Shadows are scarce among the forest, the sun banishing all but the faint slithers hidden beneath the leaves of the underbrush.

My spine stands straight in awareness, my eyes surveying our surroundings with lethal precision. My hips move in sync with Asher's back as he retains a steady trot, his paws kicking up small clouds of dust from the bone dry earth.

My hands remain resting on his shoulder blades, the feeling of them sliding beneath his pelt as he walks somehow soothing my uneasy notions.

The atmosphere has changed, the aura of the environment different; not of a positive manner.

In the midst of our path a large log lays, rotted and decaying. Asher's pace does not falter, his back legs only contracting and pushing his feet off the ground in a graceful leap. As he lands on the other side of the log, we become trespassers; trespassers with no intentions of turning around.

Analyzing the new smells that a new pack's territory offers to me, panic is, yet again, immediately brought forth.

"Stop."

Asher does so, lowering himself for a second time for me to dismount. My feet holding their own weight now, he turns around for his golden eyes to question me.

"Go back to the border. Follow along it until you find our scent trail again on the other side. I'll meet you there."

My instructions are told futility, Asher refusing to wait for my last sentence to finish before growling his protest.

A pang of irritation ricochets inside my chest for the disobedience. But beastial instincts do not prolong in the abolishment of the emotion, cutting short my negative feelings towards the thing most precious to me.

Killing the possibility of a one-sided argument, the familiar gory sound of bones popping from their sockets and reshaping by force draws my attention.

A mere second is all it takes for the human face of Asher to linger only inches from mine, the same glowing yellow orbs burning into my skin. And just the meager fact of knowing they belong to him is enough for me to let them roam my face for however long they wish.

His body is bare, the transformation having ripped his clothes to shreds the first time. The only article that still remains is the metal piece pierced through his left ear, shining as if it were silver.

His form stands at a microscopic distance from mine, teasingly withholding contact, but instead brushing the loose-fitted clothes that he had scavenged for me.

A gleam of fresh anger flashes in his honeyed irises, the small action emitting a foreign feeling from within me. He had caused this feeling the first time I had ever experienced it, proving him to be the only one capable of it.

Attraction.

When he speaks, his voice only strengthens the lust, "Unless you take me for a careless asshole, I'm not leaving you to walk through enemy territory alone."

Hypnotized, my dominant and commanding mindset is nearly erased, to be replaced with obedience and docility.

What's wrong with me? How does he do this?

His hands glide down my arms, firmly encircling my wrists in his strong-grip fingers. The thick sleeves of the button up shirt put on me whilst I had laid unconscious had, to my gratefulness, smothered out the feeling of the scars bared upon upper arm.

His lips lean into my jaw, moving against my skin as he speaks.

"You're not leaving my sight," a growl accompanies his words, the manner of it almost coming across as seductive.

Persistent as the desires to capitulate to him are, every rational thought in my mind is the same; to part ways, to take the safer option for him.

"Asher," his growling immediately ceases at his name gliding off my tongue, "Trust me. You follow the border and I'll follow the scents so we don't lose them."

Reluctance is engaged within the dark depths of his pupils as his grasp on me tightens. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath, the presence of stress clear in his body language.

It's then that it becomes evident that he too is struggling with the same problem that plagues my own decision to part ways; denying the one whose skin can cause a spark-like feeling when touched with his.

"Fine," he opens his eyes, glowing even brighter now, "Call my name if you so much as hear a single sound other than your own. Do you understand me?"

I nod, his hands slipping from mine with the gesture.

He starts to go towards the border crossed only minutes ago, but abruptly stops. His back remains facing me, yet his speech is said so lowly as if his lips were once again beside my ear.

"I want an explanation when when we get there."

A dreaded sentence, but as predictable as the sun is to shine. My identity can't be hid from him forever. But my cruel death will come before the truth does. I would be sure of that.

I don't respond. Only listen to the morbid breaking of bones and stretching of tendons taking place behind me. Paws pound rhythmically against the ground as they carry Asher away.

My bare and uncovered heels pivot in the dirt, my feet turning on impulse to go back to the scent trail.

With force, my mind pushes any angst-filled thoughts of the future back, replacing it with two vital objectives.

Follow our scents. Escape this horrid place.

