Hail left the pack and was out hunting in the woods. Her path was clear, she’d walked a straight line, his wolf stopped as he found her phone laying on the ground, and he felt pain touch him, as he understood her intent. She was leaving and making sure there was nothing to track her by.
He could still smell her scent, hadn’t gone rogue here, like they’d all thought she had. Hail was moving once more, tracking her down the road towards the human world, got there and there was just nothing. Left in a car, he realised. Someone had come and picked her up, but when had she actually left? When had she actually turned herself rogue? In that car or at her destination?
His wolf headed back to the pack. He needed a car, stopped and looked at Anders standing naked in the woods, Ori’s phone in his hand dangling at his side, he looked confused, his wolf snarled at the man, it was all his fault that she was gone, his and the Alpha’s fault.
He saw Anders look at him and something else flickered on the man’s face. He didn’t even care that Hail was snarling at him, all Alpha aggression. “Do you smell that?” he asked quietly, and there was a slight tremor in his voice.
‘Smell what?’ he asked via the mind-link.
“She smells different to me.” He murmured, and his eyes moved to the phone in his hand.
‘I know, kind of smells like caramel.’
“She shouldn’t smell different.” His eyes moved back to Slade’s wolf. “There are only two reasons a she-wolf smells different to you. 1, she is your Mate…or…” he watched Anders close his eyes and shake his head, actually saw pain touch his face as he thought about the other.
‘Or?’ Slade prompted.
“They’re pregnant.” He heard the man state in a half-mortified whisper.
Oriana
It was a long two-hour drive to Phoenix and she half expected pack cars to be racing after her, but they did not. No one came for her, and she chastised herself for even thinking that. Why? She thought they would. It was beyond her. After all that had gone on, all they’d done to her, they didn’t care, wanted to get rid of her, and she had just given them what they wanted. The easy way.
She’d felt the moon set halfway to Phoenix, and knew they were all now fully distracted by Dariah’s first shift and would soon be out running in the woods, for several happy filled hours. That party they were having was now in full swing, as they celebrated Alpha’s daughter.
She was unlikely to ever do that again herself; celebrate inside a pack. Ori understood it was dangerous out here as a rogue female, but she was going to settle herself in some quiet small town that was well out of the way of everyone. Make human friends and pretend to be human for the most part.
A place where there were lots of trees and forests for China to run in, once their daughter was old enough to ride on her and play with her. She could attend school in the human world, and just be a normal child with no stress or pressure of what her bloodline should mean to her. She was going to give her daughter the life she should have had, a carefree life with a loving mother, away from the world of wolves, she hoped.
Ori arrived at the airport and found an ATM, withdrew out as much cash as she possibly could; her cash limit for the day, put it all inside her suitcase and then went and looked at the departing flight board, skimmed over it. Where she was going, it wasn’t going to be in a state that surrounded this one. No, she was going to go as far away as she could.
She saw a flight to Boston, Massachusetts, and it was leaving in 49 minutes. She booked herself on it. Took the ticket from the lady and walked away from the counter. Stopped not far away and took a long breath in to prepare herself for the next part of her life to start. She had to sever ties with the pack, she did not belong there, didn’t actually want to be there, to have to look at any of them anymore.
No one inside that pack knew of her pup. Maybe Lindal had guessed, but she wouldn’t say anything, didn’t even know whose it was. So she was actually good to go. Was going to be safe out there until her daughter was 16, and got her wolf. Only then would Slade’s wolf Hail sense anything to do with the girl; that he had an unknown child out there somewhere in the world.
He wouldn’t even know whose it was. Slade nor his wolf remembered anything about that night. That was 16 and a half years away. So, not an issue right at this minute, was her future self’s problem, and by then she might have found a way to hide her daughter’s kin bond. She didn’t know, but anything was possible.
He would also be mated to Audrey, and they would have had pups of their own by then, so he might not even care at all. Just let it go because he had his Goddess Gifted and a family of his own. He certainly wouldn’t know whose it was. Or where it was, wouldn’t even know where to start looking at all.
This pack was on the west side of the country, and she was headed as far east as she could get, so Hail might not even sense it at all after all those years. That would be the best-case scenario.
She stood there in the airport and murmured quietly to herself, with a sound resolve, “I, Oriana Vale, reject the Highland Hills Pack and Alpha Roman as my Alpha, I am a rogue now.”
She felt the pack tether break with a harsh snap inside her mind, and held in the hiss of pain, bit down on it and breathed through the sensation of becoming a rogue. Not something she’d ever thought she would be.
She breathed deeply a few times and then walked from the ticketing area to the gates and strolled along, in, out and around the gates. She understood that if they did decide to come after her, and if they could track her here to this airport. They could track the rogue scent right to the very gate her plane would take off from. Know where she went, from that.
But strolling in and out of all of them. That would confuse them, she also no longer looked like the Oriana she had been inside that pack, her luggage was checked and they, if they could access the camera’s, likely would be able to, the pack had a tech department, they would be looking for a girl with long dark hair, but she had a new hairstyle for a new life, a short blonde and purple pixie cut.
She stood with all the other humans lined up to board her flight when it was called, still hadn’t seen a single wolf, recognised no one here in the airport. She kept her eyes open, had to, she no longer had that pack tether to feel for anyone looking for her. Though now neither did they, they could be 10 feet away and not feel her if she was scent masked. Probably should have pilfered some of that before she left. She thought a moment later.
Hadn’t really been in the right frame of mind to think about an actual proper strategy to get herself out of that pack and away from all those deceitful wolves. The only thing she’d known, was she was going and when to go, what moment would be the best and how to exit the state, without them being easily able to track her.
Why she’d not driven! Her car was trackable, why she’d left her phone there for them to find in the woods. It was also trackable. Their Alpha and his unit, had that live tracking app for everyone in the pack and all pack cars were lo-jacked, considered a safety feature to protect his wolves. Her phone and car were things she could not take with her. Not that she would want the car anymore, seeing who it had belonged to, before it was hers.
Finally, she got on that flight, was gone, off to Boston, clear across to the other side of the country away from this place. So far away, they would never find her.
She got off the plane and onto a bus headed for Maine, to find a nice quiet, quaint country town to live in. She knew that Maine was a pretty State, full of beautiful, forested areas. It took her two full days of public travel to get to a place called Augusta, and she stopped for the night in a hotel.
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