The Wolf’s Whisper: The Complete Series

31. Caleb

M y heart thundered as my paws raced across the earth. I knew neither pack would be pleased about me running around the city in full wolf form, yet what choice did I have? Whatever caution and stealth I had planned earlier was dashed, my entire mind consumed with finding Emily.

Her words on the phone replayed themselves over and over in a dread-inducing loop. Emily sounded so terrified and so angry. I couldn’t catch everything, but she was evidently fighting her wolf instincts, which was never good.

If she fought the shift too hard, it could crack her mind in two, leaving her a feral that’d soon need to be put down. And if she didn’t fight it, going in with boiling anger and rage… it was liable to make the wolf inside her that much more dangerous and out of control when she eventually shifted. A lose-lose situation.

Unless I got to her first.

That was what now fueled me. Blood pumping through my veins, the acrid scents of the city burning at my nose, I kept on, pushing my senses as hard as I could for any hint of Emily. I had a good beat on where she was, yet now and then, the trail would disappear entirely or turn into another scent.

Was she running? Had she found a safe place to hole up? I could only hope she’d gotten somewhere out in public. Still, if her wolf were in control and hungry enough…

It was best not to think about that.

Instead, I concentrated on the path, and though I heard the approaching sirens, I wasn’t worried about them. They were looking for either a motorcycle or a man, and tonight I was the wolf.

I caught a new waft of Emily’s scent, stronger than ever and full of stress chemicals. It was the worst I’d ever picked up from her, standing in sharp contrast to the sweet, beckoning pheromones that often came with a first shift.

It made my stomach twist to think of how scared she was, and in pain. Shifts weren’t easy to begin with, especially not under duress. I had no doubt her transition wasn’t going to be easy.

Dammit! I should have been there. The best I could do at this point was find her and get her to safety before it was too late.

So, even though my wolf-body was already tiring between the running, darting, and sniffing like my life depended on it, I found a new wellspring of energy and tore between the urban buildings.

I didn’t expect the street to erupt into a park, and while my wolf side was grateful for the cover of foliage, it felt far too out in the open. Besides, what if there were children around? It was still daylight, and I was a large wolf.

I paused and took another deep breath to reaffirm my grasp of Emily’s scent. I could feel my senses slipping all around it, overwhelmed by everything else. The sights. The sounds. The smells. I focused on blocking them out.

I couldn’t fail Emily. Not again.

But I should’ve kept my eyes open. I heard the squealing of tires losing traction over dirt and wet earth, then blue and red lights shone through my eyelids.

There was no way…

When I opened my eyes, I saw two cop cars driving right onto the grass and speeding across a community soccer field in my direction.

You have to be kidding!

They couldn’t know it was me, yet that was the only conclusion I drew once I bounded away from the cars and their piercing noise. I knew my ears would ring long after I got away.

Well, if I got away.

Normally, dodging authorities was no problem, but they didn’t usually race across public parks to catch what appeared like a giant dog. Something was up.

It wasn’t the first time animal control had been called on a shifter spotted a little too close to civilians, but these were full-on police cruisers chasing me like a human criminal on the run. Had someone tipped them off? Who? Even if some mysterious caller ratted me out, why would the police ever believe them?

I leapt underneath the thick foliage of a weeping willow and burst out of the other side to see a semi-circle of cops facing my wolf.

This was not the intimidating move they thought it was.

I heard the sharp crack of a gun discharging, and then a sharp, burning spark of pain shot through me. It only lasted a moment, though, and my head jerked towards the direction of the bullet as I bared my teeth and snarled. If it wasn’t coated in silver, it would only hurt. My wolf body would push the bullet out in minutes and knit together any of the damage.

I growled and raced forward like I was about to charge. I had no intention of killing cops, but they didn’t know that.

More shots were fired, enough to make the news or have local residents wondering if there was a fugitive, but only two hit me. They weren’t enough to distract me from bowling over the officers.

They dodged my incoming body as I tore past them and ran towards their cars, intending to vault off the roof. But I never made it there before there was another crack, and this time…it was different.

I couldn’t exactly put my finger on the why or how, but pure lightning coursed through my body, all through a burning spot on my side. But I didn’t have time to look, I just had to go, go, go ! Emily was counting on me.

However, as I raced forward, my feet lost coordination, and I found myself stumbling. I tried to continue, but it was like the pain took over control of my limbs. There was another one of those weird gunshots, but there were no accompanying sounds, and another explosion of pain, this time in my leg. A second later, it was like my limbs refused to work, and I crashed hard into the ground.

I looked at my side, panting hard, and saw… a dart sticking out?

Had they tranquilized me?!

Even if they did, it shouldn’t have done more than make me a little dopey, or I’d just wake up with a headache. I was a werewolf . If we could be so easily done in, our kind would’ve died out long ago.

Yet, my thoughts were becoming frenetic and slipshod at the same time, like my body was responding and couldn’t get any of the proper synapses to fire correctly. I fought to get to my feet, vision blurring as I felt the cops closing in.

I tried to growl, but I knew it didn’t come out right. I tried to bare my teeth, but my normal alpha dominance just wasn’t in it. That was obvious when one of them knelt beside my body.

“Relax. The wolfsbane will burn through your system in a couple of hours. It’ll hurt less if you don’t fight it.”

Wolfsbane???

Not only did the cops know about shifters, but they came equipped with weapons to handle that. To handle me.

That was… concerning.

I fought back regardless. The idea of ending up in the hands of shifter hunters or magical poachers wasn’t a comforting one. Neither the Lincoln nor the Black Hawk packs messed around with law enforcement. There was still plenty of resentment between those of us who lived on the rez and the cops unwilling to learn a single thing about Indigenous culture.

