The One 11
Chapter 11: Injured
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Chapter 11: Injured
Sophie
Penny woke me up in the middle of the night and I took my shift, watching and making sure that we
stayed safe while she slept. About an hour before sunrise, I woke her. I could see a train station
coming ahead and we needed to get off this train before anyone spotted us.
As the train starts to slow, I strip out of my clothes and put them in my bag, shifting back into my
wolf. I make sure that Penny is doing the same, then I grab my bag in my mouth and wait until the
train slows as much as I feel I can let it before I need to jump. I find a spot with grass, and I leap,
quickly turning to watch and make sure that Penny joins me andnds safely.
Hernding isn’t as graceful as mine and it looks as though she might have twisted her ankle. I race
over to her, sniffing her leg. I nudge her with my nose and wait. She puts weight on her leg and
almost instantly, she lifts it again, a painful yelp escaping her lips.
I look around. We are very exposed here and as soon as the sun.es up, anyone close by will
be able to see us. We need to get to the forest, and we need to do it quickly.
I shift and quickly take Penny’s paw in my hand. I gently move my hand up to the knee joint where
she flinched, whimpering as I touch it.
“I’m going to have to carry you Penny. We can’t stay here, we
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have to move.”
She shakes her head, pushing me with her nose, telling me to leave her.
“I’m not leaving you. I know it’s going hurt to shift, but I need you to shift, and then you can climb on
my back. I’ll carry you. We’ve got to get to the forest before the sunes up,” I tell her urgently.
When she doesn’t instantly shift, take her face in my hands. “We don’t have much time. It’s going to
be hard enough for me to travel carrying you. We have to go, Penny. You have to shift.”
She nods, and I release her face. She whimpers as she begins to shift and when her leg shifts
back, she cries out before pping her hand over her mouth. Her knee looks terrible. It’s swollen
and already bruising an ugly purple color.
“That’s going to take some time to heal. Come on, we need to get going.”
I help her up into a standing position, grabbing both of our bags and handing them to her. Once she
has them over her shoulders, I turn, crouching down in front of her and I help her
the good leg around my waist, and get onto my back. She wraps I carefully wrap my arm
underneath the thigh of her bad leg. She whimpers softly as she bends her knee and lets it hang.
“I’m going to have to run Penny, so just hang on.”
“Okay, just hurry,” she says and I can hear the pain in her voice.
I take off running as fast as I can. I run in the opposite direction of the train station and train tracks.
It looks like there’s a mile,
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maybe two, before I can get to what looks like a forest. I hope that’s what it is. I hope it’s a thick
forest, where we can hide and maybe find a ce to let Penny rest and heal.
When I get to the tree line, the sun is just starting to rise and I can see very quickly that this is no
thick forest. This is just a smattering of trees, and we’ll have to continue on.
Penny pushes her face against my back as I run. I can hear her whimpering periodically, but she
keeps the sounds as quiet as she possibly can. I frequently stop listening to make sure that no one
is following us, that no one has caught our scent. This is a bad situation, and it would be very easy
for us to be captured.
Somewhere around noon, I stop near ake, sitting Penny on the ground. I need to catch my breath
and she needs to stretch out her legs. Thankfully the trees have gotten thicker as I’ve run. I’m still
moving in the general direction of my parents’ pack, hoping that it’s them leaving the food out. I
know we’ll need to be more careful as we get closer to my parents’ pack. There are several wolf
packs in the surrounding area. I don’t know how many of those Alphas have found their mates, butCopyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.
I’m sure if they haven’t, they’ll be on the hunt for one.
I take our water bottles and fill them quickly in the coolkeing back and handing one to Penny
as I sit beside her. I drink the water quickly, thirsty after my long run. Then Llook down at her knee.
“How does it feel?” I ask her.
“Better,” she says. I look at it and see that it’s turned into a yellow and green brdise from the ugly
ck and purple that it was earlier today. That’s a good sign that it’s healing, but the fact that it’s still
bruised means it’s not healed enough.
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“Do you want to try walking on it?” I ask her.
“Yeah, let me at least try and if nothing else, maybe I can walk for a while. The forest has gotten
thicker here.”
“Okay,” I agree, knowing it would be better if I can look around, see if I can find a ce for us to
hide tonight. I pull out two more gran bars from my bag and hand her one before taking our water
bottles down to theke and refilling them.
“Let’s try walking around theke, maybe there’s an area here where we can hide for the night, or at
least let you rest until your knee is healed. It looks like it should be fine by tomorrow and then we
can both begin to run.
