DF: Just finished writing this chapter so I may have missed a couple typos while posting this. Already started the next chapter and it is looking good so far!

Chapter 4

It was another week before they found her.

Raina had not expected them. She was inside the cabin attempting to coax her children out of wolf form so she could feed them. Sofie was quite eager to swap between human and wolf form with encouragement, but Luca seemed to prefer his wolf form. Sofie was laying on the blanket making cute noises and tangling her fingers in her chestnut hair. Luca, on the other hand, was trying to slip away and whined every time Raina caught him by the scruff and pulled him back towards his sister. Babies, Raina had discovered, could be quite stubborn.

Raina was on the verge of using her magic to lure Luca back into human form when there was a crash outside the cabin. She jumped at the suddenness of the noise and her eyes turned towards the door. Fear clouded her mind and pulled at her senses. The meager light from her makeshift candle made shadows dance against the walls. For a moment, Raina thought she saw a dark figure sneering at her from beside the door. Flashes of light burned at the tips of her fingers, and she scratched at the scars on her arms as her breath quickened. Then she blinked, and the bitter memory faded from her mind.

She swallowed thickly and remembered the noise outside. No matter how terrified she felt, she had to check it out and figure out what had caused that crash. If it turned out to be a tree falling over, then it was no big deal and she had just experienced a panic attack over nothing. If it turned out to be an attack, she would have no choice but to fight back.

Raina bundled up her two babies and hid them behind a pile of debris in a corner of the cabin. Then she reached out with her Otherness and tried to feel what was outside. At first, her sixth sense detected only the surrounding forest. Then she felt a certain presence that stood out above everything else. There was something more intelligent than a tree or a squirrel outside the cabin.

Raina retracted her senses and clenched her fists. Her face was calm, but internally she was a hurricane of panic. They had found her. She didn't know how. They shouldn't have been able to find her so quickly. She had done everything right. She had covered up her tracks, hidden her scent, and created a couple more fake denning spots so she wouldn't leave too much evidence of her presence behind. And yet, they had still managed to track her down.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

Raina bit her tongue and forced the feeling of terror back down her throat. No, she would not let them take her and her children. She would fight them to the death before that happened. No one would hurt them the way they hurt her. Her terror settled into a cool rage, and her magic was swept up in the emotion's roiling dance. Crackling energy slid over her body as she melted and molded into her wolf form. She stalked towards the front door, the wood searing beneath her white paws. She slid out the door and let her blazing blue eyes scan her territory for the intruder.

At first, she saw nothing. Then she felt something move nearby. She whirled around, eyes still blazing, to find a wolf crouching behind a bush. With its black and white coat pattern, it would have looked more like a border collie if it weren't so big. Bigger than a normal wolf.

Werewolf, said an inhuman voice in her head.

She lowered her head and bared her teeth as a deep rumbling filled her throat. But before she could do anything else, the werewolf turned tail and fled.

Raina deflated as she watched the werewolf disappear. That wasn't right. That can't be right.

Raina paused and sniffed the air. No. The werewolf had actually fled. That was… odd. She didn't know much about werewolves, but everything she had heard made them sound rather formidable. They didn't seem like the kind of creatures that would back down so easily.

Cool gray eyes burrowed into the back of her skull. Cold and unyielding.

Raina shivered in shock and felt her wolf form begin to fade away.

"Shit," she cursed, pulling herself back into the safety and privacy of the cabin. She was letting herself slip into another panic attack if her magic was disobeying her. She needed to stay angry. Rage was good. Rage was powerful. Fear was weakness.

Her internal mantra did her no good, unfortunately, as the last of her lupine body faded away, leaving her sitting on the floor shivering and clutching her hair.

No. No. No. They had found her. She had worked so hard to hide her budding family and she had stupidly let herself get caught. She couldn't let them take her children. She could not fail her children so early in their lives. She had to do something.

