Wild and Free

(Still Mason’s POV)

After about an hour or so of William, my father, and countless other pack members obsessing in the infirmary over the boys being back, we were all told to leave so they could rest.

We had originally planned to sneak back in there after everyone else had gone, but you can imagine that after they had been missing for nearly two days, their parents were stuck to them like glue. I might have been their future Alpha, but I couldn’t pull rank on them and take them away from their children again just because I was curious.

Although both boys were instructed to stay the night in the infirmary, neither of them had any life threatening injuries. Thankfully. As they had said, Ben had twisted his ankle but it was suspiciously less severe than it should have been based on how they described it happening. Other than that, they had a few scrapes and scratches from being in the woods, but nothing that wouldn’t heal and be forgotten the next morning.

However the same couldn’t be said for the thoughts that plagued all of our sleep.

Even despite the fact that the boys were both safe now, my mind still wasn’t clear. I couldn’t stop thinking about the black wolf. Why did she just have to complicate everything?

It was clear that she had something to do with Ben and Chris’s disappearance, I just couldn’t figure out if it was good or bad. Judging from the fight we had a few weeks ago, she could have easily hurt them more than she did with Riley and I, as they were vulnerable out there alone. But seeing as the boys came back nearly perfectly fine, she hadn’t touched them. So what really happened that night?

Regardless of how many more questions had been added onto my never ending list, I had to wait until the next morning before I got the chance to talk to Ben and Chris.

Once I knew they would be awake, I mindlinked them and asked them to pretend to be asleep. Then I went into the room where William and his mate and Chris’s mother were sitting on the couch looking exhausted.

“Good morning William, Angela,” I greeted them, earning small smiles in return. “How’s Chris doing?”

We glanced over at the boy curled up in the bed ‘sleeping’.

“He’s well, the doctors said he could come home after lunch,” Angela said, the same look of relief that everyone shared earlier, still gracing her features.

“That’s great,” I smiled at them which they tiredly returned. “You guys should go and get some rest, I’ll stay here with Chris and Ben. I’m sure you didn’t sleep much in here last night,” I pointed out, gesturing to the uncomfortable looking couch and the unwelcoming look of the infirmary room altogether.

William and his wife exchanged a look, “Are you sure?” he asked. “We wouldn’t want to bother you, I’m sure you have other things to do.”

I waved my hand dismissively, “It’s not trouble at all. Most of us took the day off from school anyway so I’d be happy to have something to do if you guys want to freshen up or something.”

William scratched the back of his neck, “I suppose it would be nice to get a clean set of clothes, maybe stretch out legs a bit. Thank you so much Mason.”

I nodded and watched the two of the take one last look at their son before heading out the door, presumably back to their quarters in the pack house.

I sighed in relief that the plan had worked before mindlinking Greyson, Riley, and Kenzie. Of course Riley was the first there, a smile coming to his face when he entered to see his now fully awake brother sitting up in bed. They had to force Riley to leave the infirmary the night before because there wasn’t enough room for another to stay, and they were worried about him, saying he needed to get a good night’s sleep to help him calm down.

It was kind of hard seeing him like that, he had always been such a calm, controlled person. So hearing that his parents were worried about his control was difficult. But he was strong. I was sure he’d be fine and back to normal once this whole thing had died down.

The same could not quite yet be said for his mate however.

Cassie and Holden left the night before after the boys were taken to the infirmary. After my father had been informed of their relations to Kenzie and Riley mate wise, they were granted permission to enter the grounds when they pleased. But the two felt like they were intruding on the time that the boys needed to be with their families, so they politely excused themselves after we promised we’d fill them in the next day.

But despite the fact that they both seemed fine when they left, both Riley and Kenzie said that they could tell their mates were still anxious. Not that I could blame them.

We still hadn’t heard anything from Auden. I was planning on going back to her apartment when I got the chance, maybe seeing if we could follow her scent somewhere, to see if she was in trouble. I mean if we could catch her scent that was. Ever since we’d met her, I’d never really been able to get anything off of her. We could almost never get a scent off of her and could never feel her heartbeat. It was weird but it wasn’t something that was completely unheard of, so I’d been told.

