Wild and Free

recap= “What is it?” Kenzie asked Auden, looking away from me.

“I don’t know but we’re not alone,” she answered quickly.

(Still Mason’s point of view)

Before any of us could react, a huge slate grey wolf jumped out from behind a cluster of rocks, landing in front of the three girls. Cassie let out a high scream and both Auden and my sister jumped back, surprised.

Three others joined the first, surrounding the girls in a triangle shape. Each wolf was the exact same, male, dark ashy grey coats with solid black eyes. Kenz and I were twins but even our wolves weren’t completely identical like these were. It was strange.

“Shit,” Kenz yelled. She turned to me, her eyes filled with fear, “Mason!”

Kenzie was a badass fighter, almost nothing scared her. So the look she shot me across the forest made me scared.

The three of us immediately jumped into action, sprinting our fastest over to the riverbank. We all jumped over a fallen tree and landed in wolf form.

Auden and Cassie let out a gasp and I inwardly cursed myself for breaking the rules but it wasn’t something I had to worry about at the moment.

“What the hell?!” Cassie shrieked as one of the wolves growled right near her. She screamed, scrambling backwards away from its fangs.

Kenzie’s eyes turned white and I knew she was getting a vision. It couldn’t be good. At all.

“Run!” Kenzie yelled once her brown eyes returned, bolting through a gap in two of the wolves, grabbing Cassie and Auden by the arms and dragging them with her.

While one of the grey wolves was distracted looking at the girls, Riley pounced on top of him, pinning him to the ground. Greyson took on the one to the right, swiping his claws across the other’s face, leaving a nice bloody scratch. That left me the last, and naturally the largest one.

I didn’t have the chance to even blink before he came at me.

The air was knocked completely from my lungs as the brute force and weight of the gigantic wolf crashed against me. I snarled in his ear and used all four of my legs to try and push him off me. Taking some of the tactics that the black she wolf used against me and Riley, I kicked him right up against a thick tree trunk.

He crawled to his feet and came at me again, this time I was ready. He tried to knock me down again but I planted my feet and absorbed the impact. I latched my teeth onto the fur at his neck when he was just in front of me and bit down as hard as I could. He yelped and went limp, allowing me to fling him aside like a ragdoll. A thud sounded when he hit the ground.

He coughed and hunched over for a second before whipping his head around and glaring those solid black daggers at me.

Oh well isn’t the little prince a smart one, a menacing voice said in my head, the wolf I’d hit somehow worming his way into my mind.

I didn’t recognise the voice as anyone I’d talked to at the pack hour, nor did I recognize his wolf appearance and it made me worried. Just the thought that we might not be alone on our territory made my stomach churn.

Clearly smarter than you expected am I right? I fired back, risking a glance at my friends.

The opponent that went after Riley was laying limp and unconscious a couple yards away, blood flowing from his mouth and various other spots. Riley’s leg, that was still healing from the black wolf’s bite, had opened up again and was bleeding. He also had a couple scratches on his shoulders but compared to the other guy he’d gotten away easy.

Greyson was bleeding in his rib cage area and had a slight limp as he and Riley forced the other wolf into the ground.

I turned back to the one in front of me.

Doesn’t really look like your ambush worked, I hissed, with a smirk that he couldn’t see.

If a wolf could laugh, this one did. And it was the most scary sound I’d ever heard.

Who says we were here for you? He snarled.

I knit my brows. I heard another high pitched scream in the distance and gasped when I realized what he meant. I was an idiot. There were four of them. Four. And we’d only dealt with three.

Morphing back for the briefest second, I sprinted right past Riley and Greyson, who’d stopped beating the other wolf when they heard the cry .

“They’re after the girls!” I yelled, changing back.

The three of us bolted in the direction of the noise.

The wind rushed in my ears as we sprinted to rescue the girls before it was too late.

