Summer rambled happily through the woods for several hours. When it began to get truly dark, she started to make her way back toward her car, occasionally using her phone to orient herself. She could hear howls from deeper in the forest, but didn’t think about it too much.
Until a tall figure with burning eyes burst out from around a tree immediately after one of the closer howls. Summer shrieked, first in startlement, then in genuine fear as the figure bared fangs and crouched to spring at her.
She bolted, crashing back through the forest with no idea where she was going except away. She rounded another tree and nearly ran into someone else, even darker than the shadows could account for, and also with those burning blue eyes and fanged mouth. Backpedalling as fast as she could, she tripped over a branch buried in leaves, stumbled into a shallow dip, and fell.
The sound of footsteps crunching through the wood and snapping twigs alerted the pack to the fact that they were no longer alone, and every member straightened up, sniffing and scanning their surroundings to see who it was. Isaac already had an inkling, of course, but he hoped that he was wrong, and as he watched Derek lunge forwards and then he heard the piercing sound of a familiar shriek, Isaac was moving without even registering.
“Summer!” he cried out and then winced, knowing that he had just alerted her to his presence and he knew that the following moments would either break or make their fragile relationship. Pushing past Derek and knowing that he would be reprimanded for his lack of respect later, Isaac pushed himself harder, catching up to Summer in seconds. “Wait! Let me…let me explain!” he cried out as she fell, reaching out and cursing as he missed her.
Isaac shouted her name as her ankle twisted underneath her. She gasped in pain, then caught her breath on another gasp as her hands, outstretched to break her fall, scraped across something hard.
Isaac? Why was /Isaac/ out here? He was supposed to be studying! Was he running from these creatures too? And then the pain receded enough that she comprehended what he had said as she was falling.
/Explain/?
She twisted upright, struggling to sit up without touching the hurt places to the ground again, in the leaf litter. “Isaac?!”