I stayed near the cliffs, inside the trees, during the daylight hours on the beach. Not a fan of attention, I merely observed others interacting… in most cases, wishing I had something similar.
There were different people out there on the sand again. A few groups, probably those on vacation, were the same as yesterday’s crowd, and others I hadn’t seen before. People always seemed to come and go, far faster than anything else.
And then I spotted two girls laughing. One was facing me more than the other… and I paused, leaning forward in my spot on the grass as if it would help me see her any better. It didn’t.
But there was something familiar in her eyes or her face or something else. And then I realized why.
That… girl. I’d seen her before.
But where?
She held up a hand to her brow, blocking the sunlight as she squinted her eyes and peered out at the world around her, bright in the sunshine.
I’d seen her…
My attention turned to the girl next to her as she turned, or rather, I guess, they looked more or less old enough to be adults. They’d be women then.
She looked familiar too.
One wasn’t just looks, though.
She felt familiar.
When they turned to look at each other, grins on their faces as they strode on the sand, away from the water, I felt my heart nearly pitter-patter to a stop in my chest.
Oh no.
No…
My hand gripped the stick I’d been holding, tighter and tighter until it snapped in my hand and I flinched at the feeling as much as the sound.
They…
The second woman turned my way, eyes narrowed, as the first one continued to look around. I stopped breathing, and the thudding of my heartbeat in my eardrums drowned out the sounds of the ocean and chattering tourists. When she determined there was nothing of consequence in my direction, they continued on their way, walking up the stairs, toward the houses that were often rented out along the beach here.
So, they didn’t live here… they were visiting.
And they needed to leave.
As I let out a shaky breath, dread washed over me.
They can’t be here.
Those smiles they’d worn, that beautiful radiant happiness they were emitting… was about to get ruined.
But there was nothing I could do.
There was nothing I could say.
I let the pieces of the stick fall from my hand as I forced it to relax. But the second the pieces were gone, my fingers were trembling.
She had heard the noise. A noise that could’ve easily been drowned out by the waves or the chattering of people. A noise that took heightened senses to pick up on.
It meant they were wolf shifters.
And it confirmed the worst thing, that they weren’t human doppelgangers. They were really them. They were…
The picture, up in the cabin we were staying in, with an ‘x’ on it? That was the second woman. And the first didn’t have anything on her photo yet. But Myrus wouldn’t have collected her photo for nothing.
She was connected, in one way or another. There was a reason for it all.
And for some reason, this time…
This time, whatever they were planning for these two…
I was terrified.
And I didn’t know why.
...
I headed back up through the trees and foliage, all the way up to the cabin once more. But nobody was there.
My heart was hammering in my chest, even as I tried to take steady breaths. In and out. In and out.
Finally, after wandering around the outside of the house and confirming their lack of presence, I wandered over to the cliff that overlooked the beach below.
And there she was.
My heart stalled for just a minute. Maybe everything was fine… maybe there’s nothing to worry about?
Worry?
Was I worried about those girls?
How strange… that’s never happened before.
“Hey, Pet.” She called me closer, waving with her hand when she noticed my presence. “There’s some interesting characters down there on the beach, don’t you think?”
Pet.
It was what she called me most of the time, when she wasn’t bringing my attention back to a number branded into the backside of my shoulder. Like I could forget it was there, like it was a funny joke to her. It wasn’t funny to me, but I never showed it.
Not that Pet was better than a number. With Pet, I got reduced to a domesticated animal. With that, I wasn’t a human anymore either.
If it was anything, I did know my name. My real name. The one my mother gave me… but they didn’t care to use it at all.
I said nothing in response to her question. I merely assumed that whatever got her excited meant that someone important was down there and she saw them.
That probably meant those women from before.
It meant that gut-wrenching feeling was coming back.
She handed me the binoculars she was holding. And by handed, I mean she put them in my hand and wrapped my fingers around them when I didn’t immediately grab them. She pointed toward the beach. Toward the pier.
I sighed heavily.
I didn’t want to look.
“Oh, come on. Humor me,” she whined.
I nodded, kneeling down next to her.
Whether I wanted to or not, I was going to have to look, I was going to have to see them. I swallowed hard and took a breath before pulling the binoculars up to my face.
“Look,” she told me as she stood and moved behind me, leaning in close enough that I could smell whatever perfume she’d put on this morning. It made me want to sneeze; it was nauseating. Yet she only drew nearer and the feeling grew worse. “On the sand. Right down there by the pier.”
