Chapter 30 #2
The impact exploded through my chest, and both of us were lifted off our feet before crashing into the snow together.
He recovered first, driving his shoulder into mine and snapping for my throat with frightening speed.
His teeth found my shoulder and pain burst down my foreleg.
I twisted underneath him instead of away, driving both hind paws into his ribs hard enough to throw him sideways before rolling back onto my feet.
He snarled at me, my blood around his muzzle.
This time, I was ready.
The wolf didn’t waste time posturing, and the moment his paws touched the ground, he came at me again, driving straight for my injured shoulder.
He’d found the weakness almost immediately and intended to exploit it.
There was nothing wild or uncontrolled about the way he fought.
Every strike was calculated. This wasn’t some territorial challenge between wolves.
This was a professional doing the job he’d been paid to do for a bounty too big to resist.
I met him head-on, then twisted away at the last possible second.
His shoulder slammed into mine anyway, white-hot pain shooting down my foreleg, but I’d already committed to the attack.
Instead of trying to throw him off, I let his momentum carry him past me.
My jaws closed around the loose skin behind his neck, and I drove him sideways into the trunk of a pine.
The impact shook snow from the branches above us, showering us both in white.
He recovered faster than I expected.
His hindquarters bunched beneath him, and before I’d managed to regain my footing, he’d thrown himself backward into me.
We crashed together down a shallow embankment, rolling over frozen ground and exposed roots, claws tearing through snow and bark as each of us fought for the smallest advantage.
His teeth snapped shut barely an inch from my eye.
I twisted my head away, felt them rake across the side of my muzzle instead, and answered with a savage bite at his shoulder.
The other wolf threw his weight across my ribs, pinning me just long enough for my lungs to empty in a violent rush.
I bucked hard, twisting my hips beneath him the way ORT trainers had drilled into us years ago.
The move was more leverage than strength, but it was enough.
His balance shifted for the smallest fraction of a second, and I threw him clear before scrambling upright myself.
We faced one another again, both breathing hard.
Blood dripped from my shoulder, each pulse carrying more of my scent into the cold mountain air. His nostrils flared as he caught it, and I saw the confidence settle deeper into his stance. He thought he’d already won.
My wolf’s answer was almost amused.
Come on, then.
The grey wolf lunged again, expecting me to meet him with force, but instead, I gave ground. One measured step, then another.
He pressed the advantage, relentlessly driving me backward through the trees, convinced he was forcing a retreat.
I let him believe it. Every step took us farther from the open ground and deeper into a stretch of spruce where undergrowth and mud hid the uneven ground beneath it, disguising old roots and half-buried rocks.
I’d walked this trail in every season, in blizzards that erased the world and summers when the earth baked hard beneath the pines. I knew where the ground dipped. Where the rocks sat just below the snow and where a careless step would find nothing beneath it.
His left forepaw disappeared into a gap. Him being trapped and off balance lasted no more than a heartbeat, but it was long enough.
I launched.
Every ounce of my weight slammed into his exposed side before he could recover his footing. We crashed together into the trunk of an old cedar, the bark exploding beneath the force of the impact. Before he could twist away, my jaws found his throat, and this time, I didn’t let go.
He fought with everything he had left.
His claws ripped across my chest, opening burning furrows through skin and muscle.
Pain flared so brightly my vision blurred, but my wolf refused to release him.
I felt cartilage collapse beneath my teeth, then the sickening shift of bone as it gave way.
The wolf convulsed once, then again, but his struggles weakened almost immediately.
I held on for several seconds longer, ignoring the blood filling my mouth until I was certain he wasn’t getting up again, and only then did I release him.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, blood running freely from half a dozen wounds. Every breath scraped through my lungs. My shoulder burned. My ribs ached where he’d crushed them beneath his weight.
The mountain fell silent again and my ears pricked forward.
A rifle cracked somewhere to my left. Ronan. A second shot followed, and I was already running.
Pain tore through my shoulder with every stride, but I barely noticed it now. The scent reached me before the clearing did.
Blood. Wolf. Ronan. Too much blood. Fear slammed through me harder than anything I’d felt since Raff died. I drove myself faster, branches whipping at my face as I tore through the trees until the forest opened.
