Chapter Thirty-Three
Scott
When Harley woke from his nightmare, oddly insistent that the monster haunting his sleep was real, my reactive response was to say show me.
As we'd worked our way through the thickening trees, the air took on a heavy mist that told of a body of water somewhere in the vicinity and I realized that we were in the setting from Harley's nightmares. The deeper we went into the dense forest, the more familiar it became until Harley stopped suddenly, his sharp eyes trained on the shadows in the distance.
"There." The terror in Harley's whispered words made my gut clench. "It happened there."
I followed his gaze and was able to make out the outline of a building through the fog. I wondered briefly if we were still on Blue Ridge land, but the thought was pushed to the background when Harley started to back away, his already dangerously high anxiety level spiking.
My attention was squarely focused on Harley when a fetid odor began to fill the air around us. An odd combination of sulfur, acetone, and another, stronger chemical overtone that I couldn't identify assaulted my nose and crept into my mouth to burn my throat.
"They know that we're here."
Before I could press my terrified Omega for clarification, a massive beast stumbled from the brush, snorting and bellowing as it lumbered toward us, arms waving and massive claws grasping at nothing.
I released my grip on Harley's arm, shoving him behind me so hard that I heard him stumble as I tried to focus my eyes through the airborne mist. My brain kicked into overtime as I fought to determine what the fuck I was looking at.
The body seemed to be human, nearly as tall as I and with shoulders that were easily twice as wide and stout, muscular legs. When the legs tapered down to cloven hooves, the resemblance ended. My horrified eyes traveled back up the creature's body, noting the absence of any visible genitalia, and instead seeing thick scars crisscrossing both the groin and grotesquely over-muscled chest.
I had to fight back a wave of revulsion when I arrived at the massive head that seemed to sit squarely on the hulking shoulders with no evidence of a neck. The head was oddly oversized and I was torn between whether it was the head of a bull or a wild boar, but eventually settled on the boar when it closed enough of the distance between us for me to see the snout crusted with dried blood set beneath tiny black eyes that were dull and flat.
Dead eyes in a living animal.
Nothing about the horrifying chimera in front of me made sense. Without taking my eyes off the still-approaching monster, I pinched my thigh hard enough to sting.
Nightmarish or not, there was no doubt that I was awake.
"Scott!" Harley hissed from behind me. "We have to run."
"No, baby." I disagreed softly. "I can't. I don't know what this thing is, but I'm pretty sure it’s a threat. I can't just run away. You get back to Levi, okay? Tell him to get Rafael's crew up here ASAP."
I could feel Harley's hesitation and, with the threat only a dozen yards away and still closing in, I sighed and called on my Alpha voice. "Now, Harley! Go!"
Relief barreled through me when the sounds of retreat came from behind me and I turned my focus back to the current threat.
Without knowing what, exactly, I was staring down, I wasn't sure which of my forms had the best chance of defeating it.
My human had better dexterity, clearer reasoning skills, and the ability to use a weapon – assuming I could find one – whereas my wolf was faster, stronger, less concerned with the damage it inflicted, and, of course, came pre-loaded with its own formidable arsenal of razor-sharp claws and vicious teeth.
"What are you?" I asked out loud, deciding to take a shot at diplomacy no matter how absurd the thought was.
The monster stopped in its tracks and tilted its head, staring at me in confusion.
Taking advantage of its hesitation, I stepped to the side and began to creep in the opposite direction from the one that Harley would be taking back to Levi, hoping to lead the beast back into the deeper woods and away from my Omega.
A sharp whistle pierced the air and the hog-like man shook off his stupor, snorting a spray of blood from his snout as he bellowed in anger and charged me. Recognizing that it was too late for me to shift, I grabbed a branch from the forest floor and hefted it to my shoulder. I swung and the branch connected solidly with the side of the creatures massive head, the recoil making me grunt as pain radiated from the still-healing wound in my back. The beast dropped to its knees before toppling over in slow motion.
I held my position, club raised, but other than a single body twitch, it didn't move. Exhaling sharply, I moved away and leaned against a tree, wincing when the rough bark pushed the fabric against the wound that I'd clearly reopened…again.
I could smell the blood dripping down my back and dropped the branch in favor of removing my shirt to try and fashion a makeshift bandage before starting my trip back to meet up with Harley. I was already thinking ahead to my meeting with Zade and Rafael when they arrived, trying to decide if I needed to secure the corpse or if it would be undisturbed until they arrived and so on. My distraction proved to be my undoing when I noticed that the odor in the air had changed again, the smell of fresh blood muted by the now familiar nose-curling chemical cocktail.
I barely had time to register that I was no longer alone when I was struck from behind and pinned to the ground, the rich, fertile smell of the rotting leaf litter clogging my nostrils as my flesh was ripped and torn by an unseen adversary. I called my wolf forward but a sudden impact knocked the weight of my attacker off of me before my transition began.
Rolling over, I was met with a sight that I hadn't been sure that I would ever see again. The shimmering mahogany fur of Harley's wolf was slick with blood as he pinned a second creature to the ground, his brilliant white fangs glinting in the darkness as he dismantled the creature, piece by shredded, blood-soaked piece.
Rising to my feet, I stumbled over to pull him off the mutilated corpse. He fought me for the briefest moment until I spoke. "It's okay, Harley. I've got you, baby. You killed it. We're safe."
Deep in my mind, I heard my Omega for the first time since we'd been relocated. The thought was pained, horrified, and full of self-loathing.
I remember. Gods help me, I remember.
I staggered several feet from the second body and dropped down to my butt, cradling the bloody wolf in my arms as he shuddered and whimpered, tears running down my cheeks as I tried to offer some small measure of comfort to the broken Omega that couldn't get close enough to me.
When the search party came upon us hours later, that was exactly how they found us.