SPENCER
Finn and I returned to the woods for a run. By the time we came back to the house, I was starving and, as the smell of frying steaks hit my nose, my stomach gurgled. I went upstairs to take a shower. Then I put on a fresh shirt and my jeans shorts and headed to the kitchen.
Mom was right about wolves. They loved steaks.
We. We love steaks. I’m one of them now. Holy shit, I’m a wolf.
Mom chuckled when I helped myself to a second portion.
“I hope all this food won't end up on my waist,” I said as I sent another piece of meat into my mouth.
“Don’t worry,” Alister smirked. “It won’t. And your appetite won’t be the same after a couple of weeks. Your wolf is still new and too excited. She’ll mature pretty fast, and then her appetite and her behavior will become more sustained.”
“I’m just glad she’s not aggressive.”
“You don’t know that yet. She attacked your mother, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, but she was just furious after . . . it was a result of the excruciating transition.” My look traveled from one to another. “Wasn’t it?” I asked when I saw the expression on Finn’s and Alister’s faces as the two of them exchanged a glance.
“They can’t control themselves in the beginning. She was fighting for her life,” elaborated Alister, “and yours.”
“I don’t remember much, but . . .”
“Of course you don’t. You were too weak to control her.” Alister put down his fork. “When she broke through and gained her power, she took over. She thought she was protecting you.”
“Wolves are predators, Spencer,” said Finn. “But from now on, she’ll act on your command. There could be exceptions, of course, like emotions too strong for her to handle and control her actions. But I’m sure you’ll be able to keep her in check even then.”
When we finished dinner, Finn called Liam to check on him and James.
“How far did you get?” He asked as he put the phone on speaker.
“We’re in Cincinnati. We were thinking of turning the phone off so we could stop at some motel.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “That could buy us another day.”
“That’s what we thought. I just hope that Eric guy doesn’t get suspicious if we don’t turn the phone on until morning. Did you find out anything about the scroll?”
“Yeah. It’s in Tallahassee,” sighed Finn. “Now we need to figure out how to get it.”
“Damn, that’s the biggest pack,” I heard James’s voice. “How the hell are you going to get in?"
“We’ll come up with something,” said Mom. “We’ll use magic if we have to.”
“Call us if you need anything,” Liam said.
Finn hung up. But I stood staring at the phone, hit by another idea.
“Alister, you said the Temple is the Great Alpha’s crypt. That means her remains are there, aren’t they?”
“Oh yes, she’s there.”
“So if I’m connected to the compass, then I for sure must be connected to the Temple, right?”
“Yes, I think even more than to the compass.”
“Then maybe instead of going after the scroll, we should do a locator spell on the Temple itself?” I turned my excited look at Mom.
“We could.” Mom didn’t seem as enthusiastic as I was.
“You don’t think it would work?”
She shrugged. “Would be too easy, wouldn’t it? But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
And so we did. But the locator spell didn’t take us anywhere. When I offered to do the spell, Mom already suspected that the witches who created the curse probably cloaked the Temple from the locator spell, and she was right.
“We better start with training,” said Finn. He took my hand and dragged me to the hallway. “Let’s go to the basement.”
“What’s in the basement?”
“A punching bag.”
We passed the staircase, turned the corner, and went to the end of the hallway.
“I thought you were going to teach me how to fight?”
“Oh, I will.” He opened the door, reached for the switch on the wall, and turned on the light.
We went down the wooden stairs and the large room came into the view. There were two niches, one on each side of the stairs. The walls in the right niche were lined up with shelves filled with wine bottles. And the one on the left had a couch under the wall and a pool table in front of it. At the end of the room sat wooden and cardboard boxes separated by a desk. The long, heavy punching bag hung right in the middle.
“How athletic are you?” asked Finn, as I stopped to stare at it.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I tried not to skip my gym classes.”
Finn chuckled. “That’s something. The thing is, you’re different now and you don’t know the new you. Hit the bag.”
Okay. I’m supposed to be stronger. So here goes nothing.
