| ONE YEAR LATER PART 3 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Three days later they finally found me in the woods where my attack happened. I paced back and forth behind the tree line watching them come towards me: Anita, Nathaniel, Zane, the other guy that had been in the bed, and another man I had never met. They were walking slowly trying to appear harmless. I knew better. They stopped about twenty feet from me and the younger new man came towards me. This made me take a few steps back because he was one of the last people I had expected to step forward. I growled at him, low and deep – a warning to stay away. The other four started fanning out, coming up on either side of me. I continued to back up keeping them from completely trapping me. “Do you think she’s been in animal form these past three days?” I heard Zane ask. The one in front of me answered. “With the emotional jolt she had I would say it is very likely. We all know times of high stress and emotion make us all more susceptible to the change.” Anita took her turn walking towards me. “Rachel, a lot of things happened while you were gone. This is Micah,” she said gesturing to the man in front of me. “He’s been leading the pard. It’s a long story that’s going to take some time to tell. So why don’t you go ahead and shift back and we’ll talk about it over dinner.” “I think she’s already had dinner,” Zane said kicking a pile of bones that had been living animals a few days ago until they fell victim to my destructive mood. While their attention was diverted I turned and ran full out. I wasn’t ready for their explanations and that was definitely not how I wanted to be approached, like an escaped animal they were trying to take down. I just wanted to be alone. I wasn’t ready to forgive myself for leaving, for not taking their calls, for Nathaniel turning to Anita’s bed. He was obviously happy there otherwise he would have come alone and not with his bed partners. And so the self-destruction begins… When I was sure they had left I shifted back and got dressed. I pulled out an ad I had found while going through my mail, checked the address, and started driving back into town. ______________________________________________________________________________________ PART 4 INDEX |