Chapter 5 Final Prophecy
Final Prophecy
Heya, Gazetters?! It’s your favorite koala Kiwi here with a holoimmersive series that will blow your socks off—that’s Boomer for “You’re about to learn!” You can click on any of the links below to hand sprout each holoimmersive or upload it straight to your bioware cloud.
Questions? Lurvies? Hate-a-mite? The discussion is open at [link no longer working]. Holo at you later!
Time Gates? Mating Portals? Fated Gates? What Should We Call What President Nightwolf Is Black Boxing?
President Nightwolf Black Boxed Love After Getting His Own Fated Mate
Is There Really a “Threat” or Does President Nightwolf Just Hate Love (For Everybody Except Him)?
Tiara Greenwolf, This Century’s First She-Wolf Queen, Has Not One, But Two Fated Mates.
How to Go [copyrighted music license lapsed] Back in Time! Top 8 Things to Do If You Find Yourself Stuck In Another Time Period!!!
Her Viking Wolves: Why President Nightwolf Wouldn’t Be Who He Was—or Even Born—Without His Time-Traveling Werewolf Parents. Now He’s Attempting to Black Box All the Gates.
Are the Fated Gates Alien Fertility Portals? One Norwegian Professor Thinks So
What Happened to Ola Greenwolf? The North Dakota Queen and Cousin of President Nightwolf—Also One of His Fiercest Detractors—Was Kidnapped Under Suspicious Circumstances, and Her Body Was Never Found. Did President Nightwolf Have Something to Do With Her Mysterious Disappearance?
Government-Mandated Retraction and Apology: President Nightwolf Had Nothing to Do With Ola Greenwolf’s Kidnapping or Death
Resignation: Well, Friends, I Guess This Is Goodbye
Kiwi, the purple koala baby hovered over each option, asking, “This one? This one? How about this one? We can give you all the holoimmersives for free when you sign up for a year of WolfNet Gazette!”
Sadie didn’t know which one to pick. She’d already read every entry in Dorie’s fated portal series since yesterday at the lake. Twice. Reassuring herself over and over again that she’d done the right thing, and that Dorie would survive—wherever she was. But…
What if I killed her?
“There you are! Sades, c’mon, what are you doing?” Naomi demanded, walking right up to the bench Sadie was sitting on in the waiting room of the hybrid secret kingdom’s sanctuary temple.
Caught. Sadie sighed. Less than a day since the lake, and she was already falling apart. She’d thought she’d have more time before Naomi found her here, perusing Dorie Scotswolf’s old news site.
Technically, Naomi couldn’t see the holophone’s projection with the privacy filter on, but knowing Sadie too well, she asked, “Are you still obsessing over that reporter?”
That reporter.
If Naomi hadn’t chickened out at the last minute on pushing Dorie to fulfill the Prophecy, Sadie would have wondered if her best friend had crossed the line from bitterness into sociopathy.
But Sadie had seen right through Naomi’s act yesterday.
She knew her best friend wouldn’t have baited Dorie like that if she hadn’t needed to shore herself up to do the last thing the Final Prophecy required.
Naomi had needed the excuse. Had wanted Dorie angry enough to come at her.
And even then, Sadie had seen the struggle in her eyes.
Which was why, at the last minute, she’d taken it upon herself to push Dorie into the Three Gods Lake.
However, the morning after taking on that burden for her best friend’s sake, Sadie was too tired to put up with Naomi’s crap.
“Yes, I’m still upset about pushing your niece—the innocent girl I met twenty years ago, who had nothing to do with Bloody February—into a lake.”
She could still feel Dorie’s weight tipping back under her hands.
Naomi visibly bristled, her thin shoulders going up like a cat’s.
But then they deflated, and a little bit of the razor-sharp glint faded from her eyes. “I’m... I’m sorry. I know that was hard. I’m not sure I would have been able to…”
“I didn’t know I could,” Sadie whispered, voice ravaged. She switched off the holo screen. “I just wanted to reassure myself that she’d be able to survive… wherever she is.”
“She’s strong.” Naomi took Sadie’s free hand. “She wouldn’t have come at me like that if she wasn’t. She’s got steel in her. Just like Tara. Just like I used to…” Naomi’s eyes went hollow and distant. “Before.”
Naomi was right. Sadie had slipped the artifact into the younger female's duffel, the discovery of which in the Mountain Fortress's underbelly had ultimately convinced them that the Final Prophecy was meant for Dorie.
Sadie had tried to prepare the she-wolf the best she could, given how little she knew about what was supposed to happen after they delivered her to the fating portal beneath Three Gods Lake as instructed.
