AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He bows his head. “Come.”
He shifts back into a wolf, and yet more wolves arrive. Children and injured are lifted up as everyone prepares to leave.
I’m about to climb up onto Doug again when Bron approaches.
“I have no place here,” he says, wary eyes passing over the group.
Doug snorts and steps up to his friend, nudging him carefully with his snout.
“Your destiny is not my destiny, Doug. I am no shifter. I am a bastard orc.”
“Where will you go?” I ask. “Will you… will you go back?”
He shakes his head. “I do not know where I shall go. I might find myself a place at Bleakness, where orcs live among humans, and the Blighten does not have such a stranglehold. Maybe it is time I did more than pass through life. Maybe I can do good, and find ways to support the freedom of other bondservants. My future lies down a different path. I wish both of you well.”
He rests a hand on Doug’s shoulder.
Doug snorts.
I throw my arms around him and hug him.
“You will be forever in my heart, Bron. May your travels be kind to you. May you live to help liberate many bondservants.”
“I think this is where our journeys will end too,” Bard says.
“Well, I don’t rightly think I’ll settle with shifters,” Penny agrees. “Happen it’s time I found a place for myself, too. But who knows where that might be.”
I feel the pull upon my heartstrings that we have escaped, and now we are about to separate again.
“We will travel together,” Bron says. “Until you both find your own paths.”
I hug them both, and there are tears in my eyes.
“Here,” Bron says, “let me help you up.”
He lifts me onto Doug’s back just as another pair of shifters approach, nudging us onward to follow the many others who are making their way up the slopes.
As Doug trots up the slope to catch up with the rest of our party, all bound for the Oberon pack, I twist to give a last wave and commit to memory the party of three who have become my friends.
Finally, this is where our stories will divide.
We walk throughout the day, a sense of relief at our escape tinged with uncertainty about our future.
As night falls, we arrive at the den of the Oberon pack, and I discover all that Ashe hinted at, about our lackluster welcome, is true.
PartFour
Loving the Beast
ChapterOne
Jasmine
It is dark by the time we arrive, after skirting a lake and taking a pathway that rises steeply out of the forest and leads us to an entry to the den—a deep chasm in a sheer cliff face.
Doug lifts his nose and sniffs. He has been in beast form all day and did not even shift to say goodbye to Bron. Perhaps he is stuck in this form. I cannot know, nor can I presume, given he has been quiet.
Ashe, the big black wolf shifter, nudges to the front, accompanied by the two wolves who were at his side when he first met with us.
