Gray Lake Wolves Pt. 09

River and I shift simultaneously and dash off after the big brown wolf. The entire way I pray to whatever God exists to let me best friend be okay. Maybe it's not her blood or maybe she's not as injured as we think.

The tang of blood thick in the air, we crest over a small hill. Laying on the other side is a small body with medium brown hair that is so caked with blood it almost looks the same color as mine.

Her body is broken. So broken. I know she can't be alive.

Griffin shifts and tried to cradle his younger sister is his arms, but her body is so mutilated and torn apart that he can really only hold her head in his lap. He lets out a heartbreaking wail and sobs into her hair.

I remain in my wolf form. She's giving me the order and control I desperately need right now. I scent the scene around me, taking in the spring grass flavor that is undeniably Grayson, the spicy smell of Aspen, and a darker, muskier stench of a unfamiliar wolf.

My wolf growls, already hating the stranger. Griffin takes a few minutes to collect himself, then rests Paloma back on the mossy earth. She's gone now. All that's left is her broken and bloody body. He wipes his hands off on his chest and turns to me. "Let's find whoever did this" he says darkly.

~

The Pine Mountain pack is chaos when we arrive. Half the pack is shifted. Mournful howls fill the air and I know they have already heard the news. We must look like a strange sight, naked, covered in another's blood, walking purposely through the crowd.

Then I smell my mate.

A growl rips from the throat as I start to run towards him. He's in wolf form, pacing a small mental cage. His fur is matted with blood and mud. He's injured with a gash on his neck and a limp to his back paw.

"What's going on?" I scream at no one in particular.

Aspen steps forward. He's flanked by his father, Sable, and an barely familiar male. The alpha of the Monadnock pack, Sable's brother. I immediately recognize his stench as the stranger on Paloma's body.

"Your mate killed Paloma" Aspen says sternly. His voice sounds sure and sound, but the little tell-tale tick of his eyes gives the lie away. The slight shift to the left is what always made me able to win at the card game 'bullshit' as kids.

"Bullshit!" I call him out on it.

His eyes shift again. If I didn't already know he was lying, I would certainly know now. Besides, I know my mate. He wouldn't hurt anyone, let alone my best friend. Grayson growls from his cage.

Aspen looks past me. "He murdered your sister, Griffin. Erik and I were there and saw the ending."

Erik. That must be the Monadnock alpha. With a whiff in his direction I notice that he smells fresh and clean, like he just washed copious amounts of blood off his body.

Griffin storms toward them. He pushes Aspen against the outside wall of the main lodge. With a hand wrapped around his throat, he growls, "We both know that's not true. Why don't you tell us what really happened?"

Aspen's eyes shift to the alpha's and he gulps. "That's what happened. You saw him when he tore out of here earlier. He's unhinged. We need to put him down."

Now it's my turn to growl. I see River unlocking Grayson from the cage out of the corner of my eye.

The crowd is restless. Initially they believed their Heir, the boy who would be their alpha in a few short months, but now seeing Griffin and I taking the other side, they aren't sure what to believe.

Grayson draws himself out of the cage and shifts. He has a long cut running along the side of his collarbone and it looks like his foot might be broken, but still he lounges for the Monadnock alpha and pushes him so he's next to Aspen against the wall. "Try again, fucker" He breathes out harshly. He's in pain and it kills me.

"Tell them how I ran when I smelled her blood. Tell them how you told me it was another hunter. Tell them how you both jumped me when I got close enough to see the body. Tell me why she was mauled in the middle of the woods. I would really like to know that and I'm sure everyone else would too."

I watch as Griffin applies more pressure to Aspen's throat. His face is turning red and there's sweat beading at his hairline. "It was Erik!" He chokes out. "He said she couldn't live after she heard us. I didn't know she was there. Please, Griffin," he pleads, looking into his oldest friend's eyes, "Please. You know I wouldn't hurt her. It was all him. I'd never hurt her."

There's a sick crunch as Erik kicks out Grayson's wounded ankle and then he's shoving past him, shifting and turning with his teeth bared. He has Gray injured and backed up against the wall. River goes to move, but I'm so far ahead of him. Before I even heard the crack of bone breaking, my wolf pushed to the surface and I freely gave myself to her.

Shifting, I charge at the alpha male. I cry out in joyous celebration as my teeth sink into his throat. I taste the metallic tang as I rip out his esophagus and end his life. I take my time bathing myself, cleaning off his tainted blood from my fur. I growl at the humans that try to come near me.

"Baby," a man says, sitting on the ground in front of me. I sniff him. He smells like my mate. He's my mate's human. I nuzzle my nose against his hands affectionately. "Good girl" he says, pulling me closer by the scruff of my neck.

His fingers stroke my fur. I give him another nuzzle and a playful lick on his chin. He smells like blood. He smells like my mate's blood. I whimper. "Can you change back, Baby?" he asks me. Why would I want to change? Why would I want to be human? My human is sad right now. She makes me whimper. I protect my human.

"Can you force her change?" Another man asks. He's not my mate, but he's in my pack. My beta. He's my beta. I give him a warning growl. Don't get closer. Don't come near me right now.

"I could" My mate says, "but I don't think that would be a good idea. She gave her wolf control. She needs that right now. Clean up this mess, figure out what happened here, and take care of Griffin."

