The One He Claimed by Cooper
The One 11

Chapter 11: Injured 288 Mouchers

Chapter 11: Injured Sophie

Penny woke me up in the middle of the night and I took my shift, watching and making sure that we stayed safe while she slept. About an hour before sunrise, I woke her. I could see a train station coming ahead and we needed to get off this train before anyone spotted us.

As the train starts to slow, I strip out of my clothes and put them in my bag, shifting back into my wolf. I make sure that Penny is doing the same, then I grab my bag in my mouth and wait until the train slows as much as I feel I can let it before I need to jump. I replace a spot with grass, and I leap, quickly turning to watch and make sure that Penny joins me and lands safely.

Her landing isn't as graceful as mine and it looks as though she might have twisted her ankle. I race over to her, sniffing her leg. I nudge her with my nose and wait. She puts weight on her leg and almost instantly, she lifts it again, a painful yelp escaping her lips.

I look around. We are very exposed here and as soon as the sun. comes up, anyone close by will be able to see us. We need to get to the forest, and we need to do it quickly.

I shift and quickly take Penny's paw in my hand. I gently move my hand up to the knee joint where she flinched, whimpering as I touch it.

"I'm going to have to carry you Penny. We can't stay here, we

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have to move."

She shakes her head, pushing me with her nose, telling me to leave her.

"I'm not leaving you. I know it's going hurt to shift, but I need you to shift, and then you can climb on my back. I'll carry you. We've got to get to the forest before the sun comes up," I tell her urgently. When she doesn't instantly shift, take her face in my hands. "We don't have much time. It's going to be hard enough for me to travel carrying you. We have to go, Penny. You have to shift."

She nods, and I release her face. She whimpers as she begins to shift and when her leg shifts back, she cries out before slapping her hand over her mouth. Her knee looks terrible. It's swollen and already bruising an ugly purple color.

"That's going to take some time to heal. Come on, we need to get going."

I help her up into a standing position, grabbing both of our bags and handing them to her. Once she has them over her shoulders, I turn, crouching down in front of her and I help her

the good leg around my waist, and get onto my back. She wraps I carefully wrap my arm underneath the thigh of her bad leg. She whimpers softly as she bends her knee and lets it hang. "I'm going to have to run Penny, so just hang on."

"Okay, just hurry," she says and I can hear the pain in her voice.

I take off running as fast as I can. I run in the opposite direction of the train station and train tracks. It looks like there's a mile,

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maybe two, before I can get to what looks like a forest. I hope that's what it is. I hope it's a thick forest, where we can hide and maybe replace a place to let Penny rest and heal. When I get to the tree line, the sun is just starting to rise and I can see very quickly that this is no thick forest. This is just a smattering of trees, and we'll have to continue on.

Penny pushes her face against my back as I run. I can hear her whimpering periodically, but she keeps the sounds as quiet as she possibly can. I frequently stop listening to make sure that no one is following us, that no one has caught our scent. This is a bad situation, and it would be very easy for us to be captured.

Somewhere around noon, I stop near a lake, sitting Penny on the ground. I need to catch my breath and she needs to stretch out her legs. Thankfully the trees have gotten thicker as I've run. I'm still moving in the general direction of my parents' pack, hoping that it's them leaving the food out. I know we'll need to be more careful as we get closer to my parents' pack. There are several wolf packs in the surrounding area. I don't know how many of those Alphas have found their mates, but I'm sure if they haven't, they'll be on the hunt for one.

I take our water bottles and fill them quickly in the cool lake coming back and handing one to Penny as I sit beside her. I drink the water quickly, thirsty after my long run. Then Llook down at her knee. "How does it feel?" I ask her.

"Better," she says. I look at it and see that it's turned into a yellow and green brdise from the ugly black and purple that it was earlier today. That's a good sign that it's healing, but the fact that it's still bruised means it's not healed enough.

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"Do you want to try walking on it?" I ask her.

"Yeah, let me at least try and if nothing else, maybe I can walk for a while. The forest has gotten thicker here."

"Okay," I agree, knowing it would be better if I can look around, see if I can replace a place for us to hide tonight. I pull out two more granola bars from my bag and hand her one before taking our water bottles down to the lake and refilling them.

