Howl

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Lukas only observed as his small team worked on their skills. He already had enough experience to not need any training and was better off observing the actions of his comrades, but he was also extremely distracted. As it was, he was having trouble keeping track of the movements of the other wolves as they hunted their target. He really wouldn’t be much use helping them improve if he couldn’t sense them half the time.

It was all Emma’s fault – not that Lukas was going to hold it against her. He’d never known just how amazing a kiss could be, nor had he expected Emma to kiss him. Not so soon. Lukas had been willing to wait before even attempting to kiss her, as he guessed she might be reluctant, but now he wondered if perhaps after passing her test, she would be more open to him.

As much as he wanted to believe things were going well between him and Emma, he also wanted to be sure it wasn’t just false hope. Perhaps she’d only kissed him out of pity after learning that his family had died. Or maybe she really had wanted him to simply shut up.

“Lukas?”

The sound of his name being called snapped him from his thoughts of Emma, and he saw Bryan standing in front of him, along with three wolves, one of which had Cory pinned down. He knew the wolf holding Cory down was Amber, as she was a dire like Talon. With Talon not present, she was the only dire among them. Patrick and Keith looked similar in appearance, but Keith was a bit taller at the shoulder and had a slightly darker coat than his uncle.

“You weren’t paying attention, were you?” Bryan asked.

“I got distracted,” he admitted. While those words wouldn’t leave them confident in his abilities, they would at least know that he tried to stay honest.

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” Bryan remarked. “What’s there to get distracted by? There’s nothing else up here.” To make sure, Bryan sniffed the air, but he couldn’t smell anyone else nearby.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind.” Lukas did his best to push his thoughts of Emma to the back of his mind. “You can let Cory up now, I suppose. Let’s get back to the cars, take a break, and then we’ll try this again.”

Lukas had wanted to test their skills at tracking and catching a person. Normally, he would have changed up the person taking the role of the human, but he decided to make Cory do it all day as his punishment for disobeying an order. Despite the scrapes and bruises that were apparent all over his body, Cory was more than happy to do it.

Everyone shifted into their human forms when they made it back to their cars and started to go through the stuff Lukas had packed, wanting to get something to eat. While they were eating and socializing, Lukas found his phone and tried to see if he could get a signal. Even if he could have, Lukas wouldn’t have called Emma – he just wanted to see if it would be possible if he wanted to.

As he expected, his phone couldn’t get a signal up in the mountains. He put it back in the car and took his peanut butter and jelly sandwich out from the glove box, where he put it to ensure that no one else took it by mistake. He only really liked peanut butter and jelly a certain way – extra peanut butter and blueberry jam.

After eating and resting for a short while, Lukas had everyone back training again. Although still distracted, Lukas managed to make it through the next several hours without completely losing track of where he was and what he was doing.

When he finally called for an end to the day, Lukas almost drove off without Cory and Bryan, who had rode in his car on the way up. As soon as they were in the car, Lukas sped off, wanting to see Emma as soon as possible.