

I quickly sheathed my knife and crouched down to her level. “Yes, sweetheart?”

I hated the fear coursing behind her eyes. “Can we please go?”

“It… does sound like it would be nice,” Little Billy said as he inched toward me.

The kids gathered around and that forced me back onto my feet. But, when I looked around at my pack that finally migrated out of the trees, I saw their fear. Their wide eyes. Their skeletons showing through their skin and the gaunt shape of their cheeks. We were surviving, sure, but it wasn’t enough. Just surviving was never enough. I should have known that, too.

Just surviving had never been enough growing up for me, either. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to let a bunch of kids live the way I had to live all my life.

So, I curled my tongue behind my teeth and let out an ear-piercing whistle. “Follow the man with the big ass, everyone!”

I heard his growl from across the meadow as it caught the curtails of the wind and rushed all around me. Goosebumps fled across my body as the sound held me hostage. It didn’t hold me there for long, though. Because the second the children of my pack laughed and rushed in that direction with their parents hot on their heels, I allowed their sounds to overwhelm me.

“Hey!” the not-so-naked man barked from the edge of the meadow.

I threw my hands into the air. “What!?”

He pointed at the fire. “Bring that deer! We can still eat it tonight!”

And as I turned back toward the fire, relief rushed its way through my veins.

I had no idea who the hell that man was or where the hell he was taking us, but I felt safe with him. Sort of.

Safe enough to take the chance, anyway.