Prologue Pt5

The most difficult part of the whole hunt was attempting to separate the meat from the bone with his teeth so that he could bring most of it back to the camp and cook for the girl and him to eat over the next couple of days.

After a couple of hours, he had as much of the meat as he could get free, resting on some of the pigskin he’d managed to pull free on the ground. The next thing was to bury the evidence.

He dug a quick hole large enough and deep enough to hold the remains and pushed the carcass into the hole. He saved a couple of the bones as well to turn into tools later. Once the hole was filled and covered with leaves, he gathered up the edges of the pigskin and carried the cache back to the camp.

He was impressed that the girl didn’t make a sound as he came forward. If he hadn’t known she was there, he never would have even spotted her. He lay the pigskin down near the fire pit and grabbed his jeans in his mouth, moving over to let the girl get a look at his face so that she wouldn’t be afraid.

He offered her a soft rumble of reassurance and then walked back into the woods. The shift back was a little harder than the shift into wolf form and try as he might, he couldn’t quite hold back his soft growls of pain and effort as he worked to become a man again.

Once the shift was complete, he tugged his jeans on and walked back over to the camp. “Princess Sara, it’s safe to come out now if you want. I’m just going to start cooking some fo—“ His words ended in a soft grunt as a tiny blonde missile shot him in the back and hugged him tight around the waist.

“That took forever.” Sara sighed in displeasure. “You got enough, didn’t you? You don’t have to hunt again?”

Marcus turned and tugged her around to sit beside him, keeping her close by. “Yes, I got enough to feed us for a couple of days. I’ll cook some of it fast so you can eat right away, but the rest I’ll cook nice and slow so that it’ll be all dried out like jerky and we can eat it for the next couple of days. I shouldn’t have to hunt again until after we get to where we’re going.”

Sara nodded. “Will my mommy and daddy be there?”

That question virtually broke his heart. What was he to say in response to that? He had no idea who her parents actually were, but in truth, the odds were very much against them having actually made it out of town alive.

He considered the options for a long moment and finally settled on honesty. “I don’t know, Sara. I don’t know if they’ll be there or not. But listen, no matter what happens even though you didn’t know me until today? We’re family. We’ve always been family and we always will be family. I’ll make sure that you’re safe and if your parents aren’t there, I’ll make sure that you’re not alone but you have to promise that you’ll try to be a big girl and stay strong. It’s okay to be sad and it’s okay to be afraid and it’s okay to cry, but being a big girl means that even if things make you sad or scared, you have to get back up and you have to keep fighting. We fight for each other now. No matter what, okay?”

Sara listened quietly and when he was through, she nodded. “Okay. I promise. I’ll try to be strong.”

Marcus smiled then and went to work on the food. “I’ll bet even big strong girls get hungry though, huh?”

Sara managed a little smile. “Uh-huh. I’m a little hungry.” Her stomach rumbled noisily and she let out a squeak of embarrassment and ducked her head.

The whole thing was so cute, Marcus couldn’t help but laugh. “Just a little bit, huh?” He asked her, just to tease her a little more. He was rewarded with a horrified little moan from what had become a little ball of girl hidden underneath her blanket.

It struck Marcus then how strange it was that such a little thing could bring a ray of sunlight and joy in the middle of such a horrible time in all of their lives. He reached out and ruffled her hair through the blanket and then went back to work on the food.

Half an hour later, the food was cooked and Marcus handed Sara two sticks loaded with meat. She probably wouldn’t even be able to eat half of one of them, but he wanted to make sure she had all that she needed. 

The rest he’d put back on the fire to cook slowly into jerky. It wouldn’t be the cleanest or the softest jerky he’d ever made, but it would do them for the time being. Desperate times called for desperate measures and these were surely desperate times.

Marcus was surprised when Sara managed to eat all of the meat off of one of the sticks. The second one, however, she handed back to him. Then she snuggled up in her blanket again and curled up against his side.