“Give him the Cougar path, then,” said a voice from the back. Another agreed.
“No,” Marcus said. “He isn’t ready.”
Aaron frowned. “I’m ready,” he said, “Just tell me what I have to do.”
Marcus’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Aaron, I can’t let you walk the Cougar path. It’s too dangerous. The Cougars would kill you on sight. We stick to our own paths along the mountain; that’s the way it is.”
“I’m your son,” Aaron said, “You said yourself my instincts are strong. Let me do this.”
“He’s stubborn like you, too,” Jackal offered.
Marcus sighed.
“What’s the trial?” Aaron asked.
“Really, it’s the simplest one of all the trials,” Jackal said, “All you have to do is walk the length of the path.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep, from one to the other. Oh, but you have to avoid the Cougars of course. They will kill you on sight.”
“Why would werewolves kill other werewolves on sight?”
“We don’t. We’re wolves, Aaron. The Cougars are… well, cougars.”
Were… cougars?
CHAPTER 5
They’re just trails, Aaron thought to himself as he walked along the path claimed by the Mountain Cougars. Hundreds of people walked these paths every month, maybe even every day—Aaron didn’t know, in truth—and he knew he could run twelve miles without breaking a sweat. He’d never run a marathon before, but he went to the gym about four times a week and ran a five K warm up and cool down after every workout session, which for Aaron included tough regimens of arm, chest, leg, and back exercises. And that was before he came into his heritage as a werewolf.
Or maybe he had always been a werewolf, only now he was able to shapeshift?
No. That couldn’t be it. Aaron couldn’t remember the last time he took a solid hit to the face like the one the bull had just given him and healed it a few minutes after. Minutes, not hours. Aaron’s body was definitely different now. He could feel the blood in his body roaring with power, his muscles rippling with strength, his every move suffused with a kind of strange, never ending supply of energy. He had barely slept and yet here he was, embarking on a twelve mile trek around a mountain he didn’t know through supposedly enemy territory.
Was he crazy? Of course he wasn’t. This is why he came here. If he didn’t want to learn what it was like to be a werewolf and show his father just what a great man Aaron had turned into without any help he had to make this walk and he had to make it now, in front of the rest of the pack. His father enjoyed a good tough guy; well, Aaron would show him and everyone else.
“You could try being a little more cautious,” Jackal said.
Her soft voice, barely spoken over a whisper, jarred Aaron out of focus. He blinked and looked at her. “What?” he asked.
Jackal smiled. Her glasses were on her head, now. She had left her denim jacket, wallet, phone and keys back at her car, taken off her shoes, and was walking barefoot through the woods. Aaron hadn’t followed her example, though, so while his feet were crunching over twigs and rocks, hers weren’t making a sound. “The Mountain Cougars are probably going to smell us anyway,” she said, “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to be a little lighter on your feet.”
“If you weren’t here I would be in a full sprint.”
“If I weren’t here you wouldn’t know where the hell to go.”
“I don’t know. I think the trails are pretty well marked,” Aaron said, checking the surroundings. He spotted a trail marker a few yards down the line and shrugged at it.
“You really have no clue, do you?”
“No clue about what?”
They had started walking again. The air was getting a little colder, the trail a little thicker with pines, and Aaron’s feet were still sending cracks echoing lightly through the wilderness.
“Anything,” Jackal said, “You come here on your muscle car, roaring about how awesome you are, demanding to be put into challenges that are way past your league, totally oblivious to the fact that your nose is clearly too wet for your own good.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you’re a rank amateur, and your little stunt back there with the guys may have just gotten us both killed.”
“It wasn’t a stunt.”
“You don’t just walk the Mountain Cougar trail.”
“And you didn’t have to come. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“If I hadn’t have come you would definitely die out here tonight. And for some reason that I don’t yet understand, I didn’t want that.”
“So if we both die out here, it’s your fault.”
“Don’t you think I don’t know that?”
