Sasha had no idea where she was going. She just drove, tearing through the tiny downtown area of Tall Tree, no stopping for the few stop signs she passed, as always hardly anyone else was out on the road.

The window was still down, the chilly air whipping at her hair, hurting her face, but she didn’t dare slow down to roll it up, and so she heard the roar of the motorcycle before she saw it crest a hill behind her and come speeding up to her.

Kurt was on the bike, now dressed in jeans and his leather jacket, his hair whipping out behind him as he rode. 

Sasha pushed the gas pedal down as far as it would go, but the motorcycle caught up with the station wagon easily. Kurt came up beside her, and he reached through the open window, his fingers gripping at Sasha’s hair.

“No!” she screamed, and she jerked the wheel sideways, forcing Kurt to back off. Then he gunned the engine again, but she was ready for him, and she jerked her wheel over once more. As soon as Kurt had gunned the engine on his motorcycle he had hit the brakes, leaving Sasha to swerve on the road. She tried to correct herself, but swung the wheel too far back, and then the station wagon was sliding off the road.  It caught on the dirt and rolled sickeningly, once, twice, and three times, before it slammed into a tree. Kurt stopped and couldn’t help but smile.

 

Hunter was racing home, leaving the SUV and his friends behind. His cell phone buzzed, and he was relieved to see it was Sasha.

“Hello?” he said as soon as he put the phone to his ear.

“I have something you want,” Kurt said, making Hunter's blood run cold.

“If you hurt her,” Hunter began, but the other man cut him off.

“Oh, I’ve already hurt her. The question is, does she need to die?”

“Damn you, Kurt, why are you doing this?”

“Come to the firepit. We’ll talk. Come alone.”

And then the line went dead.

The fire pit was where the pack often met, it was in the middle of the woods along a dusty dirt trail. Hunter turned onto a new road and raced for his destination.

The sky was beginning to grow dark when Hunter reached the firepit. The pit itself was rimmed in heavy gray stones, right in the center of a large clearing. Hunter could see Kurt, human and dressed, and Sasha, tied up and on the ground next to him.
“Far enough I think!” Kurt said, holding his hand up to stop Hunter. Hunter took another step, and then Kurt pulled a handgun from his jeans and pointed it at Sasha, forcing the other man to stop.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to die. I want to take this pack in the direction it needs to go. I don’t care about this human slut. You die, and I let her go.”

“I don’t believe you,” Hunter said.

Kurt laughed. “I guess I wouldn’t either. No, I probably will kill this bitch. Here’s the thing, I never wanted this to turn out this way. We were family. I’m all about the pack. I just want the pack to go the way we need to go. We’re facing extinction if we don’t change. You know what’s coming.”

Hunter was shaking his head. “We don’t know that it’s coming. You only think you do.”

“And what if I’m right? What if I’m right and we aren’t prepared for it? Don’t you see I’m trying to make us survive.”

Sasha was awake at Kurt’s feet. She could hear everything they were saying, but she had no idea what any of it meant.

“So I just let you kill me, and then kill her?”

“That’s what I would like,” Kurt said.

“Have you no honor?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and laughed. “Don’t start with honor. I have the drive to survive. That’s what I have.”

Hunter glanced down a Sasha. She had been waiting for him to look at her, and now she winked. Hunter gave her a half nod, even less so Kurt wouldn’t see, and then she was moving, shifting to throw her bound legs upwards, knocking the gun away from Kurt.

“You bitch!” he yelled as the gun flew away, and he looked down, making a mistake. He took his eyes off of Hunter, and Hunter made him pay. One step forward, and Hunter was still a man, two and he was a wolf, his clothes ripping and trailing behind him. Kurt was smart though and knew the attack was coming, he knew he had messed up, and he began to change.

Hunter hit him just as he finished, and the two wolves went spiraling end over end. The fight was vicious, and neither wolf had an advantage. Hunter bit at Kurt’s flank, drawing blood, but Kurt just turned and sank his teeth into the side of Hunter’s neck.

Neither wolf could keep the furious pace up for long, and Hunter felt himself begin to fade. Whoever tired quicker would be the loser, and Hunter was sure it would be him. He only had one thing he could do, one thing he could try, a hail mary, something he wasn’t even sure he believed in.

Some shifters, it had been said, had another form. A further form, something bigger, something stronger. Hunter pushed his mind, pushed himself to the limit, begged the form to come. For a moment, he was sure he had failed, and Kurt took advantage of his lapse in concentration, and he had leaped upon Hunter and was ready to tear his throat out.

But then it happened. That ancient magic made itself known to Hunter, and he began to shift further. He got bigger. He threw Kurt aside and stood. He was on his hind legs, his front legs growing in size, the paws becoming hands.

Sasha watched this, shocked. Hunter looked less like an overly large run-of-the-mill wolf, and more like a horrific werewolf from a bad B movie.

Kurt seemed unsure of what to do. He didn’t attack, he didn’t run. Not at first.

Hunter moved forward. Kurt threw caution to the wind and met him.

Hunter grabbed his foe with both hands, one of Kurt’s front legs in one hand, and one of his rear legs in the other. He pulled, stretching the smaller wolf to the limit, and he bent his head. Hunter’s long jaws snapped on the soft flesh of Kurt’s stomach, and when he pulled his head back, innards came with it. Blood sprayed down to the ground. Hunter felt it, hot and sour, in his mouth.

Kurt was howling, the pain unbearable. As much pain, as much trouble as Kurt had unleashed against the pack, Hunter was no sadist. He finished Kurt off quickly, pulling with his arms, ripping Kurt in half. The scream which had been issuing from Kurt’s wolf mouth was cut suddenly and terribly short. He tossed the two halves of his enemy away, and then, exhausted to a point he never had been before, he changed back into a human.

He crawled to Sasha, helped free her. She went and found his shredded clothing and helped him dress. And then, together, arm around one another, they made their way back to his truck.