---Jacob’s POV---
My wolf was growling in my head as I saw Paige’s wolf-form gradually stop fighting, probably from the lack of oxygen she was suffering, since the Drained kept looking at us with a taunting look as he altered between holding Paige on the back of her scruff or the vulnerable skin on her throat. When she shifted back and he crushed her against his side, I feared the worse.
“She’s still breathing Jacob. But we need to get her out of his hold before his control breaks.” Sean’s voice flitted through my head, making me look at him through my peripheral vision with a frown on my face. What was he talking about? Trying to get there would mean killing our mates; he knew that as much as I did.
When I saw him clench his jaw and his eyes flash at the small droplet of blood on the floor, I knew what he meant but I wished I never realized it. The Drained could succumb to its raging thirst any second, and the fact that he held my bleeding mate wasn’t exactly working in our favor.
Paige’s hands were clawing at the hand around her throat as she looked up in the sky; seeing that she was forced to tilt her head back with the Drained’s fingers digging in the skin below her jawbone. She gasped slightly, gaining the vile creature’s attention as it looked up before smirking and saying something to Paige.
“Now!” Sean urged before he lunged forwards, followed by the rest of the group. Its head swiveled back round before he started applying more pressure on Paige’s throat. I could feel my own throat tense and swell from the pressure before I stumbled to the ground with Sean grinding to a halt as he stared at the Drained with pure hatred.
A pained whine escaped Paige’s mouth before she reached with her hands to claw over the Drained’s face, managing to yank at his hair while the other held on the side of his face. A piercing screech echoed through the air before a pair of falcons dove down and instantly shifted into a leopard and a large tiger, as they were close enough to the ground.
Meanwhile, the Drained vampire bellowed as he stumbled back from Paige, a red-hot handprint burned in his face before the two animals reached him and tore into it. They elegantly avoided the lunges aimed at them as they darted past and around the Drained, where the leopard pounced onto its back and just as the Drained arched its back to grab it from his back and toss it away, the tiger lunged for the Drained’s throat.
I sighed in relief and found my feet take me towards Paige as she rubbed her sore throat. Gathering her in my arms, I quickly looked at Sean and let out another sigh. “She’s safe, a bit bruised but she’s going to be okay.” He sagged down on the ground in relief while Nick held a trembling Fawna in his arms, soothingly combing through her reddish fur.
Paige leaned back in my touch as I placed my face next to hers and took deep breaths to calm my wolf. He still wanted to go after that Drained and tear it to pieces. But the two shifters were one step ahead of me and had already finished the thing before turning around and shifting to their human form. They were staring at Paige like they couldn’t belief their eyes, a shocked expression glued to their faces as the female took a hesitant step forwards.
“Paige?” She shivered in my arms and nodded with a smile as the woman beamed with a teary smile before she squeezed in her mate’s hand. My heart warmed for Paige, since I knew that we had found her parents. Or rather, her parents have found us.
“I don’t mean to be rude little one but we have to move.” Michael said urgently, looking over his shoulder towards the woods. “While we were coming this way, we were flying away from a rather large group of vampires camped up several miles from here but they were heading in this general direction.”
Sean, Cian and Cary shot a meaningful look at each other and nodded once, saying unanimously, “Lucius.” Michael spun around and produced a low growing sound in his throat as he stared at the three vampires before he glanced around, his eyes lingering on the small part of my pack and the witch twins before his posture relaxed slightly.
“Well, if the witches are involved, I guess we can trust the others around our daughter.” He mumbled to himself before turning towards Paige’s mom with a meaningful look. She replied by lifting her eyebrows before sighing slightly. “Always the cautious one.” She muttered before shifting into a blue jay, which elegantly fluttered up in the sky while Michael shook his head.
“And that’s the reason why we’re still alive.” He added a bit louder before jumping up to shift into a powerful harpy as it let out a screech and flew up higher, circling up on the air currents. They waited for us to make a move but they were slowly drifting to the general direction we needed to go.
“Jake.” I looked down at Paige as she tugged at my arms to get out of my hold; At first I felt slightly dejected that she didn’t want my reassurance but then again, I did cause it myself. My face must have shown what I was thinking because Paige sighed and pecked my lips softly before looking at the darkening forest behind us.
“We need to go. Now.” She added as her eyes flashed slightly before the whole group rushed forwards as one, wolves shifting rapidly as we yanked our belongings with us between our teeth. There was no time to pack everything up nicely after we had thrown our bags down to discuss Lucius’ plans. What fell from our mouths was left behind.