I wasn’t a bit worried about Kenzie, I knew should could handle herself in a situation like that. After all, it was the main thing that we trained for years and years for. But her fighting that huge wolf, by herself and protecting Auden and Cassie, that was what I was worried about.

We got to an odd shaped patch of woods that was clear of trees and morphed. It much resembled the areas that we trained on back at the house, with the dirt ground having been packed and worn by months, maybe years of feet going over it.

My twin sat sprawled on the ground near a tree, in human form and coughing out blood.

“Mackenzie!” I screamed, trying to get her attention.

She turned towards me, finally letting me see her entirely.

The face that we both had in common was not the one I was looking at. Other than the unavoidable cuts and scratches, there was a large gash on her forehead, just above her right eyebrow. A big purple bruise crawled up onto her jaw from her upper neck, making her already fairly pale skin seem sickly. Blood trickled out of her split lip. But worst of all, her usually hopeful and positive expression was gone, replaced with on of fear and pain.

I thought about the shape that Riley, Greyson, and I were in, and how it was nothing compared to her.

She didn’t shift.

Oh my god.

Kenz didn’t want to reveal herself to her friends so she took the beating that she did in human form instead of protecting herself as a werewolf.

Her eyes went white again and I internally cursed. Another vision couldn’t have come at a worse time. Her energy was completely drained and I barely heard her faint voice in my head saying, save them, before her eyelids fluttered shut and she fell unconscious. Or at least I hoped.

The wolf that we’d so stupidly forgotten about was advancing toward Cassie and Auden, backing them up towards a big tree on the edge of the clearing.

“Greyson, get Kenzie away from here. I don’t care whether you take her home or not but get her out of danger,” I said quietly, trying to hide the desperation in my voice. He looked like he wanted to argue or stay and fight with us but he knew how important it was that my sister was safe by the look in my eyes.

So he did as I said, bolting around the outside of the area and quickly but gently lifting Kenzie from the ground before disappearing into the forest.

“Please let us go!” Cassie begged, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

The wolf just barked viciously, making her jump.

Auden stood a foot or two in front of Cassie, only a few steps away from the big grey beast. I checked them over once to see if they were hurt and they seemed fine from what I could see, aside from a couple of scratches from the forest. But something about Auden caught me eye though. It surprised me because she looked more angry than scared. Then again her face didn’t read much emotion at all.

I thought back for a millisecond on the entire situation since the werewolves first appeared. Auden hadn’t screamed once.

Shaking all the suspicious thoughts away, as usual, I focused on the matter at hand.

“We need to get him away from them,” I whispered to Riley, counting on the fact that they still hadn’t seen us.

“And what after that? They know about us. What are we supposed to do when this is over. You have no idea what we’ve gotten ourselves into,” Riley replied.

“That isn’t really our biggest issue right now is it?” I snapped. “I’m going to distract him, go grab Cassie and follow Greyson’s scent to wherever he took Kenzie.”

He knit his brow, “What about you? And Auden?”

“I’ll take care of it- her- whatever just go,” I breathed, hoping I sounded more calm than I felt. It was a situation where I had to be an Alpha and not just a werewolf.

He nodded and crept away. A moment later I saw his figure peeking out from behind a tree and giving me a nod, to which I returned.

“Get away from them,” I commanded the foreign wolf, stepping out into the open area. “Or I swear I’ll rip your head from your body.”

His head snapped in my direction and he sneered.

In that brief moment of him being distracted, I saw Riley come out from behind the tree Cassie was pushed against and put a hand over her mouth. She jumped and spun around but when she saw who it was and how he was saving her, she didn’t scream. I could see the fearful tears glistening as the rolled down her face.

Once Riley silently pulled her away, he nodded to me.

Be careful, we don’t know what these guys are capable of, he mindlinked me before disappearing just like Greyson. And then we were alone. Me. The grey wolf. And Auden.

~~AUTHOR’S NOTE~~

As always, comment, don’t hate and read on!

~your Cheshire Cat loving friend