Raina stood up and looked around wildly. She would pack, she decided. Forget Aspen Creek. Forget Montana. She would run somewhere else. Somewhere like…

Her mind went blank. She honestly had no idea where else she could run. Where else she could hide her babies. That was the whole reason why she had come all this way to begin with. It was the only place that she knew of where they might be safe. God, what was she going to do?

She threw what little she had into her worn backpack. It technically wasn't her backpack, but she needed it more than the previous owner so now she intended to keep it. When she was done packing the bag, she tossed it over her shoulders and started looking over her old map.

She would find a new denning spot. Somewhere deep enough into the mountains that no one would be able to find her and her children. They would be safe and start a new life in a new valley.

Raina took two steps out the door and paused. Not too far from the cabin sat a small, blue container. She blinked at it in confusion. She could have sworn there was nothing there before. She looked around the porch warily and bent down to pick the container up. It was a small plastic tub, the kind someone would use in a kitchen to store leftovers. Carefully, she popped the lid open.

The savory scent of meat mixed with layers of tomato, cheese and pasta. Raina's mouth watered. Lasagna.

She slowly backed her way into the cabin and barricaded the door behind her. Without a second thought, she tore the rest of the lid off and gobbled up most of the lasagna with her bare hands. Many months of eating raw meat and whatever wild plants she came across had unexpectedly left her craving generic human foods. She almost mourned aloud when the last of the lasagna disappeared down her throat.

She was wiping red smudge marks from her face when it occurred to her that she did not know why there was lasagna sitting on her porch. Nor did she know who made it, or what they put in it. She stared down at the empty plastic container with a look of horror.

Someone could have poisoned the food for all she knew, yet she had eaten it like a child finding a piece of gum stuck to the bottom side of a table.

"Crap baskets."

Oh no. Oh God. Oh fuck.

Ashlyn panicked as she ran. Branches slapped at her face, but she didn't slow her pace. She stopped her tail from curling between her legs so she wouldn't trip over it. She couldn't afford to trip while a monster was chasing her.

This was not what she had signed up for. Well… she hadn't really signed up for any of this. Mostly, she had been volun-told for this job. She had no idea what the Marrok was thinking when he made it her job to approach the scary rogue. And the rogue had, in fact, turned out to be very scary. Eyes were not supposed to glow like that. Ashlyn was sure that if she had frozen for a second longer, that awful creature would have eaten her. Thankfully, she had still possessed the common sense to run rather than hang around.

Tag, who was slowly turning out to be her favorite wolf in the Marrok pack, had been tracking the rogue for a while. Ashlyn wasn't quite sure how old the werewolf was, but it was clear that the man was so good at tracking that he could probably find a piece of hay in a needle factory. After a few days of noting where the rogue was leaving fake dens and tracks, Tag had used his search-and-rescue skills to determine where her actual den was. Despite the rogue's sly tactics, Tag had tweezed out a pattern in her movements: her fake tracks always travelled in the opposite direction of an abandoned cabin in the valley.

Ashlyn didn't know if the rogue had been dumb, or if Tag was just that smart. Knowing Tag, Ashlyn suspected it was more the latter than the former. Still, she had made note of this little incident in the back of her mind. If Ashlyn ever needed to hide from Tag, she would make sure not to plan her false tracks relative to her actual hiding spot. Instead, she would leave them around his house.

Ashlyn dove behind a bush and hid while she caught her breath. She wasn't sure if the rogue had followed her, but she was choosing to be safe rather than sorry. While she waited, she mentally slapped herself for thinking that today would ever go smoothly for her.

After discovering the rogue's hiding spot, Bran had handed her a container of food and told her to drop it off on the rogue's doorstep. Ashlyn had looked at him like he had gone crazy, then looked away immediately. Even with the man's bland face, she could still see the wolf in his eyes. The wolf had looked back at her with its enraged, mad eyes.

