Lady and the Wolf [Book One, Lady and the Wolf Series] -Published-

Chapter One: Stirred Destiny

"Daddy..." she whispered. She had last seen her father fighting with those scary animals before he yelled at her to go with her mother. Ian, her big brother, had also been fighting with them, but why was his arm bleeding?

"Mommy, Ian needs band-aids..." she muttered, watching as her still frightened mother was trying to aid Avery as she walked.

Her mother's head spun around and Aira, although only six years old, instantly noticed those big tears rolling from her mother's beautiful blue eyes.

Something wasn't right.

"Aira, come over here and walk beside me. Do not leave my side! Do you understand?" she snapped.

All Aira could do was nod as she ran to her mother's side. Her blue-green eyes shifted to her sister who was leaning to her mother's opposite side. Her hands, knee's and clothes were covered in mud from the rain that had hit earlier. She was also limping, and her face looked dry and strained. At that moment, Aira knew that something was horribly wrong.

They walked for a good while, and by this time, the rain was coming down so hard it stung Aira's skin. Thunder and lightning weren't far off, and when the two cracked down Aira let out a shrill scream.

Her mother's breaths were coming out hard and uneven as she looked around. Shelter, her children needed shelter until help came. The rangers would notice something was wrong and come find them, so she needed to get her children to safety so that Charlie could come and find them later with Ian.

As she neared a steep, rocky hill, Vivian gasped as a shimmer of hope showed itself. There in the centre of the hill were rocks and a little crevice, big enough to huddle into, but too high and steep for an animal to get to them.

But deep down, a terrible feeling told her that these weren't normal wolves.

'Why are they here, of all places...?'

She gently sat Avery down onto the muddy ground and pulled Aira towards her, lifting the small girl up until she had a steady hand on one of the rocks.

"Okay, baby, you need to climb to where that opening is, okay? See it?" she pointed to the opening in the rocks only a short climb up while she held on to her daughter's tiny waist.

"M-Mom, you said climbing on rocks is dangerous," Aira whined back, her eyes watering from the wind that was slapping against every part of her body. The rain that had started up again was making her shiver terribly in her mother's grasp.

Vivian closed her eyes for a moment, squeezing them shut as she thought of a way to coax her scared little girl to safety. "Think of it as a game, honey, and the floor is lava. You know how to play, right? The floor is lava, you have five seconds!"

Thinking that the floor was lava didn't ease the situation in the least. In fact, it made Aira tremble in fear and freeze against the rocks. She was so frightened and confused.

Vivian was starting to get restless as she tried to push Aira up the steep rocky hill. Just as Aira shook her head no, as always, Vivian could hear the low, gut wrenching sounds of growls and branches crunching in the distance.

Looking down, she noticed Avery clawing away from the breach of trees and sit against the rocks. "M-Mom!" she cried. "They're coming!"

"Go!" Vivian shouted, shoving Aira so violently upwards that a sharp rock went straight through the little girl's palm.

In her shock, she stumbled and turned her head to look down. Her mother had let go and had picked up a large tree branch, trying to fight off the giant wolves she had seen her brother and father hitting earlier. Avery was whimpering just under Aira, screaming 'No!' again and again.