Holden’s anxiety over the situation had put Kenz on edge too but she seemed to cover it well. Or at least she tried to.

She came into the room a couple minutes after Riley and Greyson not long after her. Both Ben and Chris were up at that point and we all sat around Ben’s bed, seeing as he couldn’t very well walk over to his friend’s bed.

“So you guys are feeling better?” Kenzie asked, directing the question at the both of them.

They nodded and smiled at her.

“Ben you said that you guys were running through the woods and tripped on a root right?” he nodded in response. “If you had been you would suffered more than just a minor ankle strain. Did someone help you or something?”

“Yeah where did you guys spend the night too? Your clothes were way to clean to have had slept in the forest all night,” Riley pointed out.

The boys exchanged a glance, Ben fiddling with his fingers, as if slightly nervous. What could they have to be nervous about?

“We weren’t supposed to tell you anything about who helped us, she made us promise,” Ben mumbled.

I knew it.

“So it was her,” I cursed. My gaze shifted to Kenzie’s, “Your vision was right.”

“They’re lucky she didn’t tear them to ribbons after what she did to us,” Riley growled. “That black she wolf is a monster.”

“No she’s not!” Chris protested, his voice slightly angry. “She didn’t hesitate to help us, even when I told her to leave! She might be a rogue but she’s not a monster!”

Riley scoffed, “You guys didn’t even spend an entire day with her. How could you possibly know her that well?”

“Isn’t the first thing they teach us in Training to follow our instincts?” Ben asked. “We didn’t trust her at first but our instincts told us that she wasn’t going to hurt us so we did. She carried me back and helped me fix my ankle. And then she made us grilled cheese and let us sleep in her bed. She is the farthest thing from a monster.”

I looked at my friend who all looked equally confused. All except Kenzie that was. She had told me that the she wolf wasn’t hurting them and the evidence of that was in the I-told-you-so smirk on her face.

Had the wolf really done all of that for two pups that she didn’t even know?

“Why didn’t you guys just find your way back to our grounds? It would’ve saved us all some major heart issues,” Greyson joked.

“After Ben hurt his ankle, we didn’t want to risk making it worse by roaming the woods all night. Plus it was pouring and we didn’t know our way back,” Chris explained.

I knit my brows, “How did you guys get separated from your school group anyway?”

“We saw a flash of something when we were following the group and went to see what it was. Then we thought we smelled a rouge so we ran. That’s when I fell,” Ben answered. “By then the rain had started and we were too far from the grounds to be able to find our way back. So we stopped and tried to wait out the storm. Then Rio came.”

Riley stepped forward, his arms crossed over his chest, “Who’s Rio?”

“That’s what the wolf told us to call her,” Chris replied. “She said it’d be safer for us and her if she didn’t tell us her real name.”

So now there was a name to the face. Well wolf face, that is.

“But you know where she lives right? You can take us to her and we can talk to her ourselves,” I said, looking at Kenzie in hope that she was thinking the same as me.

Both young boys shook their heads vigorously.

“No way,” said Ben.

“She made us promise that we wouldn’t,” Chris added.

I looked them both in the eyes seriously, “Guys, this wolf knows something about my mate. I have to find her and talk to her about it. And she did something that she needs to answer for as well. We can’t just let her go if you know where she lives.”

“We can’t! We promised,” Chris said.

Ben shrugged, “And even if we tried, I’m sure we wouldn’t know how to get back there. I mean we couldn’t even get back here without her help,” he replied with a dowcast look.

At some point I guess it had slipped my mind that Ben and Chris were still pups. They’d barely even begun training and we were acting like they should’ve been able to survive on their own and make these big decisions like we did.

I rubbed my temple, “Okay I’m sorry for pushing you, I just really want to figure all of this out.”

Chris sat up for a second, as if remembering something. He hopped of the bed and padded across the cold tile floor to the chair that sat next to his currently empty bed. The backpack he’d been carrying when we found them lay flat on the chair.

He grabbed the bag and rifled through it, looking for something. He looked frustrated for a second until he seemed to find what he was looking for and he pulled out an envelope.

