Chapter 16 #2
Imvru reached out to clasp my shoulder. “No killing younglings, my friend. We’ll help you escape.
Reshar is going to create a big distraction, and we’ll cover your retreat.
” I did not even ask questions; I took that at face value because I wanted nothing more than to believe these males were good at their core.
They were an odd mix of mated and unmated, but all those who were mated had several younglings in the same age range as mine.
“Tell Zathar hello for me,” Reshar said with a mocking laugh and a barely-there bow of his head.
He slipped away while Imvru and his group helped further open the small ventilation window and pull me through.
They were crazy to do this, it could harm their standing in town, even see them cast out for it.
Yet I couldn’t deny that seeing this many familiar faces felt good, too.
To know that I hadn’t been the aloof, distant, and different scout as much as I thought I’d been.
These males were proving to be my friends.
“You’re crazy,” I told Imvru. Reshar was already gone, and I wouldn’t have said that to his face anyway. If there was one male with a slightly skewed view on life, it was he, and we all knew that. Imvru was the steady one—calm, always fitting in just right.
He didn’t even blink when I said it, just shook his head.
“No killing of younglings,” he repeated, and on the heels of those words, one of the unmated hunters breathlessly asked if Jolene really was my mate.
I saw looks shared then and realized some of these males might be here to satisfy their curiosity, too.
Jolene had mentioned that on her arrival here, many hands and tails had touched her, and I knew exactly why that was.
Reaching through the window with my tail, I touched my mate’s cheek with the very tip, and the sigils along my body glowed to life.
It felt like I might be able to control them now, hide them with a touch, but I didn’t think I ever wanted to.
The touch, as it turned out, was the signal my female had been waiting for.
She was ready to assist, onboard with the plan, even if there barely was one.
She rushed to lift my younglings through the gap before tossing our packed supplies out and following herself.
I helped her land on her feet with a coil of my tail, while my younglings divided their packs among each other with the help of the hunters.
“I’ll carry you and Nisha, we’ll be faster,” I told her, and she did not protest that, either.
She tied her ‘snowshoes’ to her belt and took out her sling and pouch of stones instead.
As soon as I had Nisha situated on my back, we were ready to go.
There couldn’t have been better timing: noise erupted across town that sounded very much like a stampeding herd.
The tamed Varkarsa we kept for milk and wool—Reshar had sent them running into the square. Clever, and relatively harmless.
Even so, the chaos would only fool the Queen and Msera for a minute, and I didn’t know who would try to stop us and who wouldn’t.
With an execution order hanging over our heads, would some dare to use lethal force?
We could not take the risk, and from the grim expression on Imvru’s face, he was thinking the same. “Go!” he mouthed.
We could only go as fast as Daois could manage.
He was the smallest, but Rasho was holding tightly to his hand and pulling him along.
I made sure to stay right behind them so I could never lose track of where they were.
The boys needed no urging once we started moving, and, like I’d previously suspected from their game with the wood chunks, they’d planned a route.
I could only applaud Rasho’s choices as he led the way around storage sheds and headed in a circular fashion toward the wall.
It was not the most direct route, but it was definitely the one with the least visibility and fewest obstacles.
Even so, shouts were going up, and hunters were giving chase.
It flashed me briefly back to a moment nearly a year ago, when I’d led the charge chasing Zathar and his mate as they escaped from town.
Then, I’d tried only to go as fast as would seem enthusiastic, while purposely aiming wide so as not to hit them, and that’s exactly what Imvru and his group were doing now.
Even more boldly, Imvru actually got into Msera’s path when he joined the chase, and the two tangled clumsily.
The wall was approaching, but we’d have to go over it, and that would be nearly impossible for Daois and Rasho unless I tossed them up.
That would take time, and we did not have that kind of head start.
“No, this way, Dad,” Rasho said as he suddenly swerved.
Daois was ahead now, arrowing away in the completely wrong direction—toward a shed, not the wall.
They were out of sight of our pursuers, and then suddenly, I didn’t see my youngest son anywhere at all.
Panic clawed at me, but Rasho was confident as he grabbed my hand and pulled.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Jolene muttered, and with a swish of her strange weapon, a stone launched right over my shoulder.
I heard a yelp that was more surprise than pain, while she was already swinging the next one with force in the direction of the hunters on our tail.
Now, I was relieved those stones couldn’t do real harm, but also happy she was striking true and providing a distraction.
“This way, Dad,” Rasho said again, and I didn’t pause to think but let him pull me behind the same shed where Daois had vanished.
The back door was cracked, and the shed was built right up against the wall that surrounded the town.
Following my oldest son’s lead, we ducked through the door and I yanked it shut behind us.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom, but even so, I was almost too late to catch where Rasho had gone.
A crooked wall panel—this time between two crates—and then a broken section in the outer town wall itself.
It was a complete surprise to me to find this weak spot, but apparently, it hadn’t been a secret to my young.
Perhaps it was a well-known sneakaway for all of them; we had those when I was young.
Nisha was quick to leap off my back and follow through the narrow gap, and though my instincts told me to go first, I let her.
“Go,” I said to Jolene, grabbing her by the back of her head for a quick, rough kiss before I pushed her after my younglings.
She was small like them and quickly crawled through.
It took me a bit of wedging to get myself through the hole with my backpack, some scales scraping a little roughly on wood, but then I was through, too.
“Well done,” I told all of them. “Well done!” For the first time, I actually believed we just might make it.