Still, Sadie shook her head. “What if we misread the prophecy? What if this doesn’t change anything?”
Naomi shook her head, too. “She was in the prophecy, Sades. The instructions were clear as day.”
Technically, Sadie knew this. She’d even brought the Shadow King with her to the sanctuary city to look it over himself, to make sure she and Naomi weren’t being delusional.
But that hadn’t stopped her from sneaking out of her room at the wolves’ single secret kingdom castle and coming to the sanctuary kingdom’s emerald temple to request another meeting with the head cleric.
Sadie would give the prophecy a full week to play out before returning to the Irish Bear kingdom. Then both she and Naomi would have to break the news to their people that they would be going into full lockdown for the foreseeable future.
Because when Dorie failed to return to her own hometown, the Scottish Wolves would try to invade the Irish Wolves’ secret kingdom again. And this time, there would be no staying out of it for the bears.
The first ceasefire had lasted centuries before the Irish Wolves invaded the Scottish kingdom and stole all those brides. This latest one had barely made it twenty years. In a week, their fragile peace would be gone.
Because of what Sadie had done.
“Hopefully, she understood and said the fating spell,” Sadie whispered. She wondered if she’d ever stop seeing the look on Dorie’s face when she fell backward into that lake.
“She did.” Naomi sat down beside Sadie without letting go of her hand. Her hard expression faltered. “She looked so much like Leora. I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Sadie nodded, understanding. She’d thought the same thing when the little girl she’d met in Scotland stepped off the plane, looking so much like Naomi’s oldest sister.
“How about if we misread the Prophecy?” Sadie said again, unable to stop herself. “How about if this doesn’t change anything?”
“It has to.” Naomi squeezed Sadie’s hand so hard it hurt.
“But—”
“It has to,” she growled between clenched teeth. “Sea and Wild gave up everything to fulfill their part of that Prophecy. Wild was a true believer. Fulfilling this final piece has got to mean something—close the circle, like the three gods promised.”
“But what does closing the circle even mean?” Sadie couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice. The doubt her best friend didn’t seem to share—not since Naomi investigated the Prophecy herself and found the last passage.
About the Dragon Queen.
“Queen Naomi, Queen Sadie, I am so sorry for keeping you waiting.”
The slightly growly voice snapped their heads up from their miserable hunch on the dark sanctuary’s bench that, like the walls, was laced with green light tech.
Sadie and Naomi both stood to greet the shifter head cleric of what the bears and wolves called the Sanctuary Kingdom.
The Tiger Cleric lowered the hood of her green robe and greeted them with a formal bow. “For the three gods.”
“For the three gods,” Sadie and Naomi answered. A lot more solemnly than they had a month ago, when the three of them had concocted this plan.
The Tiger Cleric was shorter than Sadie but taller than Naomi, and younger than them both. Sadie had never seen her outside the sanctuary city’s green robes, but the cleric had a pouncing quality about her that made Sadie suspect she was lithe and well-muscled underneath her garment.
That morning, her slightly upturned amber eyes glowed with excitement, and she couldn’t quite keep the youth or the chuffing lilt out of her voice. “I can’t believe it’s really happening! Everyone’s still buzzing about getting to see the Final Prophecy yesterday.”
The Final Prophecy. That was how they referred to Dorie. As if her whole identity only came down to those three words. As if she was a collection of instructions, not a living, breathing she-wolf whose life they'd just ended. At least as Dorie knew it.
Sadie pressed her lips together, and an irritated feeling rose in her chest. “It was a little hard to explain why you were all out there staring at her as we rode by.”
“I apologize for that, your highness.” The Tiger Cleric bowed her head so low Sadie could only see the top of her tawny-orange hair. “But we could not pass up the opportunity to witness even a bit of the last part of the Prophecy being fulfilled.”
Before Sadie could respond, the smaller shifter then asked, “How can I serve our prophesied queens today?”
The irritation faded, and Sadie found herself too choked up to speak.
Yes, she and Naomi had been prophesied to serve in their roles, and until yesterday, she had been nothing but grateful for the Prophecy that had brought her to Ireland—to her loves and this life, which had been almost exclusively happy for the last twenty years.
But now…
“I have to check the last passage in the Prophecy again,” Sadie told the Tiger Cleric. “Just one more time. I have to know I didn’t just push that she-wolf to her death.”
“Oh, your highness, I have faith you did not.” The Tiger Cleric’s face softened with sympathy. “But of course, I am happy to assist the fulfillers of the Final Prophecy. Right this way, your highnesses.”
The Tiger Cleric led them deeper into the sanctuary, and Sadie followed, trying very hard not to think about Dorie falling backward into dark water.
Into a fate unknown.