Four

**Leilani’s POV**

I jolted awake when I suddenly felt my head bump painfully against something that felt metallic in nature.

In pain, I pried my swollen eyes open, rubbing at my now throbbing head and gasped in shock when I noticed that I was lying on my left side in something that looked like the trunk of a farmer’s truck while Sam laid in front of me, fast asleep.

I sat up slowly, scrutinizing the environment and from where I was, I discovered that we were now in the clutches of those mean looking men, and to make matters worse were currently being driven to an unknown destination.

“Sam, Sam, wake up!” I whispered quietly, shaking Sam awake. As soon as she pried her eyes open, I placed my index finger against my lips just so that she wouldn’t make any noise.

“Where are we?” She asked frightfully, looking around. She suddenly spat in disgust when the wild wind blowing at our hairs made some strands of unkept hair fly into her mouth.

Whispering, I quickly explained our current situation to her while we laid side by side and watched her eyes go wide in shock when I told her about my plans to escape.

“I want us to jump. To jump out of this moving truck and run into one of the bushes around before we got caught.” I said in hushed whispers and was surprised when she immediately nodded in agreement.

It sounded like a bright plan, but a dangerous one altogether. She seemed very interested in it though, because just as unwilling as I was to be taken away by these scary looking men, she also was.

We quietly helped each other untie the ropes around our wrists and feet and waited patiently for the perfect opportunity to jump without easily getting noticed.

It didn’t take us too long to find one though, because only a few minutes later, the truck bounced shakily as it entered into a shallow pothole, and then we quickly jumped, landing painfully on the untarred floor.

As soon as our backs landed on the floor, we quickly rushed to our feet, ignoring the pain that had sprung up the length of our bodies and ran into the closest bush path by our right.

We kept sprinting through the path, panting but unsure of where the path headed to. A loud noise from a far distance made us run faster as we realized that it was our abductors and that they had realized that we had escaped.

“They’re coming at us!” Sam cried in fright as she sprinted forward. I would’ve asked that we shifted into our wolf forms to enable us to run faster but I couldn’t. Sam was only sixteen, she hadn’t met her wolf yet.

The men’s noises were beginning to sound too close, It scared me. I didn’t want to be taken back into their truck; I didn’t even want to be caught for I already knew what would become of us if they caught us after we’d tried to escape.

Just as I had almost given up, thinking they would catch up to us, I heard a loud feminine voice yell out at us, which made us come to an abrupt stop.

“What are you both doing here?” She snarled, staring down at us with a brooding expression on her face.

From the look on her face and the way she was dressed, I could tell that she was a soldier, but what I didn’t quite understand was what a soldier was doing in a forest as thick as this.

“We are escaping some men who want to traffick us.” I quickly rushed out, glancing continuously behind me just in case they were still coming after us.

“Traffic?” She asked in confusion, cocking her sandy blonde eyebrows at us.

“Yes, human trafficking, they want to traffick us!” I quickly said, glancing around frantically as my heart kept beating erratically against my chest.

I could still hear their voices from a distance and the sounds of their feet against the floor, and I knew that they were still after us.

…of course they would, they literally just bought us a few hours ago for a sum of fifteen thousand dollars!

I noticed a few more soldiers strutting over to us and without waiting to be asked again, I repeatedly told them of how we were being pursued by traffickers.

They immediately provided us a place to hide amongst some overgrown bushes and stood protectively in front of us until the ugly men from earlier arrived at the scene.

“Did you see some little girls run past?” The rude bulky guy asked the soldiers immediately when he arrived at the scene.

“And do you know you’re in a pack’s territory?” The female soldier asked too just as fiercely, obviously ignoring the man’s question.

“How would I know if this is some pack’s territory off the only thing I see are bushes?” He snapped, glaring at the female soldier.

“Because your dumb ass is supposed to watch where you go and know that most big pack’s territories are surrounded by ‘bushes’!” She snarled.

“Okay, I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes if you can tell me if you saw two little girls run past here!” He shouted desperately.

For a brief moment, I almost thought she would give us away. I could literally hear my heart beating in my ears as I waited for her to point out where we hid until she finally said;

“No we did not, but I sure heard some shuffling sounds earlier coming from that side of the forest.” She said, pointing at a distance.

“Thank you!” I heard the bulky man say, and watched as he immediately ran in the direction at which the female soldier had pointed. In relief, I quickly let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding earlier and smiled warmly at Sam who in turn smiled back.

“We’re free from them.” She whispered happily to me and I could only nod as several waves of relief coursed through my veins, momentarily making it unable for me to speak.

We slowly sat on the floor, sighing in relief when we suddenly felt something hovering over us. Looking up, we smiled when we noticed that it was the female soldier who was staring down at us with a kind of indecipherable expression on her face.

“Thank you, thank you!” We quickly rushed out in unison, and she nodded, staring down at us.

I don’t know why but I suddenly had a weird feeling settle at the base of my stomach.

I couldn’t say if it was the way she hovered over us and stared at us or the grim looks on the other soldiers’ faces that scared me but I immediately knew that we had walked into another type of mess…