After that look, Ashlyn had made sure not to ask too many questions and had beat a hasty retreat. Minus a few exceptions, Aspen Creek seemed to be full of a ton of borderline insane wolves. Most of them avoided her, while others became so interested that it made her uncomfortable.

Ashlyn wondered what insane series of unfortunate events led to her ending up in Aspen Creek. She hadn't wanted to become a werewolf. She hadn't wanted to be submissive. She hadn't wanted to be so afraid of her own shadow that her Alpha decided she would be safer in the middle of nowhere Montana. Nope. All of that was out of her control. Yet here she was paying the consequences.

Ashlyn had tried to be smart about approaching the cabin. She had tried to first check to see if the rogue was home. Unfortunately, the Marrok had insisted that Ashlyn visit the cabin alone, and she wasn't good enough with her nose to be able to tell an old scent trail from a new one.

Then she had tried moving to a better vantage point. Instead of trying to track the rogue by her scent trail, Ashlyn had decided that she would be better off using her eyes instead. She would move to high ground and wait until she was sure the rogue was gone before leaving the food on her doorstep. Like any reasonable person would do, Ashlyn had decided to climb a tree. It would provide a good vantage point while also preventing the rogue from sneaking up on her. Too bad wolf paws are terrible for climbing trees.

The resulting crash to the ground had caused quite a stir. Ashlyn had only just managed to get back to her feet when the door of the cabin flew open and revealed a terrifying sight.

Ashlyn thought back to the rogue's angry glowing eyes and pointy teeth and shuddered. The Marrok was going to get her killed over a container of food. She shook her head in disgust.

Stupid lasagna!

She got up and slowly stepped out of the bush. No sign of an angry white wolf hiding around the corner. Looked like Ashlyn was in the clear.

She confidently stepped out of her hiding spot and made her way back towards where her car was parked. Nothing left to do but report back to the Marrok. Hopefully, this was the last time he would expect her to provide food delivery services.

More days brought more visits from the werewolves. Every single time, they appeared outside her cabin, placed a small container on the ground, then disappeared back into the trees. Typically, it was the same black and white wolf. Although occasionally multiple wolves appeared outside the cabin with food. They never approached her nor spoke to her. They simply placed the food on the ground and walked away.

The first day, they had brought her lasagna. The second day had brought a homemade apple pie. The third day was a set of turkey sandwiches. Every time, Raina had carefully sifted through the food before hesitantly taking a bite. The good news was that none of the food was poisoned as far as she knew. If they were, she probably would have gotten sick by now. Plus, now that she was getting free food delivered to her doorstep, she didn't have to leave the cabin as much to hunt and leave her babies unguarded. The downside was that it meant that the werewolves knew exactly where she was hiding and were probably keeping their eyes on her. The thought greatly unsettled Raina.

She found herself again considering fleeing the area, but again she didn't know where to go. On more than one occasion, she had considered asking one of the werewolves for directions to Aspen Creek. But she had been specifically warned to avoid werewolves until she found Aspen Creek.

"Werewolves," he had said, "valued children more than they valued women." If they found out about her children, she would run the risk of a werewolf kidnapping her children to raise as their own. This was something that Raina couldn't risk. She would have to be careful around the werewolves until she found Aspen Creek. Wherever Aspen Creek was hiding.

Although Raina had to marvel at how she kept running into so many werewolves ever since crossing the Montana border. Was Montana some kind of werewolf capital? Raina chuckled at her own dumb question. Of course not. Why would werewolves base themselves in Montana of all places? If Raina had to guess, they would most likely build a capital in a place along the East Coast since they came from Europe. If the werewolves even had a capital.

Raina jumped when part of the cabin's roof abruptly caved in, dumping pine needles and debris into the kitchen. A cold draft filled the cabin and caused Raina to shiver. It was getting colder outside, and the cabin wasn't too keen on staying in one piece. She had done her best to reinforce the roof with what little skills and material she had, but it still wasn't holding up too well.

