My chest heaved as my heart rate quickened, pounding in my ears as I looked around for a large branch or something to use to defend both me and Henry.
“Henry, stop,” I yelped when he broke free from my hold and went charging back in the direction of the wolf that still followed us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another pair of glowing eyes, and my knees turned to jelly.
A second wolf appeared on the trail with its teeth bared, glaring in our direction.
“Leave us alone!” I shouted, trying to make myself bigger to scare them off somehow. My heart leaped into my throat when I took my eyes off of the second wolf in time to see Henry charge the first wolf. He attempted to go for the wolf’s neck as he lunged. He narrowly missed, and the wolf swung his left front paw at Henry, catching him right in the face.
Henry cried out, and so did I. I sobbed and begged Henry to come back to me. That wolf would kill him.
I found a branch and started to run in the wolf’s direction, yelling like a banshee to scare him off, but the second wolf made a lunge for me. I stumbled back, making the thing miss, but again I fell backward and found myself crab-walking away from it as it advanced on me. From what I could make out, this one was as big as the first wolf, with the same gray-and-white coloring.
“Get away,” I screamed and kicked at the wolf. I just missed hitting its nose. It growled deep from the back of its throat and went to lunge at me again.
I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for what I was sure was my death. Before the damn thing could attack, another, deeper, more menacing sound came out of nowhere. I blinked my eyes open, and barely made out a third, even larger wolf charging the wolf attacking me, clamping its jaw around that wolf’s neck. The unmistakable squeals of the wolf that’d been advancing on me echoed around the forest.
The two wolves tumbled out from in front of me, back into the forest. I heard more howls and squeals, but there weren’t any more wolves in my immediate vicinity. I pulled n air, breathing heavily, trying to figure out what had just happened. Blinking, I looked around for Henry.
He was a few feet in front of me, the wolf he’d been fighting with no longer in sight. I wasn’t about to stick around to find out what happened to the wolves.
“We’ve got to go,” I said, stumbling to my feet and grabbing hold of his leash. That time, I held on for dear life and started to run as fast as possible to the end of the trail, which would take me back to the edge of my neighborhood.
Behind us, I could hear the grunts and growls and the rustling of leaves, which signaled animals fighting. I was startled and almost stopped when I heard a screeching wolf howl. But I kept running, encouraging Henry to keep up. I refused to leave him behind.
“We’re almost there, buddy.” Breathless, I could almost taste freedom when I spotted the streetlight that lit the entryway onto my street. “A few more yards,” I told Henry, whose heavy breathing could be heard a mile down the road, I was sure.
I huffed and ran, eyeing Henry and his awkward strut as he tried to keep up with me. Guilt coiled in my belly. If I had been paying attention, I wouldn’t have dragged him out like this. We could be safe at home, behind locked doors, instead of running from some crazy wolves that suddenly decided to take over my neighborhood.
As soon as I got back home, I would call pest control or something to get these wolves out of here. I couldn’t be the only one in this community to have seen those things.
“Oh my God,” I blurted out as I ran up to my front porch and was confronted by another freaking wolf. This one was a mix of light brown and coppery red, but it was still huge. I rocked back on my heels and walked backward, almost tripping over Henry.
The wolf didn’t advance, though. It stood there, on the top stair of my porch, staring at me with glowing eyes. I opened my mouth to scream, but a voice came up behind me.
“Chance, no. You’re scaring her,” a deep, male voice boomed from my peripheral.
I blinked and shook my head. Once I opened my eyes again, I realized that Chael stood directly in front of me, between the wolf on my porch and me.
“Go check out the perimeter.”
I gasped when the wolf bowed his head and casually strutted down the wooden stairs, gave me and Henry one last look, and then rounded the front of the house to head toward the back.
“What the…?” I couldn’t form a coherent thought as I tried to take in what I had just witnessed. That freaking wolf stopped and listened to Chael as if he was his master or something. And speaking of Chael…
“What are you doing here?” I asked before I got a chance to really look at him. When he spun around to face me, I gasped again. He was shirtless. The massive pectoral and abdominal muscles that I’d only felt through his shirt were on full display, thanks to the glow of the moon and the motion detector light I installed when I first moved into this house.
Not only was Chael’s incredible top half bare, but a red, inky-looking liquid covered much of his chest.
“Is that… blood?” I whispered and swayed a little, feeling dizzy. This was all too much. First, Henry and I were attacked by wolves, then saved by a wolf, only to be confronted by a wolf on my front porch, and now Chael stood shirtless, breathing heavily, and he peered down at me with a wild look in his eyes.
“Are you okay?” He started for me, but I took a step back.
“Why is there blood all over you?” I did not doubt that it was blood by that point.
His lips tightened into a thin line.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. The answers forming in my mind weren’t making any damn sense.
“You were attacked,” was all he said.
