Page 3 of Fated to the Wolf Cowboy (Cowboys of Collier #1)

Tricia

I sniffed the air.

Shit!

I had somehow stumbled into Pack territory, only I had no clue which Pack. Hell, I didn’t even know where I was at this point.

It had been days at least, maybe even weeks since I left my home in the city seeking sanctuary in Westin Pack.

I had run and didn’t look back.

The quiet surrounding me was creeping me out and the sun was setting. Until yesterday I’d been traveling in my skin and staying in hotels mostly in populated areas. The further west I went, the quieter things seemed to become. I hadn’t passed a true city in several days.

I knew it was best to stay in my skin. I’d be harder to track that way.

But I was running out of money quickly and knew I was going to have to spend at least a few nights in my fur if I was going to make it all the way to California.

I just prayed I was far enough away from the trackers by the time I finally shifted.

Really, would they even venture this far away from the city in search of just me?

I didn’t think so, but a small part of me was still too paranoid not to fear it.

Westin Pack was rumored to be a sanctuary for my kind. I hoped that if I could just make it there everything would be fine. I had to believe that. It was the only thing keeping me from falling apart or giving up at any second.

I knew there were other Packs all over the world. I just hadn’t considered running into any of them.

I sniffed the air again.

Yup, definitely wolves.

Protocol made me want to find the Alpha and present myself to him, but that could be dangerous. What if it was a feral pack? I was in the middle of nowhere.

Even as I strained my eyes in every direction, there was nothing but endless land. It was quite daunting—no skyscrapers, no lights, no human sounds whatsoever.

I shivered.

How was I going to survive migrating through this area?

Sheer, stubborn, determination was all I really had going for me at the moment.

Still, there was comfort in knowing there were shifters like me nearby. Even though it wasn’t the same smell as my own Pack, it was still better than nothing but humans.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against humans. Hell, I’d been raised among them. There wasn’t much chance of avoiding human encounters being born and raised in New York City. The Big Apple was all I knew, but it wasn’t safe for me there any longer.

Years earlier a group called the Raglan had started rounding us up and experimenting on shifters. They’d been dealt with, but the aftermath had been hard on everyone.

People feared the experiments they had run and the people they had run them on. Babies had been born, some with odd powers, or multiple animals. People I personally knew had somehow been changed on a genetic level. The Pack dubbed their kind Experiments, Frankensteins, or simply abominations.

I wasn’t like them. I hadn’t been created in a lab. I had always been this way—a natural born witch.

But that fear of the unknown, of being something else, had spread beyond the initial concerns of those whom they had captured. It now includes anyone different, or special. Anyone with extra abilities. Anyone like me.

I could hide my powers better than most because they weren’t as obvious as some. But there were plenty in the Pack that knew me as a witch, plus it was documented. But I couldn’t risk being hunted down and slaughtered for something I couldn’t control.

My mind drifted to Aleah. She’d been a good friend to me, but she hadn’t taken the threat seriously. Her death had been a wakeup call to me and I vowed I would not end up dead in a dumpster like that.

I knew what I had to do. Packing up my entire life and life savings into one backpack I could easily carry in either form and leaving the only home I’d ever known had either been the bravest or the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

A cool breeze brushed across my skin, and I shivered.

It was too quiet, too dark. Looking up towards the sky I could see millions of twinkling stars. Were there always so many of them? It was rare if you ever caught a true glimpse of the night sky in the city. Sure, you could still see some stars, but not like this.

I sat back on my hind legs and just stared up into the sky. It didn’t even look real. I’d seen such things on TV before, but I never imagined what it would feel like to see it for myself.

It was pretty, but also distant, cold, and isolating. It seemed to represent exactly how I felt in that moment as I strained my ears for any signs of humanity and found none.

I took solace in knowing I was in my fur.

That made me less vulnerable out here. Predators would think twice about approaching my wolf.

Shifters had lived on all fours for as long as people roamed the Earth, right?

I was built to do this. I was invincible out here living my best wolf life, or at least that’s what I was trying to convince myself.

