Greymoor Academy: I Accidentally Bonded With Four Lycan Royals!

Chapter 149: 149. The Hunt III

Maisie

The pain vanished as abruptly as it’d come and my heart climbed into my throat.

No. No, no, no.

He’d shoved me out.

A howl ripped through the woods. It was raw. Pained. It sounded almost... tortured.

Every hair along my spine stood and my paws pounded even harder into the earth, following the sound, panic spreading like ice through my veins.

Branches lashed my face. Roots caught beneath my paws, but I barely felt them. I could smell blood in the air now.

There was so much of it, I could taste it in the back of my throat.

Another howl echoed farther ahead and then, a movement caught my peripheral vision. My head snapped left and I caught a flash of white silver fur between the trees, streaked with green war paint.

Jericho.

A bit of relief punched through my panic.

A small howl escaped me, but Jericho didn’t look back. He bounded after something deeper in the forest before vanishing behind a wall of trees.

"Wait!" I sent down the bond, chasing after him.

A heartbeat later, I caught another scent. Soren. My Lycan surged forward without hesitation as we caught sight of black fur disappearing over a rise. And soon, he, too, disappeared.

They were splitting up.

Why?

At a crossroads, I halted, my fear stalling for long enough to get a rational thought in, and I reached for the bond again. It remained muffled, but it felt... far away.

Which didn’t make sense because they were just ahead.

But before I could think about it, a gust of wind swept through the trees, bringing a fresh wave of that coppery scent.

This time, it was mingled with Soren’s scent, and I vaulted over a fallen log, following his trail until it ended so abruptly my paws skidded through the leaves.

Gone. Again.

Something was wrong.

My eyes narrowed in search and I saw a strip of bloodied linen fluttering gently from a low branch.

I recognized it instantly. It had been torn clean from the hem of Soren’s pants. I sniffed deeply and paused. The blood smelled foreign.

Sure enough, when I stepped past the strip of cloth, the trail stopped smelling like Soren, and I caught a different scent I didn’t recognize.

I stopped breathing as it registered.

Someone lured me here—

Something heavy slammed into me from behind with enough force to throw me clear off the trail before I even had time to process it.

The world lurched.

My paws clawed desperately for purchase, but the earth gave way in a shower of loose dirt and wet leaves.

And I fell.

I rolled down the slope, my body hitting the rocks and I felt my skin split open and heal in the same breath. My hand gripped a stone to break my fall but it was slippery and I slid right off.

A tree root caught my shoulder and spun me sideways.

Branches lashed across my muzzle, scratching at my eyes. Stones hammered into my spine. Dirt filled my mouth as I tumbled faster and faster, completely unable to stop myself.

My body ricocheted off a boulder and pain burst in my hip.

Every attempt to dig in my claws only tore up clumps of soaked earth before I slipped again.

Another tree whipped past me and I slammed into the thick trunk of an ancient oak with a sickening crack that drove pain up my spine.

For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe or move as my body shifted back to my human form.

My eyes watered, ragged breaths tearing out of my mouth. And when I glanced up at the height I had fallen from, there was a naked woman standing, her hair and skin streaked with green paint.

She held someone over the edge, the figure limp in her grasp.

Tessa’s mouth curved into a dark smile and her hand rose, all five claws jutted out. "You’re so fucking predictable, it’s almost dull." She giggled, pleased. "I imagine you’ll have just the night after this."

She brought down her hand and horror rolled in my gut as blood sprayed from the figure wetting her face. A female cry erupted in the air. Tessa raised her hand again, and without taking her eyes off me, she struck, silencing the woman.

And then, she let her go.

The sickening snap of bone echoed through the trees as the woman fell.

I tried to move, but my own limbs were bent at unnatural angles, still snapping and popping as they frantically tried to heal. I dragged myself forward on broken fingers and shattered knees, desperate to reach her.

I was too late.

She landed hard on a jagged root. The thick, sharpened wood punched straight through her center and burst out of her chest with a wet, horrifying sound.

A scream broke from my chest.

I crawled faster, bones knitting together with violent speed as if my body understood the urgency even when my mind was fracturing. By the time I reached her, she was choking on her own blood, wide blue eyes glazed under the moonlight.

She was young. Younger than I was. Fifteen or sixteen. And she had that scent on her. The one all Exiles did.

Her eyes found mine. A weak, bloodied cough escaped her. "Mom...?"

I didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t compartmentalize fast enough. She was bleeding profusely. My hands were shaking. She was supposed to be the enemy. The Exiles were terrible. They killed Lycans. They wrecked chaos and havoc and—

All I saw was a terrified girl. She could’ve been me. Could’ve been Lana. Or Regina. Or Jenny. She was a person.

My broken fingers set as I reached underneath her and snapped the thick root in half. And slowly, I pulled it out, so the wound could heal. I’d never stuck around the infirmary at the pack long enough to see how an impaled person was treated, but I knew unlike humans who bled out quickly if you removed the object, we had to take ours out, to begin the healing process.

But rather than heal, the wound stayed open.

She was shivering, her eyes glassy with pain.

The gashes on her neck weren’t closing either.

Oh God.

She coughed up blood again. "Poisoned... with... ash. Won’t... heal..."

I didn’t know what to do. I tore the skin of my palm open, hoping it would work or changed something.

It didn’t. The wounds stayed open, gaping. Tears stung my eyes. "I-I’ll go g-get help—"

She clutched my wrist tightly, stopping me from moving. "Won’t... make it back..." A painful wheeze. "... in time." A pause. "You look... so much like... Mom."