Page 14 of Untamed

Goddess, help me. Holding my hand over my mouth and nose, I drop to my knees and crawl inside. I need my supplies. Food, clothing, my tools. Everything I own is in this inferno.

I go straight, hardly able to see through the smoke. As I grab the picnic quilt from the small shelf by the door, it's boiling in here. Mama and I would take it out to the meadow, sometimes.

Mama. Where is Mama? Crawling forward, the quilt slung over my head; I hit dead flesh a moment after I feel the slick wetness of blood under my palms. I force my hands to seek, my watering eyes to see. Father. This corpse is Father.

A crash from the back of the cabin makes a scream catch in my throat. The smoke chokes me, making me cough and choke even more. I reach out, blindly, for Mama, but I'm too far away.

The fire is growing closer. The cabin creaks and groans under the unrelenting flames devouring it.

I can't stay here.

Wrapping the blanket around me tightly, I crawl backward. The smoke has blinded me. All I can do is go by memory. I came straight through the door, just around the table. I back up the same way until I've crawled to the door.

In relief, I roll outside. Sitting by the front door, I see my Father's pack. Grabbing it and the quilt, I half-crawl, half-stumble to the copse of cedar trees before collapsing. Blinking the tears from my eyes, still coughing and choking, I settle between two trees, the roots shielding my quaking body as I watch my home, with my Mama, burn to ash.

5 - The River

Inuit

My footsteps are heavier than they should be as I trudge into the house. I already miss Penny, and she's been gone for all of three hours. As I walked down Main Street early this morning, I could feel eyes watching, judging. They all think I'll leave to chase after Penny. They're afraid. Afraid that yet another RustClaw alphason has fallen in love with a female who isn't his mate.

"Sarj," I greet my brother quietly.

He just grunts, his eyes staring at the ceiling with a vacant expression. His arms are folded under his head. His legs stretched out on his bed. My old bed is on the other side of the room, still made up with dark blue sheets as if I never left.

I moved out of the ranch house last year. We don't have a packhouse in RustClaw. Alpha Jax turned his old home, the closest thing we had to a packhouse, into a sort of orphanage-slash-halfway house for wolves in need. I moved into it last year, just to be closer to the pack.

I hate it there. There's no privacy, no way to breathe free in that place. Our former Alpha, Macon, offered me his mother's home in the woods after Luna Gloria passed away. It was decked out like a little old lady's house, but it's secluded, secreted away deep on the edge of our territory near the mountains. An excellent place to go to escape.

So what if I have too many lace doilies and my curtains are pink and frilled? Who am I trying to impress, the mate I can't find?

I rub my hand over my face. Patience, dumbass, I tell myself.

"How was school today?" I try again.

Cold eyes look at me. "It fucking sucked, Alphason," he sneers at my title a little.

I clench my jaw to keep the canines in my mouth instead of sinking into my little brother's stubborn face. "Why? What happened today?"

"My ex-girlfriend flirted with her mate right in front of me," he says bluntly. "As fucking usual. Any more questions?"

My fists clench at my sides. "I can kill them," I offer before fully thinking it through. My words come straight from that dark, desolate place that reminds me of losing my family so long ago.

Sarj's dark blue eyes fill with tears before he slams his pillow over his face. It doesn't muffle the sob. The sound breaks my heart. Not so long ago, those same wolves were Sarj's friends.

"Sorry!" I rush out. "Fuck!" I just can't believe those little shits. "Don't they know what can happen, saying that shit?" You'd think that Sarg being part of the alpha family would protect him, but instead, it seems that he gets bullied worse.

"They know they can get away with it because they're just 'pups,'" Sarj mumbles from under the pillow.

I shift on my feet, agitated beyond belief. Sarj was seeing this punk-ass older female, Micky, but when Micky shifted, she found her mate. That's some predictable shit, but it shouldn't have been an issue. The only problem is that Micky turned nasty on Sarj, most likely because her mate was hurt and upset at her 'dating' a male. I warned my little brother, but what fourteen-year-old listens?

I sound like an old-ass geezer, but fuck, this is my little brother.

In this pack, you'd think wolves would be a little smarter. Then again, they're just teenagers. Not exactly known for understanding the consequences of their decisions.

The worst part is that Sarj won't easily find his mate, just like me. Most wolves find their mates in their own packs, but RustClaw isn't even our pack, is it? I think that's why he doesn't listen to me when I tell him to wait for his mate.

He's been depressed and agitated for months, even before all this bullshit with Micky. He'll be fifteen in just a month. His wolf is growing stronger. I just hope that he finds his mate when he shifts for the first time. It won't be long.

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