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Carla carefully eyed the calendar; she held a pen to her lips as she carefully thought out the next few days. Her body was acting strange, and the only reason she determine why was it had been a very long time since she had shifted. She noted that she was two weeks away from the next full moon, and the large gap in time just couldn't cut it for her.
Usually she marked a few days on the calendar as run days, but since moving she had forgotten her ritual. The very idea of secdualing a run was absurd to Alcide because he always ran when he felt the urge. Unless it was a pack run, pack runs were always planned.
Carla simply explained to him that if she didn't write it down she forgot. She had once put off a shift for so long that her wolf had taken over and not being able to open a door tore apart the entire house. It had cost her thousands of dollars, and she ended up eating raw noodles for a very long time.
This way she never neglected a shift until her wolf took over, but there was the odd time that she needed to shift regardless of what was going on. Those were usually nights she stripped naked at her front door and went.
She had noticed this behaviour was more common now that she lived across from Alcide. There was something about another wolf nearby that made her want to run wild day and night. The more the day progressed the stronger the urge was. She wanted to ask Alcide to go on a run with her, but she had refused to talk to him after the bar.
She didn't know what to say to him, so she was avoiding him until she could think of something clever to say to him. She had assured herself that she was being stupid, and that lots of people were mistaken as couples. But then there was that nagging tug in her stomach where she wanted Alcide to like her. This idea, she told herself, was stupid.
A wafting smell drifted in her nose and she closed her eyes trying to gain composure over herself. She had never smelt such a thing in her life, and it terrified her. The sent was musky, strong, and poured into her house. The previous conversation she had with Alcide weeks ago about being able to tell the difference between species by their smells came back to her.
Although she had been practicing by herself and was really poor at it, she knew that there was more than one male werewolf walking up her porch. It was the only way for her to explain why the sent was so over powering to her.
She had thought about hiding, but she had already been caught standing in her home. A man older than her peeked into her house through the front screen door. She decided at that moment that she needed to get central air, because so far the screens hadn't been helping her. Lucy would like central air.
"Well hello there, sorry to interrupt!" He boasted standing at her door with a grin. There was three men with him, and they each leaned up against the porch railing watching their leader smirking. It was like they were all in on some big joke that Carla was unaware of.
Run.
She suddenly had the urge to run. She needed to get away from these men because there was something wrong with them. She could almost smell it, and she could tell by the way they walked. She was trained to know these things and she knew regardless if they were werewolf or not, their actions weren't normal.
"Can I help you?" Carla asked, she refused to move from her spot, and she slowly counted four men. The leader, chuckled and tilted his head.
"My name is JD, I'm the pack leader around these parts." He said, he rested his arm on the door frame and chewed his inner cheek. Carla could feel her heart beating like mad, she didn't know how she could get out of this one. There was no way she could out run three men, let alone three men who were werewolves.
"Oh?" she said, her response caused a small chuckle of laughter between the three men standing behind JD and when her eyes flickered over to them they all stopped. She was smart enough to know that they were whispering about her, because their eyes were firmly attached to her.
"Well it is customary for a wolf who enters another territory to present themselves to the pack leader, but I figured you were so busy moving in that it would be easier for me to come to you." Everyone knew he was lying. Carla had no intention of introducing herself because she didn't know that it was necessary for her to do that. JD had assumed she had no intention on showing up, and that's all he needed to justify his actions.
The need to protect herself was still strong, she had to lie to these men. To tell them she had no idea, and that she had never been in a pack would be dangerous. These men were not like her neighbor across the street; they would take advantage of her, lie to her and manipulate her. They could get away with it too because she would have been none the wiser.
"Sorry about that, between work and moving I havn't had the time." JD nodded his head as if her answer was acceptable but they all knew it wasn't. With his free hand he wiped the corner of his mouth, she had seen people do it before. They always did it right before they said something that upset her.
"We have a run in a couple of weeks you…" Carla suddenly cut him off, she hated the feeling of being talked down to. She didn't like this man, or the way the other three were looking at her. She had never in her life seen men so obviously hide their lustful eyes from her.
"Look. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in joining a pack. I'm happy with the way things are, so if you and your friends could please leave it would be much appreciated." A frown instantly fell on JD's face, and the men behind him were silent. The smirks they had on their face only moments before gone.
"See, I don't like that, especially when you're shacking up with that prick across the street." He had caught her off guard, she had no idea why he thought that and at the moment she didn't really care. Her insides burned as she felt her wolf try to escape. She wanted to rip him apart, but even if doing so would make her feel better, much better. There was no way she could clean up his body.
She took eight long strides across the room and slammed the door shut. She could hear the force of the door squeak the screen door, on the other side.
Then as if she were mad she started to rip off her clothing as her body involuntarily shifted, she was lucky she had made it too the back door in time to slip out into the yard or she would have ripped through the screen.
The feeling of being on four legs was phenomenal for her but the shift alone wasn't enough to get rid of her anger. It took 4 whole hours of her peeing on objects, rolling around in dirt, ripping apart squirrels, and chasing rabbits to calm down.
