Hunter - Book 2 of the Hunted Series

Chapter 14 - And more tests...

Fifteen minutes later I rested down in the snow, stark naked, and tried to relax.

I knew Jeremy had said Elena had done this pregnant, I knew that she had two healthy kids now, but anxiety still came as the change came. Images of what my womb would be doing in there. What about the babies? Did they change too?

Even with my anxiety hanging over me like a cloud it'd been long enough for my body to not care what I was afraid of. It wanted to change and I could fight it, which was a bad idea, or let it happen. I let it happen.

Once the agony of muscles, tendons, organs and bones rearranging themselves were over, I was quick to make sure there was no pain in my stomach. No strange smells coming from the tail end.

Nothing. I was okay, just like he said I'd be, and the glorous sense of being 'free' came back. I wriggled, played with the dirty damp snow with a paw and inhaled the world into my lungs. Freedom.

Pav came bouncing out of the snow, finding me, and gently pounced at me. The two of us rolled around, snapping, biting, her play so gentle and careful of my stomach that I suspected she might have been afraid for me too. Her sight was clearly no better like this, she didn't exactly look at me, but her hearing... she whipped her head around in Jeremy's direction long before I'd heard his paws coming through the snow.

The three of us moved to run together, the simple joy in that enough, snow flying under paws, finding a frozen creek and learning from Jeremy how to get water from under the ice, how to move on ice, how to know if the ice was too thin. We watched as he tested it with each paw, tapping, putting weight down, jumping back a little as thinner ice cracked and made him back up slowly on his belly.

This was something Pav was again great at. Ice was deceptive, it could look one way and be another, but she didn't rely on her eyes. She relied on her keen sense of hearing to find out what it was doing. She could hear the ice's reaction long before we could and was scrambling back several times long before I heard the ice starting to crack. Before long she had her own little hole and lapped up the water eagerly.

I found it a little more difficult, as I was a little more heavy than her, but after five minutes and several scrambles off the ice using my claws, I found myself lapping up the cleanest and sweetest water I had ever tasted, so cold and clean. I moved back a little too fast, ice cracking under me, and was just a second too late, sinking paw deep in the frozen river. Woops. It didn't matter much though. I barely felt it through the thick fur.

Jeremy then led us to a little clearing and we found ourselves being instructed in combat. No fighting that was serious, it was all play and gentleness, but again we were being instructed by the alpha and both of us did our best to memorise it. How to hide, how to chase, how to surprise someone. How to get loose of a wolf's teeth. Anyone watching would have thought this wolf, black against the snow, was teaching a couple of young wolves, a black one and a dark reddy golden one. Most mutts would have seen it as an irresistible challenge- the alpha alone with two females. Kill the alpha, take the females, but we were left alone and nothing came to challenge us.

When we were done and changed back, he continued to instruct us as we dressed, and we walked back in a quiet lesson about how to evade, how to distract, how to escape. That we should never think we had to fight to the death for the Pack's pride- only mutts were like that, we knew that sometimes we had to retreat, to run, to evade. When it was right he promised to teach us both how to fight. Pav would have to rely on her hearing instead of her sight. I would have to rely on my agility instead of speed because of the damage done to my hip.

"How did you get that flexible? Did you do any exercises?" Jeremy asked me as we moved through the thick snow. He was helping, I was exhausted, a hand guiding me.