It’s been around eleven days since I left the valley, and I can honestly say it’s finally getting easier in some ways,
but not all. I was a fool to believe it wouldn’t be hard on so many levels, and I still can’t get my head around my naïvety. Knowing then what I do now, I don’t think I would have left at all.
It’s not just the survival factor that gets to you; it’s the isolation, the loneliness, the living on constant high alert as you have to be aware of all that is around you, and the gnawing fear that sits in your gut hour after hour. I’m on edge, hyper-aware at all times, and mentally exhausted with it. I cannot stop watching my back and surroundings, always listening to make sure I’m safe and afraid of even the tiniest noises or movements near me. There are so many enemies in nature that I was oblivious to when living in the mountain bubble.
I rarely sleep, so tuned into the noises of the forests, the gullies, and caverns I have walked through in recent days. Always listening for something to come out of the shadows at me and have endless dreams when I do of vampires and monsters pulling me from my tiny crawl spaces before devouring my helpless body. Every time I’m paralyzed with the same useless inadequacy as that day in the orphanage and completely unable to defend myself. I see Sierra often in my dreams too, my infrequent naps, and that repetitive sentence she utters on her breath, which always wakes me with a start. Always the same damn thing.
“Save us.”
I don’t understand why she haunts me still and can only imagine it has to do with my broken heart and the dregs of Colton in my memory banks that get through the steel door I’m trying to force them behind. She was one of our last conversations, and maybe that’s why she plays so heavily on my mind.
The first few days were the worst and thankfully behind me now, and I think it’s finally sunk in what I’m actually doing. The first night, looking for shelter, eating Doritos I had hastily packed in my backpack for supper, and trying to find a comfy way to lie in a shallow, hard-floored dugout on a hillside that barely concealed me. It was a shock to my system, having come from a lifetime of shelter and home-cooked meals I took for granted. Even being myself all those years, I was never alone or without food and a roof over my head, whereas now here I am, indeed in solitude.
I didn’t sleep at all at first. Everything was swirling in my head, and the cravings for not just Colton but Meadow, the sub pack, my room in the packhouse, and the safety of the valley. It was all crying out to me, reminding me I’m barely grown and only newly turned and still so vulnerable in so many ways. I sobbed so much in the first few days; I thought it would break me and send me running back with my tail between my legs, but it didn’t.
I weathered the storm, wandering south aimlessly with no plan, and after getting the first few miles clear of the Santo lands, I didn’t see the need to run anymore. There’s enough distance between us and no signs they’d picked up my scent to track me because, quite frankly, they would have caught up with me already if anyone had been looking. I stuck to rural areas, stayed away from roads, and moved through forests and woods, farmlands, and rougher areas to avoid humans.
I can still see the mountain in the far distance as it gets further away with every day I trek, but I’m probably not as far as I think. It seems so much further because I took so long to get here. I’m afraid to turn in daylight if I’m seen, afraid to travel at night in case I run across vampires. I have to use human legs and human speed, and without your heart and soul pushing you on, progress is slow.
Day four was the worst day of my life, and it alone was almost what ended this adventure of mine. Just when I didn’t think it could get any harder mentally, my heart already breaking with the need to see another person or hear another voice, a pain that came out of nowhere, sideswiped me.
I thought I was dying. It was like someone reached into my chest cavity, grabbed my heart in the middle of my soul, twisted it around sharply, and yanked it out, breaking every bone. I crumbled to the ground, gasping for breath, every part of my rib cage, lungs, and core slicing in agony, unable to catch air within me. Clawing at the ground as the pain shot through every limb and nerve ending.
I rolled around in the mud, clutching my chest and wailing like a wounded animal, as tears flooded my vision and my brain nearly shattered. It was the single most terrifying moment I experienced, apart from the night the vampires attacked, and I was wholly helpless again.
It felt like the ultimate betrayal, the severing of my soul, and the only thing I could connect it to Colton. It is the only logical answer to something so all-consuming, yet for no apparent reason to its sudden happening. He must have done something strong enough to our bond to inflict this kind of hell, as was sure as hell was not his death, as I’m still breathing.
Only two things could hurt your imprinted like that, especially from so many miles apart. Severing the bond, which he couldn’t have because I would be dead, or betraying the bond with an unforgivable act.
Sleeping with Carmen and marking her.