“I’m holding you back. You should just go without me,” she says,
“I’m not leaving you here. You’re at risk at being captured. I’m not going to do that to you.”
She nods and surprises me by reaching out to hug me. “Thank you.”
“That’s what friend’s do.”
“I wish we were the kind of friends who could stay together and not have to separate in another day
or so.”
“Me too. Maybe someday. We can hope.”
I help her up and wrap her arm around my shoulder before we begin making our way slowly around
theke. We both listen intently for the sounds of footfalls, running paws, growls, or howls of any
kind.
It’s slow going as Penny limps her way around theke trying
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not to put too much weight on her bad knee. Once we’re around the Lake, I look around and see
that away from theke, the forest bes thicker with trees.
“What do you think, Penny? Theke or the forest for tonight?” She looks around, then looks back
at the forest.
“I feel too exposed here by theke. I feel like anyone in the area wille here to get water, and
then they will find us.”
“I agree. I think it’s time for you to climb back on my back. I’d like to make some good time and get
away from thiske. As soon as someone catches our scent, they’lle after us and I’d like to be
far enough away that we still have a chance.”
“Why don’t we swim across? If we get in the water, our scent will be lost, and it will take a long time
for them to find our scent again. If we swim straight across, we can get out and then cut left heading
north again.”
“Are you sure your knee can handle it?” I ask her, worried about her ability to swim. It’s why I hadn’t
already suggested that we cross theke.
“I’d rather take longer to heal than to get caught,” she says resolutely.
“Okay, let’s do it. We’ll swim together. I’ll carry our bags and keep them over my head. You worry
about swimming and keeping your head afloat.”
We strip off our clothes and make our way into the water. It’s cold and my body is covered in
goosebumps almost immediately. Once we’re submerged in the water, Penny looks at me. Her lips
have already started turning blue.
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“At l-l-least the c-c-cold f-f-feels g-g-good against m-m-my knee,” she stutters with the cold.
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I nod, focusing on keeping our bags over my head as I use my legs to kick and push me across the
lake. Penny uses her arms, pulling her body behind her, letting her bad leg drag limply in the water.
Thankfully, there isn’t much of a current. The problem is the cold.
By the time we reach the other side, the sun is starting to set. We get out and I immediately grab
clothes out of both our bags, handing hers to her and putting mine own on.
Once we’re dressed, I give Penny our bags and I help her get on my back again. It takes me about
a mile to work out the cold and the stiffness in my joints. But after that I get into a rhythm and begin
running. This time it’s not as painful for Penny. And she’s able to listen for sounds of others chasing
us while I focus on running and finding a ce where we can be safe for the night.
While I’m running, I cross the path of a small Alpha hunting group. So rather than stopping, I
continue on much longer than I intended to. It’s well into the night when we finally find a ce to
stop. We both copse, exhausted. Neither of us even bothers to change. We put our bags under
our heads and fall asleep.
It’ste the next day when we wake. I step out of the little shelter I found and sniff the air, looking
around. We had both been so tired that we hadn’t kept watch, but I don’t hear anything, and I don’t
smell anyone. I turn back and I look at Penny. She’s checking out her knee and it looks much better
than it did yesterday.
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“How does it feel?” I ask her.
“Better. Healed,” she says.
“Good. I don’t think we’re too far from where we’re supposed to be based on the directions you
gave me. If we run hard, I think we can be there in a couple of hours, early afternoon at thetest.
Then you can have some food and maybe you’ll be nice enough to share the water with me,” I smile
at her.
“I’ll share both the food and the water with you,” she says. “You’ve been so kind and so generous to
me.”
“Let’s just see what’s there. Let’s hope that there really is food and water.”
We pack up our things and we start slow, making sure that Penny is able to run on her injured leg.
But it seems that it’s healed, if notpletely, then almostpletely, so we begin running much
harder. It’s early afternoon when we arrive.
We slow down and I let Penny take the lead. She has a better idea of where she’s going. The
terrain here has be much rockier than the forest, and we have to be careful. I lift my nose in
the air, sniffing to see if I smell any Alphas in the area.
What I smell has me stopping in my tracks. I smell the scent of a she-wolf. That’s expected. It’s not
one that I recognize, but it makes sense that a she-wolf is the one leaving the food and water for us.
It’s the other scent that makes me stop. The scent of pine, the scent of home.
‘Mate,’ Hedda says.