Surrogate for My Brother-in-law - Chapter 53: Chapter 53

They were hunting me. I could hear them shout my name. I smelled them on the air. They had me surrounded.
I should have realized that would happen. The guards must have reported me. Now the whole pack was out in the woods, shouting for me.
I couldn't evade them all. I wanted to. I knew, without knowing how, that if they caught me I would never run free again.
I would not go back into a cage after finally, finally tasting freedom. Not so soon. Not without a fight.
I'm not sure how much of that determination was mine and how much was my wolf. The line between us blurred a little. I knew it was dangerous, but I needed her strength. I was all out of my own.
The wolf ran, and I held on for dear life in our mind. I could hear the hunters closing in on all sides. How long could we possibly evade them?
For now, the wolf said.
I understood what she didn't say. We could evade them for now, but not for long. We just didn't have the strength.
My wolf was powerful. I could tell. She was large, larger than me. Our paw hadn't slipped out of that cuff, it had shattered it. The wolf's jaws had crushed the skulls of the animals she caught for us to eat. Apparently she thought I needed the bone marrow to regain what I'd lost.
The power I used to heal other wolves came from my wolf. I'd known that before, but that night I finally learned what it meant. I felt her strength for myself. It was intoxicating.
Her strength wasn't infinite, though. She had used everything she had to save us both. She was beginning to tire.
She was new, fresh to the world. The pack wolves were seasoned and fresh. They could hunt us far longer than we could run from them.
I knew it. My wolf knew it, too, but she refused to surrender. The sheer determination that had never let up when I struggled to heal a patient on the brink of death came from within the wolf, and it carried us then.
Why were they hunting me, anyway? What did they want from me? Why wouldn't they let me have this one, tiny thing? This one moment of freedom after a lifetime in cages and chains?
My wolf paused in a clearing next to a stream, lapping up water with desperate speed. A stick cracked behind us and we whirled, a growl rumbling up our throats.
One of Alpha Arthur's wolves stood there, in human form.
“Tessa?” he asked.
All my wolf did was growl louder. We couldn't speak as wolves, everyone knew that. There were signs and sounds that we had made into a kind of language but I didn't have any experience using it.
“Tessa, you need to come in,” the wolf guard said. “It'll go easier on you if you cooperate.”
My wolf snorted and snarled, leaping at the guard. We weren't going to hurt him. He was our pack. But we were not going to surrender.
So my wolf crashed into the guard and batted him aside. He stumbled and fell on his butt in the creek. He was damp and embarrassed but okay. That's all I knew as we were running again.
We couldn't run forever. But we could run for a little while longer. That's all I wanted. Just a little bit more time.
Something crashed into our flank, sending us rolling and tumbling through the underbrush. I learned new definitions of green as leaves and vines and other bits of nature made themselves one with our fur.
We rolled to a stop against a massive tree. Maybe an oak. I wasn't very good at identifying plant life that wasn't medicinal, and the wolf didn't care beyond “plant.”
We stumbled to our paws and whirled to face our attacker. A massive, silver and black wolf stood there, head down and eyes piercing gold.
It was Leo. I had never seen his full wolf form, but I knew it had to be him. It could be no one else.
Mate! My wolf was delighted.
I wasn't. I tried to make her run, to push forward and take command. Leo wasn't our mate! He was Eva's.
My wolf didn't listen. She trotted forward, head high and tongue lolling. She was eager to greet our mate. She didn't understand.
Leo growled, and knocked us to the ground with one paw.
My wolf whined, confused. Why was her mate angry? Why had he struck us?
I took the moment of her confusion to take control back. I wanted to get up, turn, and run, but that wasn't happening. There were too many limbs to organize. I thought I had the standing still thing down just from observation, but it was harder to put in practice than I thought it would be.
And Leo wasn't happy with me, and he certainly wasn't going to give me the time I needed to figure things out. He knocked me back down the moment I managed to get my paws on the ground.
I stared into his eyes. I could see struggle there. His wolf was fighting him. But it wasn't enough. Leo was in full control, and unlike me he knew how to use the wolf's body.
He shifted, once more into the magnificent half form I'd seen him take to fight the Rogues. I shrank back. I could not fight that! I couldn't fight anyone. I'd get my tail kicked if I tried to fight a bunny!
“Change. Back,” Leo growled.
I shook my head. I couldn't. I didn't know how!
And I didn't want to. Wolf-Tessa was strong and sure and fast and didn't hurt. Human-Tessa was terrified and hurting and weak.
I might never want to be human-Tessa ever again.
Leo leaped and pinned me to the forest floor. No amount of struggling was enough to free myself. I tried.
Finally, exhausted, I let the wolf have control again. And the wolf, despite her confusion at her mate's anger, saw no reason not to obey.
Once again, I was human. I shivered under Leo's furious gaze. He didn't speak, he just stood up and shifted all the way back to human.
He must have signaled somehow, because only a minute later several guards, including the one I'd dumped in the creek, arrived in the clearing.
“Take her,” was all he said.
He never once looked at me as I was dragged away. I tried to call out to him, but one of the wolves slapped his hand over my mouth. I seriously considered biting him. I'm not sure whether that impulse came from me, or my wolf.
I didn't understand. Why was Leo so furious? What had I done? Did he somehow know about the baby, about my deception? Didn't he understand that I had no choice?
Leo's wolves dragged me back into the manor, and back downstairs. I struggled, irrationally thinking I was going to be shoved back into that tiny room among the secret passages.
But of course that was impossible. Leo's wolves didn't know about that place. They dragged me into the holding cells in the basement, instead.
I saw Zane as we passed. He watched me with glittering eyes and a vicious smirk as the guards opened the next door and shoved me inside.
The cell clanked shut with a resounding thud, and I collapsed to the ground. One of the guards, I'm not sure which one, tossed a thin blanket in on top of me. That was the closest thing to kindness I'd experience for some time.