Bound

Circle Pit

CLAIRE POV

I could not believe that I had gone from arguing over second breakfast, to surrounded by a pack of angry wolves, in the space of six hours. Not even with eyes shedding water from the recent breaking and resetting of my nose. Not even with a head swollen with throbbing eggs from the regular traumatic abuse from the previous minutes.

The Northern Alpha threw his useless eye to the ground at my feet, and it bounced once, to land on a tree root. Looking up at me.

It was surreal.

The dry summer air pulled the last moisture from my mouth as I wracked and squeezed my brain for possible solutions to an impossible problem.

I had never dealt with more than two hostiles at once, and that was in a training capacity with the Triplets. I didn't have enough eyes to see what direction they would be coming at me next. I didn't have enough limbs to push them away. I didn't know how to be effective here. I wanted to scream and cry. I wanted to curl into a ball and let the nightmare end.

Maybe if I died I would wake up? But could I gamble that possibility against the future of the White Wolf Pack? Against Seline's niece Sam, and the bright howl she sang up at the moon every night at 3am? Against the furrow in Pablo's brow that got deeper every time he thought about a new engineering project.

No. It wasn't.

Xavier, take the reigns. I linked as the hostile wolves formed a tighter circle around me. You have experience in this arena. I said, shifting my feet to form human sized, owl shaped talons. The bones would be weaker, but the nails were razor sharp.

Two full size wolves dove in from opposing sides of the moving circle. I grabbed fistfuls of fur from one lunging wolf, and Xavier used the momentum to send it flying into the other. They retreated yipping and snarling into the outer rim, as another two descended. And then another two. And then another two. Diving in with passing blows in a constant bloody stream that never seemed to end.

I needed help. So I needed to take those damned radios out. But the rate at which wolves descended on me was too fast to catch the kind of break I needed to shift and fly. Besides. At this point in time I was enough of a toy to occupy them all. If they actually wanted to swarm me and kill me, it wouldn't be that hard, so this had to be a weird game of reverse piggy in the middle.

If I flew out, and took away their entertainment, what was to stop them taking out Sandra and my other fighters. You know, the ones currently circling a massive pine tree singing a Bon Jovi medley dedicated to the Moon Goddess.

I watched from the back of my mind, taking deep mental breaths as Xavier used my body to roll with attacks. As he used the momentum of others to make their lunging strikes less effective. They were toying with me. Ensuring that everyone got a taste of my blood, a rent in my skin. We were moving faster than light as the creatures descended, and the world was filled with a roiling mess of flying fur and splattering gore.

Xavier was incensed. An indignant fury stabbing, lunging, slashing and weaving. This enraged attitude warred against his desperate hope that the game stayed entertaining enough, for long enough, that I would stay alive. One that he was trying to keep away from me, but the Prince had forgotten how deeply a true bind wove our consciousnesses together.

Even with the odds stacked so highly against me that we could not see a way out, no wolf passed unscathed. Breaking ribs, snapping forelegs, and tearing rents on their sides to leave wounds flapping in the wake of their attacks.

Still, with every pass I was a little less me as my nerves blared louder and louder in emergent flashes of red and blinding white. Blood welled and dripped from gashes across my arms, legs, back and a vicious swipe across my face that narrowly missed my eye.