The Crow and The Wolf

Chapter 28

28.

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She felt herself getting pulled and held. The rain poured hard on her body, and like a dream, she started coming out of the haze, and there she was staring at a furious Luc. He paced up and down, his fist was clenched and unclenched with every second that passed, and his lips were drawn into a tight grim line.

His red hair was stuck to his forehead, which also had spots and blobs of mud covering it as well as his entire body. Valeria took a look at her body and realised she too was covered with mud. She looked around her before her eyes landed on the pit in front of her.

Luc had pulled her out of the bubbling pit, a cursed spot in the Etome that they were always warned to stay weary of. It called out to tormented souls, promising peace and warmth but really only bringing death.

"I can't believe you!" Her eyes sprung to him, and she watched how he was heavily breathing.

He took a step back, his gaze filled with anger as his chest swelled and fell. "How could you be so stupid, so foolish?" he growled. "Do you have any idea the type of pain this can cause your wolf if you're both stuck here, Valeria?"

"Luc I can go back...I came to find her...

"You can't go back, Valeria, they forced you to come here," he corrected her and took a few steps towards her.

"No, I can, I just needed to see how she doing," she explained.

"You are so naïve to think and believe that your wolf would abandon her one line of defence and flee into the Etome's abyss," he retorted with a chuckle.

"I needed to make sure she was okay," she whispered.

"Valeria, your wolf is trying to keep you and her alive, but she can't do that if you come into this world where she has no control over what happens," he panted with his hands on her shoulder, "you were safe outside of the Etome, but now their wolves will come after you as well."

Howls echoed in the distance that was amplified by the gust of winds. Luc let go of her as he scanned the area around her before he took her hand and started pulling her away in the opposite direction of her cave.

"Wait, Luc, where are we going?" Valeria asked, panting behind him, "We need to help my wolf if she's in trouble."

"You forget that just because you can only see her in her cave and the plains around it, she's alone here, but that's far from the truth. The only way we can help her is for you to leave the Etome," Luc pointed out.

The growls and howls got louder, and Luc huffed before he stopped walking and turned to face her. His anger had faded, but Valeria saw the frustration at the situation in his eyes, especially when he saw the confusion on her face.

"Valeria, there is no individual Etome for each wolf, there's only one Etome for each pack. Look at it like this, we have the Claw Pack out here, where we go to school and live our lives, and our wolves only come out when we shift. Where do you think they go when we shift back to our human skin?" he asked her.

"They go back to the Etome, which is like another world, another Claw town filled with our halves, and every wolf has its own territory, the one you see is yours; that's why you never see beyond the plain and cave of your wolf territory because that's someone else's territory, it's like miniature islands in your head, but you only see yours," he explained.

Valeria took everything in, what he said, and all she felt was more weight being put on her shoulders.

"We're moving slow, climb on my back, we need to get to my territory—luckily, it's just past your mother's," he said, not looking into her eyes.