“Tell your attack dog to back down,” Omar says. “Then we can talk.”
Jasper snaps his jaws in Omar’s direction.
“Ooh, feisty,” he says.
But I’m actually with Jasper on this one. “Why don’t you tell your…friends to back off first?”
“No can do. You’re on our land.”
“But…I didn’t think there were any packs around here for miles.”
“We might not be a pack. But you’re still on our land.”
Not a pack?Oh!I finally figure out why there isn’t a distinctive unifying scent about this group. They’re rogues. No wonder Jasper is especially snappy.
“We didn’t mean to intrude,” I say. “And we don’t mean any harm.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m afraid.” Omar shrugs half-apologetically. “Our charter is clear.”
“Charter?”
“Any foreign wolves found encamping on our land must be taken to the central committee.”
“The central…what are you talking about? We aren’t going anywhere.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” Omar doesn’t sound like he’s particularly sorry. In fact, I think he’s sort of enjoying this. “Orders are orders. We’ve got to take you in. Grab your stuff, you’re coming with us.”
“Where?” I ask, more than incredulous.
“Where else?” Omar cocks an eyebrow. “Rogue Sanctuary.”
“You found it then?” I ask as we’re marched through the desert.
Jasper, Omar, and I are three humans in a herd of wolves, flanked on either side by ten or more rogues. They were nice enough to let Jasper and me get dressed appropriately for hiking, and Jasper reluctantly offered Omar a set of his gym shorts, although I notice they’re the pair he wore yesterday and are probably quite sweaty still.
“I did,” Omar says, chin held proudly and a wistful look of contentment in his eyes.
“You’ve come a long way. Did you travel here by yourself?” When I met Omar he was living with the rogue healer Agatha at the base of a very snowy mountain in Colorado. We’re far from Colorado.
“For the most part,” he says. “I met up with some other traveler wolves near Seattle and we headed south together for a bit. Left them back in San Francisco.”
“You weren’t tempted to stay with them?”
“No way, cuz. I had a feeling if I kept heading where it was warmer, more isolated, I’d find the Rogue Sanctuary and, hey, that’s just what I did.”
Jasper grunts beside me. He was reluctant to go with the rogues and was especially unhappy to hand over the satellite phone before we were escorted from our campsite. I totally get it. Apart from Omar, the rest of the rogues seem a lot less friendly. They snap or growl if we veer out of their tight formation. It’s interesting seeing these rogues working together so well. Not at all something we were taught they could do.
“You’re looking better than the last time I saw you,” Omar says, his cheeks a little flushed—although that might just be the desert heat—and an approving smirk on his face.
Jasper shoots him a sharp look.
“Yeah, I was a mess.” I rub at the sweat dripping down the back of my neck. “But I’ve gotten a lot better at blocking out the noise.”
Omar eyes me curiously. “Is that so?”
“I can still feel it but most of the time it’s like a haze pressing in on me, not painful at all.”
“You just blocked it all out then,” he says, more a statement than a question.
