Moonlight Ridge

3

□

○

She woke to the sound of her dogs yelping. The sound of their pain froze her blood. She jumped out of bed without a second thought. She made her way to the door with Rem by her side. Her heart hammered in her chest as she grabbed the rifle by the door. Normally she would have opened the door slowly but concern for her animals overrode rational thought. She unbolted the door and flew out running towards the barn. The barn was open. Ice cold fear pierced her. She could now hear her dogs more clearly as they fought with whatever was in the barn. Rem had outrun her and sprinted into the open barn.

"No! Rem, get back here!" She yelled after the dog.

She bit back a sob as she stepped into the barn. Mayhem. Blood and body parts of her dogs were scattered across the barn. The stench of death reached her nose. Her stomach cramped and she gagged. Suddenly she heard the horses screaming. The sounds of growling and fighting. Time seemed to slow as she heard Rem yelping and she turned to look. Rem now sprinted towards her screaming in pain with a monster right at his heels. It had to be a monster. Or perhaps a nightmare. A wolf, that looked like it came from prehistoric times with how large it was, lunged at Rem. She raised the rifle, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil caused her to stumble back as she heard the wolf howl in pain. She looked up in time to see it's eyes turn to her. With hauntingly intelligent anger, it centered it's attention to her. It was bleeding profusely from it's shoulder. It began to bare it's teeth and growl at her. The enormity of her grave situation set into her bones. She began to inch backwards out of the barn. The wolf's eyes darted to the barn door and it crouched. She knew it would pounce and if she didn't move, she'd be dead as well. She turned and sprinted out into the cool night air.

As she slung the rifle over her shoulder, she could hear the wolf crash into the barn doors behind her. She didn't think to run back into her home. The wolf seemed more than capable of breaking through her door. A nursery rhyme ran through her head. Little pig, little pig let me in. She pumped her legs and felt the adrenaline help her bolt towards the forest. Perhaps if she could get the upper hand by climbing a tree, she could shoot it dead. She could hear it catching up to her and she knew that if she hadn't shot it, it would have already caught her.

The forest was a mere five feet away and she could practically taste safety. She ran several feet into the forest then used her momentum to jump onto a tree with lots of branches. As quickly as she could, she climbed. She was about to reach a comfortable height when the wolf's jaws closed on one of her legs.

A scream tore out of her throat. She was going back down. Branches slapped her face on her way down. Adding insult to injury. Hot searing pain from where the wolf was biting her brought another scream out from her. Her scream of pain was cut short when they hit the ground. More accurately when the wolf slammed her down into the ground. She gasped for breath and whimpered. It released her and jumped onto her.

It was in her face, growling. Her blood dripping from it's mouth. She could feel her blood flowing out of the bite wound. She wanted to close her eyes but felt anger boil inside her. No. If this was her last moment, she would look this monster in the eyes. She grit her teeth. She could feel that it was about to attack again. Swirling anger rolled off of it. She raised her hands to cover her face when something incredible happened. The huge wolf bounced away from her as if there was some sort of force field around her. She felt like her energy was draining rapidly. She was on the brink of exhaustion when another incredible thing happened.

A blur hit into the wolf. Eliciting a pained yelp from it. She turned her head to the side and saw a even larger wolf pinning down her attacker. The larger wolf was pitch black with a blaze of white on his head. It snapped at the smaller wolf and growled. The smaller wolf whined and struggled for what seemed like an eternity until it finally bared it's neck. The larger wolf grabbed the smaller one by its neck and shook it like a rag doll then threw it aside. Blood sprayed out from the smaller wolf and it yelped non-stop.

The wolf turned to face her. Brilliant yellow eyes stared at her. It took a step towards her and then something weird happened. It's body shimmered. She was dying. That had to be the only reason for seeing strange hallucinations. Her eyes began to close. But she fought to keep them open when the wolf began turning into a man. Not just any man. Sheriff Reece. Brandon.

He was completely nude as he stumbled to her and fell to his knees. If she wouldn't have been concentrating on staying awake, she would've been blushing. Her weak attention was brought back to his face. He was yelling but everything sounded muffled. He grabbed the bottom of her gown and ripped a piece off. Next he tied it above her wound to stop the bleeding. He put his arms under her legs and around her waist. An explosion of heat came as he held her. Her thoughts grew muddled and she thought that feeling hot meant she was close dying.

She could hear many muffled voices shouting. The last thing she heard before slipping into unconsciousness was his voice in her ear as he held her.

"Don't you go dyin' on me, Leonna."

▪︎

▪︎