Alpha's wolfless Luna

Chapter 3.: Time to run

The word ‘run’ echoed in Avery’s mind with a strong urgency hidden behind the voice. It was still too early to wake up, but the moment he heard the voice whispering in his mind, he was up on his feet right away. He knew the tight sensation in his chest, followed by the strange voice. The painful feeling grew stronger in the pit of his gut the moment the soft female voice ordered him to run. Avery didn’t know to whom the voice belonged to and although it sounded familiar, a warm feeling of nostalgia it radiated was still entwined with inexplicable but undoubtedly present dread. He couldn’t put a face to that voice. He couldn’t remember when or where he heard it before, but he knew it. That much Avery was sure of.

Avery remembered the day he heard the mysterious voice for the first time. At that time, he found himself lost in the wilderness with his memories gone. He had no idea where he was or why. Alone in the middle of nowhere, and apparently on a run from people he didn’t know.

The voice thundered in his head the same as today, forcing him to move his body despite the stiffness and pain engraved deeply into his muscles. Avery spent half a year running away from a threat he did not understand, hiding in different places, hoping he would one day finally lose his pursuers. He couldn’t remember the last time he properly slept or simply rested his exhausted body.

Hearing the voice for the second time confused him, but Avery knew then what it meant or rather what it was not; That voice was not his enemy and since then, he welcomed it. He might not have remembered why he was on the run or why those people kept chasing him no matter what he did or where he moved, but deep inside he knew this voice kept him alive, kept him safe.

As Avery was looking around making sure the location and its perimeter was prepared just right for his unwanted guests, tiredness escaped his lips in the form of a long sigh. How long has it been since he found this place? Two weeks? Or maybe three? This time it took them longer to find him, giving Avery more time to prepare false leads in order to mislead his pursuers to another direction and hopefully give him time before they find him again. The plan he made was dangerous, but over the past half a year, he grew tired of running. He wanted to be free of those people once and for all. He wanted to rest.

Half a year ago, they were right behind him. Avery had only a couple of days before he had to move again. He tried everything to confuse them and throw them off by choosing different locations and directions but no matter how hard he tried to lose them, he always felt them breathing down his neck. The way they always found him felt unnatural, making him wonder whether they were human at all.

‘Run’ the voice turned into a loud order. Avery knew he had an hour at most now with the current intensity of the voice.

Thanks to his pursuers always following him and Avery’s ability to adapt and learn, he had plenty of chances to test the voice alarm. He learned to assess the distance between him and the pursuers against the time between them arriving and the first time he heard the voice. Avery was determined to live, shake them off, and find a safe place for him to finally settle down. He trained his body and mind to concentrate on the voice, searching for any signs which would help him get rid of those behind him.

Ten men kept following him for half a year. The face of the one who led them seemed familiar but same as with the voice, he couldn’t quite remember whether he saw him before.

For the last time, or so he hoped, Avery checked the location he prepared several days in advance and kept rigging it up every day by adding fresh hidden trails of movement along with footprints, tracks and traces of his scent which were supposed to deceive his pursuers and lead them astray. This time it took them longer to find him than he expected, but luckily for Avery, they arrived just before he was going out to renew the tracks in the woods. The trace of blood he left several miles north held a special importance in his plan.

Avery collected a variety of herbs he found in nearby woods, mixed them with mud, and created a hole in one of the broken walls. He practiced every day, accounting for the time he needed to put the bricks back up to hide himself, leaving only a small hole to observe his pursuers.

Avery was on the run for about a month when he noticed their strange habit of sniffing the air. It took him another two weeks to confirm whether they could really smell him or not. A lot of things about them were downright strange. They weren’t behaving like normal humans, but Avery was definitely not in a situation to show himself and directly ask them what they were.

Avery successfully hid himself inside the wall, half of the place as well as his body covered in a scented mud to control his body odor and settled down to wait. He didn’t have to wait for long. Once he was sitting down comfortably in his hideout, not ten minutes passed before the first one of them showed up outside.

The person who arrived first was always the same, somewhat weak looking young man with dark brown eyes and chocolate hair. Compared to others he was a man of small build, but Avery knew he was in no way less dangerous than the others. His face always held the same expression, an almost eerie smirk which drove Avery crazy. That scrawny looking man was always smiling, regardless of the present situation or the atmosphere around, and that alone was enough to send chills through Avery’s bones. Within a few minutes, the rest of the group arrived as well.

As always, the leader ordered his trackers to search around while he waited in one place, pacing back and forth and scanning the area from a distance. Avery’s eyes zoomed in on this person the moment he entered his view.

For Avery, their leader was like a magnet for some reason, someone whom Avery couldn’t get out of his mind or out of his sight. His body reacted strangely when this man was close and Avery could tell this one was the most dangerous one in the entire group.

Those gray eyes of his haunted Avery even in his sleep. By now Avery learned his name was Damian. The scrawny guy, as this was now weakling’s nickname given by Avery himself, sometimes called him Dami while others usually referred to him as Beta. Avery had no idea what it meant, but one thing he was sure of: whoever this guy was, the others were always following his orders, no questions asked. That alone made him someone who easily instilled fear by his mere presence.

“Did you find her?” A voice suddenly boomed across the empty broken room, startling Avery with echo bouncing off the walls from every direction as his eyes and mind were focused on the leader and his every move. Avery sighed, desperation induced confusion flooding his mind . A piece of the puzzle that seemed so out of place but still bothered him for the past six months reappeared again in his thoughts.

