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“I do,” I said. “I met a friend of yours. His name is Ilad.”
She smiled at the mention of the name.
“Do you know what he told me? He told me to kill you, swift and clean. He said it is what is good for you.”
“He’s a truthful boy.”
“Maybe. But I can’t kill you. I can’t bring myself to do it. This is what I can do. Take you to the men that want you. Or you tell me why you killed your Alpha. I’ve not known you long, but I know you’re not the kind of person to kill a man for no reason. Accident or not. Tell me why, and I will know whether to help you or not.”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s something I have to deal with on my own. And I would deal with it because I know you won’t deliver me to Viper. You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to help me.”
“You say that confidently.”
“I am pretty sure of it.”
“I don’t know so much about you, Hayley, but I think I like your confidence.”
I stood up and picked her up. It was time to keep going. I wanted to make some more distance before we finally went to sleep forthe night and then kept going during the day. She didn’t struggle against me this time, and we walked in the woods, each of us to our thoughts. I was thinking of all we talked about and how she was relatively confident I would help her. Maybe I would, and I can’t put that fact beyond me. I had come here for a reason. Was it to just take her back to people who would kill her? I didn’t think so. I was here for some other reason. Maybe it was to help her.
A couple of minutes later, I was hit with the smell of blood. It was thick and close. It was a familiar one too. One I smelled earlier in the day. It was Buff, and it smelled like he had lost a lot of blood.
“Blood,” Hayley announced a second later, and I set her on the ground as I glowed my eyes, the night bursting into light before me. I could see every detail clearly and even hear the worms crawling in the grass. A couple of feet from me, there was a lump where the smell of blood was coming from. He was dead. There was no way he could have survived with that much blood loss, and I couldn’t even hear a heartbeat. I moved closer to him and took Bonne’s vial out of my pocket. I swallowed a bit of the concoction, and everything got even brighter. The air felt heavy against my skin. I could hear Hayley’s slow heartbeat. She was breathing slowly to keep herself undetected. She would sweat less that way. I wondered if she just started breathing that way or if she did that unconsciously. Werewolves can slow their heartbeat to almost a beat per minute.
I stepped closer to Buff and looked around me, taking in my environment. I couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Just the body and the blood. There was something wrong with the way Buff was splayed on the floor, though. And I soon found out what it was.
There were metals glistening out of Buff, and before I got close, I knew they were arrows. I could see three of them. When I got close enough and stood over him, I saw bullet holes in him. I removed one of the arrows and looked at the insignia on the fletching. I recognized it—an eagle mid-flight.
They were hunters. Human hunters trained to kill werewolves. And not just any kind of werewolf. Alphas. They were lethal and tactical. This was wrong. They shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. It was too dangerous. I turned around and started back towards Hayley. We have to get out of this place.
I heard the swoosh before I saw it. If I hadn’t taken Bonne’s concoction, I would have missed it. I moved out of the way, as the arrow missed me just by a mere inch, chipping off a bit of my nose and lodging into a tree nearby. Another came immediately, and I dropped to the ground.
They were still around, and they were attacking us.
Chapter fifteen (Luke)
I watched as two more arrows swept from within the darkness and buried themselves beside me. They were very close, and they could see us. They probably have night goggles on, which meant they have a vision just as good as ours.
“Get me out of this!” Hayley yelled at me as I started towards her. I needed to get to my bag, which I had dropped beside her. Another arrow swooshed past me and settled into another tree. I returned to the ground just as another arrow was targeted at me. I pulled myself to the side of the tree, using it as cover as Hayley dragged herself, even though she was bound to the side of another tree. I needed to get to her and cut her out of the ropes. If we were going to have a chance to fight these people, we had to work together. I can’t even see or smell them. They probably have their bodies coated in mud, blocking off their sweat pores and making them unnoticeable to us. I have to do that too. I have to make them blind to us.
Everything went quiet for a while, and I ran from the tree, shortening the distance between Hayley and me. I was barely a foot from her when gunshots filled the air. I fell to the ground, but I was too late. A bullet hit me in the shoulder, and the force of it knocked me to the floor. But there was no time to wallow in pain. If I remained on the ground any longer, I would get torn to pieces by the guns. I pushed myself and wrapped my arm around the tree Hayley was hiding behind, not caring that the bark was tearing into me. I got to the other side and sat down to take a breather.
Why were human hunters after us?
“Who are they?” Hayley asked me.
“Human hunters. They are dangerous and very lethal.”
I removed the knife from my pants and cut her hands free, then handed the knife to her so that she could cut the rest of the rope off. What mattered the most now was surviving. I pulled the bag to me and searched it for a flare. I needed to blind them. This was the way to do it.
“Are your eyes glowing?” I asked Hayley as I removed it, and they resumed shooting again.
“Yes,” she said.
“Turn them off.”
I said and ignited the flare. If they are using infrared goggles like I think they are, then they would need to take them off or blind themselves.
I looked at Hayley and saw she’d cut herself free. It was time to leave. There was no fighting people like this. We have to run from them.
