Page 46 of Wolf's Fate
Caleb
I’d traveled fast.Alternating between wolf and man, I’d stolen more clothes in a few days than I had in my entire life. I’d almost reached Whispering Pines when I’d stopped.
The connection between Willow and me had never been this visceral. But I was a few miles from her home when I pulled the stolen car over and got out, inhaling deeply.
My eyes narrowed on the road I’d just been on. Wetting my lips, I forced myself to concentrate and focus.
“Son of a dick,” I cursed, hurrying into the thicket. Stripping off my clothes, I changed to my wolf, relying on the wolf’s sense of smell more than mine. I’d passed a bus on the road. The fact that she was likely to have been on it pissed me off. Where the hell was she going? Did she know she was in danger? Flooring it, I raced after a bus I passed a few hours ago.
I didn’t even know the destination, but I would find her.
I checked three bus stops before I caught the scent of her. I made the change from man to wolf. I was in packlands now. Icouldn’t remember the shifters of this territory, and they lived further up the mountain, but still, it was easier to deal with patrols in my wolf form.
I never met any, and I made a note of where I had been, because even though I was a drifter, there wasalwayspack border patrol to talk around while you passed through. The fact that there wasn’t any here was noticeable.
After deciding to not go on to Whispering Pines, I stood in a wrecked motel room. The jeans I wore were too short, the shirt too big, and the boots fit but they were old and worn. I’d grabbed the jacket from the back of someone’s truck at a drive-thru. It had been hard to detect her scent over the smell of fast food, trash, and fumes, but I got a brief hint of her.
“You her boyfriend?” Turning my attention to the night receptionist who was looking at me with interest, I nodded once. “You know she was withtwoother guys, right?”
I’d scented Doc, but the shifter was fainter. Confirmation that Willow was traveling with two people made more sense.
“So, she cheating on you?”
Bending down, I grabbed the edge of the bed and lifted it, the frame creaking under the strain. With a quick jerk of my head, I motioned for her to look. “Anything under there?” I asked, my voice low but tense.
Her hesitation and look of wariness lasted but a moment before she crouched down, then with another look at me, she ducked her head to see if there was anything hidden.
“You see anything?” I asked, but she was stretching under the bed.
“Only this?” She straightened, holding a notebook inbetween her finger and thumb like it was diseased. “You interested in this?”
Snatching it off her, I flicked through it, recognizing the familiar pencil strokes, hesitating briefly when I saw how much I featured on the pages. Closing it, I shoved it in my back pocket.
“Thanks.”
“That it?” she asked indignantly.
“That’s it.” I walked out of the room, ignoring her muttered curses about being too lousy to tip. I walked around the back of the motel, and from the ground, I could tell that Willow and the shifter had come out the window.
Which meant they were being chased.
“Damn it.” I needed to get to her, fast, because time was slipping away. I would need to use both human and wolf forms to be most efficient. The wolf could cut across the mountains for speed, but I would also need to use the efficiency of human transport.
If Doc was with her, then they’d be heading to Blackridge Peak. The last place that I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be around Cannon or his pack, but I didn’t have much choice.
Looking at the Rockies, I decided to take a car as far as I could, and then the wolf would take me across the ridge. I needed another car. I wasn’t particularly proud of how easy I found it to steal. But picking pockets was one of the ways I’d gotten by for years when I needed money or transport.
I ended up with a hybrid that had a small engine, but it was clean, had a full tank of gas, and I’d heard the owner discussing going to the movie theater with a date, so they wouldn’t miss the car for hours.
Driving out of town, I once again felt a surge of resentment towards Cannon’s pack. Yet I couldn’t avoid him or his pack. Willow was heading there, and I knew I wasn’t the only one following her.
The thought sobered me. Who else would be tracking her? What did they want with her? Was it me? Were they out to get me and thinking they could use Willow to do it?
As I sat in a stolen car, heading to a pack I didn’t want to see, the irony that it was working wasn’t lost on me. But the thought that if I didn’t reach her first, that if they got to her before I did…
Pressing my foot down on the pedal, the little hybrid roared in response, echoing my frustration that I couldn’t let anything happen to her. I’d destroyed the cell phone when I left Cannon’s house that day, and I hadn’t replaced it. The only number in it had been Royce’s, and I no longer remembered it. I wanted to talk to one of them and find out if she was safe, but I also didn’t want to trust any of them.
I was still sure they were trying to trick me, but I knew in my bones that Willow being in danger wasn’t their fault.