A cricket chirped and I jumped.

Somewhere nearby an owl hooted sending me running for my life.

My heart was racing and there was a roaring in my ears as an oncoming panic attack reared its ugly face.

Was that a frog?

Something scurried past me in the grass and I screamed, only it came out as a weird barking growl in my wolf form.

What had I been thinking? I might be a wolf shifter, but I wasn’t born or taught to live in my fur out here in the wild.

The most wild place I’d ever been before now was Central Park and you could still hear the blare of horns, the screech of tires, people rushing by, and you could still see the lights accentuating the skyline.

I looked around. There was no freaking skyline to be seen. And the silence was deafening.

Trying desperately to calm myself down, a strange sound startled me. It was right there almost as if I could feel its hot breath on my neck, but even when I turned around, I couldn’t see anything but darkness.

There it was again.

I screamed once more and took off running.

About twenty yards into my escape, I tripped over a rock and went flying into a tree. I heard a crack and felt searing pain shoot up my back leg, and my bag flew from my mouth.

Dammit! Where the hell had a tree come from?

There had been nothing but empty fields for as far as my enhanced wolf vision could see before the sun set.

With my heart pounding in my chest, and pain causing my eyes to water, I curled up at the foot of the tree and closed my eyes. When the mysterious sound happened again, I used my front paws to try to cover my ears.

The pain was too much to handle. My body grew cold, numb, until the darkness around me took over and swallowed me whole.

*****

When I awoke, the birds were chirping and everything around me had come alive. Noises comforted me, even if they weren’t the noises I was familiar with. But my eyes were hesitant to open. My head was still pounding, and the pain in my leg made me want to throw up.

What was I going to do? There was no way I could make it to San Marco, California on a broken leg. And I was hungry and scared. No one knew where I was. I could die out here and it could be decades before anyone found my body, if they ever did.

The worst part of all was that I knew I couldn’t shift back into my skin.

With a broken leg, that could be devastating.

I was going to have to find a way to set it and let it properly heal out here, all by myself, in the middle of nowhere, with no food or water, and absolutely no medical experience.

Leaving New York was without a doubt the dumbest thing I’d ever done.

I no longer cared about the threats and others’ fears. What the hell did they even know about fear?

This, right here, right now, was what true fear looked like. It made all that nonsense back home seem silly.

Get a grip, Tricia. Open your eyes and take control of the situation. You can do this. You will survive , I peptalked myself.

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

Nothing.

There was absolutely nothing. Just a small crop of trees in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. Rocks, dirt, and occasional clumps of grass were it for as far as I could see.

I called on my wolf to enhance my eyes even more.

Still, nothing.

There was not a single living thing within eyesight.

No signs of humanity whatsoever.

No one was coming to my rescue.

Panic bubbled up within me once more as reality sunk in.

In my paranoia, I’d left my cell phone back in the city. I didn’t know if real people could track a person’s cell or not, but I didn’t want a possibility like that to be my fall. Besides, I’d have to shift back into my skin to use it and that couldn’t happen right now with a broken leg.

Before I was lost to the panic and fear welling up within me, that mysterious sound from last night sounded again.

My head whipped around as my heartrate spiked.

Moo!

I almost laughed as I realized what it was. It took me a moment to find it, but there not even a hundred yards away stood a big brown cow.

I sighed in relief.

“Hello, big guy,” I spoke to the animal as if I were speaking to an old friend. The words didn’t actually come out because I was currently a wolf, but in my head, it was as clear as if we were having an actual conversation.

Feeling relieved, I momentarily forgot all about my leg, until I tried to stand to go to him and instantly collapsed back onto the ground.

“Ow.”

“What’s wrong?” the cow asked me.

“I think I broke my leg,” I responded. “Can you go get help?”

“No.”

“What? Come on. You have to help me.”

“No.”

Without another word, he walked away.

“Come back here.”

“No.”

“You asshole. I need your help.”

“No,” I heard him say from much further away this time.

My heart sank.

That was weird. Did that really just happen? Maybe I hit my head on that stupid tree too.