Home is Where the Heart Is (Cloverleah Pack #13) - Lisa Oliver Page 0,2

His wolf pricked his ears and listened. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Yep, his wolf hearing confirmed the crackle of the wards were gone. “We’re free!”

He headed for the entrance where the eerie glow seemed brighter. Stepping out, Wes’s elation dimmed as hot air greeted him, smothering him like a blanket. A bleak landscape, all sand and rocks, stretched as far as he could see. Wes had no clue where he was. All he figured was he wasn’t on the earth realm anymore. It wasn’t possible for the lack of sun, moon, or night sky to cover such a huge area. Which meant, Wes didn’t have a fucking clue how he was going to get home. I don’t even know if anyone’s looking for me. His pack mates had probably assumed he’d been killed by the dark fuckers not long after he’d gone missing.

That simply means we’re on our own. Still, Wes hesitated, not that he or his wolf had a lot of options. Either he could sit down and wait for the food to run out, or he could look for a way to get home, or at least find another source of food and water. I’m not staying here. After spending goodness knows how long cooped up, Wes’s wolf was keen to stretch his legs and run, even in an alien landscape. Working quickly, Wes consolidated what little amount of provisions he had left into a couple of the storage containers the food originally arrived in. Two of them would easily fit into his shirt, which Wes bundled up into a make-shift pack for his wolf to carry.

Looking down at his feet, Wes winced at the state of his footwear. His boots, his wonderful, handmade-just-for-him boots were beyond redemption. With a sigh, he kicked them off. His tight-fitting pants he used to have to struggle to get on and off, dropped to the ground as soon as he undid the button. Wes tucked them into his make-shift pack.

Calling on his wolf, Wes allowed the shift to flow over him. Let’s see if we can find a way out of this hell hole. His wolf was so damn glad to get out of the cave.

/~/~/~/~/

Wes stopped, dropped his pack, and stared at the horizon. The only thing that changed about the view was different rock formations. He had no clue how long he had been traveling. Hours? Days? Nothing changed in this world. The glow stayed constant, night or day with no way of marking the passing hours. Whoever designed this hell hole gave no thought to anything beyond rocks and fucking sand.

Time had no meaning. Wes slept when he stopped, soaking his sand-rubbed paws in any water he could find. The different caves he found along the way, thank the Fates, had plenty of water, even if there wasn’t anything else. When the pain in his paws got to be too much, Wes shifted to his human form and pushed on, moving in one direction, driven to find a way home or at least somewhere that was something more than rocks and sand.

As the time passed, Wes got to the point where he wished the monsters that haunted his nightmares were real. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing in the realm but rocks and fucking sand. The only sounds that broke the silence were his feet hitting the sand, his breathing, or his wolf’s panting. The despair that hit him in the cave when he realized how stupid he’d been, got deeper as time marched on.

So, when Wes woke from a nap while soaking his paws to find he’d shifted, and he thought he heard a voice, his despair worsened. Hallucinations. Fucking hallucinations generated by his need to find his pack and the endless nothing of the place he was in. Wes didn’t bother getting up or taking his feet out of the pond. I’ll be seeing palm trees and sexy men running around in speedos next. Wes groaned. He’d come so far, and yet he’d gone nowhere at all. But the need to keep moving, to find something forced him to open his dust-caked eyes.

He blinked. There was a boy standing in front of him. Wes blinked again. The small thin blond boy who smelled like bear, who had dirt on his face, legs, and clothes, was still there. Wes blinked harder this time, trying to clear his mind of the tricks it was playing on him. But when he opened them again, the boy was still there. And