Hunted by the Alpha novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Caught

I ran the first mile.

Cold pine air tore at my throat, and my sneakers slid on wet needles, and the moon came up huge and white through the branches.

Behind me the horn sounded a third time.

Then the howling began, a dozen voices, then thirty, rolling across the valley.

I did not look back.

I waded the creek and climbed the far bank on my hands and knees.

My legs burned.

My lungs burned.

Somewhere to my left a branch cracked, and I swerved without thinking, and a gray wolf burst out of the brush where I would have been.

It snapped its jaws, missing my coat by an inch.

I screamed and ran.

Then something black came out of the dark and hit the gray wolf broadside.

They rolled in a tangle of fur and teeth.

The gray wolf yelped and scrambled away with its tail tucked.

The black wolf turned and looked at me.

His eyes were molten gold.

His breath steamed in the cold, and the white scar on his shoulder stood out.

I backed up one step.

He took one step toward me.

"You said alone," I panted. "You said only you."

He let out a low rumble that was almost a laugh.

I ran.

He gave me a head start, which was the cruelest thing he could have done.

I heard him behind me, not hurrying, his paws silent on the moss, just close enough that I could feel his heat.

I climbed over a fallen log, and he cleared it in one leap.

I cut left, and he was there.

I cut right, and he was there, and my heart was hammering so hard that it felt like it was in my mouth.

It was terrifying.

It was also the most alive I had felt in six years.

I stumbled into a small clearing where the trees opened up and the moon lay silver on a bed of thick green moss.

I stopped in the middle, doubled over, laughing and crying and gasping.

"Okay," I said to the dark. "Okay, you win."

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