Maddox
The sound of my feet hitting the forest floor is almost loud enough to drown out the heavy beating of my heart.
I make our pack do weekly runs around the area to make sure nobody is infringing on our lands. It’s also a way for our wolves to bond and release some energy, something we always look forward to.
But today, something feels different. I can’t explain it, but the longer we run, the more tension I feel coiled inside me. We’ve been running for a few hours, reaching the furthest point of our property, and I have the strangest sensation creeping up my spine.
“What’s wrong?” Gage asks through our pack bond, no doubt sensing my anxiety.
“I don’t know. I just feel… something. I can’t describe it or pinpoint what it is yet.”
“I’ve had a strange feeling all morning, too,” he responds.
“Same here,” Hunter pipes in.
“Me too,” Chase, Hunter’s twin, adds.
Bain says nothing, which is no surprise. He speaks very little on the best of days.
Everyone follows me in silence for a few minutes until the feeling starts to get noticeably stronger.
“I think we’re close. Whatever it is, we’re closing in on it,” I tell them. “Everyone, stay on alert.”
We continue running silently as the strange feeling grows stronger by the second. The feeling changes to a pressure in my head as I keep going, and just when it feels like I’ll need to turn around to relieve it, I come into a small clearing, and the feeling disappears completely.
I sigh in relief and look around.
“That was weird,” Chase says, shaking his body in obvious relief.
“You felt the pressure disappear too?” I ask him.
“Yeah, it’s gone.” The others confirm they feel the same as we start to look around the clearing.
It’s about a hundred feet wide and fifty feet deep.
Surrounded by thick trees on three sides and a large boulder on the other.
I would have run right past this clearing if I wasn’t pulled here; it’s practically invisible unless you’re inside it.
“There must be something here that caused that feeling,” Gage says as he sniffs the ground and moves around slowly.
I circle around the edge, sniffing heavily, until I come across the smell of something I recognize. Blood.
I let the others know as I slowly follow the faint trail where it leads through the clearing toward the boulder. When I’m about fifteen feet away, we all lift our heads and look toward it. Previously hidden by small bushes, we can now see there’s a cave in the boulder.
“Whatever is bleeding is in there,” I tell them as I slowly move forward.
“Wait. We don’t know who or what’s in there,” Hunter warns. “It could be a trap.”
“I’ll be quiet. It’s light enough out here, I think I can get a good look from the entrance.”
“We’ll wait back here so there’s as little noise and scent as possible. Be careful,” Chase tells me.
I slowly inch forward, making sure not to snap any twigs or rustle any leaves as I step toward the cave.
When I get to the edge of the entrance, my body is mostly hidden, and I peek my head inside. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark interior.
I look around, but the only thing I see is something small, brown, and furry at the back of the cave. I blink a few times, trying to figure out what it is. It’s an animal, and it’s much smaller than I am. I’m not even sure it’s alive, whatever it is.
Relaying what I’m seeing back to the others, I carefully enter the cave, and once I’m fully inside, I take a moment to make sure I didn’t miss anything on my first glance, but there’s nothing and no one else here.
Slowly, I move toward the brown ball of fur. I realize it’s not brown, it’s red and covered in dirt. Is it a fox? It’s a little big for that, though. When I’m halfway through the cave, and it’s only a few feet in front of me, I finally figure out what it is and reel back in surprise.
“It’s a wolf shifter!” I exclaim through the bond. I take another couple of steps and sniff. “A female.”
The others all enter, knowing that one female wolf shifter is no threat to the five of us.
They surround me as we all look down at the tiny female. She’s curled into a small ball, with her tail covering her face.
“She’s hurt,” Bain says after getting a good sniff of the air around her.
“I’m going to wake her,” Hunter says, moving forward. Before we can stop him, he starts to nudge her with his nose. We all hold our breath to see how she responds. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t so much as make a noise, causing me to worry even more.
He tries again, then looks back at us in confusion. She shouldn’t be able to sleep through that. Wolves have great senses—they never sleep this deeply.
Stepping forward, I change into my human form and kneel beside her. Slowly, I reach out and gently stroke her back. She doesn’t react.
“She’s so dirty,” I whisper. “Look at the color of her fur. It’s dark red, almost black. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
What the hell is a lone female wolf shifter doing all the way out here? Is she a rogue?
I move my hand to the back of her neck and give her a soft shake. “Hey, sweetheart? Wake up.” She doesn’t move. “Come on now, let me see those eyes,” I say, using some of my alpha power to force the command.
Nothing. Even though her face is hidden by her tail, I can see the top of her head, and a small piece of leather catches my eye.
“What’s this?” I ask as my finger trails along the leather strap that leads down the side of her face. I gently push her tail away and hear the sharp intake of air from the others as anger and revulsion fill me.
Hunter shifts to his human form as he grits out, “Is that a fucking muzzle?”
My stomach tightens with nausea. I know I don’t know this female, but the thought of her being hurt, of someone doing this to her, makes me feel queasy.
She’s clearly not an alpha, which makes her a beta, so my command should have forced her to obey.
The fact that she hasn’t even moved tells me she must be seriously injured.
My lips press together in worry as I carefully undo the muzzle. It gets stuck in her fur, and Gage shifts. He and Hunter carefully help me untangle it from her matted fur. It makes me sick, seeing how stuck it is. She’s had this on for a while.
As soon as it’s free, Bain, now in his human form, snatches it from my grasp and immediately rips it to shreds, the metal snapping in his bare hands as if it’s a twig.
“Where is she hurt?” Hunter asks, looking down at her. “I can smell the blood.” I trail my hands over her, looking for the source of the blood in her fur.
It takes me a while, but I come across a large patch of mud on her side. “I think this is it.” I lean in to get a better look as I try to scrape some of the mud off it. “It looks like something penetrated her skin here. Strange…” I trail off, tilting my head in confusion as I look at it.
“It looks old, maybe a couple of weeks,” I tell them in confusion.
Gage shakes his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. It would have healed by now.” He leans close to take a better look with me.
“What do you make of it?” I ask him.
Reading pretty much everything he can, especially anything on our kind, Gage normally has the answers we’re looking for.
“If she did get it a couple of weeks ago, which it looks like that’s plausible, her body must be too weak to heal itself.”
My stomach churns as I wonder how long she’s been in that muzzle, unable to eat. “It explains why she’s unresponsive. Her body has basically shut down so she can try to heal,” I say in realization.
“Fuck,” Hunter whispers as Chase’s wolf whines, his nose resting on his paws as he stares at her.
He’s normally the one cracking jokes and running around.
It worries me a little that he hasn’t shifted yet.
It tells me he’s feeling emotionally vulnerable right now and doesn’t want us to see how upset he is.
“She must be seriously injured for that not to have healed after so much time,” Gage says with a frown.
“How can we help her?” Bain asks.
“We need to get her food and water.”
I reach out and stroke her head and neck, hoping she can sense that we’re here to help.
“Don’t worry, little wolf. We’re here now.”