ALPHA’S PREY

“Bear, no! Bad dog,” I yell in my deepest, maddest voice.

He’s usually an extremely obedient dog. Maybe a little spoiled, but he always comes when called. Now, though, I see snatches of him through the trees as he chases whatever he was growling at.

Damn dog.

It’s not even like this is our first foray into the woods.

“Bear! Bear, come back! Now!”

Finally, he stops. In the distance, I see him turn and look in my direction, then back the way he was going.

“No! Come here!”

He gives one more long look away, then trots back to me, tail tucked, slinking a bit from the growl in my voice.

I scold him when he arrives and turn back to find the path.

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It’s snowing so hard our tracks are almost already obscured.

I start running.

“Come on, Bear. We have to move fast,” I pant. The altitude up here kicks my ass on a good day, but add to it freezing air, and my lungs ache just from breathing. I push on, trying to stay one step ahead of my rising panic.

If I get lost out here, I have no way to contact anyone to help. Bear and I will freeze to death before anyone finds us.

My feet push through the snow. I stumble on something under the powder and pitch headlong, face planting in eighteen inches of cold wet flakes. Bear trots back and licks my ear as I scramble to my feet.

No time to waste. We have to keep moving. I run even harder, which, of course, means I trip again.

And again.

Crap, I think I’m just getting clumsy from the cold.

I start running again, only to realize I just reversed directions-I’m following my fresh tracks rather than the old ones.

Holy fuck. Where are the old ones?

I spin around, panic fully gripping my throat. A pathetic whimper comes from my mouth.

“It’s okay, Bear,” I mutter. “We’ll figure it out, won’t we? Do you know which way is home?” I scan the area for anything that looks familiar, but it’s all blanketed in white. I don’t have a clue where we are or even which direction we came from. “Go home, Bear,” I try but he just cocks his ears and wags his snow-crusted tail, not understanding me.

I attempt to take a deep breath, but my lungs reject the cold air. I can do this. I can figure this out. Downhill.

We need to head downhill, right? When we got on the trail we were on an incline, so as long as we’re going downhill, we must be moving in the right direction.

Where is the river? That would help me figure out where we are.

The trouble is, it’s hard to tell what’s downhill and uphill right now. I can hardly see five feet in front of me. The wind swirls at all kinds of crazy angles, pelting my face with snow. I do my best to orient myself to the mountain and pick the most logical direction. I can figure this out. If we just keep moving, eventually we’ll either hit town or the river or something. And we won’t freeze to death unless we stop.

It’s idiotic but that Finding Nemo song Just Keep Swimmin starts playing in my head. Great-just what we needed-a theme song for this trek.

An hour later, I’m exhausted, my jeans are frozen to my legs and I’m starving. I call to Bear, stopping to pull some food out of my backpack. I eat a granola bar and feed him one, too. “We’ll just rest a minute and then we’ll keep going, okay, boy?” I lean my back against a tree. It feels so good to stop. Funny, but it’s not that cold anymore, either.

I let myself slide down to sit. God, yes. I just need to rest for a little while. Rest and warm up here under this tree. Maybe the skies will clear up in a bit and it will be easy to find our way back.

Or the snow will melt…

Bear nudges me. Licks my face.

Then he barks.

“It’s okay, boy,” I mutter.

I’m suddenly so very sleepy.

I hardly notice that Bear has started to bark louder and louder…

TEST SUBJECT 849

FEMALE. Female in the woods and I lost her.

Damn dog.

We need the female for our tests. Our very important testing. We need to measure how much pain she can withstand to determine what stressors trigger the change.

No, not the change.

These females don’t change.

Why don’t they change?

Perhaps with the right stressor they can find their inner animal. With enough injections of the serum.

The way mine manifests in moments of extreme danger or fear.

Or partly manifests.

If I’d had enough testing, enough practice, I might have learned to control the wild animal within me. The rage. The terror.

I need to develop the serum to fix my animal. So I can fully transform.

That’s why I have to help these women. Give them more tests. More trials to endure. More pain. Soon they will become the animals they long to be.

Soon we will get the results we’ve been working for.

Caleb

THERE’S A RAGING SNOWSTORM OUTSIDE. My bear should want to hunker down and sleep, but something pulls me out of the cabin. The same bad feeling I had yesterday, but amplified. Maybe I’m just going nuts.

It’s always there. That possibility. I spent too much time in bear form. My human reasoning has been affected. My self-control.

I pull open the door and a gust of wind stings my face with snow. I’m in human form, but I lift my nose to the air, anyway, sniffing. I hear something. It’s faint, but a dog barks. There’s a frightened timbre to the bark that I pick up, even at a distance. It’s a warning bark-an emergency bark.

Fuck.