It has to be that. Nothing else can compare to this agony! The thing they taught us about in school, about carrying that heartache when your fated mate destroys the bond. It all makes sense, and, for days after, fighting the fatigue and desperation it still makes me feel, I barely covered more than a couple of miles in total, before breaking down into a crumbling mess and sobbing again. It felt like he had taken a knife himself, cut me open, and ripped everything out before setting it alight. The emotional devastation was as bad as finding out my entire family had gone when I was just eight years old, and it still lingers like a shadow, weighing heavily, keeping me in the dark, even now. It broke me in so many ways.
Mentally, as I wore on over the following days, I became numb, and my will to run far from the mountain died a death. I was going primarily to outrun him and what he had to do. To try not to let it get to me, to distance myself from the pain and leave him to walk his path without me. And yet the Fates delivered a blow that almost stopped me in my tracks completely, killing my will to find my future at all. They left me with the heavy sadness that consumes everything and won’t lift. There’s nothing to run from anymore. It’s done. He did it.
I’m just going through the motions now, without really engaging any kind of effort under this black cloud, my new constant companion. I walk, find something to hunt and eat; I wash in rivers; I find shelter, and sporadically sleep through the dark.
The noises, the movement of nature, should bring me peace as a natural wolf, but it serves to remind me how very alone I am and that wolves are pack animals. We don’t thrive alone, and it’s wearing me down slowly. I can’t seem to ever really get any clear sign of where I belong in life or what I’m supposed to do. Just that discarded, worthless kid who wasn’t good enough to be mated, even when the Fates imprinted me on someone. What hope is there for me?
I don’t have a reason to go back anymore, anyway. Not even for the sub pack, who never really belonged to me. I need to push on and find somewhere to settle, accept it, man up, and stop crying like a stupid child, but nowhere ever feels right. Colton made his choice; I can feel it, and we’re done.
On day eight, I stumbled into an unknown dense dark forest at the base of a smaller mountain that was relatively secluded, finally finding somewhere that seemed easy to defend, was pretty, and had a good cave for a possible long-term dwelling. Dense enough to feel safe and a nearby water source. Sheltered and a good supply of wildlife for hunting. No humans around for miles, and no signs that any had been there in forever.
It didn’t take long to be chased out by feral wolves who caught my scent in their territory, though. Natural wolves, not my kind, though, because my kind would probably have strung me up and gutted me for straying there. Outside of Radstone, the packs still have deep ingrained rivalry and feuds.
They chased me all the way to a cliff edge before I had to jump into the river below to escape unscathed. I don’t think I could have fought off more than a dozen rabid wolves on my own, and I don’t have the energy to turn and heal myself right now. I’m spent. I guess I’m not eating enough, not resting enough, and all I do is travel from dawn to dusk half-heartedly and flop down again. Maybe it’s not energy but a lack of willpower when I’m stuck in this mindset of hopelessness.
I had to find a quick place to build a fire, dry everything I owned that day, and throw away the leftover snacks I opened as they were soggy and inedible. The money Meadow gave me had to be laid out in the sun, and her note was ruined entirely, which meant losing her number on the back because the ink bled out and disappeared.
Eating raw meat isn’t sitting well with my human form either, which came as a shock, as I expected it to be a natural transition, but I don’t feel great most of the time. My wolf side isn’t all that in touch with my body, and maybe it will take time to adjust, like building stamina and developing my gift.
Just more failure, and I feel it’s all getting to me. The dark, empty loneliness in my head, telling me I’m not good enough and never will be. I don’t feel like being a wolf comes naturally, and somehow being in human form is easier, which is probably normal, considering we spend the first part of our life that way. I thought it would be a fluid transition, with few bumps, like learning to float by jumping in the deep end.
Sunny today, with no breeze, and the atmosphere has an almost serene calm to it. I sit staring at the little fire I pulled together in the basin of the clearing I found. My ass on a fallen rotten tree, feet at either side of my rock, circled mini campfire. Somewhere caught in the unremarkable depths of another dense dark wood, in the middle of nowhere, is not as far from the mountain as I would like it to be.
I’m far enough that fires no longer make me nervous, even when sat in an open clearing like this, as I doubt anyone would see the smoke now. I have no idea where I am anymore; I only know how to go back to where I came from.
