Wolf Sprite
Eighteen. Cassini

POV – Lillia

The luxury of this motel is being able to shower for as long as I want and not having to worry that the time will run out before the shower turns off. And, of course, the water is not cold! I mean, the showers at the pack were okay, but when you have the luxury of warm or hot showers, man, you never want to go back.

Obviously, I just have to have another shower when I get up the following morning.

“How was it?” Mum asks when I get out.

“Really good. How are you feeling?” I ask. Mum looks at me and gives me a tired smile. I know she fell asleep before me last night, but this morning she looks like all the energy is zapped out of her.

“Are we ready to go?” Mum groans. I nod, picking up a box to put back in the car. Mum tries to help, but I can see she’s not well, so I make her sit in the car. I discard our rubbish and make sure we remember everything before shutting the door and locking it behind me. I walk to reception and drop off the key before returning to the car.

“Where to first?” I ask.

“Uh, let’s drive east for a bit, then stop off at a diner on the way?” I nod and use the motel’s Wi-Fi to figure out where I am and which way to go. I take as many screenshots as possible, trying to head in a straight line. I’m still unsure where I’m heading, but I have to trust Mum knows where we’re going.

I drive all day, checking on Mum while she sleeps. I found a diner along the way and stopped, but because Mum was still asleep, I went inside by myself and ordered two bacon-and-egg rolls for takeaway. I ate mine in the car, hoping it would wake Mum up, but she didn’t. Before I got hungry again, I stopped at a petrol station and bought one of those expensive sandwiches in their triangle packs you can buy. Mum still didn’t wake, and I was beginning to worry about her.

I was past my last screenshot of the map I had taken photos of when Mum eventually woke.

“Hey, bubs, where are we?” she asks, her voice dry and croaky.

“Not sure,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders. We were in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t seen a town or a dwelling for over two hours and was beginning to feel quite nervous.

I pull the car over to the side of the road and put on the warning lights. Can’t be too careful. I don’t want to be ticketed because I’m pulled over on the verge without permission.

“I got you food,” I tell Mum.

“Thank you, but I’m not really hungry,” Mum replies. I look at her. Her energy spurt has gone, and she looks lethargic.

“Mum, you got to eat,” I say. Mum shrugs.

“Please?” I beg.

Reluctantly, Mum picks up the bacon and egg roll and begins to nibble on it. I watched her eat and gave her a bottle of water.

“Thanks, Bubba,” Mum says, smiling weakly. Maybe I should have bought her something with lots of sugar or red meat. Something juicy with red meat. I can’t imagine going to a restaurant and asking for an uncooked raw steak. I chuckle at the thought. Maybe I should go to a supermarket? The next town we go to, I’m stopping at a supermarket.

“I’m tired,” I mutter.

“Let’s sleep here then; we’ll move on in the morning,” Mum suggests. I nod. I wind the windows down for fresh air and turn the car off. I return my seat as far as possible, doing the same for Mum.

It takes a while for me to fall asleep. I should be used to sleeping in the car at night, but strange noises stir me from my sleep. At one point, I swear I hear sniffing from outside and howling. But it’s not enough for me to wake up. By the time morning breaks across the sky, I feel unrested. I feel like I could sleep forever.

I wind my seat back into a sitting position and turn the car back on. I rely on instinct when I turn left at the intersection. In my head, turning left means going north, and turning right is south. And the direction we’ve been going is east, so this is the right move.

I drive for a few hours, pulling over to finish the rest of my junk food and to check how much money Mum has in her wallet. I could do with another motel pit-stop, my hair feels all oily and raggedy, and I’m sure my face is littered with acne from the lack of washing.

Mum wakes from her sleep two hours later.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” I ask, trying to sound happy for her. Mum is worrying me. She is getting worse, and I can do nothing to help her.

“Better,” Mum lies, her voice croaky again. I swear she has a slight green sheen to the colour of her skin as she speaks.

“Finish your egg and bacon roll,” I tell her. She hardly ate any of it last night, and I ended up rewrapping it and putting it back in the bag.

“Aye, aye sir,” Mum replies, mock saluting me. I smile. At least she’s trying to show me she’s doing well.

“I heard some strange noises last night,” I tell Mum as she nibbles on her roll.

“Like what?”

“Animal steps. Howling. I think the car got a good sniffing.

“Stop for me, for a sec?” Mum asks. I look at her but pull over anyway. Mum opens the door and gets out. I run to help her, but she pushes me away.

“We’re close to a pack border,” mum tells me. I nod, pretending I understand. I don’t know what she’s talking about, and even sniffing myself doesn’t give anything away.

I help Mum get back in the car, running back to my side so I can crank her seat into sitting position and put her seatbelt back on.

“It’s okay. We don’t smell like rogues yet, and wolves can travel more freely now between packs,” mum tells me. I know what a rogue is. We used to get a few in the city. Alpha Marcus and a few of his deltas and omegas would capture them, returning them to the pack house for questioning. They all smelt like rubbish bins, a mixture of sulphur, ammonium and decomposing food. Their eyes were red too.