A satisfied smirk spread across Aaron’s face. Jackal caught it and frowned. “Relax,” Aaron said, “What’s the worst—”
“Schh,” Jackal said, pressing her fingers against Aaron’s mouth.
“What?” Aaron said. Cold fingers ran up the length of his back setting his body to high alert.
“By some strange stroke of luck, someone is actually making more noise in this forest than you are.”
“Maybe it was an elk.”
“Will you shut up?” Jackal’s voice was a harsh whisper, urgent and silencing.
The sun had fully set over the back of the mountain now casting the sky in a purple so deep and rich it looked to Aaron like the sky on some distant alien planet. Crickets were chirping ahead, owls hooting above, and winged insects floating all around, though Aaron wasn’t sure how close any of these sounds actually were; they could’ve been hundreds of yards away and imperceptible to the human ear for all he knew. But he couldn’t hear whatever Jackal sound Jackal was honing in on, and that made him nervous.
Then she turned her head to the left, hard and fast. Her blood red hair went loose and whipped around in the movement, and Aaron caught sight of the reason for her supernaturally heightened sense of hearing. Her ear… it was larger, thicker, and it ended in a point. It looked almost like a dog’s ear, only with less hair natural hair.
How are you doing that, he wanted to ask. But he held himself; the time for questions wasn’t now. Whatever had caught her ears was important enough for her to be giving it her full attention which meant it couldn’t have been an elk or a rabbit. Those were prey. Unimportant. Trivial. And Aaron’s very skin was reacting to Jackal’s alarm. What a strange feeling.
“We have to move,” Jackal said.
Aaron didn’t have to hear it twice. He pushed past Jackal and further down the Mountain Cougar path but Jackal grabbed his arm and yanked it hard. A set of razor sharp claws, gleaming in the dark, sailed past Aaron’s face and trimmed a few hairs off of Aaron’s head. He staggered back and stared at the creature that had seemed to simply appear in front of him like a ghost and felt the familiar surge of anger bubble up inside of his chest.
The beast wasn’t tall, at least two heads shorter than Aaron. Its face was the likeness of a jungle cat with eyes that shone like fire in the dark, whiskers, a thick black nose, and a swishing tail. But its muscles were lean and thick, its posture was human, it had teeth and claws that looked sharp as razors, and its fur seemed to perfectly blend into its surroundings making it look as though the forest itself had just tried to carve Aaron a new face.
“Leave,” the thing said in a throaty rasp that sounded more like it had choked the word out.
“Aaron,” Jackal said, stepping back a few paces.
“Leave?” Aaron’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I thought you said these guys would kill us on sight.” And yet this one was offering them a chance.
“Now!” it said, swiping at the air once more.
A wicked grin flashed across Aaron’s face. He felt his muscles tense, his heart quicken, and his blood pump hard in his veins. The smell coming off the strange cat-man creature was intoxicating; a powerful, challenging musk that smelt like the mountain itself, if the mountain wer
e covered in bristly feline hair.
“Aaron, you don’t want to—” Jackal started to say, but it was too late.
Swift as air, Aaron charged at his opponent as his body began the slow process of transformation. His muscles tensed and contracted, bones swapped places, nails and teeth elongated, skin tightened and hardened, and a thin layer of fur started to grow all over his body. But he wasn’t the beast wolf he had been that, the night of the moonfire—the night when Amber set a building ablaze with silver flames No. He was somewhere in between. Caught in a kind of fight-ready half-form Jackal said only Aaron’s blood could achieve.
Aaron cocked an arm and swung it, palm open, but the cougar was ready for him. The cougar twirled to the left and Aaron swiped at air, so Aaron put his right leg down to stop his motion, pivoted, swiped again, but the cougar had anticipated the move and had had jumped out of reach.
“Aaron, no!” Jackal said, but Aaron couldn’t hear her. Wouldn’t hear her. This was his fight, not hers.
