A new dawn rises
~
Cadence
~
Swords clashed against claws and arrows collided into fur.
Cadence could nearly smell it, the stench of the foulness of torn skin and fur, they were drawing back. The threat had shifted its course.
"Kill every single one, none of them leaves this pack!" Cadence bellowed.
The last remaining hunters listened, intuning the Larren hunter's commandments and barricaded the door.
Had they won? Cadence didn't know, she couldn't hear the outcries of the others from above the stairs, but she knew something had changed.
The werewolves were trying to run, draw their armies back and Cadence couldn't allow it to happen.
Hunters dying, werewolves and lycans too, Cadence would leave no room for these last wolves to flee.
Tristan reloaded his gun and shot bullet after bullet at the wolves stuck with them in the dungeon.
Erisa had to put her strength into pulling the arrow out of the dead werewolf's chest and strung her bow back to shoot again.
"That's my girl!" Cole cheered.
Ignoring him, Erisa dashed back over to Cadence, her hair disarray and face coloured red.
"He's trying to piss us off." Erisa hissed at Cadence who pierced her sword through and through, stabbing into skin, bones and fur.
Cadence knew that, for whatever reason was motivating him, he had wiggled his way through the cracks and jabbed at the last standing hunters with pitiful mutterings that reaped with sarcasm and under-the-breath threats.
Perhaps he was bored, maybe he was biding his time, perhaps he had nothing else. They knew his indifference and how little he cared.
He had a human body with no fragment of a soul, he was rotting away as these dead wolves would, the only difference is he would live ... for now.
"Well, it's working!" Cadence shouted in response and swung her sword back.
"Why would the wolves be running away? They can't free their Alpha, so they admit defeat?" Erisa asked the person that had no answer.
Maybe they had run out of fighters, maybe they were losing and needed to regroup — recruit more soldiers to return to finish what they started.
"It's because they got what they came for," Cole answered for Erisa, the tease in his voice cheeky with mischief.
Without warning, Cadence and Erisa whipped around, their faces stricken with anger.
"Got what?" Cadence questioned, sensing the air around her alter. They didn't get Cole.
Did they find Rexton? Cadence shook her head thoughtlessly at the slightest consideration. No, he was safe — safe in the underground where no one could find him.
Footprints were retreating, scattering out of the dungeon and back upstairs. Tristan and his followers tried with all they could to stop their enemies' escape.
Cole said nothing and rolled his shoulders back, looking stiff and uncomfortable from being stuck in metal and chains for hours on end.
"GOT WHAT?" Cadence roared and gestured the sword at him, the blade peering through the bars and toward his head.
Cole showed no fear and even leant toward the tip, his skin meeting the silver point with a sly grin echoing across his cracked lips.
Cadence had grown sick of Cole's antics, telling so little with so much more lingering behind his words. She was eager to finish him off, pierce that sword straight through his skull and have one more enemy gone.
It plagued her insides with a blistering and soul-taking vengeance on who lived above the dungeons. Who survived the terror of the Canus and Thrax wolves?
Did Lycus and Accalia end with where they began this evening, together with nothing to tear them apart?
Cadence's stomach dropped, an estranged and foreign sensation pulling and twisting inside her. She couldn't describe it, no familiar notion connected the dots within her mind and her bottom lip shook.
Cole's head tilted, a face of mockery dancing across his haunting features and Cadence couldn't even stomach any of the tormented words that followed out of his mouth.
"Cadence has her tail tucked between her legs," Cole burst into laughter and flung his head back, more laps of taunts flying out his wretched mouth. "Run, run and find all the ones you love ..."
It took everything in her to walk away, forcing one step forward that felt frozen at the soles of her feet and she stalked away from the target she wanted to take out.
Erisa and Tristan checked everybody laid on the floor out, checking for any signs of life and if their hearts were still beating.
"They're all dead," Tristan concluded.
Cadence nodded, eyes on the fallen hunters and feral mutts.
Besides Cadence, Erisa and Tristan, a few hunters survived. The lost ones wouldn't be forgotten. Their stories and triumphs would live on through the stories travelled through the grapevine of hunters for however long they lived to tell the tales.
"Let Cole's wolves rot before him," Cadence growled and inclined her head to the entrance door. "Let's go."
Ashes in the air, blood staining the ground and piles of bodies in the afterlife, Cadence gathered there were no more battles to come. This lasting night now brings on the day, dawn rising.
Walking through the decay and dying in their wake, Cadence noted the many Fenris wolves scattering across their lands and tracing their steps to inspect the dungeons.
Erisa stuck close to Cadence as they searched for any familiar faces as bodies were already being burnt by flames.
Fenris lycans and werewolves rounded all their people that didn't make it out of this war and through the many fields of dead grass and treeless plains, they were lit up in flames. Their ashes would meet the earth, their souls would travel elsewhere.
Cadence reminded herself they would need to do the same for her people.
What shocked Cadence first was Accalia's teary face, tears falling and face ridden in muck. Beside her was Tala, a crestfallen Beta.
The three hunters ran up to them. They got it worse than they did; Tala's arm was bent at an odd angle and Accalia was clutching her side, but that wasn't why she was in so much pain.
"Where's Lycus?" Cadence asked hoarsely.
Accalia shook her head miserably, tears spilling from her eyes and she stepped up toward Cadence, her arms trembling around her in an embrace.
Accalia fell limp in her hold, an onslaught of her pain and sorrow falling against Cadence like a wave and it crashed against her like nothing ever had before.
