***UPDATING TOMORROW CAUSE I'VE BEEN A BITCH
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A crunch between the leafy ground and my foot was the only noise that passed alongside Striker and me, but it didn't seem my silence could bother him at this point. He must've understood that I wasn't able to take small talk just to be friendly and uplifting.
Or maybe he was at a loss for words as well.
Either way, I only had one thing on my mind. And that was quite obvious.
I could see the small hill the tunnels had been planted in ahead, so I quickened my pace to a small jog that Striker had to catch up to until I was stood still right in front of nothing. Absolutely nothing.
"It isn't here." I mumbled once Striker stood behind me. I could feel my hope shattering and my heart falling at the feeling of near defeat. I was supposed to take over and settle this for Fox, and yet I couldn't even manage that?
"Don't beat yourself up over it, Luna." His attempted words of encouragement fell on deaf ears. "You can't let this get to your head. We'll find more evidence-" I held up my hand sharply and he silenced immediately, my ears perking to an odd sound.
"Stop!" A female's voice yelled from a distance. "Don't touch me! Let me go!" Our heads whipped around and I could feel my heart pound at the sound of that accent. Neither of us had to wait for the other before we ran in the same direction our ears led us to.
"Where's my mate? Grayson!" The voice screamed, pushing my feet harder.
And then we were right on top of the voice, as if I could hear her voice right in my ear.
We stood and looked everywhere, our heads turning every which way until I was sure I had whiplash.
"Who are you?!" She screamed, and I finally yelled back.
"Mom!" As my voice echoed throughout the forest I could feel the hairs on my arms stand straight, each repetition of my yell creating an eerie and odd silence among the wildlife.
I looked over to Striker with wide and confused eyes, his perplexed face already saying it all. And before either of us could mutter a thought to the other the ground beneath us shook and concaved, like trap doors had just opened and our bodies were in the air for the end to catch.
I felt the hard impact through my whole body, a yelp escaping my lips. The air was knocked out of me for a few minutes, and when I was able to breathe steadily again I sat up and looked around.
Striker laid a few feet from me unconscious, his eyes shut softly with a steady breath and a peaceful look on his face. I began to feel a slight panic in my chest now that I was alone to deal with whatever trap the fae set up for us, but I passed the feeling and focused on my determination.
I pushed myself off from the concrete ground and praised luck that none of my bones were sprained or broken.
I looked around at dimly lit room, my eyes landing on the one corner that was dark. I took a deep breath before looking back at Striker and finally moving slowly towards the suspicious corner. It was when I was consumed by the darkness of it that I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I reached out to what I couldn't see, finding that there was no wall. My eyebrows fell into a frown and I stepped forward, the wall never hitting my palm. I looked back, noticing that this was no longer the room and instead a hallway that didn't allow me to see.
I put both of my hands to the walls of the hall, my foot leading the way in case there was another trap. Instead, there was a new room to my right looking identical to the one I had just come from. And I mean it was the same room.
Striker was lying unconscious in the same position I had left him.
My eyebrows furrowed at the concept. Was this a trap with no exit?
I took a deep breathe before I allowed my mind to cave to the panic rising in my chest. I had to think like a leader, like a Luna. What would Fox do?
I couldn't check the hall because it was too dark to even find the wall five inches beside me. However they provided some lights in the big room. That means they didn't want me to find something in the hall.
I looked at the lights with a raised eyebrow, looking back down at Striker. If I used my lightning I couldn't promise it would go out of my control. But I had no other option.
Finally I took three more deep and slow breathes before raising a single hand in a light's direction, pulling all of the power I could feel from it in strings. Soon after I pulled my hand down with electricity crackling out of the yellow bulb, my other hand moving to direct it away from Striker slowly and into the hallway. The bolts crackled to strike a surface and go out of control, but I kept my invisible grip on it strong, spreading the strings to light up the whole hallway.
There was nothing but the walls in this hall, so I moved the bolts to the next hallway. I pressed on every inch of each wall and floorboard, but there was nothing. I could start feeling my head go fuzzy, so I started to move faster.
The next hallway I looked around rapidly, about to give up and move back into the room it led me back to. However, just before I let the bolts strike I noticed a slight crack in the right wall. I reached up with my bare hands and started pushing my nails through the wall and opening the crack. There was another room inside.
I could feel my heart beat slower and my vision was dotting, so I used the bolts I had a grip on to rip apart the wall starting from the crack I had made slightly larger. It was then that I lost control of the bolts and they went in different directions, making me dive to the floor and cover my head. I jumped and hissed at the singe of one of the bolts just barely scraping by my leg.
When I no longer heard the bolts striking in different places I lifted my head and looked towards striker who had seemed unharmed. I breathed a sigh of relief before I turned to the open wall, my feet wiggling slightly before I caught myself and leaned on the wall, my hands leaving bloody prints on the paint. I tried to breathe steadily, but my breaths were short and my heart was beating too slow. My head was also foggy and my limbs were weak, but I knew I couldn't just leave it at this.
