Marcel Conway is fresh on the market for a new year of the Mating Season: a sex auction masquerading as a Peace Trade to keep the packs from going to war. But she's gritting her teeth and digging her heels in, determined to come home to her small bu...
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I was running.
This couldn't be real. I could barely mentally digest the levity of this situation, the only reminders of reality was the icy wind braiding through my fur and stinging my eyes. Each time my claws met the ground, there was a resounding crunch as my paws broke the iced dew crusted forest floor.
I was running.
Through the haze of my disbelief, I was running, swerving around trees and logs, listening to the stud huff and puff of my lungs, and the distant trampling of the male wolves chasing.
When I stopped it was only to sniff at the air, getting the scent of the new area before breaking out in a dead sprint once again, angling my body like a needle shooting through the winter woods.
"Whose woods these are? I think I know!" I could feel a distant memory pushing past the threshold of my focus as the familiar burn in my legs began.
"His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow," Between the sting of the icy wind and the bleeding memory of my mother oozing through, I could feel hot tears pooling into my eyes, blurring my sight.
I lurched over another fallen tree, my lung aching as I felt the memory crackle like static on a bad radio station. Her face wasn't all there, but I could see her pale lips, cracked and weak as she mouthed the words of the poem.
"Mom, stop you don't have to finish, you're just making yourself weaker!" My voice rang through and I gritted my teeth pushing myself faster.
"No, I'm fine," She feebly argued, her lungs rattling as she spoke. "One more story for my bitty pup."
I stopped in my tracks suddenly, hacking as I could feel the sobs building up in my massive chest, my wolf form not knowing what to do with this emotion. The memory was more static over a grainy film.
I had buried the memory of my mother's final days so very deep I had forgotten them, leaving them to stale in the vault of my past.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep," I looked up as I heard the yips and howls growing closer and I shot forward, determined to reach the end of the territory. It couldn't be much farther, could it?
"And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep..." Those words took the wind from my sails as I could feel the impending exhaustion leaking through. But I could not stop. I forced my legs to keep moving, my breaths dissolving into steam in the air as the tears leaked down my furry cheeks.
I could no longer hear the trampling of the male wolves. I was limping, my wolf weak from exhaustion and black-edged into my vision. I continued a slow, shaky pace, trying to calm my heart and avoid blacking out. My breathing was like violent hacking, dwindling on the edge of hyperventilating.
