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The Blood War

Chapter Fourteen

A chorus of crickets masked the sounds of pawprints picking delicately through the brush under the cover of darkness.

"I still don't see what we're doing out here in the middle of the night," Snowbank growled, digging his claws into the ground violently with every step he took. "And with HER, at that," he snarled, jerking his head in Outlander's direction.

The coywolf lowered to the ground slightly, as if making herself a smaller target for Snowbank's piercing words to hit. She didn't understand what they were doing here either. A few hours after the pack halted its tracking mission to rest, Snowblind and signaled for both of them to follow him away from the temporary camp.

Snowblind looked back at them over his shoulder. "We're continuing the hunt. On our own."

"What?" Snowbank sped up his pace, stopping in front of his brother. "Are you insane? We can't hunt that thing on our own! We don't even know where we're going!"

"I saw it earlier," Snowblind said matter-of-factly as he pushed past his infuriated twin. "I know which way to go."

"And you didn't think to tell mother, or anyone else for that matter?!"

"I was going to, but large numbers will only anger it, don't you think? Less wolves will die if we look like we aren't a threat. Besides," he said, looking at Outlander, "We have the only one he's failed to kill."

Outlander shrank into the shadows. The thought of facing that bloody creature filled her with anger, but also fear. Still, she was grateful to be pulled from the scornful eyes of her pack as they followed her to their certain deaths. Now the moon was their only guide as they picked through the shrubbery, hunting a monster they most certainly couldn't kill on their own.

"Coywolf, keep up," Snowbank barked back.

"She has a name," Snowblind sighed. He slowed until he was next to Outlander. "You can't walk in a straight line?" He joked, looking at her paws. She had been struggling to keep her feet under her. "I haven't slept," she confessed.

"The nightmares again?"

"Yes," she sighed, the image of Scavenger transformed into a decayed creature entering her mind. She saw it everytime she closed her eyes. Monster elk she could handle, but she couldn't bear to see her sister turned into a horrific monster before her very eyes. She had given up on sleep since that night, and the effects were showing.

Snowblind looked up to the moon. "My mother once told me of a green bird that visits wolves in their nightmares. If it touches whatever is haunting you in the nightmare, you'll never have a nightmare about whatever it was ever again."

"You believe that?" Outlander lifted an eyebrow towards the skeptical wolf. He shook his head. "I'm sure there is a way, though." He smiled at her, but not at all in a friendly way, and a realization came over Outlander. She wasn't his friend, she was his subordinate, and he would leave her to die the second her usefulness ran out.

Nausea rose in her throat and she quickened her pace a bit. "The nightmares will fade," she said, more to herself than to him, "once the Beast is dead."

~CL1

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