Wild and Free

(Mason’s POV)

“Would you be gentle? I’d like to have skin when we’re done here,” I snapped at Kenzie who was cleaning off the fresh cuts on my face.

“Sorry,” she said, throwing away a blood soaked cotton pad in the bin beside my bed. “I still can’t believe this. They’re not healing. Why are they not healing?”

“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew?”

She rolled her eyes and purposefully pressed on the wound, making me wince and swat her arm.

“What kind of werewolf does this?” she asked, glancing over at Riley who was sitting on the edge of my bed, holding his head in his hands. I had to help him back to the pack house because he was in rough shape after the encounter with the black wolf.

I shook my head, “I have no idea but she didn’t listen to me at all. And then she fights with us? There’s someone here that needs to be put in their place.”

“It was a female?” Kenzie snickered, “You guys got your asses handed to you by a girl?”

“Yes but I’ve never seen a werewolf like that,” Riley replied.

“What was so different about her?” she asked.

“She fought differently, not how we were trained at least. It was all very unexpected and spontaneous, neither of us knew what was coming.”

I stood up from my desk chair and went over to the large mirror hanging on the wall, studying the cuts. Four sharp, slightly curved lines. They seemed almost too perfectly executed. Then I gingerly lifted the hem of my shirt to reveal the four puncture holes just below my ribs, also not healed yet. They bleed through my shirt, leaving very questionable stains of dried blood on its clean white fabric. I made a mental note to burn it later.

I’d been so tempted to use my ability in the fight but knew I couldn’t in front of someone I obviously couldn’t trust.

“And she was the darkest black color I’ve ever seen,” he went on, letting Kenzie clean his head off as well.

“Black? All over?”

The two of us nodded.

“You didn’t see any of this in a vision or anything?” I asked, looking up at her hopefully.

She winced guiltily, “I saw a vision of some sort of black wolf in the woods but it didn’t show you guys. I just assumed it was a tracker returning from a mission or something. I never would’ve guessed. Was there anything else about her that might give us a clue as who she is?”

“She had blue eyes I think but I didn’t really get the chance to see them while was being kicked into a rock and concussed,” Riley spat.

“At least in a few hours it’ll be nothing more than a headache,” I countered, and pointed to my sliced cheekbone, “This hasn’t healed even the slightest in the past hour and a half and it still burns. Whoever we were fighting has some crazy skills for fighting.”

“What are you saying, you think that they could teach us some things about fighting?”

I half nodded, “Well if we ever find the bitch-”

“Hey watch your mouth,” Kenzie snapped, glaring at me, “don’t forget that you guys started the fight and the wolf that you fought with wouldn’t have done it without a reason. What was yours?”

“She was eavesdropping on our conversation! I told her to reveal herself and she didn’t. She disobeyed an Alpha’s order,” I defended myself.

“So you fought with her? You have some serious anger management issues. I’m just glad they’re not genetic. Not even a week here and you are already getting in a fight,” Kenzie muttered.

“Okay well in our defense she looked ready for a fight before we made the first move, it was sure to happen,” Riley excused.

Kenzie threw her last cotton pad away and closed the first aid kit, slipping it back into the bathroom cabinet. She brushed her hands together and folded her arms across her chest.

“Either way, if Father sees you or you get close enough for him to read your thoughts, he’ll have a lot of questions. So unless you want him to blow up on his new pack looking for whoever did this to you guys, I’d think of a damn good excuse in the next ten minutes before dinner.” she said, opening the door and turning back one last time, “Good luck,” and with a small salute, she left Riley and I in my room.

“So what do you want to tell your-”

“How are we going to find this wolf?” I cut him off, angrily glaring at my scratches in the mirror.

“Um May, I think we should do what Kenzie said or your Father will want to know what really happened,” Riley said, avoiding my question. May was what my friends and sister called me sometimes for short, I thought it was dumb but didn’t really care all that much.

I waved my hand dismissively, “We’ll just tell him we were sparing out in the woods before dinner and were a little too rough on each other. It doesn’t matter he’ll be too distracted from his meetings today to read into it.”

“Okay, well if you want to find out whoever this wolf is maybe watch the training sessions this weekend and we’ll see if we can find the wolf,” he suggested.

I nodded, “That’s a good idea but shouldn’t we try to find her sooner?”

Riley sighed and stood up from my bed, walking wobbly across the room towards the door, “You need to stop taking everything at a hundred miles per hour. I’m sure that whoever this wolf is, they’ll still be there tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.”

He opened the door, “Well I guess on the bright side this gets your mind off of that Auden girl.”

I shrugged.

“Get dressed for dinner, I’ll see you down there,” he laughed, leaving my room and shutting the door behind him.