Paige rose her nose in the air and sniffed a few times before shivering as she glanced back. “They’re coming and they’ll find our scent. We need to get away from them and hide our scents before we can escaped them.” I nodded once as I relayed this to the rest of the pack but none of us had an idea about how we were going to deal with this.
The blue jay elegantly swirled down before landing on the shiny fur of Nick’s shoulders, its small talons quickly grasping the red strands of fur as it looked around before laying eyes on me.
“Forgive me for being bothersome Alpha but we have a problem. The vampires have closed in on your former campsite and have now picked our scents up as well. Unless your pack is close by, we need to hide, and quickly too. This doesn’t seem like an accidental meeting.” The warm, motherly voice drifted through my head as the bird blinked a few times before swiveling its head around to look at the forest behind us.
Lowering my head in respect, I addressed Serena calmly as my paws kept devouring the distance with dizzying speed, although I knew that we couldn’t keep this up forever. “Yes, I’m sorry we unintentionally lead them to you but we have been searching for a few weeks for you guys by now. Paige wanted you back home, where you belong.”
Serena turned her head, slightly puffing up the blue feathers on the top of her head before she dropped of Nick’s back, twisting and turning between the wolves until she flew by my side. “And where exactly is home? We don’t want to endanger anyone with our presence.” She blinked a few times before looking at my side, where Paige was running forwards with her eyes flashing between her father up in the sky, leading us to safer grounds before they flashed towards her mom by my side.
“Home is back at our pack, several days running from here, probably shorter when we could fly but that’s impossible.” I remarked before truly realizing that we found my mate’s parents. They were finally reunited but we couldn’t exactly celebrate that when we were running for our lives.
A few laughs made us look back as the fur in my neck instantly pricked up at the disturbing sound of even more Drained. And behind them, was a smirking Lucius, who flicked his hand in a signal, releasing several vampires to run after us out of the woods.
What had started as a race to find Paige’s parents, had now become a race for survival. There was a niggling thought in the back of my mind, which was whispering that the only way Lucius would give up on his plans was when he was dead. I looked back to see that the vampires were closing in, Lucius casually strolling in the back as he watched us running away with glinting black eyes.
When the vampires got even closer, Paige snarled before throwing herself up in the air and turned into a beautiful bird. It was fairly large, about the same size as the harpy with red feathers smoothly turning in a yellow/orange hue. Paige flew back straight at the vampires, which made my heart constrict.
“Paige!” I howled out, locking my joints to grind to a halt and run back to her. My eyes widened as she flew lower and touched the weaving grass with the tips of her wings…just before she caught fire mid-air. I heard Sean gasp behind me as we watched in awe how Paige made a rather large circle around the vampires before she flew up, the fire leaving her feathers unscathed before she shifted back in a wolf, barking out a laughing howl as she shook her head.
“They should see their faces. Lucius is pissed though.” She laughed out loud, adding the last part slightly more serious seconds before a roar sounded from the burning circle as Lucius glared hatefully at her, seething because he couldn’t give chase. Serena shifted in a wolf as well and smirked wickedly. “That’s my girl.” She whispered while brushing her fur to Paige’s side in a loving gesture.
---Paige’s POV---
“Since when can you change into a Phoenix?” Cian stuttered in shock as we were still trudging through the stream, covering our scents up so we could hide away from Lucius and the others. I shrugged slightly and said, “It just happened. I was getting quite angry and flew up as a falcon and well…Here I am.”
It felt weird to be with my parents again, to see them for myself. They haven’t aged a day since they left me but now I knew it was because they weren’t human. Mom’s brown wavy hair was fairly longer and both her and dad looked tired, black smudges under their eyes to indicate that they haven’t got enough rest.
Cian snorted and shook his head at my explanation while he and his brother were holding tightly on Lizzie and Beth, both fast asleep on their backs; they had used their magic to make sure our scents weren’t going through the air anymore, at least until we were safe.
“So, it seems Lucius won’t give up.” Cary said, looking over his shoulder to check the forest again, his eyes flashing over our surroundings before going back to look at me. I nodded, kicking the water up slightly to get the mud of my knees as I replied, “I don’t think he’ll ever give up. Jacob thinks the same and believes that we need to kill Lucius when given the chance.”
Sean popped up beside me, a frown marring his face as he thought about it. “Killing Lucius isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Several others have tried to before you and failed…miserably.” He shuddered in disgust at the thought and stepped out of the stream as mom waved us over from the side.
“We need to make a plan to escape those vampires and get to your pack before they find our scents again. Those two can’t hold them off much longer.” Mom said with a worried glance at Lizzie and Beth, who were still fast asleep. I nodded slowly and thought about ways to escape the vampires. Sadly, I couldn’t come up with anything, and neither did the rest.
