25

The doctor moves aside as Meadow comes to my side and they switch places. The doctor checking over Carmen and wiping her tears away as she checks her pulse, and temperature and generally looks her over. Meadow sighs heavily and casts me an intense look that translates to ‘I feel helpless, I wish I could do something’. Despite her history with carmen, Meadow is still a caring wolf and wouldn’t wish this on anyone, even her. I nod knowing this is exactly how I feel, and I gesture her further from the bed in a bid to give them space to let the Doctor do what she needs to do.

“Doc is going to let her sleep; we should take it in turns to sit by her until she’s more with it. I’ll ask sierra too, maybe for a few days we can rotate and switch out femmes to comfort and support her. So she’s not alone.” I don’t know what else to do as I was so young and surrounded by grief when I lost my own family that it was completely different. We have been at peace for years so the horror of losing our people isn’t as numbed out as it was a decade ago. I have no experience of how to comfort someone else in this way when I was never comforted in any kind if way at all.

“Luna Alora, Luna Alora!” A wolf bursts into the med bay startling us out of our huddled somber and makes me jump with the speed and urgency in which he shot in. We spin on him, glaring to pipe down seeing as he startled the crap out of everyone.

“What is it?” I ask in a harsh tone, hating how panicked he looks and the raised high pitch of a distressed tone coming through his words. My stomach churning in unease at this interruption and my gut instantly tells me something is off.

“Come quickly, there’s something … in the air.” He throws his hands up, look somewhat confused and beckons us.

“What?” Meadow and I exchange glances and follow him at speed, leaving Carmen with the doctor and her capable care and speed outside to the main entranceway of the drive to see what he’s talking about.

Sure enough, just like he said there’s some sort of green smog in the air in the far distance of the mountain, which seems to be rolling down and into the forest at great speed like a heavy blanket sliding over the landscape. It’s like smoke, or a dense cloud and the rate it’s moving is alarmingly fast and swallowing all things in sight wherever it slides.

Colton something is coming towards the pack…. a fog. Get back here NOW!! I link rapidly, in panic and fear, reaching out to my mate in case he hasn’t looked up and seen it heading his way. I don’t know what it is, but all my senses are telling me they should get the hell away from it and get back here to safety behind the rune border.

“What the hell is that, Chica?” Meadow stares at the same thing I am fixated on and we watch in horror as it splays out and spreads sideways through the forest, expanding as it travels and encompassing everything as it moves. It seems to extend and move widthways until it starts to curve around the homestead at a distance and still continues to head this way. It seems to be grower larger and denser and picking up speed.

We see it, we’re moving. It’s fast as hell and almost here. I have them heading back. Colton quiets some of my anxiety by responding and I will him to get here. Whatever it is it’s not natural and the way it came down from the mountain raises all kinds of alarms. We long ago figured the vamps use the mountain to stay close enough to mount attacks, maybe have tunneled inwards, and they definitely use it as a vantage point to look over the lands surrounding. We know they have witches, and I don’t like whatever this is, even if it might be nothing more than a harmless strange colored fog.

Colton it’s spreading. It’s taking over the forest and circling us. My mind link doesn’t hide the panic in my voice, and it wobble uncontrollably, my heart racing as all I can do is watch this monster smog eat our landscape so effortlessly.

Stay in the homestead boundary. It may be a way to let the vamps move in daylight now the suns coming up. Stay behind the runes. We’re coming.

I grab Meadow’s hand in a tight grip as we watch and I can tell by her fixated gaze on the fog she’s linking Cesar, checking on her mate as it moves at us with deadly haste. It feels like an eternity and not the few seconds it’s been in reality. Both poised, numbly quiet and just waiting.

Where are you now? Colton, how far?

I tap my foot on the ground, aware my feet are human again, naked, and I’m standing on gravel but oblivious to the pain. My only focus is them, my heart and soul out there who needs to come to me so I can be sure he’s safe.

Not far, it’s almost……

I wait for him to finish his sentence then glance at Meadow again as nothing comes. She screws up her face indicating something is up with her link to Cesar too. I can feel it between us, the swirling rise of concern and panic as we both wait out this endless silence.

Colton? What were you trying to say. I ask, waiting patiently but no response at all comes through the link. Instead, an eerie solitude that I haven’t experienced for a long time, not since Colton cut me off many moons again when he rejected me swirls around me. It starts to dredge up my inner anxiety with a fury as I pull at my mind to make the connection but feel like I’m facing a blank dark wall. Meadow moves forward and she stares at the tree line, seemingly trying to concentrate real hard and I realize she maybe too has lost her link to Cesar. This is not a coincidence.

“He’s not responding anymore.” I point out, distress rising in my throat and I watch as she moves as far to the edge of the trees as she dares. Her face stiff, her eyes wild and dampening by the second as hysteria rises in her and points ahead suddenly with a shaking finger.

“I think I can see them in the woods….. moving fast but the fog it’s with them, all around them.”

I move beside her, my heart lurching into my throat and stare as far as I can see into the woods and strain to distinguish in the dim light of dawn. The woods are dense but she’s right and I spot dark shadows in semi wolf form hammering this way like lightning and sigh with relief. Exhaling heavily as my body loosens lightly and I almost laugh as emotions swirl and cave in indescribable joy.

“Maybe the fog stops the gifts, like the frequency does?” I point out and Meadow shakes her head and points out into the shadows.

“I could have sworn some are turned and in wolf form so surely that means their gifts are fine. We need to get closer to the boundary, something is stopping them from getting closer, it’s been too long…. look, they haven’t come nearer.” I stop my inward rejoicing and turn and look where she’s gazing to see for myself that she’s right. Despite being close enough to leap home in under a second, they aren’t appearing beyond the rune border but instead seem to be lingering on the other side of it. I move beside her and nudge her.

“We don’t need to. Here.” I lift my hands, flattening them palm to palm and point forwards as though slicing into the forest and slowly move them apart, splitting the trees and pushing foliage and branches back with my gift. Clearing a passage of sight so we can view all the way to the border of the boundary. A tunnel of unrestricted vision where I can see the fog has met the border and seems to be rolling up into the invisible protective wall and climbing higher to get past it. It’s smothering all beyond in a dense haze which makes it hard to really see anything.

Sierra’s family magic is keeping it back but it’s completely clouding our wolves from sight with the thick fog and we can’t see any of them coming our way.

“Why aren’t they coming?” I ask numbly, fear slowly dwindling around me once more and I know if Colton could link me, he would. He isn’t able to. We have a break in communication because whatever that stuff is it’s doing something to keep them out there.

“I have to go look; I can’t leave them out there in this with no contact.” Meadow’s voice breaks, her tears becoming evident as she loses the will to hold them in anymore, her own emotions stifling me. Her love for her mate and her pack reigning supreme and I can’t argue with her. My need to know Colton and my pack are okay overwhelms me too, and I walk past her, against Colton’s wishes, and head to the tunnel I am still holding apart. Meadow follows without question, without hesitation, both holding our breath in anticipation and we carefully, slowly, walk the long distance until we come almost level with the smog.

“Look” Meadow points up and we see from this angle how it’s risen more than thirty feet up, still blocked by our protective barrier and doesn’t seem to be able to climb any higher. Instead, it’s travelling the entire perimeter of the boundary, spreading, and looking back I see it’s far behind the other side of the homestead at an equal distance. Surrounding us on all sides and leveling itself off, but it can’t pass the rune border and it’s still too dense to make out the pack out there among the trees.

For the time being, we’re cut off, with no links, no visual and I stand here motionless unsure what we are meant to do.