It wasn’t in my nature to roll over and show my belly. As I pushed upward, a weak snarl issuing from my lips, the cop just sighed and stuck me with another dart right in the back.

“Come on, buddy. Don’t make this harder on yourself,” he said.

My world exploded in pain again, but far worse. It was like my body was ripped in half, someone gripping my wolf by his haunches and separating him from me. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I just held on for dear life.

My wolf was mine. I was him, and he was me! One couldn’t just force me out of my shift, yet that was exactly what happened. As the whirlpool sucked me in, I lost control, my fur sloughing off, my body shrinking until I was just a shivering human covered in sweat.

The cop said it would only last a few hours, right? But Emily needed me, now!

“N-n-needs m-me…” I spoke through gritted teeth.

The cop shook his head. “Sorry, brother, got orders to keep you on ice overnight. Let it pass now. It’ll make the time go faster.”

I didn’t want to; in fact, what I wanted was to rip out his throat. Instead, however, the wolfsbane effect enveloped my brain, and I was lost in total darkness.

I woke up in a prison cell.

Not exactly a surprising development, given the last thing I remembered, but still not a welcome environment to wake up in.

So, there were shifters on the force now—either that or shifter-hunters, but those were more boogeymen than anything. As far as I knew, there hadn’t been a sighting or encounter in years of any human who knew about shifters and had the skills to take on multiple members.

That didn’t exactly make me feel better. I’d been locked away while Emily was out there.

I might have been kidding myself, but I felt her like a halfway sensation somewhere between a smell, an echo of her energy, and a thumping within my chest. Emily was agitated, angry, upset, and scared. God, I was caught between hoping she’d shifted and was fighting her wolf and hoping she hadn’t yet, because both options were miserable.

I couldn’t stay prone any longer, my body propelled forward by sheer urgency. I stumbled, wondering if I was experiencing a hangover. It wasn’t something I’d had to go through before, no matter how much I drank, and… it sucked.

“Hey!” I called, looking around blearily for anybody else. Wasn’t I supposed to be in a holding cell with other prisoners? I wasn’t booked, either—I’d been far too unconscious for that. “Hey! You gotta let me out of here! Hey! ”

I reached the bars and rattled them a bit. As a shifter, I should’ve been able to bend the bars, or at least make them groan with effort. When I gripped these, it was like I was a teenage boy again, willing but inexperienced and weak.

“Damn wolfsbane,” I hissed as I paced.

What had that cop said? They had orders to keep me on ice. Did… did someone know about Emily’s shift?

Gray.

How could I have missed it? Gray had given a twenty-four-hour notice, and he knew about Emily. Of course he’d want me locked up long enough to get his hands on her.

Dammit!

This was worse than the Black Hawks or Zach taking her. I knew I shouldn’t put my former head alpha on the same level as an enemy pack or a crime lord, but he represented another way Emily could disappear: absorbed into the same system that had so thoroughly rejected me, its structures rigid and unfeeling.

I tried to listen for footsteps, but my senses were still fuzzy around the edges. I hadn’t been dosed with wolfsbane for some time, and I’d forgotten just how enfeebled I felt under the influence. I hated it. I was still a wolf, of course, but I was so weak now.

“You can’t just keep me here!” I shouted at no one, frustration bursting out again at this sheer helplessness. I’d been in a lot of dire situations, but I’d never felt so thoroughly trapped with no way to escape. Plus, with every second that passed, I thought, what about Emily?

I reached out to that tentative bond between us. I had no idea what this actually was. We hadn’t so much as nibbled at each other’s glands, but it felt like one.

I was grateful because I knew she was alive, but fearful of what would happen if it suddenly stopped.

Come on, Emily, please be there. Please, please, please !

Finally, I found it, that tugging feeling within, and gripped it with all my mental strength. I followed the twisted, flickering energy until that same connection wrapped around my heart again.

Thank God.

I could feel her. I could feel her! She was alive, just… not in good shape. There was anger flowing through her, white-hot and virulent. Hunger, too—oh, she was hungry. I could feel it eating away at my own stomach as my inner wolf rumbled.

“That’s not good,” I grumbled to myself, pushing calm and reason into the bond. I wasn’t sure if it’d work, but I could try .

Ultimately, the strongest thing slipping through our connection was pain . Pure, unadulterated, biting, stinging pain. It raced along my limbs, thousands of little teeth burrowing under my skin, biting at whatever nerve they reached. I was ripped apart and compressed all at the same time, flesh nearly tearing away from the bone. If it was so horrific for me, I couldn’t imagine how bad it was for Emily.

She needed me, and I’d failed her—again! How many times could I prove I was a worthless guardian? It felt like Emily was cursed being saddled with my care. Her life would’ve been so much better if she’d been assigned to someone competent.

Come on, Emily! I urged mentally, still sending fervent support through the bond. Don’t fight the shift. I know it’s scary, but don’t fight it. It’s a part of you. Just follow your instincts, okay? Just f ? —

My affirmations were cut off by a thunderous clap. I stood there in silence as inside, the severed pieces of the bond fell like loose strands of rope.

What just happened?

It was worse than I feared, this sudden, intense absence slicing into me like a knife. One moment she was there, the next she’d blinked out of existence.

Was she dead?

No.

No!

That couldn't be the end. I refused. Emily was not going to die by herself during her first shift!

“Hey! Someone! Get me the fuck out of here, or I swear to God, I’ll rip you limb from limb!” I roared and charged at the bars once more. I threw myself over and over, the entire wall rattling. Part of me knew it was futile, and knew how weak I still felt, but I couldn’t give up.

So I did it over and over again until my shoulder came out of my socket, until my nose, even my hands, were bleeding, until my body surrendered, and all I could do was lie on the floor, mentally clawing for any shred of evidence my charge was still alive.

Try as I might, there was just…

Nothing.