Something was wrong with my mom, and they trapped us in this weird dungeon. I couldn't allow myself to fall unconscious or sit down for a while. Who knew what would happen if they had come to torture us before we can even escape.
I stood back up straight with a new determination and weak limbs. I broke off more of the wall until I could fit, and without hesitation I slid through the opening and found myself a new tight room that had been planted in the middle of the hallways.
I reached out with my hands to feel around the walls until I felt a rod, and then there were many. I continued to feel the object, realizing it was a ladder.
I grabbed onto the ladder and began climbing up until my head hit what seemed to be a trap door. I pushed on that before it burst open after I gave it all the strength I could find within me.
This new room was lit up brightly and I sighed in relief pulling myself into it. It was when my eyes landed on a large device sticking straight up into the ceiling that I had begun to grow even more confused. But when I looked closer at it and found a crate displayed on a flimsy table I started connecting the dots.
There were cassettes with labels of various people's names I knew or knew of. My heart was racing when I realized these were what was used as bait. Meaning my mom...
I searched the device and pulled on different things, but came up short. My mom's cassette was missing from the collection.
And then I heard her faint call of my name, but it was as if it were playing in another room above this one.
Wait. That wouldn't be another room. It was the woods.
"What the-" I spun at the voice, my eyes wide at the sight of the man in front of me. Without thinking twice out of survival I had reached with both hands towards the lights and grabbed as much electricity without thinking and striking it right at the man. His body trembled and his eyes rolled to the back of his head before his body finally fell like a plank of flat wood onto the floor.
But it was also my body that gave out and began falling, my head starting to go out of it before my body never even hit the same floor.
Arms had wrapped around mine to keep my body in the air, and instead of letting my hit the floorboards roughly I was gently lowered to sit. I looked at Striker's face as he kneeled beside me, his hand reaching to my forehead to feel my temperature. I was sweating, but that didn't matter to me since I was more focused on finding a way out of this room back to the woods.
"Your temperature is too high, Luna." Striker spoke with a somewhat raspier voice than before and I shrugged off his concern.
"It's fine, I've just been overworking myself-"
"Then sit here and rest and let me figure the rest out. You've already made it this far."
"But I can't-" Striker looked at me sternly as if I were a child.
"If you keep pushing yourself you will pass out and your health will be in danger seeing as we don't have your medicine on us. Then you'll be even more vulnerable, and it will make it harder for me to get us out of here before more fae come." I was silenced by his reasoning before I nodded, lowering my back to the floor and closing my eyes to try and regain health.
I put my hand on my beating head and breathed deeply. "They're using the cassettes as bait to lure us in, that's what they used with my mom's voice. She isn't really in any danger."
"Well how did they get their voices?" I could hear Striker farther in the room. I thought over his concerning question before I made another realization.
"There's a type of fae that can mimic. They didn't actually record anybody's voice." I remembered overhearing about it in the fae castle. I kept my eyes shut and focused on my breathing as I could hear Striker moving around the room and testing different things.
"This device..." Striker thought aloud but I kept my eyes shut. "It's implanted through the ceiling that leads to outside." After a few minutes I could hear him groaning and I opened my eyes, spinning around to see him attempt tugging at breaking the device. My thoughts ran wild as I watched him try to use strength to his advantage. It was when my head cleared up from the fog that I had an idea.
"Striker, step back." I demanded as I stood. He looked at me with slight frustration that I wasn't still trying to recover.
"Luna-"
Without waiting for him to continue I reached my arm straight and used the electricity in the device to feel around, as if a third disconnected hand.
My eyebrows furrowed and my mouth turned in a frown as I shut my eyes and started mapping out what I felt. My neck turned as I felt multiple buttons, but I couldn't see what each one was.
My head was pounding, but I pushed and pushed and pushed every ounce I had into the lightning, and then I found myself able to see what the bolts saw. I was taken back, but I didn't dwell on what just happened before I moved the bolts to press the red button.
I entered out of the vision and stepped back a couple steps before Striker grabbed a hold of me again, the device sounding an alarm that could only mean self destruction. At least, that's what I planned for.
"Go back down!" I commanded before climbing down myself, nearly just falling straight through without the help of Striker lowering me. Finally when I was down he had quickly followed, grabbing the two trap doors and holding them shut. We waited in silence as the alarm continued, our eyes wide and on each other when we could hear a loud explosion. I shut my ears and Striker struggled to hold the doors together, loud bangs from the room confirming what I had predicted would happen. The thumps didn't stop until a few minutes after and we were both hesitant to go back up.
But eventually, Striker pushed the trap doors back open and looked around before climbing down to me. He helped me stand back up and managed to get me up the ladder and out in the open. The device parts were everywhere and what had been the ceiling was mostly blown out to see the woods during sunset.
