Fifteen:
“Alright bitches, get down and give me two hundred.”
No one moved, a few people shifted uncomfortably but otherwise it remained still and silent. Apparently no one liked it when I called them bitches, well they were just going to have to get used to it. They were going to be called that until they showed me that they weren’t.
Suddenly a tremor rippled through the crowd and everyone began to look around uneasily. Someone at the back, who seemed to be panicking, yelled over the hushed voices, “Rogues!” The word was whispered through them and the unease heightened.
They obviously didn’t know what they were supposed to do and I wasn’t about to inform them. Kieran was under order not to come and tell them what they had to do unless I gave him the cue. But they should know what to do; everyone should know what to do during a rogue attack. So far their evaluation wasn’t going very good.
With a heavy sigh I folded my hands on the small of my back and widened my stance, which was Kieran’s cue to get his rear in gear. It was pitiful that these people couldn’t figure what to do during a rogue attack, even a child would know what to do.
A minute later he walked, more like ran, out of the house and began to yell orders at his pack, even though the majority of them were from Brettly’s pack. They listened to him and began to run towards the forest.
I watched him in awe; the Kieran I knew would never have been able to do something like that before. And when I saw him at Ivory Sun he didn’t have nearly as much confidence.
He saw me watching him and sent me a flat look. “What?” he asked.
I shook my head and smirked. “Nothing,” I said, “it’s just that you’re different from when you were a few days ago.”
“Good or bad?” he asked with a slight laugh in his tone.
“Good,” I answered, “it’s definitely an improvement. Your mate would be proud of you if that’s what she saw in you.” I began to walk away from him and towards the trees.
“It’snot my mate I’m trying to impress,” he yelled after me, making me pause for a moment and when he didn’t say anything else I walked into the forest only to fall into a hole and begin to whiz through the underground.
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I sat in a tree that overlooked a clearing. Devon, Harris, Fillip, Monica and Hank were surrounding the area and the other trainee wolves were on their way towards this very spot.
If I could, I would join in, but there were two very large reasons why I couldn’t. First, it would be unfair towards them because I had far better strength and I might go a little further than I should considering my emotional resentment towards these people. But there was also the fact that Brettly would find me and know the instant that he saw my wolf.
The first few wolves stepped into the clearing, sniffing around cautiously and the remainder of them soon joined. None of the others stepped out yet, which in turn would lull them into a false sense of ease that they wouldn’t attack.
But they will always attack. No matter what or who.
As they began to relax their guard dropped, and that was when I sent the signal. It may not have been fair, but rogues weren’t fair. They picked off the weak and they waited for you to be at your most vulnerable.
Slowly the entered the clearing so that they were surrounded and there was nowhere that they could run to. I could sense the panic ripple through them and how their self-preservation began to kick in. I watched as they aimlessly began to attack the “rogues”, they were going to it with no plan and they weren’t communicating with each other. They were going to get each other killed.
Fillip, Harris, Hank, Monica and Devon were instructions to not kill them, but harming and mentally scarring was fair game (except for gang banging). They began attacking back with half force, but it was still twice as much strength as the trainees had. The longer that I watched the less hope I had and the more weeks that were being added onto the two months.
Fifteen minutes was all it took for them to retreat and begin to run back towards the pack house.
As the last tail slipped through the trees I jumped out of the trees as they shifted back to their human forms. They didn’t have any wounds, but that was because no one had enough strength to get close to them, let alone harm them. Although they had plenty of scars themselves.
Their wolves could only protect them from so much, but when they shift back they'll have the wounds, just not the blood that matted their fur. I tried to feel sorry for them, yet the feeling never came. Maybe I would have if they had actually done something that might have made me care about their lives, but so far that was yet to occur.
We traveled back through the tunnel to the pack house, and we managed to get there long before any of them did. Which was pathetic, since they were in wolf form and we were simple humans. They were gone long enough for them to hide in a bunch of trees and for me to drink a glass of lemonade and eat a banana.
By the time they lumbered in, I was sprawled out on the porch steps with my arms folded under my head and stared at the blue, cloudless sky. I was half asleep when I heard the sound of a twig breaking across the yard. I turned my head to see them crawl in.
I saw crawl because that was the only way to put it. They were all but in the ground crawling like inchworms.
Pathetic.
I sat up and waited for them to get closer. "You all look pathetic," I spat at them. None of them looked too proud of themselves either. I snorted and shook my head. "Five against thirty. That's six of you for every one of them, you outnumbered them yet you're the ones limping home.
"Do any of you know why you failed?" I continued after standing up and pacing the wood planks of the stairs. "Allow me to educate you in your painful flaws of attack. First, there was no plan and none of you communicated with each other. They look for that, for cracks in their opponents system and they use it. They can tell whether you move as a force and when you don't. Secondly, there was no power behind your attacks. If they had really wanted to they could have easily killed you all with absolutely no effort. It almost seemed like you wanted them to kill you and then move on to killing your loved ones. Was that what anyone had wanted?"
In unison they all shook their heads and shifted back into their human forms. They looked horrible. Forget about what I said about them not having blood on their bodies, because it was everywhere. I shook my head and continued pacing.
"What would happen if you had to fight them again? Would any of you be so lucky as to live through it?" I asked, which was my co-trainers signal to come out of hiding. When they did, in their wolves once again, everyone hassled close together and tensed up. Anyone with half a brain could see that they had given up and were going to let each other be killed. I groaned and began to tug at my hair. This was hopeless, they were never going to learn anything. If I could I would kill them myself, but somehow I didn’t think that anyone would take that very well. “You are all worthless pieces of garbage, scared of five wolves that aren’t even trying to kill you.”
They all stared at me with disbelief, like they didn’t believe that they wouldn’t harm them. I shook my head and said, “You guys can shift back.”
In a second they had shifted back into their human forms and Hank, who had dark hair with dark eyes and pale skin. He was the troublemaker and class clown, but he was a great way of keeping a mood light and not making people too extremely uncomfortable, so as per usual he was rolling on the ground laughing like he was about to burst a lung. For a moment I almost wanted to join in with him, but thought better of it when everyone looked offended.
I smirked when he said, “You should have seen your guy’s faces! It was like,” he made a terrified face and then burst into another round of laughter. The smallest giggle bubble escaped my throat as I watched him.
“Enough, Hank,” I said, slightly reluctant. He stopped laughing and sat cross legged on the ground with an innocent look on his face. With a sigh and walked off the porch and paced in front of them. “We will be your trainers for the next two months. You’re to be here and prepared at six-thirty every morning and not a second later. If you’re late by a minute you’ll be hunted down by one of us and do two hundred laps around the property. Now go get tended by the healers and we’ll meet here tomorrow.”
They all slumped passed me without a glance and crowded into the house. I crossed my arms over my chest and fell to the ground and closed my eyes. I could feel them walk past me and followed the others into the house. For a second I thought that I could feel the eyes of someone on me, but I refrained from looking up to see who it was.
I was still drained from yesterday and travelling underground took a fair amount of energy out of a person. With the small shred of energy that I had remaining I forced the ground beneath to open and let me fall in the pit of blackness.