Lying on her back she twisted her body to rub her sent more into the ground then she thought was ever possible. She had seen Bruce do the same thing on Alcide's front lawn, and had known it was something she had taught him.
Her tongue hung out of her mouth as she panted heavily the night's activities finally catching up with her. She could see small puffs of air escape her mouth, and the cold air nip at her sensitive dog toes. With a jerk of her body she flipped herself over and her pearly white teeth started to gnaw at her leg.
She was so busy that she hadn't noticed a small dog jump into the clearing. He tried to stop himself at the last second skidding across the ground. He hadn't intended to get that close to a werewolf, but he didn't see her until after he jumped over a log. The dirt was loose on the ground so instead of stopping he kicked piles of dirt at the wolf and landed only inches from her.
Carla shocked that her face was suddenly filled with dirt stood up and started sneezing, when that failed she used both paws to try and pry the dirt from her face. The small collie that had ran into her stood still, he wasn't sure if he should run. He was positive that she would catch up with him if he did.
Carla inhaled deeply when she was finished and the scent of Sam Merlotte filled her lungs. She could determine that it was him from anywhere; she had after all used him in her smelling experiments. She would walk into the diner and try to pick out his sent amongst everyone in the bar. It was hard at first but now she could pick his sent up easily. She was now working on being able to pick out humans by their sent.
Her eyes rolled over the small dog, and for a moment she was silently. She had never seen Sam shifted before, and she honestly didn't believe that Sam could shift at all. Sam watched her with untrusting eyes, she was positive he had figured out who she was, just not what she would do.
An idea formed in her head. Werewolves lived in packs; this meant they ran in packs. She had never ran in the woods with someone else, sure she ran with her dogs but to her that was a chore. She had to keep a keen eye on them so they wouldn't run off.
Jumping forward she nipped at Sam's side. He stiffened at first not knowing how to take her interaction, but when she crouched down, her bottom in the air he knew she was trying to play. The very idea of someone wanting to run with him excited him, he was known as a freak amongst his friends and none of them really understood what he was. It would be nice to have a friend who had some kind of understanding. Sam lunged forward nipping at her side, a playful growl rattling in his chest. Then with that they were off they zipped in-between trees nipping at each other's sides.
"I'm surprised you're out here alone, usually weres travel in packs." He said softly, he tried to warm his body up by rubbing his upper arms with his hand. Carla kept her eyes glued to his eye level; she didn't want to accidentally see anything.
"I don't belong to a pack." Sam had given her a strange look. Uncomfortable she turned her attention to her feet. Her feet were black with dirt and not that it was ever a problem. As a child she had been taught to keep a container of baby wipes around to clean hands and feet. But tonight she figured that she needed to shower.
"I didn't even know other's existed until I met Alcide, hell I didn't even know there was such things as shifters." She burst, it had made Sam chuckle. Most people didn't know about shifters. It was funny to him because he had infact met other shifters and the first time he ever met a shifter his reaction had been the same.
"Alcide is a good guy, but how could you not know that you weren't the only one?" His stomach churned when he saw a look cross her face. She silently used her hand to push the soil off her feet and for a moment Sam didn't think she was going to respond to him.
"I lived with my biological Grandmother until I was seized from the state at 15." Carla could feel her lungs wavering, talking about her childhood was painful for her. She didn't have a horrible childhood, but she had a horrible adolescence.
"The first time I shifted in front of my adopted mother she packed up and moved the entire family and left me behind." He could vividly remember coming home to an empty house and his bedroom left untouched. The feeling never left him, and for a long time it left him hungry for something.
"Jesus." Clara muttered shaking her head.
"When I first shifted it was during dinner. I was so hungry I jumped on the table and ate just about everything in my sight." She and Sam both laughed at the vision. A small wolf pup jumping on the table and eating everything while family members stood on the side lines stunned.
"The next night my grandmother took me to the middle of the forest and beat the living daylights out of me. She said it was to get this demon inside of me out." A painful silence hung between the two and Sam was stunned. He didn't know what to say, his parents abandoning him was painful but they had never laid a hand on him.
"You know what's funny? I can remember the smell of the soil and the sound of the leaves when it happened. It sounded like rushing water." Carla's voice drifted off, he understood what she was saying. When his parents packed up his home he remembered the smell of his room when he opened the door. The hot sticky air, and smell of dirty laundry.
"What happened after that?" that nagging feeling of needing to know was in his chest.
"I don't remember, I woke up in the hospital months later and was told a group of hikers found me." Carla began to play with her feet again, and Sam could feel the Goosebumps raise on his skin. He had lived through the same experience, but it was never by a loved one or someone he trusted. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"That's horrible." Sam mumbled, a soft smile spread across her face and she tilted her head to look at him.
"You're not the first one to say that, but the truth is I'm okay now, I survived, and that's the only thing that matters." Sam couldn't help but smile back, she was right. She was one of the very few people who could truly understand what it meant to be a survivor, to live most of their life without family, and to come out of a nasty situation okay.