CHAPTER 3: The Woods

CHAPTER 3: The Woods

GREY’S POV

I didn’t think anything of it when Priest asked us to follow him.

He was our coach. We followed him to practice, to film sessions, to meetings we didn’t want to sit through. 

So when he turned and walked out of Karl’s doorway without fully explaining why, I grabbed my jacket and went.

Karl was confused and restless beside me the whole walk. I could feel that through whatever the bite had done to me. 

I had been feeling his emotions since I woke up next to him and I still hadn’t fully decided what to do with that.

Priest took us outside through the back exit and across the training field. I thought he was heading to the facility. He wasn’t. 

He kept walking past it, past the equipment shed, past the boundary lights, into the tree line.

I slowed down a pace a but. “Where are we going coach?” I asked, behind him.

“Not far.” Priest said without turning around.

Karl’s hand found my arm briefly. I looked at him. His jaw was set and his eyes were doing the thing I had seen once before in the locker room, that shift that makes them look darker and more focused than any human eye had a right to be. 

He was reading something in the air that I couldn’t read.

We walked for another few minutes until the trees were thick enough that the facility lights were just a dull glow behind us. Then the Priest stopped.

He turned around slowly and looked at both of us and the easy coach energy was completely gone. Something else was standing where it used to be.

“Finally.” He said. “I have been waiting for the right moment.”

I looked at the two women behind him. They hadn’t said a word the entire walk. 

They were standing still in a way that wasn’t natural, like they had turned something off inside themselves, and they were both looking at me with an attention that made my skin feel wrong.

“What is this?” I asked.

“This.” Priest reached into his jacket and pulled out something metal. “Is me stopping pretending to care about your power play.” He looked at Karl. “I’m a hunter, I have been for eleven years. And you.” He pointed the metal thing at Karl without flinching. “Have been the most cooperative wolf I’ve ever tracked. Showing up to practice every day. Staying in one place.” He almost smiled. “That made my job very easy.”

Karl didn’t move or talk. He freaking wasn’t even shaking. This dude is strong for real.

“And you.” One of the women spoke for the first time. She was looking at me. “Have been even easier. Walking around with a bound bloodline like you were just a regular person.” She tilted her head. “You’re not a regular person Grey Andreyson. You are a witch. And you belong to us.”

“I’m not a witch.” I yelled.

“You don’t have to know what you are for it to be true.” She said.

“He’s not going anywhere.” Karl said. His voice came out very flat.

Priest looked at him amusemingly. “Here’s the thing about that.” He said. “Your pack can’t reach you. You know why?” He glanced at the women. “Because a witch served a bond that was placed by a she-wolf. That breaks the pack connection. Whatever tether your alpha had on you, whatever way your father could find you in an emergency.” He paused. “It’s gone. And you’re on your own out here.”

Something happened on Karl through me, it was like it’s from the bond. It was cold and very sudden.

“So.” Then Priest said. “Here’s how this goes. My friends take the witch. I take the wolf. Everybody goes home.”

The two women moved toward me at the same time.

Karl stepped in front of me. “Don’t.”

Three hunters stepped out of the trees. I hadn’t heard or seen them coming. 

They moved around Karl slowly, cutting him off from me, and I watched Karl’s head track each one of them without turning fully, just his eyes moving calculatively.

One of the women grabbed my arm. I pulled back hard and her grip tightened and I felt something like electricity move up my arm from where she was touching me. 

Although it wasn’t painful. But it was like something inside me recognizing something inside her and not liking it.

“Karl.” I said.

He was already moving. He got one hunter off his back and I heard the impact from where I was standing and then the second one grabbed him from behind and the third came in low and I saw the moment it connected, the hit to his ribs, and I felt it.

I freaking felt it. Holy moly. I felt his pain. I was honestly freaking out god damn it.

So if they start fighting now, it won’t be like watching someone get hurt. It will be like getting hurt myself. 

Another punch hit Karl again. And a sharp crack right below my own ribs that knocked the air out of me and I gasped and the woman holding my arm said something to the other one that I didn’t hear because I was still processing the fact that I had just felt Karl’s pain in my own body.

The woman shoved me and I went down on one knee and my palm hit the ground and that electricity feeling came back, but it was stronger this time, moving up through my hand from the earth, which made no sense but was happening anyway.

“Karl.” I said again.

He was on his feet but there were three of them and Priest was standing back watching with his arms folded and his metal thing still in his hand.

“You told me.” I said. My voice came out unsteady. “You told me you were the alpha in waiting. That…that means something.”

Karl looked at me over the shoulder of the hunter trying to hold him.

“So prove it.” I said. “If you’re what you said you are. If I’m actually your mate and this bond is real and you felt what I just felt.” I looked at him. “Prove it. Right now.”

One of the hunters hit him again and I felt the echo of it in my own chest but I kept my eyes on Karl’s face.

“Shift.” I said. “Save your mate.” And something changed in Karl’s eyes.

Not the dark focused thing I had seen before. Now, it was something hat had been held back for a very long time and was done being held.

His head dropped forward, then his shoulders started changing shape. The hunter holding him stumbled backward without letting go and then let go anyway because something was happening under his hands that hands weren’t meant to hold.

Priest took one step back. The two women went completely still. Then a sound that came out of Karl, and honestly it wasn’t a human sound.

And then there was no Karl standing in the woods anymore.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ There was a mighty wolf.

Werewolf do exist. I thought those were myth. Right?