Chapter Three

We lived far from anyone. I could easily state that at this point. And nothing about my life to date prepared me for the journey to the Werewolf Academy. Basically I was told to follow the trail downhill. Whenever I got to a fork in the road, pick the one that descended. Sounded much easier than it turned out to be.

For one thing, my previous runs were short and I got to pick the time I went. It was always cold, and snow covered the ground all year. I'd actually been unaware there were alternatives until Angie began my education on the outside world. When I marveled, she'd merely tried to help me learn about all of it. Angie grew up in a mostly human town and visited her family a couple of times a year.

I always begged her for stories about what it was like, but it was hard for me to follow a lot of what she attempted to share. My own experiences were so limited that she finally snuck in the player and recorded movies and television shows. I hadn't even realized such technology existed. We lived with almost none, but as I devoured the entertainment, I learned how others lived. And I yearned to take part in the kinds of life I saw. People my own age hanging out at a beach house for the summer or someone's brother's home…maybe? Sometimes my lack of experience created confusion, but I still wanted to know more, and gradually things came into focus.

And as I ran, in wolf form, paws bouncing off the shifting gravel and ice, all that information pinged in my brain. I guess it was lucky I even spoke the language of where I was going because my father spoke many.

He chose to use English with me.

The tree line lay below me, but it drew closer. At this point, I felt so exposed, nothing to hide behind on the rocky trail. If Father had the slightest feeling that something was wrong or if someone managed to get word to him, he'd have no trouble finding me.

A rock shifted under my paw, and I scrambled for footing before regaining my balance and bounding on down. I had to get out of sight, and only the trees could help me with that. Not that my father didn't have other ways to track me down, but I could only hope he'd gone far enough that even if one of his spies reported me to him, I'd be long gone before he arrived.

I focused on the trees. Unlike my father, I had no assistant traveling with me to carry my clothing. Angie was going to disappear, not to the village she came from but another area where nobody knew she had connections. I hoped she'd be all right because my father's rage was nothing to smirk at. He had centuries if not longer of having his way, or so I was told. I didn't even know how old I was, much less his age. Angie thought I was eighteen or nineteen in human years, but she hadn't been brought in to care for me until I was a little girl, so she didn't know.

The trees weren't getting any closer, and even in wolf form, I'd been out in the cold long enough to feel the chill. Snow began to fall, catching in my fur and making it hard to see the path. Not that a wolf in general needed a trail, but with all the sheer drops around me, Angie's warning to be careful and not stray proved critical.

The whole experience took on a nightmare quality, the snowfall thickening, the wind kicking up to lash the flakes against my face and weigh down my fur. Father always had alluded to having some sort of magical powers but never got specific, leaving me wondering if he was capable of anything.

Obviously, he was wealthy, or he couldn't have the staff he did and provide all the supplies to live in the mountains. But nobody had ever discussed money with me. In my gilded cage, I was provided with whatever Father felt was appropriate for my status as his daughter, but I never asked for anything beyond meal preferences. Because until I saw the videos, I didn't know what I might even ask for. Sure, if my clothing became worn, it was replaced, but Angie took care of that.

The path was gone, as far as I was concerned, and the trees lost in the whiteout, but I continued downhill because that was the only thing I knew to do. And then, just as I began to think I'd end up freezing on the hillside, I realized something. Wolf was not the perfect animal here. An arctic hare would get me where I was going, but I'd have no way to hold on to my bag with my few possessions. A penguin could be good. A polar bear, on the other hand…

I'd never tried to be one, hadn't known they existed until I watched a nature documentary, so I wasn't sure if it was in my repertoire, but I slid my bag off and closed my eyes tight, and pictured what I'd seen.

It felt so weird as I rose high on my hind legs and took in the landscape around me. Even with my current eyes, I could barely make out the trees, but for some reason—and I had no idea if it was a shifter bear thing or not—I could see enough to plow down the last of the mountain and make the tree line.

Once I was there, the forest blocked some of the storm, and I shifted again into wolf form where I was more comfortable running, and I relocated the path and raced as fast as possible, always conscious that my father or one of his minions could be behind me.

By the time I reached the highway where a silver sedan waited, motor running, I was so exhausted and scared, I just flopped into the back seat and trembled.

"Werewolf Academy?" the driver asked.

"Yes, please." It never occurred to me that this was not my ride. Naive much? It was in fact just the first leg of my journey. The driver pulled up next to a small jet at a private airport, and after a long flight, another car took me from another private airport to my new school.

For a girl who had never been more than a mile from home, it was a lot!