Awakening (2 book series)
Awakening – Rejected Mate Chapter 75

The whizzing whistle of air that skids past my left ear and physically inflicts a searing pain with the high pitch velocity it passes me with, makes me jump sideways and crash into bushes as I run at speed. I almost swallow my own tongue and my stomach lurches, about jumps out of my body with the scare. It gives me a near heart attack, and I scramble in stinging, scratching bushes to fight my way back out. I get caught up in thorn heavy vines and trip back over my own muddled legs.

The fall makes me tumble and roll into hedge way, knocking my shoulder on rocks and stops my scrambling for a second. I take a moment to look back at the surging sunlit bright area I left behind, gasping as I see the pouring of black dressed men coming from some ground level hatch near the main door, like a concealed lid lifted from the gravel, and four maybe five bodies appear on the ground above. There are already two outside the gates and both are facing this way, looking intensely into the wood where I ran, and pointing big a's guns with sights trained in here.

I don't know what flew past me, I don't think I want to know, and my doubt that I wasn't in any kind of danger, dies an instant death. The blood draining from my body so I turn cold and statue like as it sinks in, they are definitely looking for me. I don't stop to wait for even a blink longer, terror once again ripping through me at speed and activating my run like shit button. They all face this way and come thundering after me as soon as they see the rustle of the bushes I dart from.

Gifts that are remarkable or not, I can smell them from here, wolves, and they are all armed. A little patrol of male wolves in black uniforms and they're clearly coming at me. I don't care who you are, what story you're in, that never bodes well in any situation and I don't think they're trying to invite me in for coffee and cake. I've obviously stumbled across something I shouldn't have.

Pure instinct takes over and the urge to turn is almost killing me with the rate my human body is pounding itself to shreds with sheer adrenalin. I run, I trip, I fall, and I know that human form is only slowing me down and making it more likely they catch up with me. I know only too well that wolves will not be kind and show me mercy at being caught in their lands. I have one set of clothes... and that's it.

I need to think about survival now, even if that means ending up naked, and backpack less, miles further into the undergrowth. I just need to replace another way to gather the things I need later and curse myself stupid for ever venturing this way, near this dammed building. It's obviously not an inconspicuous power station. Those men were guards, and whatever they're guarding, is important enough to carry weapons and stay in the multiples.

I'm so god damn stupid. Fuck you, Sierra, and your damn dreams and pushing me East. Fuck the fates. Fuck Colton for making me leave the mountain and fuck Juan for being the root of all my woes and how shitty my life has been for a decade. This is all his fault! I turn. My inner wolf almost howling with an intense release, glad to be free finally. Head down, clothes shredding pitifully as I leave the last of my worldly possessions in the dirt and run like the wind. Nothing else that I can do about it now, and they are in fast pursuit.

I fall, wedging between trees that are too close to get through and break free noisily with sheer strength and will power. Wood splintering, branches crackling, but being silent is no longer my concern as the noise of their pursuit out sounds mine. I can feel them coming, hear them, smell them, I can even feel their heart beats synching with mine as scent follows me close on my heels.

Panic spreads through my veins and I hope that angry numb I gained with the bear, kicks in soon, or else I'm screwed. I can't even stop to try and use any sort of gift right now, when I don't even know how. The last few days of trying to conjure it up proved futile. I'm scared right now, not angry, and I have no hope in hell of conjuring any other feeling.

Something else whizzes over my head, like a small shooting tunnel of air that makes my hair tingle and pull in its passing. It shoots directly into the tree several feet in front of me, and stabs viciously into the trunk, standing proud and straight when it comes to an instant halt. I only catch sight of it for a split second, a clear tube, filled with watery liquid, a red feather tail, embedded deeply in the rough wooden skin of the poor tree. It catches me eye, draws my attention, and before I can run past it while still trying to figure out what it is, something fires into my spine insanely stab-like, right between my shoulder blades with a stinging pain so intense it makes me howl involuntarily. A loud wailing noise that hurts my own ears.

The impact is hard, the pain unexpected, and the combination makes me trip and crash face first into the branches and rocks on the ground I'm crossing at speed. I roll, hitting the rough floor of the forest like a dead weight and skid ungracefully, pulling debris and dried leaves with me, kicking up a cloud of dust and choking on it, across a tiny clearing knocking whatever was sticking in my back off as I do so. I feel it being yanked out with a stomach-churning tug.

I land on my face, legs sprawled as my body betrays me and turns back to human form without my say so, and my eyes focus on the tiny thing only feet on front of me. Dazed, trying to catch my breath as this unearthly warm and strange sensation pours through me from the connect spot in the center of my back.

It's the same as what hit the tree. A clear tube, only empty this time, with a red brush tail, only now I can see the tip and its long, silver, extremely pointy, and looks a lot like a dart for taking large animals down. I've seen them on African game reserve documentaries. The needle is thick and huge, so no wonder it felt like something stabbed me with a big pointy object; they literally did... at bullet speed. I let out a groan and try to roll and move, aware that an empty tube suggests the contents are inside of me. I attempt to get up, but my limbs give out like useless heavy weights of flesh with no control, and my vision begins to spin. My head turning woozy as everything around me sways crazily, like I just got on the deck of a boat amid a rolling storm.

I don't like this, and I can feel the thundering of feet fast approaching me as wolves' growls turn to human voices. I can make them out ever so slightly, coming at me on the gentle breeze of the rustling trees as silence begins to take over. My hearing and head fading out despite trying to fight it.

"I hit her... she's to the left. Split up and spread out in case we need to double dose her."

I can't grasp anything as my hands claw at the dirty muck strewn ground below me, desperate to keep trying to run. As futile as I know it is, something in me is refusing to give up the fight and urging me to get to my feet. Like a tiny warm voice in my mind, softly calling out to me.

I swear, I hear Sierra drifting my way in the wind as she reminds me of the same thing she has been saying all along, yet it somehow means something else in my drugged stupor.

"Save us"

I reach out to it in my oncoming delirium with weak grasping fingers, sure I see her face in the canopy above as my eyesight obscures.

"I can't. I'm not strong enough." It's a pathetic whisper at no one, as my eyes blur with tears at my own failure, and my heart aches that somehow, I let her down, even if it makes no sense. Maybe it's the pain of failing myself. Weeks of running, hiding, and I can't do anything about what I've gotten myself into. I was stupid to think I was special.

I can feel them so close now, and as I try to lift my head and shoulders up from the soggy earth in one last ditch attempt to save myself, my vision blanks our completely and I lose consciousness.