Chapter 6 Luca

The scent hit me before I saw it. Rot, blood, and hot wild anger burned through the night air and crawled straight into my lungs. It was a rogue. And it was close. Too close. I was already moving before I fully registered where I was headed. My shoes tore through gravel and dirt as I ran across the back edge of town, muscles tight, and pulse sharp in my ears. The houses thinned out quickly, giving way to the darker stretch of trees that marked the edge of pack territory. I should have alerted my father. I should have called the others. Instead, instinct and the need to prove myself to my father drove me forward.

The wind shifted and I smelt something else tangled with the rogue’s stink—milk and honey.

Aria.

My jaw locked. The rogue was hunting near her house. I dropped low as I hit the tree line my body sinking into shadow. The moon was high enough to give shape to the clearing beyond the Morgan property, silver light catching on leaves and the pale fence that barely separated the backyard from the forest. Her house was quiet and dark except for one faint glow at an upstairs window. She was awake.

The rogue moved fast. With my heightened sense of hearing, I could hear the uneven drag of paws. It was in wolf form. That wasn't a good sign. When it slipped into view between the trees, the sight twisted something sharp in my gut. Patches of fur clung to torn skin and it was too lean for a werewolf. Its eyes burned with the flat, dead focus of something that no longer remembered what anything was.

It lifted its head and sniffed then attention snapped straight toward Aria’s yard.

“No,” I breathed.

The shift tore through me like lightning under my skin. I could hear my bones cracking, my clothes being ripped apart as I transformed. Heat surged through my body as my vision widened with the shadows being as clear as day. I landed on all fours without breaking stride with claws cutting into damp earth as I launched myself across the clearing.

The rogue heard me at the last second. It spun with a snarl and the impact came hard and violent with our shoulders colliding, bodies slamming through bush and dead branches. I bared my teeth feeling a growl rip through me. We rolled through dirt and fallen leaves and I raise my claw to strike but his got me instead. It raked across my side. The pain was only momentarily as I could feel it healing already. But I was angry and clamped down on its shoulder and feeling bone cracking under my jaws. A painful howl escaped his throat.

The rogue staggered wildly and I wasn't relenting. We crashed into a low tree trunk and the bark split under our weight. It twisted and caught my foreleg between its teeth. The scent of my own blood flooded the air, metallic and sharp.

Another wrong move and this would escalate into something else.

I jerked free with a savage wrench that tore fur and flesh together. The rogue staggered and I surged forward and drove it backward in a blur of motion until its spine hit the narrow strip of fence at the edge of Aria’s yard. The wood splinered but it created a loud noise.

A light flicked on behind the glass of her back door.

Shit!

The rogue sensed it too and its focus snapped past me toward the house with hunger rekindling in an instant. It lunged wild and reckless. But I intercepted in mid-air.

We slammed into the cobblestone of the yard. The rogue’s claws caught my neck this time and blood spilled down my chest. My hearing was spiked and I could hear Aria’s hurried footsteps through the door. Her heart beating wildly in her chest coupled with her fear permeating the air.

I had to end this and quickly.

I drove my weight down and crushed the rogue beneath me. My teeth closed around its throat and I held with my fangs sinking into it as it convulsed once, twice, then stilled. Its body went slack beneath my jaws. The fight drained out of me and I was now panting.

I lifted my head slowly. Only the chirping of crickets could be heard now as silence had descended.

Aria stood frozen on the back step, barefoot, and wrapped in a loose sweater. The porch light cut pale across her face. Her eyes were wide with pupils dilating, breath shallow as she stared into the darkness beyond the yard. At the blood smeared through sand and leaves.

My blood and the rogue’s. She could tell something wasn't right even if she did not understand what it was.

I backed up slowly into shadow with my body trembling with the effort to stay still and quiet. My shoulder burned and my ribs throbbed. Every instinct screamed to move her away from the edge of the woods, to put myself between her and the dark. I could not let her see this.

Her gaze roamed the tree line. She took one tentative step forward and fear came off her in waves now. I edged back farther into the woods. The rogue’s corpse lay half in moonlight, unmistakably wrong even at a distance. It was too large for a coyote should it be discovered and I just realized how fucked I was. Werewolves weren't meant to discovered by humans. My father's gonna skin me alive, now.

Something rustled behind me and I turned just fast enough to see another shape moving at the edge of my sight.

Mason. He had followed my trail after all. His eyes met mine through the dark.

Go now. I’ll take care of it.

His voice rang clear in my mind.

No, we'll take care of it.

I couldn't let anyone clean up the mess I had made alone. Mason was gone in an instant to take care of the rogue's body.

Aria moved again with her body tensing. This time she stepped fully off the porch and her bare foot brushed the sand and she froze. Her breath caught audibly as she stared at the deep gouges torn into the ground. At the thick dark smear soaking into the cobblestone.

“What the hell…,” she whispered.

She bent down slowly and cautiously towards the ground. Her fingers hovered inches from the blood before she jerked them back. Then she lifted her head with her gaze moving straight to me. For one split second, I was certain she could see my eyes burning in the dark.

Her heartbeat rose and a shout cut through the night from the front of the house. Her mother was calling her name. Aria spun toward the sound. I did not hesitate. I turned and bolted, retreating deep into the woods.

By the time the whole pack reached the clearing minutes later, I was gone and Aria was safely inside her house knowing that something quite beyond her comprehension had happened tonight.