Chapter 6 Luca
Rot, bloody scent, and hot wild anger burned through the night air and crawled straight into my lungs. It was a rogue. I was already moving before I fully registered where I was headed. My shoes tore through gravel and dirt as I ran across the back edge of townbpulse ringing in my ears. The houses thinned out quickly giving way to the darker stretch of trees that marked the edge of pack territory. I should have alerted my father, waited for Mason or Rafe instead, instinct and the need to prove myself to my father drove me forward. The wind shifted and I smelt something else tangled with the rogue’s stink—milk and honey.
Aria.
The rogue was hunting near her house. I dropped low as I hit the tree line my body sinking into shadow. The moon was high enough to give shape to the clearing beyond the Morgan property with silver light catching on leaves and the pale fence that barely separated the backyard from the forest. Her house was quiet and dark except for one faint glow at an upstairs window. She was awake.
With my heightened sense of hearing, I could hear the uneven drag of the rogue's paws. It was in wolf form when it slipped into view between the trees, the sight twisted something sharp in my gut. Patches of fur clung to torn skin making it too lean for a werewolf. Its eyes burned with the flat dead focus of something that no longer remembered what anything was. It lifted its head and sniffed then attention snapped straight toward Aria’s yard.
“No,” I breathed.
The shift tore through me like lightning under my skin. I could hear my bones cracking, my clothes being ripped apart as I transformed. Heat surged through my body as my vision widened with the shadows being as clear as day. I landed on all fours without breaking stride with claws cutting into damp earth as I launched myself across the clearing.
The rogue heard me at the last second, spinnig with a snarl and the impact came hard and violent with our bodies slamming through bush and dead branches. I bared my teeth feeling a growl rip through me. We rolled through dirt and fallen leaves and I raise my claw to strike but his got me instead. It raked across my side. The pain was only momentarily as I could feel it healing already. But I was angry and clamped down on its shoulder and feeling bone cracking under my jaws.
The rogue staggered wildly and I wasn't relenting till we crashed into a low tree trunk. It twisted and caught my foreleg between its teeth. The scent of my own blood flooded the air, another wrong move and this would escalate into something else. I jerked free with a savage wrench that tore fur and flesh together. The rogue staggered and I surged forward and drove it backward in a blur of motion until its spine hit the narrow strip of fence at the edge of Aria’s yard. The wood splinered but it created a loud noise. A light flicked on behind the glass of her back door.
Shit!
The rogue sensed it too and its focus snapped past me toward the house with hunger rekindling in an instant. It lunged wild and reckless but I intercepted mid-air. We slammed into the cobblestone of the yard with the rogue’s claws caught in my neck this time and blood spilled down my chest. I could hear Aria’s hurried footsteps through the door and her heart beating wildly in her chest coupled with her fear permeating the air. I had to end this quickly.
I drove my weight down and crushed the rogue beneath me. My teeth closed around its throat and I held with my fangs sinking into it as it convulsed once, twice, then stilled. Its body went slack beneath my jaws. The fight drained out of me and I was now panting. I lifted my head slowly. Aria stood frozen on the back step wrapped in a loose sweater. The porch light cut pale across her face and her eyes were wide with pupils dilating, breath shallow as she stared into the darkness beyond the yard at the blood smeared through sand and leaves.
She could tell something wasn't right even if she did not understand what it was. I backed up slowly into shadow with my body trembling with the effort to stay still and quiet. My shoulder burned and my ribs throbbed and every thought screamed to move her away from the edge of the woods to put myself between her and the dark but I could not let her see this.
Her gaze roamed the tree line. She took one tentative step forward and fear came off her in waves now. I edged back farther into the woods. The rogue’s corpse lay half in moonlight, unmistakably wrong even at a distance. It was too large for a coyote should it be discovered and I just realized how fucked I was. My father was gonna skin me alive. Something rustled behind me and I turned just fast enough to see another shape moving at the edge of my sight.
Mason.
He had followed my trail after all. His eyes met mine through the dark. Go now. I’ll take care of it. His voice rang clear in my mind.
No, we'll take care of it. I couldn't let anyone clean up the mess I had made alone. Mason was gone in an instant to take care of the rogue's body.
Aria moved again with her body tensing. This time she stepped fully off the porch and her bare foot brushed the sand and she froze. Her breath caught audibly as she stared at the deep gouges torn into the ground at the thick dark smear soaking into the cobblestone.
“What the hell…,” she whispered.
She bent down slowly and cautiously towards the ground. Her fingers hovered inches from the blood before she jerked them back. Then she lifted her head with her gaze moving straight to me. For one split second, I was certain she could see my eyes burning amber in the dark. Her heartbeat rose and a shout cut through the night from the front of the house.
“Aria!” Her mother’s voice cut from the front of the house, worried.
Aria spun toward it and I didn’t wait. I bolted deep into the trees, paws pounding earth, and blood dripping behind me. By the time the pack arrived minutes later, the clearing was empty. Aria was back inside safe and my wolf—my stupid, reckless wolf—didn’t care about rules or secrecy or what my father would do when he found out.
He only cared that she was safe and that she’d looked right at him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
That fight was brutal and way too close to Aria’s 😱 Luca’s wolf took over the second the rogue got near her, and now she’s seen something she can’t unsee. The tension is skyrocketing—what do you think she’ll do next? Brush it off as a big dog or start connecting dots? Drop your thoughts below and tell me how long before she confronts Luca about the weirdness in their shared backyard?