Midnight Wolves

Chapter Eleven: Flood

"I'll make you enforcer if you get it. You'll be home, in our pack, just like you should be. Imagine it Callie. Family, back together once more."

Her uncle's words haunted her, keeping her from sleep.

To steal from the beast.

Callie wasn't sure, but it sounded like a terrible idea.

"It's just a piece of paper, that's all!" Her uncle had insisted at her resistance.

"Then why do you need it?" She'd countered, panic filling her veins.

"Because it will give us legal right to take that land back. That land belonged to the Magnum family and now it should belong to us. It's what your mother would have wanted, Callie. I know it in my bones."

"Well, do your bones also know how likely it is that I will die? I made your entire pack submit to me, and it didn't make him blink."

"Exactly. You made the entire pack submit. You are powerful enough to defeat him, I know you are. You are your mother's daughter. She was always so scrappy."

Scrappy.

That word haunted her too.

It's what J had called her. And Callie had been so secretly proud about it. She liked the idea of being scrappy. Loved it even.

So, it was that thought, and clinging onto the hope that even if she did die at least it'd be quick, that had led to her agreeing to do it. Tomorrow, at dawn, she would enter the Shadow Valley packlands.

Tomorrow, at dawn, she'd probably die.

Had she not been kept from her sleep by her fear, she may not have heard the soft paws against the ground, heading for her tent. Nor would she have heard the near-silent transformation from beast to man.

She'd like to think she'd have heard the tent opening. And his scent, immediately making her wolf growl in anger, would have woken her for sure.

Maybe he'd known that. Maybe he hadn't.

His face appeared, looming over hers. Grant.

"Looks like it's my lucky night, little wolf."

His hand wrapped around her throat, dragging the air from her lungs. She grabbed at his hands, her nails digging into the flesh fighting to get his hand off of her.

But he was stronger that he looked and had the advantage of being over the top of her. Yet still he grunted with the effort, eyes narrowing and filled with his wolf as the scent of blood bloomed in the room.

She'd have growled had she the air. He leaned down harder on her, jumping on top of her as his hand tightened. She scratched deeper into his arm but he didn't appear fazed as he knelt onto the bed, one leg either side of her. He was taller than her, stronger, bigger. Pinned down, she could only watch as her vision began to blot and darkness fizzed on the edges of her mind.

Her wolf's anger fizzled out and fear filled the hollow space it left. She was going to die. She tried to scream or to call out but she couldn't manage more than a grunt as he doubled down above her.

She could already see what would happen. She'd pass out. He'd bite her. She'd wake up mated and trapped.

As her vision darkened in and out, she knew it wouldn't be long. She begged her wolf, pleaded with her to keep fighting, long after she'd passed out, but her wolf was scared, petrified, and curled in a ball somewhere in Callie's subconscious.

Callie knew the fight was already lost. A tear slowly traced down her cheek as she mourned the freedom she was about to lose. Maybe if she was lucky, he'd kill her.

Her eyes slid closed.

Only it wasn't the bittersweet pitch blackness of unconsciousness that awaited her. Instead it was a forest, one so familiar to her by this point that she knew the pattern of trees off by heart. But she wasn't alone this time.

Besides her child-sized self, there was a man. She couldn't make out his face, but he had just placed her onto the ground and as he stood up, he winced and gripped his back. "Your mother put up more of a fight than I thought. I should have killed that-"

Callie lashed out and bit the man's leg, her tiny teeth tearing through the fabric of his jeans and into the flesh underneath. "You little-"

The dream faded.

But anger surged.

For years, for her entire life, perhaps, people had been trying to make decisions for Callie. Had been interfering with her life, ruining it. A murderer who dumped her to die in a forest, a moonmate intent on possessing her, and now Grant, greedy and foolish enough to think she wouldn't fight back.

Even Callie had believed she wouldn't. That when her moonmate tried to force himself on her, she believed she wouldn't have fought against him, or tried to escape. Maybe she just hadn't been pushed far enough.

But Grant. He hadn't even given her a chance to say no.

Now, she would teach him what happens when you underestimate her.

Something in her snapped.

Something irrevocable and intrinsic.

Anger like she'd never known flooded forwards.

*
A/N
Second update of the day!
(I really want you to meet Vikas, so I'm uploading like crazy at the moment!)