Her babies started crying, woken up by the noise and disturbed by the sudden cold. She removed the twins from their crib and held them close to her body. Her warmth and soft voice calmed the two babies and caused them to fall back asleep. She returned them to their crib and returned her attention to the hole in the roof.

Raina shivered but not from the cold. Things would have to change soon if she didn't want to freeze to death.

As it turned out, change did in fact come quickly. And it came bearing gifts.

On the eighth day of the werewolves' visits, her free meal came with an attached note. The scrap of paper was haphazardly taped to the top of the Tupperware container. It looked like a random, discarded piece of paper at first glance. But when Raina unfolded the paper, she found words written in delicate looping cursive penned across the paper's surface. She read it carefully.

We have noticed your presence in our territory and have chosen to welcome you to stay in one of our homes. If you choose to accept our invitation, please meet me at 18 Rosemary Ln.

At the bottom of the paper written in a completely different style of handwriting were more words.

Welcome to Aspen Creek!

Raina blinked slowly. So, they had gone from trying to kidnap her son to stalking her and leaving gifts for her, to now inviting her over to their house? In a different situation, Raina would have expected the behavior from a controlling ex-boyfriend. But she was dealing with werewolves, and werewolves were nothing but controlling and paranoid.

She thought carefully. If she attended this meeting, she would have to leave her kids behind. For all she knew, it was a trap. Something intended to lure her away from her children while also leaving her open to ambush.

She glanced at the deteriorating walls of the cabin. The cabin became colder with every day that passed. Even while wearing her jacket, Raina found the inside of the cabin uncomfortably cold. Even her children had begun to notice as they were less keen on leaving their wolf shape even when they were hungry. The extra layer of fur helped to keep out the cold.

Raina sighed as she considered the offer. She didn't like it but she couldn't wait any longer. She had been stuck in the mountains for weeks and still hadn't managed to find Aspen Creek - wait. Did the note say Aspen Creek?

She read over the note again. It did mention Aspen Creek. In fact, it even included a small map with a line between the location of her cabin and a small dot marked as Aspen Creek. Aspen Creek was wedged in a part of Montana not far from the Cabinet Mountains. It was the same part of Raina's map that was completely unmarked and did not show any towns.

"Well," Raina breathed. "That explains why I couldn't find Aspen Creek." It wasn't even shown on official maps. That was probably a good sign, she thought. Or a bad sign. She wasn't sure.

If the werewolves knew where Aspen Creek was, they could offer her an idea of what she was getting herself into, something that her informant had failed to do. In that case, she would have to chance it. She would scout out the area and see what she could learn instead.

She set about preparing. She expected that the werewolves wouldn't expect her to show up so quickly, so she would take advantage of the timing to stay hidden while she checked the address out. She packed a set of clothing into a backpack and threw it over her shoulder. She checked on her babies to make sure they were still asleep and gave each of them a kiss on the forehead.

Before she left, she pulled on her otherness and used it to set a trap just inside the front door. Subtle enough that the werewolves wouldn't sense it from the other side of the door, but powerful enough to maim an intruder.

She set out on her way to Aspen Creek using the map the werewolves had provided her. Traveling in wolf form made the long journey on foot faster. However, when she reached the edge of a small town, she transformed back into human form and quickly threw her clothes back on. Nothing said "I'm not from here" like walking around naked in the middle of town. Once she was fully dressed, she made her way into the town.

Raina wasn't sure what she was expecting when she went out looking for Aspen Creek. She had suspected that the place was a town. She hadn't imagined it would be a town this small. No wonder it wasn't on any of the maps. Now that it was in front of her, Aspen Creek was clearly more of a village than a town.

I traveled all the way out into the sticks to find a place like this?!

She would have been better off in a large city like Denver. At least there were enough people to allow her to blend in. Aspen Creek was the exact opposite of a place to blend in. She would stand out like a sore thumb.

