Wolf Girl (Wolf Girl, #1)(42)

“You’re pissed about something,” Walsh commented, barely winded at my side.

I gave him a long side-look. “Yeah, it just seems like everyone in Werewolf City is used to having things handed to them on a silver platter.”

A slow smirk pulled at his lips. “And you’re not?”

“No,” I growled, and pushed harder into the hike. It hit me then, I was so mad. Mad at Werewolf City, mad at Curt Hudson and his stupid bylaws, mad at the system. Why did my mother and father get kicked out? Why did I have to grow up without a pack, in a school of misfits who shit on me every day, when these Wolf City kids were being spoon-fed every drop of luxury. I guess I was glad it happened that way, it made me who I was. I wasn’t the girl who took the easy shot.

Before I realized it, I’d reached the peak of the mountain. It was craggy and pointy, with a path only about twelve inches wide. If you slipped forward, you would fall down the front of the waterfall, and if you slipped backward you would fall down the back of the mountain.

Note to self: Don’t do either.

I peered to my right, down the backside of the mountain, and noticed those little red boundary flags and a blur of motion as something moved in the thick tree line down there.

A Paladin?

My heart hammered in my chest as I stared at the spot, but I didn’t see any more movement and started to think I was making it up. Picking up my camera, I took a picture of the boundary flags, reminding myself to ask Sage more about it. I stepped about five paces along the path until I was directly up to the waterfall, hovering right over it. Part of the mountain was flat, bringing water from a river somewhere, but the part I stood on, that I’d just climbed up, steeply cut off the back like it had been shorn off in an earthquake or something.

Nature was crazy.

Pulling my camera up to my eye, I stepped forward and looked down over the waterfall.

“Be careful,” Walsh warned.

I pulled the camera back and looked at him, twenty feet away back at the path that led down the mountain. “Come here, you gotta see this. It’s amazing.”

He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like heights.”

I chuckled. “Okay.”

Looking back down through my lens, I couldn’t help but feel a thrill run through me at the sheer size of the height I was standing at. Water flowed unrestricted down the mountain, slower at first, until it crashed into a mass of white rapids and turbulence.

I hung my head directly forward and snapped the picture. And that’s when I felt my balance go wonky. The ground was wet, so when I went to take that half a step forward to get the shot, my foot gave way.

Oh hell no.

I felt myself fall forward, toward the waterfall a little, and panicked, throwing my weight backward to counter the move.

Bad idea.

“Demi!” Walsh screamed as I overshot the path and began to fall completely backward. My ass hit the ground hard and then I was sliding. Pain laced up my back as I slid like a kid on a snow day, except without a sled.

Oh fuck, was all I could think as I dropped my camera around my neck and started to grasp at ferns, tree trunks, anything to slow my fall.

That’s when I started to roll. I hit a little rock shelf, went airborne, and when I came down on my left shoulder, something snapped. I wailed in pain and I just started rolling. Like a fucking bowling ball, I tumbled down the mountain, Walsh was screaming my name like a madman and I just kept thinking: How is it not over yet? How am I still falling? My wolf surged to the surface, but the cuffs kept her at bay as I rolled and rolled, until I felt sick and battered and half dead. Pain throbbed and sliced through my entire body as the mountain chewed me up and spit me out.

With a grand finale, my head smacked the side of a rock and everything went blurry.

I cried out as pain laced behind my skull, and I finally stopped rolling, skidding to stop on the ground.

With a shaky hand, I used my right arm to grab the side of my hair, and upon feeling the sticky wetness there, I pulled it back with a whimper.

Walsh’s voice felt far away and warbled. I was confused.

What happened? Where was I? How did I get here?

Fuck, I hit my head.

Oh God, my shoulder.

I focused on Walsh’s voice, something familiar, something that I knew would keep me safe as I lay there and felt sleepiness work its way into my body. A twig snapped, and then a giant of a man, big enough to rival Eugene, stepped over and crouched in front of me. A man about sixty years old stood shirtless with bright blue tribal war paint on his chest and face. A necklace made of tiny, sharpened bones hung around his neck. He bent down and looked at me, frowning.

I was scared of him for a moment. I mean who was this? A Paladin? Had I rolled on to “their” side?

Everything was confusing.

When he crouched down and looked at me, I was taken back with how kind his blue eyes were. Eyes that kind couldn’t hurt me, right?

He reached out a hand to place two fingers at the pulse on my neck and I smelled him.

Wolf.

Dominant.

Magic?

Satisfied with my pulse, he picked up my right, good hand, and inspected the arm cuff, then he leaned down and smelled my wrist, looking back at me wide-eyed, his eyes the color of the waterfall.

“You need to be more careful, pup. I’ve seen the Ithaki drain your kind in less than a minute,” he whispered, looking behind him as if he’d heard something.