That’s the thing about us ... we can always find our way back to places we’ve been or left, but without a map, I don’t know how far I am from where I started, or where I am if someone asked me. It all started to look the same to me after only two days, and finding landmarks in almost identical forests is not that easy. I have to keep climbing trees to check where the mountain is on the horizon, so I stay heading south of it.
Lord knows I would probably accidentally do a Uturn and head back if I didn’t. I don’t seem to have a sense of direction that I’m sure most wolves should. I just have this constant pull to go home, and I’m not convinced it’s entirely because of homesickness.
Sierra’s dream keeps haunting me, even in daylight now, and, for some reason, keeps replaying whenever I have to choose a direction, swaying in the canopy and gazing at the miles stretched out around me. More than once, I’ve noticed that when I come to a crossroads in my path choosing, she becomes prominent in my mind, and my gut tries to pull me east. Not even back to her son, but off to the left, into the unknown. I’m not sure it’s related or why my mind keeps wandering that way.
I’ve wondered what would happen if I said screw it and just went that way more than once, but I know it’s probably nothing more than my being dumb and imagining it. I’m lost emotionally and physically, so it’s no wonder my mind is trying to give me some sort of guidance, or fake purpose, to get me out of this funk.
My plan was always south, my instincts keep on trying to sway me away from the south, and I shouldn’t ignore my gut, but if my instincts are as faulty as the Fates, I’m better off ignoring them completely. Look how wrong they were about Colton. He did it ... ignored them despite our bond. He marked a mate and forgot about me. I guess it wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be in the end. He just needed me to get out of his way.
South is where my mother said her family came from, not that I know much about them, as she never really spoke of her roots the way my father did. My mother was not a Radstone wolf, nor a Whyte pack. She came from somewhere else, shrouded in mystery, and always said meeting my father was fated and magical but never really told us the details or expanded on it.
I was not overly invested in love stories as a small child, so I never pushed. Father would shrug and tell us that their story was much like any other and brush it away, evasive, but then he wasn’t the gushy romantic type. I know that she said she came from a place where the weather was warmer, land flatter, and her pack never kept in touch or reached out in all the years we lived on the mountain skirt.
My grandparents were my father’s family, and my mother never brought hers up. We didn’t talk about it. My family was small because my father was an only child, born late in my grandparents’ mating life, and older generations had passed away in my early life before I knew them. Like vampires, wolves live longer than humans, but not for hundreds of years.
It never used to make me think or dwell, but now that I have red eyes and a strangely rare gift, I wonder what I knew about my mother. Memories are mostly her in human form, and on the few occasions I glimpsed her as a wolf, I don’t recall ever seeing her eyes. There isn’t much need for a pup to see their parents in wolf form when you live on a peaceful, settled farm, growing vegetables and raising cattle. Turning used to be a personal thing when there was no need. Like recreational time for yourself, activity among the peaceful dwellers who didn’t have to fight, defend, or lord over anyone. The Whyte pack leader was equally stable and calm, and I never saw him turn at all when I knew him.
My father never mentioned it; no one did, so I doubt they were red. I mean, she was a snow-white wolf, which was mentioned enough over the years as though it was a bad thing. I knew it meant she was different. I’m sure her eyes would have been a talking point too, if they had been like mine.
They said her fur was white because she lacked a pigment, like a flaw in her genetic makeup, and I wonder if it’s why my eyes are red ... like a person with albinism. Although my wolf is half gray, I’m sure people with albinism have pink eyes, not blood red. It’s all so confusing, and I wish Meadow had told me more about the legends or that the Shaman had taken time to talk to me. It feels like they should have some relevance or that my gift should. Maybe all it means is what Juan said is true. I’m a diluted, impure bloodline and ultimately flawed.
It’s afternoon, the sun’s still high, but it’s doing very little to warm me through and lighten my dull mood, not that I care. We have a gift in that we’re not affected by the cold the way humans are, and we don’t need the same temperatures to survive. We can feel it, we can enjoy being warm and cozy, but we can sleep in freezing surroundings and not get sick. And if we do, we turn and, voila, healed. I’m not worried about getting ill or injured out here as long as I can muster enough energy to turn for a few seconds, but my mental state worries me.
I keep thinking about Luna Sierra and her broken mind, and I would be lying if I didn’t have a deep-rooted fear that I may not be strong enough to endure an oncoming war. It’s always there in the background of my mind. I can hide and avoid it as much as I want, but one day, I’ll find myself in the midst, and I won’t be able to escape it.