Into Their Woods (The Eerie, #1)(91)
I move closer to the kind boy, drawn to him in a way I can’t explain but feel on a visceral level. I want to reach out and tap him on the shoulder, force him to turn to me so I can see his face—a face, I can feel in my gut, I’ll know instantly.
“B, can you take us out hunting?” another boy asks the cruel kid, who rolls his eyes.
Before he can answer though, wails sound off from somewhere outside the metal walls of the building. I look around, the screams and cries growing louder with each passing second. A door crashes open, the boom of metal striking metal making me jump. It’s so loud that it almost drowns out the surprised cries some of the children make.
A massive man storms in, his thickly muscled arms holding a woman who’s doing everything she can to get away. His greasy hair clings to his head, and his thick brows are drawn in anger. Compared to him, the woman is tiny, clothed in little more than dirty rags. A clump of her hair is missing from her head, and a trickle of blood is visible on her neck.
“You will fucking submit,” the man bellows in her face, and she screams something unintelligible back.
“Where is she, you bastard?” the woman snarls, and the man tosses her away from him. She flies through the air, crashing against the metal wall of the warehouse, and the collision reverberates through the entire building.
“Mommy!” a tiny voice cries out, and then little feet are pattering across the concrete floor to get to the groaning woman as she tries to push herself up from the ground.
The vision blurs for a second, then suddenly I’m the one moving closer to the hurt woman, and when I look down, the tiny feet and the child’s body belong to me.
The big man roars in outrage, but I don’t pay the fury radiating off him any attention, my sole focus on getting to the woman on the ground. Her head snaps up and a familiar blue-green gaze fixes on me, a gaze I would know anywhere despite how long it’s been since I last saw it.
My mother.
Her battered face hardens with determination, and her eyes start to glow. Black veins crawl up her neck, and a tear spills down her cheek. She opens her mouth, and with every ounce of strength she has left, she screams, “RUN!”
I slide to a stop as a brown wolf rips free from her body just in time to intercept the colossal gray wolf that starts viciously attacking her.
I scream as I watch them tear each other apart, the sound of my fear and pain ricocheting all around me until I snap out of the memory as brutally as I was sucked into it.
I gasp, alarm and terror spilling out of me as I slam my hands to my chest and breathe through the fear. I blink, and I’m back sitting at a table with the alpha and luna, the guys, and their family—only now they’re all staring at me with concern.
Ellery, Gannon, Ruger, and Perth are instantly crouched around me, guarding and protecting me. If only they could shield me from this.
I don’t even know what to think.
“What happened?” Ellery presses, threading his fingers through my hair and pulling my focus to him. “Breathe, baby, just breathe,” he encourages as I pant through my shock and outrage.
Our gazes connect and I swallow past the lump of astonishment in my throat. “My mom was a wolf,” I rasp, and emotion starts to sting my eyes. “So was my dad,” I whimper, and I feel Ruger, Perth, and Gannon put their hands on and around me as though they’re trying to lend me their strength. “I saw him attack her. She must have gotten away somehow and took me and ran. I think she was hiding me…from him.”
26
NOAH
It’s colder in Howling Rapids than it has been since the day I stumbled into this unexpectedly deceptive eerie town. The slice of sky I can see between the blazing red maples is the muted gray that signals an impending snow storm. As if that hailstorm a few days ago wasn’t enough bad weather. Everything around me feels as though it’s holding its breath in anticipation of the first flakes. The air is crisp with a slight bite to it that feels good against my anxious, heated skin.
I’m about to shift into a wolf for the first time.
I bring my arms up and hug them to myself for a moment, though the puffy jacket I’m wearing kinda impedes my ability to self-soothe. Not that there’s really any possibility of tamping down on the anxiety churning my breakfast into a bad idea right now. I feel like I’m dangling over a boiling ocean, about to be dropped into the bubbling sea without so much as a life preserver.
Today I’m going to meet my wolf.
I pull in a deep stinging breath, the ground beneath my boots crunching with each step as I follow Perth along a path deeper into the woods. A light blanket of frost kisses the world all around me, and I start to question if shifting in this freezing weather is wise.
Maybe I can convince Perth to do this another day?
“Stop lollygagging and trying to come up with excuses to get out of this,” Perth calls over his shoulder, the same annoying smile that greeted me first thing this morning still spread across his face. Despite the weather, he’s wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, like this cold doesn’t bother him at all.
“Crap, was I projecting again?” I ask, stumbling over a frozen root and then righting myself. I’ve been trying to get better about controlling my thoughts. For the most part, I think I’ve got it down, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m leaking like a sieve right now. I’ve got bigger problems to worry about.