Dad appeared from the sky, elegantly shifting back to his human form before he tussled his hair a bit and sighed. “It’s no good, the vampires are still coming after us, although they’re going more to the north than we are, meaning that they can’t exactly spot our scent.” I sighed and sat down, feeling Jacob shift to his wolf before he nudged me so I could lean against his furry side.
“We could always ask the pack for advice.” Nick said, adding his two scents while he held Fawna close to his chest, slowly petting her as she purred in content. Jacob let out an agreeing rumble as he stretched his paws in front of him and looked up at everyone, frowning as he thought.
I shook my head at Nick’s suggestion. “I think the pack has enough to think about; there were hunters there, who were negotiating with them.” At that, Jacob’s head shot up as the other wolves jumped up in distress, several of them shouting “WHAT?!”
Raising my hands in surrender, I quickly explained, “Calm down you guys. Like I said, they were negotiating. The group of hunters that were there wanted their wolves back and they wanted to talk to me about it.” Nick and Tyler settled down again, still a bit peeved that there were Hunters bothering the others back at home but we had bigger problems.
I looked around the cave and stared at the pale brown walls and the piles of rubble here and there. My eye was drawn back to the entrance, which gave us a view of the thick pine forest, which was slowly being swallowed up in the mist. Dad was staring in the mist with strange illuminant eyes while mom walked towards me and sat down beside me with a soft sigh.
She held her head down as she looked at her feet, almost as if she couldn’t look at me. A few moments later, the silence became too much and I reached out, hesitantly stirring her arm before she looked up at me, tears slowly appearing in her eyes.
“Honey, I’m sorry we had to leave you like that, but we got wind that the hunters were closing in on us. We couldn’t take you with us and condemn you to a life of hiding and surviving, especially because your scent wasn’t as strong as ours. You could have a normal life if we left you, so we did.”
I nodded slowly and murmured, ”Yeah, I figured that out after I was accepted in the pack. But why didn’t you guys take me and go find a pack to protect us?” I asked curiously, trying to keep the resentment out of my voice. Although my mom and dad left me to protect me, and they were very reluctant to do so, a part of my mind doubted that I would have hated a life of hiding more than my life in the orphanage.”
Dad’s deep voice sounded from behind me and I looked up to see that he had silently approached us while Sean had taken his place at the entrance. “Because our presence would disturb the peace in any pack. If the hunters would find out that we were living amongst wolves, they would attack and decimate that pack. We couldn’t do that to anyone.”
Mom shyly hugged me before I pulled her closer and wrapped my arms around her, holding her tightly while dad gave up on the whole ‘tough guy’ image and pulled both of us in his lap, engulfing us in a bear hug. Mom started sobbing but smiled all along and made me laugh when she exclaimed she was crying because she was happy.
Dad let us go and tilted an eyebrow because as I can recall, Jacob had growled as a reflex when dad pulled me away from him. He observed Jacob with curiosity, probably wondering where that possessive streak was coming from, but then again, I was accustomed to it.
Jacob had shown remorse for his earlier behavior and although he seemed a bit lost about how he was going to make it up to me, his intentions were sincere. After his breakdown he seemed more…humble, I guess you could say. It wasn’t all about being the alpha’s son and soon to be alpha anymore, and I had to say I was glad he let that stuck-up trait slip away.
I felt dad freeze as he sniffed the air slightly before he looked from me to Jacob and back. The others were settling down against the cave walls but the calm, sleep-inducing atmosphere quickly changed when Dad pushed me gently aside and stood up with a growl before making his way towards Jacob.
Nick frowned and quickly stepped up beside Jacob, defending his Alpha if things would get out of hand but everyone froze when Dad growled again and took another step forwards.
“I’m sorry for intruding, Alpha, “ Dad apologized with a growl before he continued in an accusing tone, “But could you explain to me why my baby girl is reeking of your scent?”
Jacob froze before his eyes locked with mine and I had to bite my lip to hide the smile when I noticed that Jacob was apprehensive, mildly scared to tell my dad that we were mates, or rather, that we were fully mated.
I think that Jacob had some explaining to do, not to mention that he needed to tell my parents that they were going to be grandparents somewhere soon. Nick chuckled when he heard my thoughts and backed up a bit, probably relaying to the others what was transpiring as they sat back and watched to see how Jacob was going to talk himself out if this.
I feel for Jake, really I do. He has to explain to Michael why his daughter smells of a male and is pregnant? Wouldn't want to be in his shoes, or paws xD
Anyways, what do you think? They escaped Lucius.....for now :p Nope, He isn't going to quit quite yet :p I still have a plot twist coming up xD
Comment, Vote,.... :p