I drew closer, bunched my hand into a fist, and slammed it into the bag. The bag swayed.
“Look.” I shrieked.
“Not bad. But you can do much better than that.”
I threw another punch and then a few more. I could feel my blood rushing through my veins, and I liked it.
“Maybe we should fight and—”
“Spencer.” Finn was smiling. “I can sense your adrenaline rush, and I know how you feel right now. But I can’t just start throwing punches at you. First, you need to learn how to move around your attacker and how to protect yourself.”
While talking, he stepped behind the bag and unexpectedly pushed it at me. With his strength, it moved pretty fast, and it nearly reached my nose before I reacted. As a result, my punch had a poor effect.
“You see what I mean? The attacker wouldn’t stand there and wait for you to hit him. Concentrate and let’s try it again.”
My reactions got better and better, and when Finn came at me himself, I almost knocked him off his feet after the second attempt.
“Well done,” he said with a little too much pride in his voice.
“You let me do that, didn’t you?” I threw him an annoyed glance.
He laughed and locked his arms around me. “You did great for your first training.”
“So you decided to reward me?” I smirked. “Just so you know, next time I’ll kick your ass for real.”
He pushed a strand of hair that had fallen out of my bun behind my ear.
“Then I better be ready,” he whispered against my lips before he kissed me.
It must’ve been the adrenaline, but I wanted Finn so badly even though we were both messy and covered in sweat. Suddenly, I remembered how much Alex liked to watch our strong and sweaty football players during their training.
I get it now, I thought as I threw my arms around Finn’s neck, jumped up slightly, and wrapped my legs around his waist. Holding me tight with one hand, his free hand sat under my knee, glided up my thigh, and under the edge of my shorts. I fluttered at his touch. As he gently laid me on the pool table, I drew my face up and his parted lips slid down my chin to my neck. I sank my hands into his hair and pulled up his head, and as my lips crushed into his, my free hand slithered down his body to pull off his sweatpants.
“Let’s do this again tomorrow,” I said later as we laid on the pool table heavily breathing.
“And the day after that,” Finn chuckled. “No, wait. What about tonight?”
I laughed.
* * *
I wasn’t afraid to turn anymore, and the next morning when I tried again, it was almost painless. Finn and I went for a run and had another training session before breakfast. This time I made him actually fight me after I threw a punch at him first. But he still didn’t want to hurt me too much.
“You’re holding back,” I tilted my head. “Come on, show me your best.”
“I will after you learn to block the oncoming punch.” He grinned. “You’re holding back a lot yourself. You don’t know your strength. You haven’t used even half of it yet.”
I looked at him puzzled. “Really?”
“It’s because you know you’re not in danger, and deep down, you don’t want to hurt me either. I’m sure you’ll put it all out there when you meet the enemy.”
“Right,” I beamed.
“We can go again tonight. This time, we’ll fight in wolf form. We should let them have some fun, get to know each other better.”
Now that the transition wasn’t hard anymore, I was starting to like the new me even more. I enjoyed running with Finn, and it felt incredible to be strong.
I remembered the night after the party when Brian pushed me against the tree. I wasn’t strong enough then to even push him off me and it brought a smile to my face as I imagined myself throwing him aside with one hand.
* * *
Alister studied the Tallahassee pack territories on the Google map then printed it and marked all the important buildings and the less dangerous points to sneak in.
“But even if we get in, it’ll be hard to remain unnoticed,” he said as he showed us the map after lunch. “Last I heard, Marcus had almost a hundred and twenty wolves. That may be a lot for a pack, but not enough to blend in. They all know each other. They’ll recognize an intruder at once.”
“So it leaves us no choice but to use magic,” said Mom, her eyes focused on the map. She pointed her finger at the building marked with the letter A. “I understand this is the alpha’s house. Obviously, he’s the one who has the scroll and the compass, but we still need to find out where exactly it’s hidden and how it’s protected.”
“Indeed. This won’t be easy.”