I looked at the cassettes lying everywhere and reached out and pocketed one, my eyes briefly staying on the burnt fae body.
I couldn't pay much attention to it before I stumbled with Striker towards the wall that was mostly blown out. He climbed over it and reached down, pulling me up with him.
It took forty minutes longer to get out of the woods than our journey to venture further inside and hunt for fae all due to the frazzled and overwhelming feeling shared between the two of us. I didn't know what to process.
Were we what they were going after to bait as they created that secret hideout, or was it a happy accident for them that only ended in our favor? And how did they get all those voice recordings? Wouldn't a Mimic fae need to hear the person's actual voice to actually mimic it?
And how did so many fae get past our borders so easily?
By the time we had made it out of the forest my phone provided a good distraction from all my mushed up thoughts running wild when the hospital called. And when I heard the doctor's voice report that Fox was awake my heart skipped a beat and I forgot to continue breathing.
Striker didn't even have to ask since his heightened hearing already gave him the question he would be asking otherwise. In silent agreement we got in Striker's car and went straight to the hospital. I don't even think I spared a blink.
Before the car even came to a complete stop I hopped out and was already through the door, dirt and dust still fresh on my skin and stuck to my clothes, my hair slightly tangled without a care. I didn't have to pretend like I cared what I presented myself as a Luna anymore. Right now that didn't matter as my dark-rimmed eyes stared dead into the doctor's who had found me right in Fox's wing.
She didn't raise interest in the matters of why I was so dirty, but rather instead lead me straight to Fox's room. She closed the door behind me without giving me a list of do's and don't's, knowing damn well that wasn't what I cared about.
My whole body froze as I locked eyes with Fox's orange orbs, my heart trembling in the amount of yearning I've felt for him for this whole time he'd been unconscious.
"Fox-" I breathed, finally having feeling in my legs again. I ran quickly over to him and wrapped my arms around him best I could, my face digging right into his neck, and I immediately felt overwhelming tranquility.
His hand somehow nudged around my body and landed softly on the back of my head, pulling me further into him. I could feel fluttering in my stomach and my heart burning of warmth. I've never felt so relieved.
"Don't do that to me again." I breathed again, unable to find a stable voice. The small rising and falling of his chest helped ease my pounding heart.
"Then don't bite me again, vampire." I looked up at him and frowned, his eyebrows narrowing down at me as he examined my expression. I noticed the orange in his right eye flicker into another color, that almost seemed a pale green, completely unlike anything his eyes have ever done. But before I could focus or question his eye, he spoke and broke me out of my curious daze.
"You're dirty. Why?" I sighed and let my eyes drop and my fingers travel along his bare arms.
"Do we have to discuss this?"
"You're taking over my work?" His voice was firm and I didn't like the direction he was taking this conversation. I looked up at him again and pouted.
"Please just let me be happy with the fact that you're alive and okay."
"Don't start messing around with the fae."
"Fox, I have to help take over your duties while you're healing. I need to help solve this before it continues to worsen and break out into battle in the fields or even in our territories. This has to be controlled immediately." Fox looked down at me with softened eyes, and I wondered how even a Were could be gifted such orbs.
"I had a long dream." Fox changed the subject, and I laid my head lightly on his abdomen and got comfortable as he stroked my tangled head of hair slowly, my body no longer tense.
"A girl with dark hair was running, and it was hailing..." I closed my eyes and listened to the silence of the room mixed with Fox's smooth voice. "-she didn't seem to care for the ice, but instead the forest fire catching up to her. Even though it was the hail that was hitting her head and leaving cuts on her bare skin she was still unbothered, I found it weird..." I could feel myself going out of it between sleep and reality.
"But the weirdest thing was that this was my whole dream, for the whole time I was out. Just the girl worried and running and being cut. And when I woke up it changed." Fox's voice paused, but I was already out of it.
"The girl disappeared, and instead a rose took her place. The hail had disappeared, but the fire started to develop the flower. Instead of crumbling away into dust, the rose crippled into itself."
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I am such a mother flipping disappointment for y'all all because I DIDN'T UPDATE FOR 5 FUCKING MONTHS I AM SUCH A BITCH PLEASE COMMENT I AM A BITCH BECAUSE IT'S TRUE AND ALL OF YOU PROBS QUIT THIS BOOK AND GAVE UP BUT ITS FINE IM FINE
anyways
many things happened
and im sorry it got in the way of my writing....
but I'm trying to get another chapter for this book out there hopefully tomorrow?? because i really do have exciting plans for this book and i hope you guys give me a second chance to redeem myself and prove that I WON'T TAKE ANOTHER 5 MONTHS BECAUSE I DONT WANNA BE A BITCH
so you'll notice some changes start happening for the ho down throw down if you catch my drift okay? okay
perf
so school starts for me soon if it starts for you too just know i'll be #prayinnng lol
so basically don't give up on me yet i'm trying i swear