Chapter 11 #2
“And what if you’re wrong?” I wondered, turning to the man again.
“Look, mister, I have no idea how any of this stuff works around here. I’m a mortal from Nerith, and I found this werewolf in a cage, and I set her free.
Then she saved my life but scratched me in the process— pretty sure accidentally.
These are the facts. If I didn’t die, it wasn’t because of me—it was because of her. ”
The look on his face was pure shock, and his friends felt the same way.
Suddenly the one on the right pulled something from his backpack—a large knife with a curved blade almost as long as my arm.
My insides were on fire. Now that I called for it, the heat inside me responded immediately at the thought of being cut wide open with that thing.
No.
“She is a curse that has plagued us for years. As long as she lives, our pack will be divided and in chaos,” the same man said. “She must die—now.”
Not going to lie, I was scared shitless, but I still moved forward, took one step, then another. Licked my dry lips again while my heartbeat shook me like a drum.
“I’m warning you—I am not as harmless as I look.
Please, just walk away,” I said, and to my surprise, my voice didn’t waver this time at all.
Instead, the heat that was moving toward my hands gave me enough pressure that seemingly suffocated the fear, and my brain flashed images of those mermaids in the cavern.
I’d picked them up and pulled them out of the water—by God, I would pick these men up and throw them far away from us right now.
“This is pack business, noxavira ,” he said, as if he expected me to know what the hell that word meant. “We have no reason to harm you. Walk away and we will not.”
Fuck that. “I’m not going anywhere. Bring it, big guy,” I said through gritted teeth.
He paused for a moment, and when the guy holding that huge knife wanted to step forward, he raised a hand to stop him without even looking his away. No, his eyes were locked on mine.
“You will lay down your life for a wolf? You will bleed for her?”
Fucking hell. When he said it like that, it sounded especially horrifying.
By some miracle, I didn’t even flinch on the outside. “Yes,” I said, and I said it with my whole heart. I would most definitely die for a werewolf I thought was a dog because I’d saved her life and she’d saved mine and she’d brought me a dead fucking squirrel to eat.
What would it make me if I walked away now?
Someone I didn’t want to be, that’s what.
But I had the light in my hands and the warmth under my skin, and I really, really wasn’t as harmless as I looked to these guys because what I could do was real.
So, I raised my hands toward them and prayed they glowed.
“You want to get to her, you have to go through me,” I said, then willed my hands to light up with all my being because the only way I knew how to make this work was pure imagination.
The men looked at one another, and they were so fucking big, and the voices in my head were screaming at me— what the hell do you think you’re doing, you idiot? They will eat you for fucking breakfast and pick their teeth with your bones!
Fuck, I was shaking, but I didn’t allow myself to move back. If I had to die at the blade of that knife, so be it. A much better fate than being a sorcerer’s prisoner, anyway.
The guy in the middle stepped forward, and he, too, reached for something behind him—a knife, smaller than that of his friend, but the blade looked just as sharp. I could have sworn the tip of it glistened under the sunlight that pierced the canopy here and there.
Please, God, if you save me this time, I promise you I will never, ever, ever complain about anything ever in my life again. Scouts’ honor.
I seriously needed to stop doing this, stop trying to bargain with God like I was negotiating a back-alley deal—just not today.
Then the man said in a whisper, almost like he was talking to himself, “You should not be alive.”
I almost laughed— I really, really shouldn’t! This entire place had been out to kill me since I first stepped into the Aetherway, but I was still here. Suck it, Verenthians. And when I did die, I would go down swinging.
“And you should consider cutting that hair—it’s falling in your face,” I muttered—a completely idiotic comment, of course, but I would forever blame it on the adrenaline.
They all came closer, and they were barely five feet away from us. I swallowed hard, and I had hope, despite what those men looked like. I had hope that I would get us out of there.
“For the last time, we?—”
A sudden howl took over the forest and cut the man off.
A gut-wrenching howl that was coming from the very wolf these men were here to kill.
Maera, who was standing beside me, her head up and her jaws open, that sound coming out of her very soul.
Calling for mine.
I couldn’t even tell you what the hell happened in that second, just that she howled, and I heard. I heard, felt it in my bones, and it did something to me. It added heat to the sensation under my skin, and something shifted in my mind, too. In my entire body.
It was a call, that howl. And there simply was no other option but to answer it, so I did.
A blink, and I saw. A deep breath, and I smelled. A footstep, and I heard the entire fucking forest.
The men were coming, running, and I saw every movement of their bodies as if suddenly time moved in slow motion for me.
I didn’t, though. The heat inside me rushed with my blood as fast as always, and though my muscles were locked tightly and I couldn’t move back if I tried, I didn’t want to.
There was no need to try to get away from these men, said a voice in my head, a voice that seemed to have been unlocked by the sound of that howl.
There was no need to move away, no—but I could always move forward.
Through the corner of my eye, I saw leaves moving in the wind on one side—and the werewolf jumping in the air in the other. She jumped with her paws in front and her jaws wide open, the tips of her sharp teeth glistening in the sunlight.
For a moment, the world froze, and the men froze, and she froze midair, so that I could count every strand of her fur if I tried.
Protect her, my instincts said. I needed to protect her at all costs.
And it was easy.
Whether this was real or not didn’t matter—but it was easy to move, to shoot forward, to get past the werewolf still in the air, and to those men who had their knives raised and murder written in their bloodshot eyes.
I had no weapons on me, but I slammed my hands onto the chest of the one in the middle anyway.
Then I exploded.