Cadence couldn't get through to her, no words of comfort offered helped and all that she could give were her arms wrapped securely around Accalia, feeling every tear that fell on her shoulder and trembles that coursed against her.
Tristan came around them and gently brushed his hand across Accalia, fanning his touch across her head.
"Beta, Luna!" A voice shouted at a distance and everyone turned to the male wolf that stumbled toward them.
"What is it?" Tala snapped at the fighter and he shook his head fretfully, his hand waving them toward a direction that would take them to the end of Fenris's territory.
"They left a message,"
____
Cadence lifted the door open and flinched as a bang shook through the deserted forest.
Running down the steps, the flameshad dimmed and the room had grown colder, feeling the iciness of the floor creeping through her boots.
He was huddled in the corner, his head buried in his arms. He wasn't wailing from the cold, but shuddered out his spluttering weeps and pleas.
Taking the last step down, Cadence delved closer and her face creased with worry. "Rexton?"
His head shot up and he climbed to his feet, his back falling against the wall.
Cadence didn't know if he wanted to attack her or strike her down, both were of the same cloth and she deserved it.
He appeared to be in good shape, with no marking on his body, no open wounds and blood on him like her. Thoughtlessly, Cadence drifted over to the cage and lifted the door, the veil being lifted between them. He could have left, but he didn't.
As Rexton froze, so did she and they waited.
One second passed, twenty seconds and then a mute minute passed between them that rang louder than those screams and cries of dying hounds and hunters.
The silence cracked as Cadence gasped from the impact Rexton had upon her. She stilled, not throwing him off like she considered and kept settled by the low tides of him crying onto her shoulder.
His slender hands gripped her shoulders and drifted by her arms, then circled his hold around her entire body as he wept and wept.
Rexton utterly crumbled against her, moulding his body into hers and so he wouldn't fall to his knees, Cadence held him upright, snaking an arm around his back. She swallowed her pride, the anguish that would find only disgust in whatever this was to her.
This shouldn't be happening, these levels of comfort spoke volumes of unfamiliarity to Cadence. She hugged very few people in her life, they more so being the instigators in the act of affection, but she never imagined being trapped in the arms of a supernatural creature.
But warmth took refuge in the deepest parts of her being at the same token, his warm skin pressed against her coldness and drawing out whatever ill-will that writhed inside of her.
"I am sor–sorry, Cadence. I truly am." Rexton wailed softly by her ears.
Cadence drew away from him, feeling a shift in the air and inspected him, her face furrowing in confusion. His hands refused to let her go.
"What do you have to be sorry for? You did nothing. I caged you." Cadence muttered harshly. It was all me.
Rexton's face swam in front of her. "To protect me?"
"You could call it that." Cadence stated numbly.
Rexton's strands of hair swept by Cadence's forehead and she recoiled.
He shivered. "I'm sorry for everything. For all that I have done, for any pain I have caused you."
Cadence shook her head stubbornly, not wanting to hear it. "I should apologise."
This didn't warrant forgiveness between them, Cadence didn't know if that would ever happen, her unforgiving nature was too strong-willed to allow it.
But she couldn't handle another apology from the hybrid, not when he didn't need to say something that she didn't deserve to hear.
Cadence had grown used to the hybrid, had sought him out for help and had felt content in his company. She didn't hate him or even feel the slightest bit of dislike. It wasn't a welcoming situation, it was dragged through the mud and soil of earth.
"I knew you wouldn't be harmed out there, look at you, unlike any being I have ever laid eyes on," Rexton exclaimed, his tone recapturing its gentleness.
Once an enemy.
Rexton was unlike another being Cadence had come across, so warped in the chaos of being two species, but withholding a type of humility that Cadence recognised to be a rarity. He was kind to her even when she didn't deserve it.
"I was so fearful. Is Accalia harmed? What of my brothers? Have you heard from Gabriel—"
"Rexton," Cadence said sternly and Rexton froze, the words capturing in his throat. "I have to show you something."
That fear pronounced back into Rexton's boyish features, fear Cadence didn't wish to cause him and he managed a puzzled nod.
They left the cellar together and dawn welcomed them with open arms, the sunrays breaking through the trees and hills.
Cadence couldn't speak or answer any of Rexton's demands, she could only show him. They strode through the woods that had swept away all the destruction with flames, ash and dirt. The bodies had been destroyed and all that was left was the aftermath. The clean-up.
Near the border of the Fenris territory, they travelled and not a minute passed when they were met with Tristan, Tala, Erisa and Accalia.
They were battered with marred skin and Rexton's face fell in pity for them. Perhaps he should've fought alongside them, he could've been the very weapon they needed.
It was too late for that, what was done is done and now they'll have to pay for it. With blood.
Cadence had no other explanation but to show him, weaving through the hunters and Beta as they stuck close to whatever lay on the earth's ground.
Rexton was in front of them as Cadence stood by him and they peered down at what awaited them.
Anything else, it could have been anything else, and Cadence would have a definitive plan of attack. A comeback after leaving all the disaster they ensued like they were never there, Cadence could find them, she could do something about this.
Cold trails, covered tracks and printed along the dirt, in visible and clear writing with blood for ink, wrote:
You take my Alpha, I take yours.
____
The end of Blood Ties.
Another cliffhanger.
Please share your thoughts with me on how you felt about it. The good and bad. The ugly and beautiful.
What are your theories for the state of Accalia and Lycus's relationship?
What do you think is installed for Cadence and Rexton?
Does anyone have a favourite and least favourite character and why?
— Caranyx.