Rejected Mate and Following Fate - Awakening Book

When the door fully closes, I walk out in front of the tree where I’ve been hiding and peer over at where he left his truck, wondering if he maybe left anything of value there. If I’m cutting my losses, and running, then he might have something. He didn’t lock it, and he was alone. Maybe a medipack, food, clothes, or something that I can use.

He obviously isn’t coming out right away, and I should make the most of his absence before he does come back. He might not stay and judging by the fact abandoned his truck and never brought it into the compound, I don’t think he is. I have to be quick and go.

I run along the tree line keeping to the inner side and within its shadow and make a dash for his truck, using hyper speed to get to it fast and peek inside when I slide up against the door on the far side from the building. It’s an off road four by four, covered in mud, and debris, and obviously the perfect vehicle for moving around this terrain. I can tell right away there’s nothing in it at all. Not even general trash, or even anything in view that I would want. It’s clean and free of anything worthwhile. Not what I would expect for a truck with frequent use, so it makes this even weirder. He obviously doesn’t use it all too much to come and go. One last fleeting run over with my eyes, convinced he has nothing of worth.

I dash back to the closest border of brush and start making my way back to my own temporary camp without looking back, this time keeping behind the trees by two rows. My breathing labored with the heavy weight of mounting panic growing inside of me like a warning signal. Heartbeat pounding in my ears as it batters my rib cage and adds to my terror. I don’t feel safe this close anymore and I should never have ventured to find this building. I don’t know what I was thinking, and the last thing I need are complications from wolves, and James Bond type buildings in the middle of forests. This has spy movie all over it, and I’m in no mood to be dangled headfirst over a vat of sharks for information I don’t have.

When the noise of the building cranks up again, I don’t know if it’s the floor moving up again to reset, or if he’s coming back. It stops me in my tracks and I instinctively drop to the dirt and turn around. I crouch where I am, and watch, waiting with held breath, peering through the trunks and bushes to see the door, until the moaning cranking noise of heavy innards moving comes to a halt. Yet the door doesn’t open. Nothing happens at all, except the return to a previous hum. I don’t think it was him, I think maybe the floor comes up again when they reach a destination, and I relax a little, blowing out my air with relief, moving again from this tree base to the next to make my way back to my perch.

I almost make it all the way in when another loud thumping noise pauses me in my tracks and makes me look back nervously, so jumpy and on edge, with all my senses kicking into a higher mode of efficiency. This time the noises are less intense, less mechanical, and more like regular people noises.

The building appears to be coming to life as it increase, the doors make swooshing noise, but nothing seems to open. There’s a bang, sliding of maybe bolts, I can’t tell. A beep, a woosh, like the noise a piston makes, and then I can make out the swing of a heavy metal door and gravel rolling and sliding from it.

Lights flick on all around me, so suddenly from concealed posts further out in the trees it makes me jump, my heart misses a beat and frozen ice flairs in my veins, and I find myself illuminated in the previously dark space. Blinded by the sudden solar strength, blazing pain that hits me in the eyeballs. I start blinking, shielding my eyes as my nocturnal vision craps out and gives me an instant headache, like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

I wasn’t expecting this entire area to be brightened up like standing under a sun lamp at close range and pull my wits back around me. I dart as fast as I can for the nearest sign of darkness and hope they didn’t see me. The lights must be extended above the canopy on masts further out that I didn’t see, as everything around me is brighter than daylight, and I have no one direction to go to that will get me out of it faster. The entire space is bright as hell. I run, heading towards my mountain in the far distance, and concentrate on nothing else except escape. Screw my backpack and furs, I don’t need them right now.

I sprint, dodging, jumping, clearing fallen logs as twigs and leaves scratch my face and hands, and rip at my skin in passing. Breathing labored and loud, panting. I aim for the shadows, not looking back, in case this is because of me, that maybe he did see me out there and whatever this place is, no one is meant to know. I put my head down and hyper speed the best to my ability, only just make it to a skidding halt into darker bushes when an alarming piercing noise fills the air around me. It has a horrible effect on my body and senses, rattling my brain inside my skull, as my physical self crunches up, instantly immobile and I grab my ears.

is going to explode, my body straining to turn to wolf to get away faster, but I don’t let it. I need to keep these clothes,

and halt, and rationalize about this, and stop reacting. That they couldn’t have seen me, as the cameras point down, and I didn’t venture near the

even without someone like me lurking nearby. They couldn’t know I was there if there even was a ‘they’, and what really would they react like this for? What could they possibly be hiding

of some sort. I know a lot of that contradicts what the other parts of my

I keep on telling myself I’m overreacting.

jump sideways and crash into bushes as I run at speed. I almost swallow my own tongue and my stomach lurches, about jumps out of

hedge way, knocking my shoulder on rocks and stops my scrambling for a second. I take a moment to look back at the surging sunlit bright area I left behind, gasping as I see the pouring of black dressed men coming from some ground level hatch near

and my doubt that I wasn’t in any kind of danger, dies an instant death. The blood draining from my body so I turn cold and statue like as it sinks in, they are definitely looking for me. I don’t stop to wait for even a blink longer, terror once again ripping through me at speed and activating my run like shit button. They all face this way and come thundering after me as soon as they

black uniforms and they’re clearly coming at me. I don’t care who you are, what story you’re in, that never bodes well in any situation and I don’t think

that human form is only slowing me down and making it more likely they catch up with me. I know only too well that wolves will not be

think about survival now, even if that means ending up naked, and backpack less, miles further into the undergrowth. I just need to find another way to gather the things I need later and curse myself stupid for ever venturing this way,

and your damn dreams and pushing me East. Fuck the fates. Fuck Colton for making me leave the mountain and fuck Juan for

almost howling with an intense release, glad to be free finally. Head down, clothes shredding pitifully as I leave the last of

fall, wedging between trees that are too close to get through and break free noisily with sheer strength and will power. Wood splintering, branches crackling, but being silent is no longer my concern as the noise of their pursuit out sounds mine. I can feel them coming, hear them, smell them, I can even feel their heart beats synching with mine as scent follows

my veins and I hope that angry numb I gained with the bear, kicks in soon, or else I’m screwed. I can’t even stop to try and use any sort of gift right now, when I don’t even know how. The last few days of trying to conjure it up proved futile. I’m

tunnel of air that makes my hair tingle and pull in its passing. It shoots directly into the tree several feet in front of me, and stabs viciously into the trunk, standing proud and straight when it comes to an instant halt. I only catch sight of it for a split second, a clear tube, filled with watery liquid, a red feather tail, embedded deeply in the rough wooden skin of the poor tree. It catches me eye, draws my attention, and before I can run past it while still trying to figure out what it is, something fires into my spine insanely stab-like, right between my shoulder blades with a stinging pain so intense it makes me howl involuntarily.

rocks on the ground I’m crossing at speed. I roll, hitting the rough floor of the forest like a dead weight and skid ungracefully, pulling debris and dried leaves with me, kicking up a cloud

legs sprawled as my body betrays me and turns back to human form without my say so, and my eyes focus on the tiny thing only feet on front