“Rio said to give this to our future Alpha,” he said, holding the envelope in his hand as he sat back down next to Ben on his bed. “She said it would explain everything and that you’d know what it meant. I didn’t know what she was talking about but we didn’t have time to ask.”

We all looked at the cream colored envelope curiously.

“Should we give it to the Alpha or something? Doesn’t he deserve to know what’s going on?” Greyson asked, looking at me.

I shook my head, “I never even told him what actually happened the day of the fight with the she wolf, he’d flip if he knew about her, let alone that she had taken the two of them hostage.”

“We weren’t hostages!” Chris claimed. “She gave us a choice to come with her or stay on our own and we chose to go with her. Nothing was keeping us there.”

“Regardless, we shouldn’t tell my father,” I said, biting my lip. “It’s better if we keep this between us and just let everyone else think you guys found a cave in the forest to shelter for the night before coming back. Agreed?”

Everyone nodded and I held my hand out for the letter which Chris placed in my hand after a hesitant look.

I unfolded the parchment and studied the impeccable cursive writing.

I know what it looks like. I know that you would just love to get your greedy little claws on another opportunity to place the blame on me. I hate to break it to you but that isn’t the case here. As they boys probably already told you, I did not kidnap them, nor did I have any intention of hurting them. I found two pups alone in the woods and didn’t want to leave them there knowing that I hadn’t done anything to help. That’s all. I kept them safe at my home until a time where I thought returning them would draw the least attention.

You probably have many questions. I will tell you that I do not belong to your pack, meaning I broke no law by fighting back against you and your friend. I will not cause you and your precious little pack any trouble as long as they do not cause me any either.

Leave a note in the woods if you need to contact me again. Otherwise, stop looking for me.

~”Rio”

I ran my fingers over the paper. It was strange knowing that she had touched this very paper. The one that plagued my mind so often after the fight that day, she had held this in her hands not too long ago.

“What does it say?” Riley asked.

I shook my head, “It just confirms the things that they told us about yesterday,” I said, slipping the letter back into the envelope and putting it into my back pocket.

Kenz looked at me hesitantly, “And?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just defending herself from what she knew we would try to blame her for.”

Ben looked up at me from the bed, “Why do you hate her so much?” he asked, sounding kind of hurt by my rather resentful tone of voice.

“I don’t hate her,” I told him. “I just don’t know her and that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have any reason to believe that she isn’t some kind of threat to my pack.”

“We already told you! She isn’t!” Chris defended.

“Yes but you guys are just kids, people are different behind closed doors,” I replied. “I’m not saying that she isn’t a nice person but all I have to go off of right now is what you guys are saying about her and you only knew her for a day.”

Ben knit his brows, “Why do you say that as if she’s gone or something?”

“She is a Rogue living on her own,” Greyson piped up. “Sounds like a goner to me,” he shrugged.

Riley glared at him and whacked him on the back of the head when Ben and Chris’s eyes filled up with tears. I didn’t know how they could’ve gotten so attached to this Rio girl in less than twenty-four hours.

I opened myself to say something else but Ben cut me off.

“Can we be alone?” he asked tightly, his gaze glued the the sheets of the hospital bed. “I’m tired and I don’t like how you guys think that Rio is some kind of monster. All I know is she helped us and risked herself in some way by doing it. Everything i’ve learned about mean, hurtful rogues is that they don’t hesitate to kill. It wasn’t even a thought to her so why can’t you just accept that and be done?”

“Ben-” Riley started.

“I agree,” Chris interrupted. He looked up at me, his golden brown eyes burning a hole in my head, “Why can’t you just accept that maybe you were wrong?”

Okay so at this point I’m like seriously excited because I ACTUALLY have an idea of what the hell I’m doing with this story. So obviously I’m not going to spoil anything but I wanted everyone to know that the bigger of the plot things in the story is going to be built up more. When thinking about all that has happened in my poor so far I am realizing that there are a lot of dramatic events but they are all in some way important to the story and how it all adds up. Just be patient and wait and see because it will be very worth it.

~~AUTHOR’S NOTE~~

Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

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

~your Cheshire Cat friend