Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) by Tina Smith Page A

heavily injured and remained with a
limp, even as a wolf. No one cared enough to try to have her leg
reset and after the scars disappeared, she was too traumatized to
ask.
    Sky grabbed his
own hair in both fists and struggled to contain the many
conflicting emotions he could not give into. Regaining his
composure, he went through the hallway to Sam’s end room and out
onto the balcony that wrapped around the top of the house. He
stared hard at the Jacaranda tree, willing himself to jump and take
off, and he should have jumped the rail and run. But they would
have caught him and he hated to admit it to himself but he feared
the cage.
    He breathed in
the air. Shell made a noise as she stepped out through the far
screen door, which led from the main living room; she pulled up a
chair on the opposite end of the long verandah. He tried to ignore
her, and struggling to do so, went over and pulled up a seat
opposite her which squeaked on the wooden boards.
    “Intense huh?”
she said low, towards the view in front of them, she was smoking a
cigarette. He breathed out; Shell was trapped here herself, though
she had been more compliant than him. He sensed they shared a
similar unrest at being in this pack that the likes of Angele and
wolves like Blair did not suffer. They had never belonged so well
anywhere else in life and had never had another pack. Perhaps they
knew no better.
    But Shell and
he longed for something that had been better and had been taken
from them. He put his bare feet up on the other chair. He wasn’t
sure what it was for her, just that she had been happy before Paws
took her, kidnapped her into this world, and she knew better than
to simply be happy with that decision being made for her. They both
heard the continuing kerfuffle in the house. It was dawn and the
first light of the sun began to peek over the horizon of trees.
    “Narine’s going
through your room,” Shells soft voice informed, not looking towards
him as she breathed a feathery plume of smoke and flicked the ash
on the boards. They weren’t allowed lighters, Tyler had probably
lit it for her. Sky glanced at her and back towards the expansive
dawn view over the railing as light hit the green lawn, which
stretched into shrubbery and sweeping bushland.
    Neither of them
felt the urge to make idle gossip and anyway, anything they chatted
about would not have been what was on their minds and to speak what
they really felt would have been idiotic. Anything overheard now
could be twisted against them and they knew better. Genna was
always listening. She offered him a drag and he accepted it. Shelly
Bealy had been his Geography teacher in Shade High. So they had
found some common ground and shared a few jokes every now and
then.
    Angele’s
flowery scent alerted him to her presence before her ringing voice,
that there was a meeting in five. He handed the smoke back to
Shell. They sat wasting time until the pack convened on the
mismatched couches in the living area in the upstairs. He wanted so
badly to escape it, but as though trapped, he had to attend and
hope against hope they wouldn’t pin him down and tear his body
apart for treason. There was no way out other than to see it
through and hope to arrive on the other side of the meeting in one
piece and though she was all he wanted to think of, he couldn’t
think of her.
     

9. New Leaf
     
    The valley went
on whether I believed in it or not. I dreamt of the angel statue as
I slept, armed with a bow, above Tormey’s grave. She opened her
electric eyes to glance at me lovingly. As I neared her she put her
hand to my face. Her cold marble skin began to crack in lines that
grew like lightning strikes and I reached for her. As she gave me a
startled look, I desperately grappled with nothing as she fell to
pieces before me. I felt as though I had shattered the angel.
    Sometimes,
after waking from the dreams, I would go to the river. On the bank
there was a big leafy oak. I left my clothes on its