Forbidden (10 page)

He opened the first door and saw Rachel Washington inside. She looked at him and smiled. “Make me proud, Alek.” It was a bare whisper, not because she was trying to be particularly quiet, but because the side of her face was swollen from what looked like repeated punching. But she was smiling and her eyes were bright. “Keep her safe.”

Why in the world would they let her compete in that condition? Who hit her in the first place? He could only shake his head and give her a small smile. “I'll do my best.” Then he shut the door and moved to the next room.

Claire was standing at the sink in one corner of the room. Judging by the strip of bandage and the paper towels she held, she had cleaned the blood off the gauze and was drying it with paper towels.
Why not just get new bandages?
She would occasionally dab at the trickle of blood leaking down from a stitch that had torn in her scalp. “Hi.” Her voice was quiet and slightly embarrassed. “Sorry to drag you into this mess.”

He crooked his finger for her to follow. There would be more time to talk once they were in the forest. “Don't talk. Just follow me.”

Without another word, she gathered up the sodden mess of paper towels and tape and tossed it in the trash and rolled up the gauze and tucked it in a front pocket. Then, as almost an afterthought, she grabbed a handful of paper towels and shoved them in the pocket too. Together they climbed the stairs to the main office. Nobody said a word to them, not a single greeting or good luck, as they left the office.

He turned his head. “Can you run? Can you track scents?”

At her nod, he took off at a sprint into the trees. “Count to ten and then follow me! I'll run the course.” He didn't look behind. The point of the challenge was tracking. If she couldn't find him, she would fail. Plain and simple. He could explain how the challenge worked until he was blue in the face, but it just made sense to see if she could even track.

The bright sunlight dappled, shadowed, and finally disappeared as he ran. The forest closed around him and the noisy modern world became primordial and silent. Scents became his world as his nose guided him along hidden deer trails where travel was quick and quiet. He let the frustration, anger, and worry dissolve as the velvety brush of leaves and pine needles slid around him. Emotions could be tracked. Fear was the easiest to follow, and frustration was a form of fear.

Only prey show fear, Alek,
his mother had always said.
Fear has large eyes that predators can find in the darkest forest.

He had always struggled to understand the nuances of fear.
But shouldn't I be afraid of people who want to hurt me?

She would stare at him with those patient, intelligent wolf eyes and sigh.
Caution is not the same, child. Do not fear your enemies, for all they can do is attack you. If you are prepared, the attack will fail. Wolves are always prepared.

Even to the end, she had been prepared. But overwhelming force had been too much and she had been taken down. He still remembered her last words as she gripped the back of his neck like a steel vise.
No fear, Alek. You are wolf. You are Sazi. We can be killed, but we will never be defeated. Defend your brothers and sisters. Promise me. Keep them safe.

He'd failed to protect Vera, his older sister. Sonya had disappeared so he had no idea whether he'd succeeded. And Denis? Well, Denis was safe from outside enemies. If only Alek could save him from himself.

So many memories of happier times with Denis. Of hide-and-seek in the hotel, hunting with the pack in the trees, with the humans in their park just a stone's throw away. The scents of cars and people and fur everywhere. Here was so very different. There was no interstate, no throngs of humans rushing to and fro. No pack to call his own. Feathers replaced fur in his nose. But they were family too, those feathered children. Why couldn't he find them? He was supposed to be one of the best trackers in the town. How many times had he won the Ascension? Fifteen? Twenty?

A vibration in his pocket stopped Alek abruptly in a small clearing, where the quickly setting sun managed to reach through blackened stumps that spoke of a horrible fire in years past. Thick green grass defied the cooling weather and a few small yellow flowers poked out of the carpet of pine needles. The sound of his own heart from the hard run made it hard to hear subtle sounds in the woods. He pulled out his phone. Lenny had texted him: the first hour was over. Looking around, Alek realized he was at least five miles from town and nowhere near where he'd planned to be. Damn it! How had he gotten so lost in thought?

