17 Bullets: becoming the Werewolf Queen

Chapter 22: Missed

But I couldn't do it.

I bit my lip in defeat. "Night Day. Then go wheelbarrow."

He turned back to me. "Sleep?"

I nodded and looked at the grasses at his feet. "I can't walk. No El walk. Hurt."

"Hurt?" His eyes widened in alarm for only a second before he corrected to his blank face. "El hurt. Walk day. Yes."

I'm sure I surprised him. I walked until I blacked out with Aunt Flo's kind of pain, even with him badgering me to stop. If I was asking to stop, he probably thought I was dying.

I twisted my knee around and grimaced.

Maybe I was dying.

He walked around me and touched delicately at my still bare back.

I held my breath so I wouldn't hiss out in pain.

"Hurt," he commented and then walked back to his pack and dug out the white paste again.

"No," I shook my head. "No medicine. Hurt little." I groaned. "And I'll probably need to ration those meds. Let's just stop today."

"Medicine no?"

"No."

He nodded and replaced his bowl.

Actually, I already longed for the morphine paste or whatever it was. But I had to be strong. We only had that one bowl and it would have to last a good few weeks with how deep the gash was.

"You could still carry me?" I held my arms out like a toddler begging their parent.

He twisted from me like he wouldn't even look. "Stay," he motioned to the rock and started walking into the forest.

Jerk barely left me alone to even pee the last day and now he needed to run?

I was very tempted to run my butt the other way, but with my back and leg how they were, I pretty much could not move.

At least I could go to a different rock. Maybe that would tick him off good enough.

After a moment, I huffed.

Now what?

Sometimes he left for hours.

I slid down the rock and sat on the ground, resting the good part of my back against it and let my legs relax.

My eyes had closed, and the sun had traveled an hour over the sky when I opened them again.

A strange soft crow had woken me. Much lower than any bird call on Earth and immediately my eyes scanned the area, looking for the source. And a grin tilted my face when I found its owner.

Well hello Mr. Unicorn Chicken.

Pleasant seeing you around.

He was plump and round, almost like a beach ball. Brightly colored with a toucan beak and single shimmering horn.

I let my breathing get slow and movements still as I watched him.

He was using his horn to scrape at a tree trunk covered in a purple moss. When bits of moss would fall to the forest floor in front of him, he would press around it with his beak and pick the pieces he liked best out of it.

He really did have a chicken air about him pecking away.

Something a moment later spooked him and he flapped his wings in warning away from his ball body. And when he was worried, so was I.

If some hunter was tracking him, I was sitting on the ground with a messed-up leg and cut open back. Talk about sitting duck.

In the slowest of movements, I pulled the gun from my shoulder and pointed it the chicken's direction.