Ronan lay crumpled against the base of a granite boulder; one arm twisted beneath him at an angle that turned my stomach. Blood soaked his chest and shoulder, spreading across the snow in a widening pool. His rifle had fallen several feet away, just beyond reach.
Less than ten feet from him lay a dead hyena, its skull shattered by a rifle round fired so close there was almost nothing left of the back of its head.
The second hyena stood over Ronan.
Smaller than the wolf. Leaner. Its dark muzzle gleamed with blood.
The hyena lifted its head as I burst into the clearing, and its lips curled.
Almost as if it was smiling.
Then, with complete confidence that Ronan was no longer a threat it turned its full attention to me.
The hyena reacted before I’d covered half the distance between us.
It watched me, matching every step I took with one of its own, shifting sideways through the snow with an unnerving economy of movement.
It kept between Ronan and me at all times, never once exposing its flank or giving me a clean line to attack. Everything about it spoke of patience.
My wolf slowed.
Different.
He was right.
A wolf wanted dominance. A wolf committed.
This bastard wanted an advantage.
It wanted me to make the first mistake.
I dragged in a painful breath, forcing myself to ignore the blood spreading around Ronan’s body. Every instinct screamed at me to reach him, to drag him clear, to make certain he was still breathing, but that was what the hyena wanted. If I glanced away for even a heartbeat, I’d already lost.
The animal’s lips curled away from bloodstained teeth, and a strange, chattering laugh rolled out across the clearing.
The sound crawled beneath my skin. It wasn’t triumph, and it wasn’t mockery.
It was communication. Somewhere deeper in the forest, another hyena should have answered. None did, and its ears flicked once.
Its head tilted, as it studied me. There was intelligence in those dark eyes, calculating and cold.
It wasn’t searching for an opening anymore.
It had already found several. My chest burned where the wolf’s claws had opened me from collarbone to ribs, and every breath scraped against bruised lungs.
I wasn’t hiding how badly I was hurt. I couldn’t.
The hyena attacked. Its jaws clamped around my left foreleg just above the paw, and instead of trying to drag me down with brute force, it twisted violently.
Agony exploded through the joint. My footing vanished beneath me, and I hit the frozen ground shoulder first, the impact driving every breath from my lungs in one brutal rush.
Before I could even react, it was gone again.
It hadn’t stayed long enough for me to reach it.
It hadn’t given me anything to fight.
By the time I’d forced myself upright, it was already circling once more, dancing across the snow while blood dripped from the new wound in my leg. It wasn’t trying to overpower me. It was bleeding me one bite at a time.
My wolf snarled.
Coward.
The next attack came from my blind side.
I heard nothing until teeth raked across my flank, opening another line of fire through skin and muscle.
The pain was sharp enough to blur my vision for an instant, but when I spun, snapping for its throat, all I caught was empty air.
It had already withdrawn beyond my reach, pacing just outside striking distance with infuriating patience.
It hunted without risking itself, letting exhaustion do the killing. Each wound was survivable on its own. Together, they’d kill me.
Movement behind it caught my eye.
Ronan. His good hand clawed through the snow, fingers stretching towards the rifle lying only a few feet away. Every inch cost him. Blood followed him in a dark trail as he dragged himself forward inch by agonizing inch.
The hyena saw him too.
It turned its head, and it sprinted towards Ronan.
I ran, and my left foreleg almost folded beneath me, but momentum carried me forward.
I threw everything I had left into the impact, slamming broadside into the hyena less than a yard from Ronan’s outstretched hand.
We crashed together across the clearing, rolling through churned snow and broken branches until neither of us knew which way was up.
There was no room left for tactics now.
Only survival.
The hyena writhed beneath me, twisting its body into angles that no wolf ever could. Its hind claws tore across my stomach before I could shift my weight, opening fresh wounds that burned white-hot. I answered with a savage bite across its muzzle, feeling teeth crack beneath the force of it.
The animal jerked backward, blood pouring freely from its mouth, and it laughed again. Wet. Broken. Mad.
For one brief second, the sound unsettled me badly enough that I hesitated.