28. The Werebear Territory
twenty-eight
The Werebear Territory
*ROYAN*
M y instincts as a warrior kick in instantly, and I’m relieved to see it’s the same for Shayan. His expression is calm all of the sudden, as if we weren’t amidst a whole group of werebears. Our only luck is that it’s night, and we approached stealthily.
Shayan touches my arm and gestures towards a path that leads us through the territory.
This feels like a suicide mission, but my princess and my kingdom are in danger, and I will not rest until I do my part to help them. Shayan and I tiptoe around the bears, moving excruciatingly slowly not to wake them up. On the horizon I can see the night getting dimmer and dimmer; letting us know that the sun will rise soon, and then we will be in major trouble. I have no doubt that Shayan is a skilled fighter, and so am I, but not against a hoard of bears.
One of the bears snorts and grunts, and I pause. I can hear Shayan’s heartbeat going up, and I grab his arm, showing him to breathe deeply. He nods, following my lead, and breathing with me until his heartbeat is back to normal.
We should have prepared better. Shayan and I can’t even mind link. Aylin was only able to help me with mind linking over such a long distance. Maybe if we returned first to talk to Aylin again, she would have come up with something, but we jumped on the first opportunity we had.
Maybe that’s our fate, and we just had to take it.
Shayan follows my lead further along the path, but I can see the worry etched on his face as he looks at the horizon.
He gestures to me to go faster, and maybe he is right, maybe we need to make a run for it and hope for the best, or we’ll end up being the dish of a horde of werebears. Another one of the bears stirs, making me halt once again.
It’s then that a sudden smell hits me, a hint of roses. It can’t be… flowers, here? I sniff slightly, realizing that the scent leads us towards a few huge rocks and a rock face behind them. Fuck it, we have nothing else to lose. I gesture for Shayan to follow me and target the rocks. He looks at me confused, but to my relief, indeed follows my lead. I stop, sniffing slightly. The scent is getting stronger, but where is it coming from?
Shayan grabs my arm and pushes past me. He carefully brushes away some snow, and to my surprise, reveals a crevice, barely big enough for us to squeeze through. I nod at him, and he pushes himself through, groaning slightly when he has to tug at his bad arm. Some of the bears stir again. The hell with it! I give Shayan a push, pressing him through the crevice, before following suit. Out of the corner of my eyes I can see one of the bears getting up, and then a thundering growl echoes through the area.
“Fuck,” Shayan curses, grabbing my arm and tugging at it.
“Harder!” I breathe out. Some of the bears have noticed me and start to chase towards me. I have no chance to defend myself against them if I’m stuck like that.
“Suck your stomach in!” Shayan says.
“I have no stomach,” I hiss.
“Then, suck your non-existent stomach in!” Shayan commands. “I’m not going to leave without you, so you better suck it up! Literally!”
“It’s you who has to return to your…” Mate, I want to say, but swallow the word down before I can say it.
“Maybe you have someone waiting for you, too,” Shayan retorts. “Don’t you wolves believe in fate!?”
We do. The sweet scent of roses hits me again and with newfound energy, I press myself further through the crevice. I can feel my side being twisted and my muscles being strained, before I finally free myself and stumble against Shayan.
Growls and hisses can be heard from the other side of the rock face and I pause my breath to see if the werebears can follow, but even in their human form, they tend to be bulkier than wolves, and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Did you get hurt?” Shayan asks.
“Just some cuts and scratches, but my wolf will heal me,” I assure him.
“Let’s get away from here. I don’t trust the bears not to follow us,” he says.
He is right. His words take me back to the present, and I turn around to look at our surroundings. We are inside of an underground passage, it seems. “Handy,” I mutter when the smell hits me again.
“Do you smell this too?” I ask. “Roses?”
Shayan looks at me like I have lost my mind. “No, I don’t smell anything aside from the rotten flesh of these bears outside.”
“It’s a sweet scent… it led me here, and helped me find this passage,” I say.
“Then, let’s follow it further,” he says. “It saved us once, so I will put my faith in you and your instincts.”
I nod, relieved that he isn’t questioning me, and push past him to lead the way. The underground passage happens to be a whole labyrinth and there are scents all over the place. It seems like several individuals pass through here, so maybe this is where we were supposed to walk through all along. I can’t believe our luck!
I keep following the scent, leading Shayan through the underground passages, until…
“What’s this?” he asks.
I turn around to see what made him stop. I was so focused on that rosy scent that I didn’t even realize what else we walked by. Shayan approaches a cage and kneels down in front of it. A beautiful white fox is locked in there, looking at us with sad eyes and barking slightly.
“Someone caught it,” I say.
Shayan frowns. “What for?”
“Foxes are said to have beautiful fur,” I explain. “It’s forbidden in our lands to hunt animals for their fur alone. We hunt to eat and can use other products for our clothes and alike, but this here…”
Shayan nods. “Then, I will free him.” He looks at the lock on the cage and tugs at it.
“I doubt we have time for this,” I point out.
“We have,” he says with conviction, making me give in with a sigh. I approach him, watching him tug at the lock before he turns to me. “Do you have a sharp object with you?”
“I have a needle for my hair,” I say. “Kilah used it.” I tug it out of my hair and hand it to him, watching him opening the lock with deft fingers. I raise my eyebrows. “I didn’t know you had these hidden talents. Tynan will be fascinated.”
Shayan doesn’t answer, but I could swear that the tips of his ears turn red. “Here,” he says, opening the cage. “You can leave now, little friend.”
