Chapter 15: Aria

Chapter 15: Aria

Lying in my burrow, I felt a dull ache in my chest as I thought of Lucas and his pack. I could feel their warmth, even from miles away, and I wanted more than anything to join them, but my pride held me back. I imagined what it would be like to be a part of their celebration; the joy on their faces, the reverberation of their many paws pounding the ground as they ran under the meteor shower and sang. Throughout the night, I tossed and turned, unable to find solace in any position. I thought of Lucas’ sympathetic touch and caring smile. Even though his offer to stay still lingered in my mind, I couldn’t accept it. It was time to prove myself to my pack. In the darkness of my burrow, I prayed that it would be enough.

Anticipation of the day ahead weighed on me, making sleep impossible. When I finally woke up, my body felt exhausted and heavy, as if from a physical workout.

In the morning, I walked out to the field beyond the villa, where most of my pack was already gathered. Everyone was in their wolf forms: Emma in robes of brown and black, Cassie in pale tan and amber ticks, and even Lacey had come to join the run in her coat of distinguished agouti marks. My parents, in their varying shades of timber. I saw Jonathan in a light cream coat of fur and Mrs. Foster in her warm summer hues. Mr. Ross stood tall and proud in a mix of silver and dark grey. Everyone rallied around the two leaders of our pack, Oswald in his wood brown pelt and Mara in a pale silvery-white, looking like the moon had crafted her of its own glistening light. My stomach curled with envy, but it was short-lived as I shifted my thoughts back to Lucas. Mara may have been beautiful, but Lucas believed I was stunning, and that mattered far more than the small unpleasant flickers I felt around her.

I kept to myself as the pack prepared for the run, loping along the outer edge of the group, watching everyone play and frolic. As far as I knew, the plan was that we would run for a short while, then regain our energy, then we would begin training. After that, I suspected there would be a hunt. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits enough that my presence didn’t affect them. They saw me—I caught their glimpses, so I knew they were aware of me—but they didn’t seem to mind that I was there. Instead of feeling like I was Public Enemy Number One, I felt invisible—a marginal improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.

When the pack was finally ready to move, I found my place among the other Omegas near the back of the group. There weren’t many; most lacked the motivation to socialize with the pack like this. But even the other Omegas kept their distance from me. I saw their side glances and heard them snickering under their breath about me. It was easier to ignore them, knowing I had other, bigger concerns.

The silence was split by a howl from Oswald. We all turned our eyes and ears to the Alpha, listening.

“Thank you, everyone, for gathering here with us today,” he announced, his tail waving high above his back. “Let’s use this day to strengthen our bonds as a pack and embrace one another’s strengths. It will become crucial in the coming days as we prepare to protect and defend one another.”

Even though he spoke loud and confidently, my heart soured with acidity, knowing that Oswald only led this run because Mara had come up with the idea. Just yesterday, I had told Lucas that Oswald never got the pack together like this. Now I felt like a fool like I’d lied straight to Lucas’ face. Still, part of me wanted to see the best in Oswald and my pack. Maybe it would be a good thing to be proven wrong. It could be the start of a better life in the Grey Creek Pack if Oswald were going to be more attentive.

I clung to that thought as the pack broke into a run, racing forward after Oswald and Mara. I let hope fuel me, driving me forward with the pure enjoyment of running alongside my packmates. Feeling the wind in my fur and the grass under my paws, I could almost forget all the terrible things I’d endured. I could feel like I was one with my packmates.

Up ahead, I caught sight of Jonathan. He wasn’t running with anyone else. I didn’t know him that well, but from what little I did know, he didn’t seem to have many friends of his own, and my heart panged for him. I sped up until I was jogging just behind him and nipped at his flank.

He saw me and veered sideways. At first, I thought he was just surprised, his wide eyes suggesting that he hadn’t expected me to appear. But then he looked around and pushed ahead of me. I sped up to keep pace with him, only for Jonathan to bare his teeth in warning.

My heart sank. I should have expected he wouldn’t want to run with me. It probably got him in trouble when Oswald found out I’d been working in the archives, so I didn’t blame him for begrudging that. With a sigh, I let him speed away from me, catching the final glance he threw my way to make sure I wasn’t following.

The optimist in me wanted to believe someone else would let me run with them. When I saw Mrs. Foster, I galloped toward her with a yip of greeting and a friendly tail wag. To my amazement, she smiled at me, bounding around me with a youthful energy that didn’t match her age. My spirits were lifted once more. I knew I could always depend on Mrs. Foster to give me a chance. I ran after her, batting at her paws and tail in play.

That didn’t last long, either. Mrs. Foster’s family was on the run, too—her son and daughter came crashing up behind us, shouldering me roughly out of the way. They snarled at me, threatening to stay away from Mrs. Foster. Once more, my mood was wounded, my ears wilting atop my head as I slowed down. Mrs. Foster looked sympathetically at me, but my plight was quickly forgotten as she continued running.

A hard bite jolted me back into action. With a yelp, I looked behind me and saw Emma snapping at my hip. She flashed her teeth in a wicked laugh. Behind her, my parents coldly ignored me, pretending like I didn’t exist.

It was enough to destroy my mood completely. My pace faltered until I lagged at the very tail of the group, barely motivated to move my feet. I watched my entire pack surge on ahead of me. Maybe feeling like I was invisible wasn’t any better.

Now that I’d stopped to catch my breath, I noticed an unpleasantness in the air. There was a pungent note on it that didn’t belong to any of my packmates. I wrinkled my nose, looking around for the source. Ahead, my packmates didn’t react to it—almost like they didn’t detect it while they were running. But the scent was quickly growing strong enough to put me on edge, sending electricity through my skin and making my fur stand up.