He moves away slowly and I nip at his leg to gain his attention. "Come" he tells me, so I follow him. I follow him into the human home. I follow him up the stairs and into a room I don't know. It's a guest room. My human nudges at me from the back of my mind, sleepily, like she's starting to wake up.

He walks into another room and makes water come from a sliver piece of metal above him. I sit back on my haunches and watch him, curiously, with my head tilted to the side, as he washes the blood and dirt from his body. When he's done he goes back into the bigger room and calls me to him again.

He lays down and I curl up against his side. "Sleep" he murmurs and I close my eyes.

~

My eyelids feel thick and heavy when I try to open them. I feel the warm caress of Grayson's hand as he strokes over my belly from my ribs down to my hips and back again.

"Mmm" I try to speak, but my mouth is dry.

"Here's some water" Grayson says, helping me sit up and pushing a cool glass to my lips. I take it and gulp greedily.

Returning the glass, I lay back down and Grayson continues his lazy caress on my stomach. He leans in, giving a sweet little kiss just below my navel and I remember. My eyes pop open, straining in the bright morning light.

"We're having a baby" I whisper, running my finger through his dark, unruly hair.

"Yeah, we are." He gives me a small smile and just like that, the rest comes crashing back too. My father. Paloma. Aspen's lies. The taste of Erik's blood as I ended his life.

"I need to speak to Aspen" I tell Grayson.

"I figured you would. Can I get you to eat a little bit of breakfast first by chance?"

"No. I need to get this over with."

"I figured that too. Let's go," he says, pulling on shorts and passing me some clothes, "he's being held in the cell beneath the meeting hall along with your step-mother."

"Sable? Why? What's she doing there?" I ask, confused.

"I'll let you hear it from him."

~

The room Aspen is being held in is small and dark, but it looks less like a prison cell and more like a walk in closet. A cot sits to one side with a blue fleece blanket haphazardly thrown across.

Aspen is sitting on the floor with his back leaning against the wall when we walk in. He moves to get up, but Grayson puts up a hand for him to stay down.

"You owe her an explanation" he growls.

I don't know what I expected, but I never thought Aspen would break down, but he does. Through tears he tells me, "It was never meant to go this far. I didn't want it to happen like this. He promised me you and you were all I ever wanted. I love you, Clara. You know that right? I love you.

"Erik approached me about taking over the Pine Mountain land. He knew I wanted you and he wanted the land. We planned..." he chokes and turns away before clearing his throat and continuing, "We planned on convincing your father that Erik should be Heir and I should be your mate, but he wouldn't hear it. He said that he promised your mother that he would mate you to Grayson. I didn't think Erik would take things this far. I'm so sorry. I see how wrong I was now."

With that, we leave Aspen to his solitary. "I have one more stop" I tell Grayson with a nod of my head toward the other cell door.

Inside, Sable is withdrawn and dirty, lying on the small cot. "Why, Sable?" I demand, but she doesn't even blink. In fact, she looks bored. She rolls to her side and stares blankly at the wall.

"Because he asked me to" she finally says, her voice void of emotion.

"Who, your brother?"

She ignore my question, but continues, "He wanted this land. The Monadnock pack is backed into the mountain. There's no land for hunting and the humans are slowly drifting in with their ski lodges and alpine slides. He tried to make an alliance when your mother was still alive, but she wouldn't go for it. We thought luck was on our side when that deranged wolf got to her, but your father gave her his word and wouldn't be swayed. Instead, Erik mated me to him. That old man, who could never bond with me the way I could with him. We were just going to use the little heir pup, but he was so eager to go along with everything we planned..."

"That's enough" I say, standing and walking out the room. I heard enough.

"What do you think about Aspen?" Grayson asks later as we sit eating with River and Griffin. I expected Griffin to want to mourn with his parents, but he said that we are his pack now and he'd rather have our support.

"We'll never know if he's lying or how involved he was" Griffin responds.

"I agree. We can't let him be alpha here. Grif, you would be strong enough to lead this pack. I already spoke to the beta about it. Are you interested?" asks Grayson.

"No" Griffin shakes his head surely. "My spot is with you, at the Gray Lake pack."

Grayson leans back in his chair and rubs his hand through his hair. "We'll have to call in Adirondack pack to take care of this. We can't leave them without an alpha and something needs to be done about Aspen."

The Adirondack pack is the closest thing we have to werewolf royalty. Hailing from the original wolves in the Algonquian Native American tribe, they're in charge of and represent all the packs in North, Central, and South Americas.

"I'll make that call and then we can head back home" River says, getting up from the table. Griffin follows him out.

Home. I can't wait to go home.

"I love you" I say, turning to Grayson.

He pulls me into his lap and places a gentle kiss on my lips. "I know. I love you, too."

"I know."

"I already love our baby," he tells me.

"Me too."

"Let's go home."

"To Gray Lake pack?" I ask with a grin and he grimaces at me. "I kinda like it" I tell him.

The End.

*****

Note from the author:

Thank you all so much for reading Clara & Grayson's story! I still have three other stories planned out set in the same "world" and including many of the characters from Gray Lake Wolves. Next up is Releasing Raven, about, you guessed it, Raven! Don't you want to see inside her head? Wouldn't you love to know where that claim bite came from? Please give me some feedback on how you would like the parts in the future. I know I started putting these out quickly, but life got in the way toward the end there. Thank you all for being so patient. Would you rather I publish the parts as I write them or finish the entire story and publish them one after the other?