He snarled and lunged at the cougar, but the tricky beast kicked a clod of dirt into Aaron’s eyes that sent him staggering shoulder-first into a tree. Aaron saw stars after the impact and struggled to turn around, but he wasn’t fast enough. The cougar lashed out from the darkness with his razor claws and sliced Aaron’s exposed side open sending a spray of hot blood into the air.
Aaron shrieked from the pain! He pushed himself off the tree and brought his arm up to block another deadly attack. This time he blocked the arm and grabbed it, and the success came with a moment of euphoric satisfaction. His heart was hammering in his chest, now. Pain, anger, and elation all mixed inside of him to create a simmering broth that filled him with a kind of immense power and drive; the drive to survive, to succeed—to win.
He threw his free fist into the cougar’s face and connected with its jaw. The hit sent a loud crack through the forest followed by a groan of pain from the receiver. Then Aaron saw Jackal move in from the side, only she wasn’t in her human form; she was a wolf. He knew it was her even though he had never seen her black coat. It was her distinctive scent that gave her away. Aaron didn’t have to question it to believe.
Jackal bit into the cougar’s thigh and the flesh broke under her jaw; flesh and bone and muscle. The cougar cried out and kicked but Jackal was already out of reach. Aaron, who still had a hold of the cougar’s arm after the block, went in for another punch but the cougar was too fast. It wrenched free from Aaron’s grip, spun away from Aaron’s blow, and struck out with its own razor claws catching Aaron across the chest.
Aaron staggered back, roared, and then his vision started to go.
The world was swimming; receding and approaching, receding and approaching. Aaron was in motion, but he couldn’t control his movements. He could see the landscape moving before him; his nose was low to the ground and he was running through the woods at a downward angle, though he couldn’t see where he was going. Trees and dead leaves were darting past him, his big, hulking body dodging some of the larger obstacles while crashing through others.
In the conscious part of his mind Aaron knew that he had changed shape again, and in this new shape Aaron was no longer in control; his body given over to a beast possessed of a primal instinct Aaron could never possibly hope to comprehend. It was like he was being held beneath the surface of a pool of blood against his will. He could still see if he opened his eyes, but he was so busy screaming that he could barely see the world through the bubbles.
Receding and approaching. Receding and approaching.
The world was a blurry, red film reel of pine and dirt and kicked up leaves, whizzing past him at full speed. All Aaron could do was endure the ride and hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Escape, hold on, survive. Find safety. Escape. Survive.
Hold on.
CHAPTER 6
Aaron gasped into consciousness and sucked in a breath of air. The pain came rushing at him in a bright flash which subsided only after a few moments of steady breathing. His entire body was a dull throb punctuated by bright, sharp pains in his chest and arms and shoulders and back. He could smell the blood in the air—his own blood—mixing with the heady aroma of wet dirt, trees, and animal droppings.
Somewhere nearby, a stream rolled down the mountain. Aaron could almost hear the river’s healing and refreshing properties calling to him. He had gotten so close, but he hadn’t quite made it inside. It seemed to him as though he had run—or tumbled—toward the nearest water source and propped himself up against a sturdy tree instead of dipping his battered and torn body into it.
But why?
A cold breeze sailed down from the mountain and brushed against Aaron’s arm. It screamed in pain and Aaron winced, clenched his jaw, and breathed through the moment until the pain subsided; but it didn’t subside. The wound was deep and harsh; four diagonal slashes that had torn open skin and muscle alike. He had another wound on his side that he couldn’t quite see from the angle he was in, but he was sure it too was deep, nasty, and probably bleeding too.
Aaron shifted his weight to try and see it but groaned from the pain.
“Schhh,” said a voice. Jackal’s voice. “Don’t move.”
She must have been a hallucination because Aaron hadn’t heard nor seen her until now and she was still wearing clothes. Hadn’t she shapeshifted? But whether she was real or not, he was grateful to be seeing a familiar face. “I’m fine,” Aaron said, putting up a strong front.
