Chapter Thirteen

Baine is enjoying the thrill of the hunt as he continues to gain on Renn and Gabi’s trail. He licks his lips at the taste of victory when he hears the sound of an arrow piercing through the air.

Crap.

“Spread out and watch yourself. It looks like we’ve got some unwanted visitors on our trail.”

The three wolves separate, and Baine continues following the tracks of Renn and Gabi while Dane and Carl distract the hunters.

He hears another whizzing sound through the air and ducks as he feels the arrow skim the hair of his coat.

Damn, that was close.

Baine takes off in another direction that will take him farther away from getting closer to catching Renn and Gabi but will definitely help not to get him killed.

***

Gabi continues to keep looking behind her to see if she can see Baine or the others catching up to them.

“Renn, slow down. I think we’ve lost them for now.”

Renn nods and starts to slow down before stopping. Gabi jumps off his back just before he collapses to the ground.

“Renn!”

Gabi drops down to the ground next to him. Before she can touch the fur of his wolf, Renn shifts back into his human form, trying to catch his breath. Gabi grabs a flask filled with water and hands it to Renn.

“Here, you need to drink this. Why did you push yourself so hard?” she says angrily.

Still trying to catch his breath, he says, “I’m, I’m sorry. I was just trying to give us a head start, was all.”

Gabi sighs as she sits with Renn, staying quiet, knowing that there was no point in really arguing about the situation. It is what it is, and it did give them a bit of a lead that they needed to stay ahead of Baine and the other wolves.

“I could sense them getting close, but then, it was gone. I wonder what happened,” Renn says as his chest is now rising and falling at a calmer rate.

Gabi shrugs. “I have no clue, but at least it was to our advantage.”

She looks around to try to figure out where they are.

“Can you move yet?” she asks.

Renn gets up from the ground and is a bit wobbly at first but regains his balance and starts to walk.

In a bit of a distance, they see a house.

“Do you think that’s the house?” she asks.

“Only one way to find out.”

They start making their way to the house. When they are about a hundred feet away, they hear yelling coming from the house.

“I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me what you did with my daughter.”

It is an older man’s voice yelling.

Renn and Gabi start running towards the house and barge in.

Inside, there is a man and a woman trying to push something into the corner of the room. The man is holding a fire poker in his hand as he continues to threaten the thing.

It starts to whine and howl, not knowing where else to go but get backed into the corner.

“Hey, what do you think you are doing?” Gabi yells at the couple.

The couple quickly turn to see Gabi and Renn standing in their living room.

“Get out of here. This is none of your business,” the man yells at Gabi.

Gabi looks at the animal and realizes it is a wolf.

“No, you stop. You are scaring it.” Gabi tries to move towards the wolf.

The wolf growls as Gabi gets closer, but Gabi hears something else.

“Get away from me. Why is this happening to me?”

“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” Gabi tries to say to the wolf.

“What are you trying to do? You can’t talk rationally to them. They are nothing more than savage beasts and need to be killed,” the man says as he grabs Gabi and pushes her away from the wolf.

Gabi falls from the push. Instead of Renn going to see if Gabi is okay, he can feel his wolf taking over. He shifts quickly into his wolf and starts to growl at the couple moving closer to put himself between them and Gabi.

“Renn! Be careful.”

The woman looks at Gabi with a disgusted look, but her eyes widen as she gets a better look at Gabi.

Renn lets out a vicious bark towards the couple. Not knowing who to threaten the fire poker with more, the man moves it back and forth between the two wolves.

“Eve, go grab the weapons. We need to put a stop to them, so they don’t hurt anyone else.”

Gabi tries to stop the older woman.

“Stop! You don’t know what you are doing!” Gabi yells at the woman.

“Get out of my way, girl. We know exactly what we are doing, and if you knew what was good for you, you would want us to kill them too.”

Gabi is shocked to hear this, but this is the exact reason why Dyrk has a no human tolerance. Wait, if they know what they are, that means—

“You’re a Luminar?” Gabi whispers.

Both the man and woman look at Gabi with surprise. The Luminars typically keep to themselves and keep what they do a secret. It helps them from being hunted down by the abominations that they were sworn to kill.

Renn leaps forward and bites down on the poker to get it away from the man.

“Steven!” the woman calls out.

In the end, Renn is able to get the poker away from the man. The couple group back together but stand with pride and not fear.

“If you are going to kill us, then get on with it,” he says to Renn.

The other wolf starts to bark relentlessly at the couple and Renn.

“Stop it. Get away from my parents! You sick beast.”

Renn turns his head to look at Gabi and tilts his head in a confused manner.

Parents?

“Wait!” Gabi says and slowly tries to walk back over to the wolf. It growls but steps out from the shadows. Gabi lets out a gasp as she recognizes the black wolf with amber eyes.

This is my wolf.

“Easy, easy. Just breathe. That’s right. Now think about your human body. Picture it and allow your human self-take over.”

The wolf closes its eyes, and a moment after, a girl is kneeling on the ground. When she stands up, the couple yells out.

“Lucy!”