“If Spencer and I get close enough, we’ll be able to figure it out. Even if the compass isn’t activated yet, both the scroll and the compass contain magic. We’ll sense it.”
Finn’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen.
“It’s Liam.” He answered the call and put the phone on speaker. “Hey. What’s up?”
“We’re in Chicago. In the woods, right on the border of the pack. And they just drove by. Three cars. Could be ten to twelve wolves in them. Can’t say for sure.”
“Your job is done then. Now turn the phone off and head back,” Finn said.
“Maybe we should get closer,” said James. “It would be nice to know what happens next.”
“We know what will happen. Eventually, they’ll turn around and come here.”
“Maybe they’ll give up,” I suggested, “and go back home.”
“Spencer, no wolf would give up on his mate until he’s rejected,” said Alister.
“If we turn off the phone, Eric might get suspicious,” said James. “He’ll know that we know.”
“We could speculate about what might or might not happen until morning and come up with dozens of versions,” said Alister. “Or we could pack our bags and leave before they decide to pay us a visit.”
“Alright then,” said Liam. “We’ll check on them in a few hours to see which way they’re heading.”
“Keep us posted.” Finn hung up.
“I don’t think we should waste more time.” Alister folded the map. “We should take off.”
“Alister, we don’t have a plan yet.”
“We have a long ride ahead of us. We’ll come up with one on the way.”
“Shouldn’t we wait?” said Mom. “At least until we hear from Liam.”
“Clare, Alister is right,” Finn replied, “we can't wait around just to see where exactly they will drive. If Eric finds out that we’re trying to trick him, he might do the same to us.”
“Yeah, Mom,” I sighed. “We need to leave.”
“If we need more time to come up with a plan, we’ll stop at a motel,” Alister gave Mom a soft look. “But right now, we better get as far away from here as possible.”
**********
I walked into my room, closed the door, and sat on the bed. I was so sick of packing. Will there ever be a place I could call home?
I covered my face with my hands, then after a moment, dropped them onto my lap and looked at the trees behind the window.
We stayed in this house for only a week, but it was enough to fall in love with it. And being here with Finn was the best thing that had happened to me in my whole life. But as always, I had to shut down my feelings, swallow the disappointment of being uprooted again, and being in danger, had to run, and see where life would take me next.
I hate my life.
When I got up and pulled the suitcase out of the closet, I heard Finn’s quiet voice in my head. Don’t be sad.Everything will be okay.
Dammit. I forgot he was close. He was in his room packing too and he could sense my feelings.
I’m fine.We'll be together, and that’s all that matters, I replied. And I meant it.
Half an hour later, we all gathered in the front yard.
“We could all fit in one car, of course, but I think we better have two vehicles at our disposal.” Alister headed to his black BMW. “Clare, would you like to keep me company?”
Mom glanced at her car, then at Finn and me.
“Alister’s car is faster,” said Finn. “if you’re okay with that.”
“Yeah,” Mom nodded. “But you drive ahead of us. I want to have you in my view.”
Finn and I carried our luggage to his car and loaded it in the trunk. He locked the doors, and after one last glance at the house, I slid into the passenger seat. Finn got into the car too and started the engine.
“We’ll be back here sooner than you think.” He glanced at me as I sat with my eyes absently staring at the road behind the open gates.
“Yeah,” I heaved a breath, then gave him a weak smile.
He briefly squeezed my hand, and we took off.
Sitting next to him, I could sense his concern for me, his need to protect me. And that was my wake-up call. I can’t let him waste his time worrying about me. We had a mission and that’s what we had to focus on. All of us. I didn’t want to be a burden. I wanted Finn to rely on me as much as I relied on him.
I’m the heir of the Great Alpha. I’m a powerful witch and a strong werewolf, and I’m done with self-pity.
Yes, I had a shitty life, but now it’s in my power to change it. And not just for me, but also for James, Liam, Alister, Finn, and Mom, and who knows how many others out there hiding just like Mom and I did my entire life.