“Bullshit you’re fine,” she said, kneeling by Aaron’s wounded side and inspecting the damage. She pressed her lips together. “He got you good.”
“A scratch.” A cocky smile broke across Aaron’s lips, but Jackal didn’t smile.
“You shouldn’t have gone for him blind like that. He could have killed you, and judging by the damage he’s done he may have killed you already.”
Aaron worked through the pain to roll onto his good side, dropping to his shoulder with a grunt. He breathed deep through his nose and exhaled through his mouth, in and out, in and out, as he pulled his body toward the stream. Jackal helped, deftly jumping over him and tugging him the rest of the way toward the water. Once there, Aaron dipped his hand into the cool stream and brought a sip of water to his mouth.
Jackal went around to Aaron’s hurt side again, washed her hands in the stream, and rubbed icy cold water into Aaron’s wound. He let out a grunt, held his breath, and clenched his good fist hard around a clod of dirt, but the pain became easy as the moment passed and Aaron’s breathing returned to normal.
“Where did he go?” Aaron asked, washing his face with the cold water from the rolling river. “What happened back there?”
“You got hurt so you bolted. I hurt him too so he bolted,” she said with a shrug. “But he’ll be slow. I tore his hamstring out.”
“So we can catch him.”
“We? You need to heal.”
“No,” Aaron said, cringing from the strength with which he said it. “We have to go after him and get him back.”
Jackal removed her soothing hands from the wound on Aaron’s arm and turned him onto his back, arching over him to begin her work on the second wound he had taken. She had to peel pieces of his tattered shirt from off his chest in order to get a good look at it, but she seemed to let go of the breath she had held in her lungs when she saw the state of his skin. Again she dipped her hands into the cold water and Aaron braced himself for her touch.
Her hands may as well have been dipped in fire.
Aaron had to bite down on his knuckle to stifle the groan that wanted to explode out of him as Jackal washed the blood and the dirt from the wound. One by one she picked out loose twigs and leaves that had gotten caught in the tangle of flesh, muscle, and ripped up fabric. The wound was a mess but it didn’t stink of infection, and his skin was quickly numbing.
“How is it?” she asked.
“You tell me,” he said, letting go of his knuckle.
“You’ll live, but he’s going to heal up way before you do.
”
“Do you know where he went?”
Jackal straightened her back and sat on her knees next to Aaron, occasionally running cold wet hands over his chest and abdomen to soothe the bruises and minor cuts she could see. “I do,” she said. “I know where he is right now.”
“How?”
“I tasted his blood.”
“So where is he?”
She pointed north, or to what Aaron thought north was. “About a mile that way licking his wounds. My teeth aren’t as sharp as his claws, but I cut him deep too. Lesson one; fight the beast with the beast. If you’d have let the beast wolf out his claws may not have cut so deep.”
“I did let it out and I ended up running away.”
“You didn’t let it out; the beast wolf clawed its way out because it didn’t want you to get it killed. You shouldn’t fight it. You need to see eye to eye with it, be one with it, otherwise you won’t survive.”
Aaron’s skin came alive as her wet hand crawled over the tangle of pubic hair above his abdomen and belly button. Her fingers stopped when they met the waist band of his jeans, which had been almost totally ripped apart during his transformation. He looked up at her, then, and found her eyes exploring the landscape of his long, muscular body.
“Jackal,” he said.
She turned to him and lowered her head. Her hair came first, tickling his lips and chin as she closed the distance between their faces. His heart began to thump fast as, in an instant, images of Amber’s fiery copper hair, freckled skin, and eyes like spring grass came bounding forth as if to put up a wall against Jackal’s advance.
“No,” he said, a whisper of a protest. “I’ve got a girl.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her full lips so close now he could feel her breath on him, “I won’t tell her if you don’t.”
It took all of his strength, but Aaron grabbed Jackal by the shoulders—both shoulders—and repeated “No.”
Jackal’s eyes widened. She swallowed hard and stared at him, blinking. Then her cheeks flushed bright red.