The thought of rogues brought back painful memories of Alpha Marcus, his Luna and his son, putting us omegas back in our places when we did something wrong. I remember when I was about six, Clark, who was a year older than me at the time, was angry at something. I am trying to remember what. But I got in his way, and as a result, he pushed me into a room with a feral rogue chained up to the wall and left me there. I remember as the feral rogue approached me, his teeth barely reaching me as I hugged the wall and screamed. Clark’s laughter when that happened still haunts me.

“Yet?” I ask, shaking the memory out of my head. I know my place in the pack, I’m an omega, and I’ll be dammed by Alpha Markus and his family if I forget that.

“Yeah. The first is the smell. Those who are still in their human form have the smell. If and when they turn into their wolves, they risk the chance of becoming feral. Feral wolves have red eyes. That’s why we shouldn’t shift while we’re out on the road,” mum tells me.

I never knew that. I ask Mum a question, but she’s dozed off again.

I drive into a small township and head towards the nearest supermarket. I know what I need to buy with the money from Mum’s wallet. I leave Mum in the car to sleep and go to the supermarket. I get some schnitzel because the meat is thin, cheap and red, and some lollies sprinkled with sugar. I’ll try anything to get Mum’s energy up, even if it means getting her to eat raw meat. I also buy some body spray to mask our scent, just in case we start smelling like rogues. I am still determining when our next shower will be, and I am hoping this will do the trick.

I hum as I make my purchases and walk back into the carpark. Walking on my two feet feels much better than travelling by car. Sitting all day, I forget what it’s like to use my legs like this.

Mum is dozing when I get in, and she wakes when I close the door.

“What did you get?” she asks. I open the bag, which I had to pay fifteen cents for and pull out the schnitzel and chocolate.

“Raw meat?”

“Yeah, I thought it might help get your energy back,” I reply, backing out of the car park and driving away.

“Where are we?” Mum asks as I drive back through the town.

“Cassini,” I reply.

“Hmm. Skathi Pack. They’re a nice pack. We need to head north from here,” Mum says, wriggling in her seat.

“Did you see an information centre when you drove in?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Go back and stop there. I need to get something,” mum tells me. I nod. I have no idea where we’re going or what she is thinking. I just trust that she knows where she’s taking us.

Mum opens up the pack of meat and rolls the first schnitzel in her hands, biting into it. The blood drips down her chin, but she sighs in pleasure.

“When I was little, my dad used to come home from hunting with a deer and would rip the meat with a claw for me to eat. Glynda would cook mine, but Dad would eat it in his wolf form raw. He would always promise to take me when I turned eighteen,” Mum sighs. I smile, mum has never spoken about her dad or told me stories about her childhood.

I replace the information centre and I stop. Mum’s chin is red from the meat she’s scoffed down, and I watch as she gets a tissue and pours water on it to clean her face.

“I probably smell like a rogue now,” Mum sighs.

“I got this as well,” I say, thankful for the body spray. When Mum sees it, she grins and takes it from me. She now smells like sweet watermelon.

“Thanks,” I’ll be right back,” Mum says.

When she comes back, I notice she is holding a map. I give her a quizzical look.

“Cassini is a tourist town. They give away free maps,” Mum explains. I just nod. Mum knows a lot about this area, more than she lets on.

“Mum… what is the name of your dad’s pack?” I ask. Mum doesn’t reply, only telling me which road to take to get out of town.

“Not yet. There are many packs this way, Blue Mountain Pack, Redwood Pack, Clear Water Pack, Moss-Tree Pack.”

“I’ve heard of them.′ I admit. That was something I learnt when I snuck into the pack’s library as a kid. I got a hell of a beating when I finally was caught.

“Well, you should have; some of those packs are the biggest and most powerful packs in the country. A lot of them also share borders to Fairy Territory,” Mum says.

“Is it true that some of the packs Alpha can trace their lineage to the original Lycans?” I ask.

“Yes. Some packs even have links to the old portals,” Mum replies.

“Portals?” I ask. I didn’t get that far in my reading.

“Aha. You’ll need to study all about genealogy when you get to my father’s pack,” Mum says.

“Play catch-up?” I joke. I was never allowed to learn about our wolf history in Urban Wolves. As an omega, it was information above my rank.

After that, Mum doesn’t say anything for a long time, and I feel bad. I know Mum left her pack, but I don’t know why. Mum nor Calla ever told me.

“Continue up Trojan Road, then turn left onto Fillie Cross Road,” Mum says, looking at the map. She folds it back together again and slips it under her leg. I shake my head at Mum, still keeping her secrets. I turn the car onto Trojan Road like she said and drive. The light snoring next to me indicates that she’s fallen asleep.

~

Edited with Grammarly