~*~

It was the next day and I was in a shitty mood. The scratches were still present and stinging painfully. They had begun the healing process but it was like it was put in slow motion, very slow motion. Was that what it felt like to heal as a human? Poor beings.

“You guys always have the most fun without me!” Greyson whined, grabbing a slice of pizza from the lunch line and plopping it on his tray. “I hate punishment.”

“That’s what you get for skipping patrol duty on Sunday,” Riley chastised.

Greyson grumbled something to himself and handed the lunch lady his lunch card which she swiped and handed back to him. Riley and I followed in suit and were headed over to sit with Amelia who’d invited us again, that morning in the hall.

“Wait I forgot a fork,” I said, halting and turning around to go to the condiments and utensils station that was set up outside the lunch line.

At the same time as I did, someone else’s hand reached for the fork container. A hand with very familiar and prominent scars across the palm.

I looked up and saw Auden with a withdrawn, tired expression on her face like she’d not gotten any sleep the night before. She glanced up at me as well before looking away and grabbing her fork. When she went to walk away I noticed a slight limp and knit my brows.

My mind flashed back to yesterday afternoon when Riley bit the black wolf on it’s leg. There was no way...

“Are you okay?” I asked, stopping her where she stood, and getting a sense of deja vu from the first day we met. “You’re limping.”

She looked back at me skeptically for a moment before replying, “I just tripped on a root when I was a run this morning, I’m fine.”

I glanced over at my table quickly before looking back at her.

She scoffed, “But I get it, I’m a freak, or what was it you said? A mess? Yeah that was it. Don’t worry your arrogant little head about me and go back to your perfect life.”

I would’ve rolled my eyes but something about what she said hurt me because it made it seem like I didn’t care at all. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have asked. So I watched her turn around and leave, grabbing my fork once she was gone and joining my friends for lunch.

“Hey,” I greeted everyone plainly when I sat down, in between Greyson and Riley and across from Amelia.

Amelia looked up at me with a smile that faded once she saw my face and then Riley’s.

“Oh my god what happened to you guys?” she asked with a shocked but intrigued face.

It wasn’t really like we could use the same excuse with them as we used with my father because how would we explain the claws? Yeah, not a great conversation started. So I had to think quickly.

“I got attack by a dog,” I spit out, not really thinking. Technically it wasn’t really a truth or a lie. I looked at Riley to finish his side of the story.

“Oh, um, yeah our neighbors dog got loose and jumped on him,” he confirmed.

“And you?” Amelia asked him.

“Um, I was playing with my little brother and he threw a toy truck at me,” Riley shrugged.

Greyson and I had to bite our lips to try and suppress our laughter. Riley may have been the most logical of our trio by far, but he was a terrible liar and a big nerd. Little kid and toy truck is what he chose instead of something heroic like bear fight or something.

“Well I hope you guys are okay,” she gushed, sounding unconvincingly genuine. “Anyway we need to discuss the pep rally and game on Friday.”

Everyone at the table stopped their conversations and turned to listen to their obvious leader.

She sat up in her seat and clasped her hands together, “Okay so we’re working on posters after school and everyone is strongly encouraged to come.” she said in a voice that made it sound like participation was non negotiable. “Then we’ll all go to Mel’s for dinner. And the after party after the game on Friday will be at my house per usual.”

“Oh!” a girl, I think name Loren, near the end of the table raised her hand as if it was a classroom and waited until Amelia pointed at her, “What’s the theme?”

“I think we decided on school colors, red, black, grey, and white,” Amelia announced. The table erupted in whisper chatter. Wow who knew the theme of color was so exciting. It was so hard not to roll my eyes, so hard.

The rest of the period was a lot of talk about Friday, mostly the girls deciding what to wear and the guys talking about the party and the game.

However cliche and dramatic the girls were, the guys were unexpected a lot of fun to hang out with in general and not all of them were meatheads. Who knew!

When the bell rang, I made sure to hurry over to Kenzie’s table before she left. And of course she sat with none other than the girl who hated me and even worse, the best friend of the girl who hated me.

“Hey Kenz,” I said, grabbing her elbow before she walked out along with everyone else.

“Hey May, what’s up?” she asked.

“Do you mind telling Father that I won’t be at dinner tonight?”

She furrowed her brows at me, “I don’t think he’s going to like the idea of both of us being gone.”

“Why? Where are you going to be?”

She pointed her thumb behind her where Auden and Cassie stood chatting, waiting for my twin, “We’re going to work on that project for Mrs. Bradford’s class after school and get something to eat after. But I was about to call him anyway to tell him my plans so I’ll tell him about yours too and I guess he’ll call you if he has a problem with it.”

I nodded, “Okay thanks sis. See ya at home.”

“Bye!”

She waved and joined her group before we all went off to our next classes.

~~AUTHOR’S NOTE~~

Comment, don’t hate, and read on!

~your Cheshire Cat loving friend