Wolf Soul

Prologue

"OH GODS! CONNER RUN!"

His mother's frail voice broke out over the sounds of the gunshots, the yelling of voices and growls of wolves. The fire had grasped his family's house as it cast out sounds of creaking and cracking in eating away the wood of their home.

Pushing open the back door his parents had showed for this reason. If the hunters ever found his pack, his family. Cold air snapped into his skin, kissing and edged as his bare hands stuck in the snow.

Raven's hair snapped into his eyes to sting them in the tears racing down his cheeks. Only the sounds of the gunshots pushed his body to claim out of the doorway. He snuffed out a whimper as his bare feet entered the snow. Melting on his pj's and making his body ache from the shock of the cold. The warmth of his bed a far away memory of only moments ago in his ten-year-old mind.

"PLEASE CONNER, JUST RUN!"

His mother's voice was drowned out by the sounds of his father turning into his wolf form, ready to protect his family and pack from the hunters. His uncle's own voice joined in the chaos of the gunshots as Conner choked back a sob and stood up from his knees in the snow, blinded by the tears and swallowing his sobs to push for the treeline. Everything was a blur, his nose clogged by mucus as he fought to breathe and run away like a coward.

Yet, even as the bite of the cold hit his skin, blinded nearly in seeing the trees and his nose adding him to push for the safety of the place his family had set up for this moment.

He still heard the sounds of the gunshots, his home captured in the grasp of flames. His mother, feeling her shift into her Alpha form, dark as raven wings in color and ruby eyes looking to kill. He felt them, his mother taking a bullet to her hind leg in mid-jump but still her fangs finding a throat of a hunter. His father, pale as a bone in the moonlight, blood leaking out from his wounds of knives and bullets pouring out in blind range of his mate and Luna being hurt. Grasping on any strength he had to bite into the arm of a woman, twisting to tear the limb off as she cried out.

Conner only blindly grasps the branch oak branch. His swing his father had put this summer swaying in the winds of winter. Did he look back? Only his mother's mental urge, pushing him to not, to keep his body moving to the cabin. Even his uncle, tan in a blur of fury of his family being killed knew his heart had been shot, his lungs fighting to keep his body moving to give his nephew that chance to live.

He would never wake to his mom's off-key humming, cooking pancakes in the morning in the kitchen. His father showing him how to track in the woods, to use his inner wolf to see the forest as no humans could. The joking witt his uncle, helping him to work on class cars and such. His small ten-year-old world was gone on a gunshot from a hunter's hand.

"Conner, son keep running!"

His father thunders mental yell shock him, ordering him to keep going. His uncle even on trails'edge of the call also adding in his own push for his nephew to run.

So Conner ran, pushed by his family even as they knew they would never see him again. The winds covered his tracks, keeping his scent scattered to who might follow to kill the last of the monsters.

Hours maybe? Moments? He was only driven by his instincts to the outline of the cabin. Conner only when seeing it, looked back to see nothing but snow falling and forest in sleep.

He was alive, the last of his pack.