The fox peeks its cute head out and looks at us.
Shayan smiles. “Go, and make sure to not get caught again.”
“We should do the same,” I point out.
“You’re right,” Shayan agrees. “Get us out of here.”
“We are close,” I say. “And, I don’t know what to expect.”
The fox doesn’t seem to want to leave us, and instead quietly trots after us. Neither Shayan nor I have the heart to chase it away. We walk the rest of the path in silence, both of us tensed for what will greet us once we reach the end of this underground passage. The scent gets stronger the closer to the exit we seem to come, filling me with relief that I indeed followed it. With the scent getting stronger, I also pick up more noises. There seems to be someone running around, and then a cry echoes through the area.
“Please tell me you heard that!?”
“I did,” Shayan says with a frown.
I don’t wait for him to say more, instead I can feel my legs automatically taking me out of the passage. I run, following the scent and hardly realizing how my heart beats frantically. The sun is finally rising and coloring everything in a burning orange. Right in front of me there is a lake, not frozen, which is rare for these lands, and there is a beautiful woman with long black hair running along it.
Mate! My wolf blurts out, his restlessness now making much more sense.
I can’t believe it! A smile lights up my face and I feel my heart racing. “Run!” the black-haired goddess yells towards me.
“Royan,” Shayan pops up next to me. “I… WHAT IS THAT!?”
My eyes follow his gaze, catching the frame of a huge worm raking out of the water.
“Run!” I yell, pushing him to get away from here, while I chase towards my mate and grab her hand. Tingles spread through me, but I have no time to linger. “What is this behind us?”
“A sea monster,” she pants, her eyes gazing at me. She is a witch. I can clearly sense it. My beautiful mate is a hot witch.
We catch up with Shayan, who is holding his sword now and tries to fend off one of the tentacles. “How do we get away from here!?”
“There,” my mate pants and gestures towards the direction of another rock face. “It’s a hidden portal.”
We stumble backwards as the sea worm snaps forward, its sharp teeth trying to grip my mate’s cape. She clings to me in horror and screams. “Goddess,” I hiss, keeping my arm around her to make sure the worm doesn’t tug her away, before grabbing one of my daggers and slicing the fabric. The worm retreats, giving us the chance to run.
Shayan lets us run past him before following us. My mate and I are almost at the portal when I can hear him yell.
“Damn it!” I huff, seeing the worm has grabbed him by his leg and is trying to tug him towards the water. He tries to hit it with his sword, but the angle is off. “Stay here,” I tell my mate before rushing back to Shayan.
Before I can do anything though, a blur of white rushes past us and bites down on the tentacles that tried to hold Shayan. The monster screeches in surprise, giving Shayan the chance to scramble to his feet.
“Shayan,” I yell. “Come, fast!”
Shayan grabs his sword and the white furball before running after me. My mate waits for us to catch up before activating the portal. With our last remaining strength, we drop through it, landing amidst a forest.
All three of us drop down in the snow, trying to catch our breaths. “That was close,” my mate remarks, before turning to look at me. “I felt the tingles,” she says shyly.
My heart makes a little jump of joy. “What’s your name?”
“Rona,” she says.
I chuckle. “We both start with the same letter.” I take her hand in mine, squeezing it slightly. “I can’t believe my luck.”
“Me too,” she says with a giggle. “My mate literally appeared from nowhere to save me. Because that’s what you are, right? Right?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What are you doing here?” Shayan asks, and I can almost hear the hint of skepticism in his voice. Part of me wants to punch him for it, but Rona hasn’t caught on, so I just glare at him.
“You will think less of me if I answer that,” she mutters.
“No, I won’t,” I say softly.
“It’s just… my family is short on money, really short, so I work as a messenger sometimes between here and the pack lands. I know it’s dangerous,” she says quietly.
“Actually, we do the same,” I tell her, which isn’t all the truth, but I don’t want to endanger her by telling her everything. I show her the paper the barman gave us. “This is where we need to bring our delivery to.”
Rona’s eyes widen. “It’s the address I sometimes work for!”
“Really?” Shayan asks, surprised.
“Yes, they pay well, so I don’t ask many questions, but I was on my way to them, too. The witch there occasionally mentors me.”
“It seems like we really got lucky,” I chuckle. “After bumping into the group of werebears.”
“Yes, that’s their territory there,” she explains. “There is actually an underground passage leading directly to town and to the territory of the pack lands, which is a lot safer. Normally, I don’t find myself attacked by a huge water snail.”
I blink. It’s the first time I heard about it. While Shayan is busy asking Rona about this passage, I make sure to link Quinn and update him briefly; both on our progress, the passage, and to tell him that we probably won’t be able to mind link a lot after this.
I turn my attention back to my mate, smiling when I realize she is still holding my hand. “What’s that?” she asks curiously as she eyes the white furball in Shayan’s arms.
“Oh that.” he lifts his jacket a touch to reveal the white fox he saved. “That’s a little friend,” he says. “He is accompanying me everywhere.”
I’m surprised by his lie, but I figure it’s to keep up our whole pretense. Since the fox clearly adopted him as his owner, it makes more sense to keep it up.
“Let’s continue,” I say, getting up and pulling Rona with me. She smiles shyly when I put my arm around her middle. She is a bit skinny. I can easily feel the bones through the fabric of her dress. She said her family doesn’t have a lot of money, so maybe they don’t have much to eat.
She is safe now , my wolf, Donovan, says with pride. We saved her and we will continue to keep her safe!