Page 17 of In Your Eyes
The fate of my pack rested with me. No matter what happened in that ring, walking away from the challenge and abandoning my pack was not an option. My father raised me with honor.
“Yes,” I said, trying to put every ounce of strength I didn’t have into my voice.
My mother cried out, her voice anguished, but she didn’t argue.
“Mom,” I said. “You don’t need to stay.”
“I’m staying.” Her eyes were red, her face was wet, but her voice was firm.
I suddenly flashed back to her words over the years, explaining that despite not being an Alpha herself, she understood the responsibilities we had. For the first time, I grasped the truth of her statement. Her husband’s body was not yet cold, and still she stood and waited for her eldest son to walk into battle.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my gaze locked with hers.
A soft nod was the only response she was capable of giving me, but I knew she understood. Being the only person present with complete knowledge of my shifting issue, she was the only one who truly grasped what was about to happen.
“Enter the ring in your wolf forms and wait for my command,” the council member said. “You will continue the battle just as it ended—with fifty seconds left. I will notify you at the thirty-second mark and again when the time ends.”
I had less than a minute as a wolf to kill Dirk. After that, I silently prayed my body would heel to my command for the first time in years and shift. Otherwise, I would be disqualified and all would be lost.
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and then began to methodically remove my clothing. I heard Dirk grumbling but I ignored him and turned my focus inward, using all the failed strategies I’d tried over the past few years to control my shift. When I was finally undressed, I folded my things, stacked them neatly, and tucked them behind a nearby tree. Then I dropped to the ground and let my wolf free.
After so long being caged, it felt wonderful to be in my wolf skin. But with the pain in my heart and the fear in my gut, I couldn’t revel in it. Instead, I walked into the ring and waited for the council member to give me permission to rip out the throat of the man who had taken my father from me.
For a moment, I thought I would defeat Dirk without satisfying my need for vengeance. Rather than shift when he was told, Dirk continued arguing with the council member, insisting he had already won the challenge and both packs were his. But when he was told in no uncertain terms that he was wrong, that the rules had been written for generations, and that he would be disqualified if he didn’t step into the ring, Dirk finally complied.
Time moved in slow motion after that.
Dirk lowered his bruised and battered body to the ground and took his wolf form.
An image of Korban Keller’s white wolf shot into my brain, and I thought of how different they looked from one another. Dirk had none of Korban’s beauty or grace. Plus their eyes—Dirk didn’t have those mesmerizing navy eyes.
The council member shouted for us to begin.
Dirk turned tail and ran.
I bared my teeth and pounced, landing exactly where I’d aimed—on top of the shifter I planned to kill.
Dirk whined and wriggled, trying to get free.
I bit his back, his shoulders, his nape, trying to reach around his body to his throat and reveling in the coppery taste filling my mouth as I gouged and wounded him.
There was shouting and chaos all around me, demands that we shift back to our human forms. I ignored them at first, but when Dirk somehow managed to take his human skin and lay beneath me with rips over most of his body, I tried to shift.
“Ten more seconds,” the council member yelled, and even through the fog, I knew that was an extra warning, one to which I wasn’t entitled. “You must shift or be disqualified, Samuel!”
But I couldn’t shift. No matter how hard I tried, my wolf wouldn’t let go. And when time ran out, I was suddenly under attack, not by the unconscious man beneath me, but by his witnesses. They had the right, I knew, to keep me away from their Alpha. The challenge was over. I had failed.
With my entire being drenched in sorrow and shame, I fought my way free of the Miancarem shifters surrounding me and ran into the woods. I didn’t know where I was going. It didn’t matter. I had failed the challenge, failed my father, and failed my pack.
My howl echoed off the trees as I did the only thing I could. I ran.
Chapter 6
ALTHOUGHIwas more in touch with my base instincts as an animal than I was as a man, I still had the same memories, the same intellect, and the same knowledge. So as I raced through the woods, I was keenly aware of my loss and my failure. A part of me knew I had to shift back eventually, because my mother would be worried and she’d need me to be strong for her and the rest of the family. But I doubted that would be possible, doubted I’d be able to control my shift enough to take my human form.
Deep down, I was grateful. Maybe if I stayed in my wolf form long enough, everyone would forget about me and I could forget about them, forget about my human half, forget about seeing my father’s blood spill on the forest floor. With my birthright to become Alpha of the Yafenack pack gone, I could live out my days in my animal form doing what came so naturally and easily instead of suffering through the discomfort that inevitably came when I tried to fit in with other people.
Unable to think clearly enough to choose a destination, I wandered aimlessly and lost track of time. I don’t know where I was or the exact hour, but the orange glow of the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon when I felt a call, an urge, a need to move in a certain direction. Too tired to resist it, I followed my gut and walked through the trees and brush, over a few hills and valleys, and before I knew it, I started recognizing things—scents at first, and then the landscape.
