The Wolf Experiments
Chapter 4

The entire valley spread out before her. Rebel bucked wildly in her grasp. It seemed the steed was enjoying the newfound freedom even better than she was. The wind blew past her hair wildly and she almost gave an old Indian war cry before she remembered that her throat was just not engineered that way at the moment. Behind her, the wolf fought to keep up. Amandas’ tongue was out in excitement as he ran madly to maintain the stride of the powerful horse.

Alex could hardly believe that Andy had given but here she was, exploring the valley on the back of Rebel. It had taken them a month but they had finally given in. Alex was wearing a coat to ward off the cold but it was not doing such a good job at the moment. Good thing she was too excited to pay much heed to the cold. She drew the zipper on the coat up to her neck with one hand and held on tightly to the reins with the other.

This was the first time she would be riding off on her own without Hawk’s supervisory presence with her. The move to have her take up horse riding had taken a full month but the talk to agree on her going off on her own had taken all of a week. Hawk had told her that she had just about two hours. He had tried to cram the map of the area’s topography in her head and she had only listened on half-heartedly. She looked at her LED smart watch to signal her impatience and also to tell Hawk that she understood.

“Fine. I guess we’re good to go.” Hawk finally declared. “But remember, you have to be careful out there.”

Hawk moved her knee slightly to open the saddlebag. “If you get lost, throw up a flare. The sensors will alert us to the heat index. We’ll find you.” He sorted through the items in the pack, making sure everything was there, and then nodded with satisfaction. “I suppose I shouldn’t worry. Your wolf will be with you.”

Alex made a clucking noise in her throat, clearly telling him he was being over-protective. As she rode away, he smiled at her, and that made her breathless. Her pulse quickened until she could no longer see him—until she had escaped from his deep, watchful gaze. Then and only then did she veer off the marked path, and head straight up the mountainside. Her eyes scanned her surroundings for a cove hidden and camouflaged by rocks that she had seen on a geographic map. It was just the place for something to hide. The stallion was somewhere close by. She could feel it in every fiber of her body. She knew there was a magical place where the pine-forest met the tawny and crumbly granite wall of the mountains. A secret place. From there the stallion watched from a lone rise, his silhouette highlighted by a rainbow of color. All Alex had to do was find it.

Her hair flew wildly in the wind as the horse galloped at full speed. The radiant sunlight glared against the thick snow that moved beneath a brutal wind. The mountain peaks and ridges formed a wall nearly three hundred miles in diameter, but hardly fifteen miles wide at the base. The highest range was nearly eleven thousand feet with dozens of summits. Patches of snow flanked the slopes, and a paradise of rushing streams and wildflowers were clearly visible.

As the surroundings became dense, Rebel’s skin rippled nervously. She gave him a confident pat. The snow was thinner in the forest, and Alex guided her horse beneath a colonnade of trees whose woven branches intermingled and formed a long archway. It smelled like a different world, fragrant, fresh and full of life. The wary horse stumbled and Alex dismounted to check his feet. She walked him a few paces but could see nothing wrong.

The woods gave way to a small clearing where a beautiful wolf stood silently in the center. The creature seemed shy and timid, lifting its nose to the air. Amandas growled, and Rebel pulled against the reins. The wind stirred the surrounding drifts and something menacing glittered in the wolf’s strange yellow eyes. His coat shimmered in a blue-black wave, healthy and glossy beneath the spectacle of a distant sunray. He was beautiful but even that didn’t abolish the fear crawling across her skin.

In that instant the wolf lunged for her, Rebel bolted, and Amandas attacked. The two bodies crashed together, a tangle of black and white, and Alex watched helplessly as blood stained the dusting of thin snow crimson. All around them, the forest erupted in sounds, birds shrieking and animals fleeing the reverberation of battle. Amidst the muffled snarls, alarm bells screamed in her head, and the ground tilted beneath her feet. The wind snatched her hair and wrapped her coat constrictively about her body. Her face contorted. Then, with a final screech, the other wolf loped away, yelping in defeat.

Amandas trotted to her proudly. She dropped to her knees and felt for injuries, but not even a tuft of hair was out of place. It was nothing short of miraculous. When the wolf suddenly shifted his gaze over her shoulder, she froze and knew the stallion waited behind her. Slowly she turned.

The stallion stood there, silent and majestic. His thick, wispy mane nearly covered his large, brown eyes. He bent his nose to Alex’s face, and Alex’s chest constricted with sudden and unexpected emotion, the blood roaring in her ears. He was a big, heavy horse—some kind of draft maybe. The horse nickered softly. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Amandas whimpered questioningly. The stallion’s beauty was immeasurable and moved her to her unthinkable depths. And Alex loved him. Maybe she had never known what that was—how it could overwhelm and control—how it could destroy. But Alex loved the stallion more than anything or anyone. So naturally, when he took a step, Alex followed without hesitation.

They had only travelled a short distance, just to the end of the clearing, when the soft thump of Amandas’ tail alerted them to the presence of another. The stallion grazed her arm as he wheeled on his hind legs and disappeared, the speed of his departure sending her hair whirling about her head. Hawk rode up just then and leaned out to offer his arm, effortlessly moving her into the saddle behind him. When Hawk shifted to look at her, she met his dark eyes and saw something untamed there, like the stallion, like the valley that surrounded them.

“I was worried when Rebel came home without you. Did you fall? Did something frighten him?” he asked. She shook her head to indicate she was all right and Hawk looked in the direction the stallion had gone. “I saw him with you. He needs you, I think.”

They rode back to the complex in silence and as if he understood that she wished to see no one, Hawk deposited her at the window to her apartment. She had too much to think about. There was the stallion’s sudden appearance and sudden departure, a stranger roaming the complex, the room she had found that was really a forgotten tomb, and the void of her own lost memories. She was the girl with the white wolf and that gave her the identity she craved, but it explained nothing.

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