‘Did you find her?’ Echoed in his mind. The word ‘HER’ in particular, which made zero sense. Apparently, they were looking for a woman, but they kept pursuing him relentlessly. Avery felt confused to the marrow of his bones. They followed him for over half a year but Avery overheard them talking about a woman multiple times. He figured a lot of things about those guys merely by observation, but this piece of puzzle simply didn’t fit anywhere. Whichever way Avery tried to wrap his head around it, it simply did not make any sense. However, he still did not want to risk facing those ten mountains of muscle, well, nine mountains of muscle and one regular man to get the answers he needed and clear the obvious confusion. Because what else could this be?

The scrawny guy was the one to answer his leader, while slowly approaching Damian where he stood in the middle of the room, the exact spot Avery chose for executing his plan. It was the perfect place. The walls were damaged, permeated with many holes. Windows already stood there empty, resembling gaping voids, their glass shattered and scattered across the floor beneath them, and not even frames were left in place of doors. Over years, everything got slowly destroyed by time that knows no mercy. People must have abandoned this building a long time ago. The whole place was filled with mixed scents belonging to all kinds of animals which either found their way to this broken building while passing through on their journey or used it as their temporary shelter. It was the perfect place for Avery to conceal his presence and obtain any usable information from his pursuers without directly asking them, as well as to gain some valuable time to drive them away to the opposite direction just before he moves to the new location.

It took them approximately thirty minutes to search the entire place before Avery heard Damian click his tongue. This was a good sign. Clicking his tongue usually meant Damian became impatient and disappointed, which meant he was about to leave the place.

They exchanged a few more words before Damian finally left. The others dispersed again into multiple directions, following their routine of scouring every nook and cranny of the place looking for any signs of Avery.

Avery silently waited in his hideout for the night to come when one of the men suddenly reappeared right in front of the wall where Avery hid. His heart nearly stopped beating as the sudden appearance of the large figure startled him. It took only a minute before the man abruptly left again in haste. Avery realized he had headed straight to the town, but he could only guess what it meant, as they rarely talked to each other unless their leader was around.

Hidden away from sight, Avery could hear the gentle rustle of the wind playing with the leaves of nearby trees, but other than that, he couldn’t hear anything else. It was almost like any living creature, however big or small, dreaded those men as well, leaving the place in a hurry and running as far as possible, the same as Avery always did.

Just as he was contemplating his next moves, the group pursuing him appeared again, only to pass around by the building leaving everything around intact, heading straight to the woods, which brought more questions to Avery’s already confused mind. It took approximately two hours for Avery to get to the place where he left the trail of blood and back running at full speed, yet they were already following the trail? It was impossible for a human being to run there and back in such a short time. Especially since it was maybe an hour since their leader, Damian, left the perimeter and the slim guy, whatever his name was, continued searching the area. Avery knew they were working quickly, but this was not even within the range of human abilities…they simply moved way too quickly, and Avery could not help himself but to wonder yet again what the hell they were exactly.

Once those bloodhounds disappeared from Avery’s sight and he stopped hearing rustling sounds from under their feet, he slowly began removing the bricks which covered the entrance to his hideout, one by one. He had no second to spare but he needed to hasten if he wanted to get the advantage his plan should provide if executed successfully. Nevertheless, given their hearing was also heightened, Avery had to do his best to calm the nervous jitters jumping through his limbs and stay careful and silent as much as possible. Within half an hour, Avery was back on his feet, picking up a pace while running to the south, the exact opposite direction from where they went, misled by tracks he planted.

Avery knew that the time advantage he gained by this little trick he played on them wouldn’t last forever. Once they realize those tracks won’t lead them where they so eagerly want to be, they might return to the beginning and get back on his tail. The only thing that could protect him for now was the mud he single handedly mixed with herbs and coated his clothes and skin to cover his scent. Avery wasn’t fully convinced this strategy would work with them and using it to cover himself with the wall was a highly risky way to test his stealth skills. Nevertheless, it was the only way for him to see whether it would work or not.

Avery was now pondering about two things. They either couldn’t sense him at all, and previously he simply got confused by what they were doing, or the mud scented with herbs worked and contained his odor, protecting him from being discovered.

Despite being able to find a solution to how to conceal his presence from them, Avery couldn’t relax. This little victory didn’t put him at ease, not by a long shot. Especially since those unanswered questions rooted deeply in his core kept tugging at his thoughts, bothering him, making him feel somewhat hopeless.

He didn’t know these men, although one of them looked familiar. Apparently, they were looking for a woman but kept pursuing him instead and it seemed they weren’t willing to stop, no matter how far he would go. Whatever happened half a year ago, before Avery lost his memories, must have had something to do with them and with the reason they kept going after him. All those thoughts kept popping back into his mind without a break, always forcing him to think. Still, those lost memories didn’t come back. Everything before half a year ago stayed engulfed in the dark, hidden from Avery.

Avery continued running south, pushing himself every step of the way, afraid to stop even for a minute to take a break. He had to get as far as possible in the short time he knew he had, but despite his fear, his body had limits.

After a short rest, he had plenty of energy to spend. This pursuit kept him in perfect shape, building his stamina and agility. It all made Avery wonder whether he was good at sports before he found himself on the run or whether this maddening pursuit made him like that.