My eyes scanned through the group, and by sheer luck, they began to turn to run alongside the forest instead of into the trees. I took off, hoping to intersect Oswald at the head of the group. He spotted me coming toward him and showed his teeth, too, bristling at me to back off.

“Oswald, something’s wrong!” I shouted. “There’s an unfamiliar scent!”

He shook his head and ignored me.

“Oswald, please!” I called after him. “Mara invited me on this run for a reason—to share what I know! And I know that something’s wrong!”

Oswald’s eyes flashed with anger. He steered closer to me, but only to snap a response. “Fall back, Aria! I won’t have you ruining this run.”

“Can’t you smell it?”

He wrinkled his nose as if he purposely tried not to breathe in. “Don’t make me warn you again!”

“Please listen to me!” I begged.

But my desperation pushed his temper to its limit. He lashed his jaw at me, dragging his teeth above my eye and tearing open my temple. His reaction stunned me, causing me to stumble aside to get away from him. As blood dripped into my eye, I staggered and stared back at Oswald, who didn’t bother looking back at me. He was determined to ignore me.

When the breeze turned, it slapped me in the face with an even stronger smell, and I realized why I couldn’t see what it was coming from. The smell blew in from the forest ahead of us. And with the breeze came a dark tide of Rogue wolves that had been lying in wait for my pack.

I gasped, shock stalling me as I watched the oncoming mass of Rogue wolves converge with my pack like a tidal wave consuming unsuspecting beachgoers. The cheer in the voices of my pack suddenly cracked apart into terror. They knew that there were Rogues lurking. The whole point of this day was to prepare them for it. But nobody could have known that they’d strike that very morning.

All at once, carnage erupted at the edge of the forest. My packmates howled and cried as the Rogues surrounded them, lunging thoughtlessly to cause as much havoc as possible. Their teeth shredded through flesh and cast blood into the grass, their gums frothing in wild, ferocious violence. I couldn’t bear to stand by and watch my pack get torn apart. I had to do something—I had to protect them, even if they didn’t want me!

I leaped into the fray, thrashing against rogues who held my packmates in their jaws. The Rogues behaved the same way as the last couple of times I’d encountered them, too, fighting with the same mindless viciousness. They were aiming to kill, and it seemed no matter how much blood they lost, they didn’t stop. Last time, the Rogues had fled, but this time it was as if they knew their numbers would overwhelm us, so they would keep fighting until either them, or we had all died. I saw it in the way they ripped apart everything in their path. They came here to kill us!

My wounds from last time weren’t even healed. They slowed me down, but they wouldn’t stop me from fighting back. It didn’t matter who it was being attacked—I had to save them. When I saw a Rogue braced over Cassie, I threw my shoulder into the Rogue’s ribs and knocked them sideways, then sunk my teeth into their neck and opened a gushing wound. Two more Rogues had my mother by the back paw and tail as she tried to run. I intercepted them, biting down hard on the wrist of one Rogue, breaking it, and then unleashing another bite on the other’s spine. Their screams poured into my ears, but their agony didn’t register to me. They were monsters and had to be stopped.

The Rogues took notice of me severing their numbers. I wasn’t sure if I’d killed any of them, but they certainly didn’t like how swift of a warrior I was. Three of them followed me, each of them taking turns snapping at my haunches and leaping at me, trying to drag me down. There was no way I could overpower three of them. My only option was to outsmart them. So I swerved toward the treeline, heading into the forest. I knew it far better than they did. Their mistake was thinking they could take me on in my own terrain, but I had come to know every twisted root and fallen tree that snagged the Rogues chasing me. A sharp yelp behind me promised that at least one of them had injured themselves, and before long, the other two were lost in the tangle of the forest. I emerged back into the field to see most of my pack retreating toward the villa.

Mara was nowhere to be seen, but Oswald had stayed behind and was fighting off another rogue. He wasn’t doing well. Blood soaked his neck, and it looked like the Rogue had torn open his side. It sickened me to see the Rogue hurting him. Anger boiled up inside me, but not because I had residual feelings for Oswald.

I was angry because Oswald should know better than to stay behind, leaving himself vulnerable to the swarm of Rogues.

Losing all sense of self-preservation, I tackled the Rogue attacking Oswald. We became entangled in a snarling mess, biting and ripping at each other. Stuck on my back, I grabbed the rogue’s neck and wrapped my arms around them, holding them in place for Oswald to deal the final blow—but he was nowhere to be seen. The Rogue wrenched free, and I rolled onto my paws to see Oswald dashing away, abandoning me to the fury of the Rogues.

Not only did he foolishly get caught by the Rogues, but then his cowardice pushed him to run away when I was in danger!

And I was still in danger because now most of my packmates had fled, and I was one of the few who lingered to fight back. My other remaining packmates were all soldiers, fully trained for battle, and they were too preoccupied to look in my direction.

Panting, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold my own any longer. I backed away, but the Rogues continued to surround me. Their snapping teeth sheared through my flesh, reopening wounds that Esther had healed just yesterday. My cries went unheard by my packmates. They weren’t going to help me. And I would die if I kept trying to fight. My only option now was to run, but my paws didn’t take me back in the direction of the villa.

Because I knew that if I dragged my carcass back into the villa, someone would blame me for what happened. My pack didn’t care that I’d risked my life fighting for them. They left me here to die. Maybe they hoped that I would.

No… There was only one place I could go.

Although my body rang with pain, I ran as fast as I could away from the destruction. Guilt and shame were all I could feel. I should have stayed, fought to my dying breath, but I… I was desperate not to die for a pack that hated me. My death shouldn’t have to be in vain.

I kept running, my trail vanishing into the woods.