I followed her directions and braced myself as I brought the line of sight to the pier, and then down onto the beach it was on.
I saw the two women smile and laugh with each other as one picked up a shell from the sand. They’d changed clothes from earlier. That must’ve been why they’d gone inside. Now they wore swimsuits as they played near the water.
I forced my face to remain neutral, even as my heart stirred and trembled in my chest, bile threatening to rise from my stomach.
Just seeing their smiles, or the way one of them tossed their head back in laughter… I could almost hear that laughter. Feel it, all the way from here.
Neutral, I told myself, I am clueless and know nothing.
They’re irrelevant.
This wasn’t the first time she’d clued me in on a target as they were… ‘hunting’… in one way or another. It wasn’t always death. Sometimes it was interrogation, or just stealing something they owned.
So…
Why did I get the feeling this one was death?
The plants they were having me grow? The glint in their eyes? The red lines on the pictures?
I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t say otherwise. Not literally, not out loud. I wasn’t about to write it down either.
Pulling back from the binoculars in my hand, I turned and looked at her. She grinned wide, amused and delighted by the women down there, by their presence, by their obvious obliviousness to her and her father.
“They’re really stupid. We were going to back off of Jane Blackstone, and then she just appears.” She laughed as if she’d just heard a hilarious joke. “Funny, huh?”
Not really, no.
I didn’t think that was funny.
Nobody would think that was funny.
My gaze trailed back to the pier, to the two women, without sticking my face in the binoculars. I could barely make out their bodies, like little colored moving dots in the distance. My mind drifted back over her words.
Jane Blackstone.
As much as I knew little, I knew enough. Blackstone. It was one of the first so-called Alphas in the shifter world. Of the five, I knew they’d been targeted before. The descendants were just a few. Myrus and his daughter had mentioned that there were only three left, that it was more than it used to be – and that particular fact was annoying him. I didn’t know any of the reasons, just the results and current statuses.
But if she was a Blackstone…
She must be the one with an ‘x’ over her picture, I presumed, mostly due to the words she’d just said about her. They were going to ‘back off’. She was no longer a target. She wasn’t a part of their plan any longer. But did they make a new plan then? Was she in that one? Were they a part of the group that wanted to make the Blackstone line end?
And who was with her?
A friend?
A sister?
I didn’t know. I wasn’t privy to that kind of information. But they had to know each other, I thought wearily, that’s why they had a picture of her. That was obvious enough with just seeing them interact on the beach.
They were debating whether they could use her or not, maybe even to get to Jane, unless it was the other way around?
I was drawn back to reality with the sound of her voice too close to me.
“It’s no matter. She’s a pest worth taking out.” She leaned ever closer to me, still wearing that smile. “But we don’t need her. This is just a little extra hunting.”
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye and saw her gazing out at the beach, a terrifying gleam in her eyes. Her mouth opened again and she spoke softly this time.
“I wonder which one…”
‘Which one?’
I didn’t know what she was trying to say… and it was frustrating. I felt my jaw clench. If I’d been able to speak, would I ask? Would I just sit here and listen? That was something I would never know.
Staring into the binoculars again to take my eyes away from the one next to me, I tried to mentally calm myself down. I wasn’t sure if I could hold back how I really felt in my eyes any longer, or even in my face. But the second she saw anything out of the ordinary in my expression, I’d be in trouble, I knew. She’d be suspicious if I was angry or worried or concerned about any of this. After all, this was just an ordinary day to her… and to me, though I wasn’t sure if I could handle those ‘ordinary days’ much longer if my heart continued like this over each new target.
“I really wonder which of those two down there will get to play with my new toys first.” I heard her excitedly whisper near my ear, the hot gust of her breath hitting my cheek and sending chills through my body.
Toys.
New toys.
I stared at their smiles, trying to not feel my heart take off at an erratic pace at those words.
They were definitely going to die.
And she was the one that was going to kill them.
And I…
I wasn’t supposed to feel any particular way about all this, but I did.
And if they knew, would I be next on their list to go? A picture with an ‘x’ through it in red marker? The new test subject of a toy?
What exactly… were these new toys, anyway?
A strange thought hit me then, as I schooled my features and stoically handed the binoculars back to her. She immediately looked through them again, a sinister smile gracing her features as she watched them. I watched her, feeling more detached from her with every second that passed.
If she killed them, if she used her ‘toys’ on them, if she hurt them, then I…
If those two women died, then I couldn’t stay with this girl and her father anymore.
I would run.
In this moment, I was certain. I couldn’t let her kill them.
But why?
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