Asher needs to know as little of my past as possible. And in result, he needs not know of why I made him follow the border and me the direct trail.

This isn't the first time I've trespassed here, the last ending only in blood, death, and a new, revenge-starved enemy. An enemy who's target would instantaneously be set on Asher due to my own cruel, yet unregretted intentions two years ago.

The ripping, the tearing. The blood, the change. The claws, the teeth. All of it habit, familiar, and done innumerable times proceeding this one.

The asshole dared to touch me. He dared to think of me as a helpless child, one who would submit like a puppy to his paper-thin facade of dominance.

He was the center of my hatred, but he was not who my damnable intentions were set on. No. Revenge is a bitch unlike any, and the sweetest of it comes not with death... not his anyway.

My sights were set on the essence of his life-- and what I would make the essence of his pain; his Lifeblood.

Her scent was easy to find, her guards like fleas even to my four-legged form.

Honorable wolves would never go as far as to harm their enemy's Lifeblood to get to them. But never has honorable been in association with my name, and according to the whole nation, I was going to Hell anyway. Mercy was a word the world had refused to let me learn, so I didn't bother to try.

After her death, the white walls were painted red; painted red with the blood of the Alpha's Luna, the Alpha who cared so little for her personally that he would betray her with a 14 year old trespassing rogue.

I'm not as stupid as he was. If by the undesirable possibility that he still rules as Alpha of this pack, he won't be given the chance to so much as look at Asher.

His mistakes will differ from mine.

.

.

.

Cold moisture lays thick in the air, filling my nose and guaranteeing a storm that is soon to come. A breeze blows, rustling the leaves of the forest and stirring the cool, rain-heavy atmosphere.

With the refreshment of the gentle wind also comes a warning; the gagging scent of a member of this pack. Female and likely a scheduled border check.

As if on cue, an accusing voice shouts from in front of me.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

The angry and surprised tone of her voice I have heard many times before, and would undoubtably hear many times again.

My breath is not wasted on her, nor is my time. My pace doesn't change as she advances towards me, both of us cutting down the distance between us.

"You should have never crossed that border," she growls, her eyes darkening in ferocity. Once she's close enough, she lunges, her claws unveiled from her skin.

Her attacks were predicted before she even intended them for herself. She would lunge, her claws aiming for my neck, therefore leaving her own vulnerable. She would cut the flesh upon my collar bone, but it would be I who struck death first.

And that's exactly what happened.

My fingers wrap around her neck with the grip of a cobra, squeezing, strangling, restricting the air from entering her lungs. Wet liquid smears my chest, staining my stolen white shirt an eye-catching red. The burning from the claw marks is trivial, not deep enough to even discomfort me.

The hand not sinking its claws into her jugular finds contentment in latching its fingers around her wrist, snapping her bone back dried pasta.

A high pitched, pain-filled scream fills the forest, frightening the birds from their perches among the trees, the flapping of their wings rustling in panicked harmony.

Her body is discarded before her uninjured arm can land a blow, thrown against the nearby trunk of a tree. A grotesque pop comes from her spine as it impacts against the wood, her neck twisting around from the force.

I stand, watching, waiting for her to get up. But her body doesn't move again. It lays, limp and broken, against the stump, blood dripping onto and soaking into the earth below her, her brown hair covering her dead eyes.

"You've already killed Lizana," a begrudged voice comes through gritted teeth, "Now you have to kill her too?"

Never will the face that matches that voice be wiped from my memory, however bad I wish for it to be.

As expected, the Alpha who had been scorned by me many moons ago comes out from behind the shelter of a briar bush. His eyes as black as night, and his jaw clenched as tight as my fist.

My shielded green eyes stare at him straight in the same steely grey ones carved into memory, not so much as the slightest hint of sympathy existing upon my stony expression or in my frigid tone.

"Her name was Lizana," I ask through contempt and mockery, "Such a unique name. A shame she didn't get to keep it long."

///

A/N:
So what'd you think?

What do you think is going through Asher's mind?

How will Amber get out of telling him the truth when he wants an explanation?

Also, who is curious about what EXACTLY happened two years ago when Amber was there? If you want to know, just say so here and I may do a separate bonus chapter on that....

Thank you all for reading!