A Knight's Purpose (Book 1) ✔️

Chapter 5 - You Can't Run Forever

It's been eight years since I have run with anyone else and I can't contain myself. I leap to the next tree over with precision and land on my toes in a crouch, my body weight so slight that the branch barely moves. The black wolf growls at me, probably not liking that he can't see me very well through the branches. Oh well.

My feet know the way better than my mind does and so I let instinct guide me instead, using four limbs instead of two. The wolves keep up surprisingly well and we make it down the mountain in good time. I slow down to stay with them when we near the parking lot and jump down nimbly to land in front of them.

With a fluid movement and rippling of form, both men are suddenly standing before me and neither look happy.

"What was that?" Waters is mad. Whoops.

"I'm sorry, I just needed to get out the extra energy." I can see him shaking in anger and his eyes remain amber.

"You're human and yet you aren't."

"That one I can't explain. Listen, I just needed to get out, to get away from the past. And I haven't had a Pack in a while... You know what, I don't have to explain myself to you." And just like that, the anger is back. I hadn't even noticed its absence this morning when I woke as the feeling was buried in apathy and emptiness.

But now that it's back, I am prepared to go back to living with it. I turn and stalk back to the car, getting in and shutting the door with the two wolves following behind me. They stare for a short moment before joining me.

"You said you didn't want to be Pack," Waters spoke softly but I hear the implicit question.

"I chose not to belong to a Pack for a reason." Is my terse answer.

"Does it have to do with your brother dying? That would be a long time to be alone." It's Collins this time.

"He was my last real Pack. I tried a few other times but let's just say that things didn't work out." 

I've met two people who had convinced me to try being part of a Pack again. The first was Lia, an owl who I met the month after I came out of seclusion. She convinced me that in order to come back to being human I needed to be with people who understood; her Pack was made of those who went rogue and became their beasts, just like me. In the end when it became clear just how dominant I was, they chased me out scared that I would take over. Lia didn't stick up for me.

The second was Greg, and yes, he tried to convince me to join his pack so we could be mated, but I couldn't do that. He didn't know that I wasn't a cougar like him but when I told him I was moving, he followed me. We were together for two years and though I never took the oath to him, it was as close to Pack as you could be without it. He returned to his Pack after eight months in a new territory without announcing our presence. I think he finally realized I was never going to be an open person, he was never going to be able to say I was his, that if I had it my way no one would even know who I was. Though in truth the last straw was when I refused to shift with him because I wasn't a cougar like he thought I was.

"I think Pack needs to be family. You need to love each other and right now I don't have that in me."

"That's why we have Pack. To love you when you can't find it in yourself to love. We're here if you need us," Waters responds gently. And honestly, I didn't expect that sort of answer from a young man like Sheriff Waters. Huh, I guess life is full of surprises.

"I'll take that under advisement." It didn't take much longer to reach my home. The moon was at its peak as I stepped out.

"Don't worry about escorting me in. I'll be fine," I say through the open car door to stop Waters from stepping out as Collins moves to take back the front seat.