He'd planned to cut back and forth, go under logs and over boulders, but stay to within a half-mile of town on approximately the course that would be used for the challenge, so Claire wouldn't be hard to find if she hadn't found him after an hour. Now she could be anywhere and Ascension was fast approaching. Should he wait quietly or call out to her?

*   *   *

To hell with this. And to hell with
him
!
Claire sat on a log, feeling frustrated tears nearly overwhelm her. She was utterly lost, her
mentor
nowhere in sight, and the time of this stupid Ascension test fast approaching. She'd never understood the saying, “can't see the forest for the trees” until now. But she'd never been in a forest before. Growing up in Kansas and then moving to west Texas never exposed her to trees so high that you couldn't see the tops, so dense that the branches seemed to grow into a mat of wood, and so intensely fragrant that any hope of following someone was gone. Her head was pounding from running and she'd finally been forced to sit down so she wouldn't fall down. Being dizzy wasn't surprising but it wasn't good. It was hard to concentrate and blood kept dripping in her eyes. She kept her legs carefully on the big round fallen tree as she'd been taught and pressed the last of the paper towels to her stitches. Snakes liked to hide under dead branches. She didn't know how many snakes lived up here … and she realized she hadn't properly prepared herself for this experience.

“What an idiot,” she whispered to herself. She thought about calling out for Alek, but asking for help wasn't exactly the mark of a Wolven agent. This was her first real assignment, and she would be damned if being alone in the woods was going to get the best of her.
Don't trust anyone,
Rachel had said. Did that include Rachel herself, or the man who'd brought Claire back from the dead?

Fine. If she had to rely on her own resources, so be it.

She stood up and had to blink a few times to stop the ground from moving. Getting her bearings at last, she decided to turn around and head back to town. Heck, maybe that was part of the coaching, to see if she could make a trail that could be followed. Or maybe Alek was in cahoots with the police chief after all, trying to get her lost up here so she'd lose this challenge. But she wasn't going to go down without a fight.

Her pack leaders had taught her well how to follow a trail. She remembered hunting with the other kids for sticks of deer jerky hidden under cacti or in the crevices of mesquite trees. You had to move fast to get to the jerky before the fire ants did. Nothing worse than fire ant stings on the tongue.

She knew her own scent and had made sure to break small branches as she'd chased after Alek. On the way back, she'd look around as she ran, to start learning the terrain. But she would have to run, though at a slow pace, to beat the clock; she had to be at least a couple of miles from where they'd started.

On the way out, she'd been consumed with keeping up with Alek, but he was too fast. She'd panicked a little when she'd started to lose ground. Speed had never been her best thing. She was fast enough to catch food and could probably get quicker with more training, but pace had never been an issue since she had endurance. She whispered the words her Alpha used during their runs together. “Focus on the one true scent, Claire. Don't get distracted by the scenery.”

And just like that, she fell into a quiet, familiar energy. She was a marathon runner, not a sprinter. She let her breathing slow, pushing air out of her mouth with each leg fall and pulling it in again with her nose to maximize the scent intake. Soon she started to be able to match scents to individual plants instead of perceiving an overwhelming rush of newness.

It wasn't like home—the grasses didn't smell the same, nor the trees. But as long as she didn't try to put a name to things, she could concentrate. Every so often she would catch a whiff of the musky maleness of Alek and she would falter and lose focus. Every time, Claire forced herself to ignore that scent, knowing that if she didn't, she would follow it as if she were a homing pigeon. His natural wolf scent was intoxicating enough without whatever the hell cologne or soap he wore. Together they turned her mind to putty and her insides to liquid.

Alek could be dangerous in more ways than one. She didn't like to admit that chasing after him, she'd wanted nothing more than to overtake him, throw him to the forest floor, and rip off his clothes. Taste his smooth skin, wrap herself around him, bury herself inside that musk, and see if it was stronger when he was sweating and excited. She felt a shudder pass over her and a rush of warmth in her gut that made her stumble. Damn.

No, she couldn't afford a distraction like Alek Siska, not with lives on the line.