Raina pinched the bridge of her nose. Seeing how she was already here, it looked like she would just have to make do for now. She can worry about finding a different city to move to later. She glanced down at the address in her hand.

18 Rosemary Ln.

She took a deep breath and went about finding the address.

It didn't take long to find the address. Aspen Creek didn't have that many streets. It also helped that the house was at the edge of the town, so she didn't have to worry too much about staying hidden. She only ran into one person, but they were so busy managing the little dog they were walking that they paid no heed to Raina.

Raina stopped in front of the house with the listed address. It was a rather plain house. It had faded yellow walls and a dark roof. It looked like it was likely older than Raina herself but at least it wasn't falling apart like the cabin was.

Raina peered through the windows into the house. It appeared unoccupied. There was furniture but no signs of anyone currently living inside the house.

Strange, Raina thought. Why would they hold a meeting in an empty house?

It could be a trap, she considered. She tested the front door, but it was locked. She checked the back, but the back door was also locked. She could have transformed into a wolf and forced the door open, but then the whole town would know that the house was broken into. Not something she wanted to risk. She sniffed around but only detected the faint minty scent of werewolves that had visited the backyard some time ago.

She circled the entire house but found no signs of traps or anything unusual. It was just an empty deserted house.

"Well, that settles one problem," Raina said. Since the house seemed safe, she would take her chances with the meeting. If it turned out to be a trap, she would just turn into a wolf and flee back to the cabin. Her Otherness lurched in the back of her mind.

And no one would stop her if they got in her way.

She shook away that more primal part of her mind. She turned back towards the street and nearly screamed.

A cat stood behind her. It was small and black and stared at her with green eyes. It meowed at her and rubbed up against her leg.

Raina reached down and stroked the cat's fur. "Hey there, kitty. You nearly made me poop my pants. You should get back home."

The cat meowed and padded off.

Raina watched the cat leave and placed a hand over her stomach when it growled loudly. She could really go for something good to eat right now. The werewolves had brought food to her cabin this morning, but she had already eaten it all. She didn't feel like eating rabbit or squirrel right now. She wanted to eat something more modern.

Her eyes fell on a gas station. It was closer to the center of town but still provided Raina with a convenient escape route back towards the woods. Her mind was made up.

She walked down the street towards the gas station. She smiled and waved at a young man as she walked past him. The man turned around and gave her a dumbfounded if not offended look. Raina's smile fell and she stopped waving. Okay, then. She guessed people didn't wave to each other in Aspen Creek.

She walked into the convenience store as casually as she could manage. The cashier glanced up at her as she walked in, then looked back down at the newspaper he was holding. She smiled at him before walking towards the food aisle. She grabbed a couple bags of chips and some beef jerky and brought it back to the counter. She didn't realize her mistake until she reached the counter.

"Will that be all today?" the cashier asked as he scanned the food.

"Yep," Raina said tightly. "That's all."

The cashier smiled at her, his minty scent wafting towards her. "You don't look like you're from here. Are you another tourist?"

"Yes," Raina answered quickly. "Yes. I'm here to do some hiking and maybe some skiing too."

"If that's your plan, you should get better clothes. It gets cold up in the mountains. Don't want to end up with frostbite."

"Mhm. I'll keep that in mind."

Raina took the plastic bag that the cashier handed her and quickly left. She took deep breaths as she walked away from the convenience store.

"That was dumb," she muttered to herself. "That was so dumb."

All she had to do was get in and out of town without drawing attention to herself. So, what does she do? She walks into a convenience store run by a werewolf all because she had a craving for junk food. Stupid!

Hopefully, the werewolf hadn't noticed any strange smells on her, though Raina doubted that she would be so lucky. She suspected that a werewolf's sense of smell was stronger than hers. If she was able to smell him, he could probably smell her.

In any case, it was time to leave. She needed to be gone before the cavalry arrived.