"Let's try walking around the lake, maybe there's an area here where we can hide for the night, or at least let you rest until your knee is healed. It looks like it should be fine by tomorrow and then we can both begin to run.

"I'm holding you back. You should just go without me," she says,

"I'm not leaving you here. You're at risk at being captured. I'm not going to do that to you."

She nods and surprises me by reaching out to hug me. "Thank you."

"That's what friend's do."

"I wish we were the kind of friends who could stay together and not have to separate in another day or so."

"Me too. Maybe someday. We can hope."

I help her up and wrap her arm around my shoulder before we begin making our way slowly around the lake. We both listen intently for the sounds of footfalls, running paws, growls, or howls of any kind. It's slow going as Penny limps her way around the lake trying

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not to put too much weight on her bad knee. Once we're around the Lake, I look around and see that away from the lake, the forest becomes thicker with trees.

"What do you think, Penny? The lake or the forest for tonight?" She looks around, then looks back at the forest.

"I feel too exposed here by the lake. I feel like anyone in the area will come here to get water, and then they will replace us."

"I agree. I think it's time for you to climb back on my back. I'd like to make some good time and get away from this lake. As soon as someone catches our scent, they'll come after us and I'd like to be far enough away that we still have a chance."

"Why don't we swim across? If we get in the water, our scent will be lost, and it will take a long time for them to replace our scent again. If we swim straight across, we can get out and then cut left heading north again."

"Are you sure your knee can handle it?" I ask her, worried about her ability to swim. It's why I hadn't already suggested that we cross the lake.

"I'd rather take longer to heal than to get caught," she says resolutely.

"Okay, let's do it. We'll swim together. I'll carry our bags and keep them over my head. You worry about swimming and keeping your head afloat."

We strip off our clothes and make our way into the water. It's cold and my body is covered in goosebumps almost immediately. Once we're submerged in the water, Penny looks at me. Her lips have already started turning blue.

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"At l-l-least the c-c-cold f-f-feels g-g-good against m-m-my knee," she stutters with the cold.

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I nod, focusing on keeping our bags over my head as I use my legs to kick and push me across the lake. Penny uses her arms, pulling her body behind her, letting her bad leg drag limply in the water. Thankfully, there isn't much of a current. The problem is the cold.

By the time we reach the other side, the sun is starting to set. We get out and I immediately grab clothes out of both our bags, handing hers to her and putting mine own on.

Once we're dressed, I give Penny our bags and I help her get on my back again. It takes me about a mile to work out the cold and the stiffness in my joints. But after that I get into a rhythm and begin running. This time it's not as painful for Penny. And she's able to listen for sounds of others chasing us while I focus on running and replaceing a place where we can be safe for the night.

While I'm running, I cross the path of a small Alpha hunting group. So rather than stopping, I continue on much longer than I intended to. It's well into the night when we finally replace a place to stop. We both collapse, exhausted. Neither of us even bothers to change. We put our bags under our heads and fall asleep.

It's late the next day when we wake. I step out of the little shelter I found and sniff the air, looking around. We had both been so tired that we hadn't kept watch, but I don't hear anything, and I don't smell anyone. I turn back and I look at Penny. She's checking out her knee and it looks much better than it did yesterday.

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"How does it feel?" I ask her.

"Better. Healed," she says.

"Good. I don't think we're too far from where we're supposed to be based on the directions you gave me. If we run hard, I think we can be there in a couple of hours, early afternoon at the latest. Then you can have some food and maybe you'll be nice enough to share the water with me," I smile at her.

"I'll share both the food and the water with you," she says. "You've been so kind and so generous to me."

"Let's just see what's there. Let's hope that there really is food and water."

We pack up our things and we start slow, making sure that Penny is able to run on her injured leg. But it seems that it's healed, if not completely, then almost completely, so we begin running much harder. It's early afternoon when we arrive.

We slow down and I let Penny take the lead. She has a better idea of where she's going. The terrain here has become much rockier than the forest, and we have to be careful. I lift my nose in the air, sniffing to see if I smell any Alphas in the area.

What I smell has me stopping in my tracks. I smell the scent of a she-wolf. That's expected. It's not one that I recognize, but it makes sense that a she-wolf is the one leaving the food and water for us. It's the other scent that makes me stop. The scent of pine, the scent of home.

'Mate,' Hedda says.