It was probably better this way. Let him play whatever games he was playing. She would rise above them to do her job. It helped that she was pissed and feeling betrayed by him.

The top of the sun edged beneath the shadow of the mountain and the sky's blue dissolved into orange and fiery red, beautiful but almost too bright to look at. She remembered the old rhyme an uncle, his name long forgotten in her memory, used to recite.
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Tomorrow would be sunny, clear sailing. If only she could get through tonight.

She moved from a jog to a run as the daylight dimmed and the shadows grew deeper. She had to rely more on her nose than her eyes in the thick trees and that made her head hurt.

The more she ran, the angrier she got. Wasn't it just common courtesy to explain what the hell he planned to do? Alek knew she'd just arrived, that she didn't know the area. He knew they were short on time and that she had no idea what Ascension was or how it worked. Wouldn't it have been nice if he'd explained the rules?

Pushing harder to reach town before night completely stole her vision, she made her tired muscles move faster, forced her burning lungs to pull in even more air as the town began to appear in the distance.

“
Ten … nine … eight … seven…”

The sound, distant but pure, filled the still air. It was a chorus of voices, young and old, male and female. It was a happy sound, like at the celebrations for the New Year.

“
Six … five … four…”

The wall of trees finally gave way to a wide clearing and Claire saw a crowd of people at the far end of town, gathered around a wooden stage. They were all looking at the speaker at a podium. “
Three … two … one!
”

The man at the podium was the mayor and Claire felt her feet falter and slow. “That's it!” he called out to the crowd. “The challenger has defaulted. Ascension is over and we have a new champion!” He held up the arm of a buoyant, wildly excited Rachel like she was the winner of a prize fight. A moment later she was accepting hugs and pats on the back from townspeople as she descended the stairs into their welcoming embrace.

Claire's mind buzzed and her stomach felt like she'd been punched. She'd missed it. She'd lost her first challenge in a new pack … by
default
. Claire felt her face begin to burn hot, partly from embarrassment and partly from sheer anger.
Damn Alek!
Damn him straight to hell! And damn her too, for believing that he would be honest and help her.

She smelled him before she saw him race out of the woods just a few seconds behind her, but her inner wolf was too shaken to respond to the musky scent. “Claire … I—” He touched her shoulder, his scent a wet mix of sorrow and shame.

Claire didn't want to hear it or smell it. In fact, she wanted nothing to do with him. “Go to hell, Siska. Thanks for nothing.”

She strode forward toward the crowd, head high and defiant, leaving him standing alone on the dirt road. She was ready to accept whatever humiliation the mayor and police chief were likely to heap on her.

Rachel saw her first. She broke out from the crowd. Rather than the sly smile at her failure that Claire was expecting, the other woman's expression flicked between horrified, terrified, and relieved. “Claire! Where in the world have you been? Are you okay? What happened?”

Claire didn't get a chance to open her mouth before the police chief chimed in. “What happened is she missed the challenge. So she lost the challenge. We take timeliness seriously around here, Miss Sanchez.”

Someone shouted out from the crowd that began to gather around them, “You snooze, you lose, newbie!”

It shouldn't bother her—the visceral glee from the town at her humiliation—but she was accustomed to a more supportive pack. It was clear that she wasn't going to be happy in Luna Lake. She'd do her job anyway, of course, but she didn't see that she had to protect the person who was really at fault. “My so-called mentor ran off and left me in the woods. I couldn't make it back in time. Congratulations, Rachel. You won fair and square.” She turned to the police chief, who was nearly salivating under watchful, predatory eyes. “So what happens now? Locked in a cage? Taking a strip of hide?”

Rachel flinched visibly. She pulled Claire into a hug and whispered, close to her ear, “Not that, hon. Nothing like back then. It's not so bad, being the Omega. You'll get through it. It's only a month and you've always been stronger than me. I've done it most of the time I've been here.” Rachel pulled back and gave Claire a shaky smile. It was clear she wanted to be happy she was no longer the Omega, but wasn't happy enough to wish it on her replacement.