Free Chance Lost by Jo Larue Page B

took him in and adopted him. Small town ideals saved him from starving. In the wilds of Washington he wouldn’t have lived long. They struggled, but Trey never wanted for anything. He went to school and lived a normal life.
     
    Everything stayed that way until the night of his sixteenth birthday. Growing up without parents to teach him about his gifts caused the greatest harm to the woman he called mother. In his horror of what was suddenly happening to him, he got too close to her, wanting her to fix it like always. She hugged him when it happened. He shifted in her arms and the sudden burst of power in his body crushed her back and neck, killing her instantly. In his world, you didn’t care about anyone, because they always ended up dead.
     
    Trey left the house as he found it and returned to his SUV. The Navigator was his home away from home and after the day he just had, it felt good to sink down in the comfortable leather seats. He set the final address into his GPS and left, hoping this last one was his money tree. He stopped at an all night fast food place and purchased several hamburger meals to go. He was starving, again.
     
    Finding the next neighborhood was easy, but there were no empty or vacant homes on the same street. He found one, for sale, on the next one over that was kitty-corner to subject four’s backyard. There was one problem he saw right off. The house for number four also had a complete privacy fence. He would deal with that later. Thankfully it was the middle of the night and no dogs were sounding warnings of a stranger being around.
     
    Trey picked the back door lock, hoping he would not have to use this skill again any time in the near future. Never would be too soon, as far as he was concerned. At least this house was set up to sell, complete with furniture. He left the lights off and settled in. Subject four was not home as far as he could tell, so that gave him time to contemplate his life since that fateful night he needlessly killed his adoptive mother. He opened the bag of burgers and ate while he reminisced. Mostly he wondered what he could have done differently. He knew now that he should have never gotten close to her during a shift. Life was full of “if only” and his seemed to have them more than most.
     
    The shock that set in following her death set his feet to running. It seemed that he’d not stopped since. Taking up with a gang of human kids in the streets of Seattle taught him the hard lesson of survival. The gang initiated him in with an attempted beat down, but they were clueless. It ended up being the opposite. By the end of the fight, he was the only one left standing of the baker’s dozen that jumped him.
     
    Trey won instant respect and they taught him the fine art of thievery. He ended up being the best of the bunch. He could get in and out a target in less than five minutes, including shutting down the alarm system. In big cities, burglaries were the bottom of the priority list for police intervention. His five minutes snagged them quite a few trinkets before he left the gang to their own devices.
     
    Trey finally discovered he preferred being in the woods. His shift was wolf and that’s where they thrive. He met a female wolf while out on one of his forays in the wilds of northern Washington. They stayed together for several years until he caught her with another male. He left her, the state, and never looked back, until now. He was tired of struggling and taking orders, and he was definitely tired of being alone.
     
    Trey contemplated his desire to bring the pack into what it should be, a family. Yes, they were all rogues, but they had the same wants he did. That is how Craven brought them all together. Each and every one of them was tired of being alone. Craven thought he lorded over a pack full of cutthroats. Boy, was he mistaken. Sure, if called upon they would defend the pack to the end, but they really did not want the life of the lone wolf.
     
    This