Misty II

Gilbert

The Jeep won't work again now that it had been parked.

Without a door, the burned seats, uneven metal, a yellow shred of cloth stuck on the handle of the left door—we could have left this vehicle behind on the Lycan territory somewhere hidden.

But what was the use of it when the human pup won't be able to cross the border anymore? I couldn't look in the eyes of my mate. I couldn't hold gazes with my Beta and brother when my niece was fighting for her life.

The seat in the middle was filled with the human pup's scent.

Slow steps reached my ears while I raised my gaze up to stare ahead at the belt of trees from where she was thrown.

"Keira's wound has been treated. But the poison is working its way into her body," Stephen said, standing beside me.

His gaze moved all over the broken vehicle while my chest filled with dread.

"I will buy the time as much as I can, Gilbert. But it is not going to cure the poison for longer," He said while sniffing more around the seats.

I backed away a little, letting him explore as he took a round around it.

The mild blue color was covered with dried mud all around.

"You went to a place where your brother and my sister were stuck whole of their lives," the old man said in his rough voice. His specs hung on his nose when I glanced at him. "I want to know what you observed the whole time."

I stared back at the forest. The noon was grey, today. There was no sunlight. There was no warmth. Only cold aftermath of seeing an innocent soul owning a heart of gold despite suffering the hardships.

"The pups did more than me. I myself don't know what they have witnessed alone," I told him truthfully.

At the dawn, we had crossed the border corresponding to way ahead of our civilized valley. It was more of a mid-point between the distance from the city to the valley here. Right on the other side of the border, there was the graveyard of Lycans. We couldn't go straight because of the uneven surface inside the dense forests. There was an opening diagonally towards the south-western side.

There were no tombs to understand the lineage, no time left to waste when Keira was wounded. We could only look at the graves marked with tree poles from the far. There were no souls there, Thomas had told. After all, those were the ones who were at the moon unlike the ones he saw earlier near the forest closing in on the border.

"It is all medieval inside that pack," Stephen said, observing the hood of the Jeep. "Before Eva and Keira could gain Misty's attention, she seemed comfortable and content with her mate. As if she truly had forgotten the outside world. It was no act, Eva told me."

I blinked and looked away at the vast ground.

The wolves were told to train on western ground rather this one. If only I could have ordered that way before the ceremony, her mate wouldn't have find her scent so easily.

"You saw him. Didn't you? How is he?"

My jaws clenched in discomfort.

"He is thoughtful," I said, remembering the words he mumbled to Pete last night. "He didn't mate her all this time. He knows her vulnerability."

Stephen smiled when I glanced at him. For some reason, he always would piss me off with this gaze as if he could read me easily.

"He is not that bad as others could have been?"

I couldn't guess.

I nodded slowly. "I didn't see the Beta," I told him without a doubt. "Alvena and Savina's mates, both got impatient ones. Worse. But Human pup's mate is no saint either. He had a pup outside the bonding."