Chapter 86

86 Chapter Eighty Six

‘Hey Jason, get over here...’ Cole called through the mind link.

‘Huh, what do you mean? I thought you were...’ the Royal started tracking his friend as soon as he got a whiff of his scent.

‘She’s with Jeremiah... Giving him a tour, I suppose...’ the Royal said, cutting his friend’s ventures in half as he’d planned to look for Sandra. Cole finally got his eyes on the alpha and started following him while maintaining the mind link communication.

‘Very well, what do you have in mind?’ Jason asked changing course to find his alpha instead, ‘We could go watch a few archery bouts though I’d prefer to watch people get creamed in paintball,’ the alpha replied, offering distractions for his alpha. ‘Have you heard from Caden yet?’

‘No, I haven’t heard from him,’ Cole sighed, ‘Do you think he’s hiding something?’

‘Maybe...” Jason replied, ‘Where the hell are you? I’ve been walking through this bloody maze. I know you are the only one in this entire festival with glowing blue eyes.’

‘Yes, I am the only one in this entire place with eyes that special though not the only one in Brigadia. Where are you looking, man? You know you’re not going to find me eating ice cream again,’ Cole said, following the clueless alpha to the shade tent that he’d found him in the last time they’d met.

‘Have you been...’

“It’s funny to watch someone look in all the wrong places...” Cole laughed at his friend.

.....

“Okay, you got me there... Now let’s get out of here and get to the bloody archery range...” Jason said, “I didn’t get the chance to go there and from what I can see, it won’t be daylight for much longer.”

“Yeah, let’s go...” right as they exited the tent, the two of them came face to face with someone that they never thought they’d run into. Jeremiah stood right in front of them with his fists clenched. Something was different about him though... Cole could tell that he was concealing a great amount of anger. His smug look had been wiped off his face and Katie was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh my, Lawson... What happened to your cheek?” Jason asked him without reading the mood he was in. “Wasn’t he supposed to be on a...” realization hit a little too late for one’s liking, ‘Oh, tour with Katie... What happened?”

“Well, my guess is that he did something stupid...” Cole answered.

“Oh, that’s not what happened. You have her wrapped up in your lies. You better stay away from her. She doesn’t need scum like you to ruin her when she has much bigger things to focus on besides...”

“You’d better stop running your mouth before we have a reason to cause a scene...” Cole stopped him mid-sentence.

“Oh, we already have all the reason to cause a scene already. By the time we leave here, you will never get close to her again,” the hunter meant his threat and Cole did not take it lightly. In fact, his wolf was screaming to tear the human before him to pieces.

Jason looked between the two males and realized they were both past words and were about to let their fists do the talking. From what he knew, Jeremiah was a powerful hunter and if he used his gift in this fight, Cole was in trouble. Cole, on the other hand, was in a mood to remind the idiot in front of him just why the Royals are feared above all kinds of werewolves as the Apex predators of the world. His eyes gleamed brighter as the two came at each other for one epic clash...

............

Katie walked through the crowd, her right hand shaking after having slapped the one person she never thought she would. It was the first time she was losing control of her emotions in her life and the effect it was having was not the best of them...

She searched her mind for reasons why she’d slapped the boy, but there wasn’t any that was strong enough to command her hand to perform such action had she been in her right mind. She felt a presence receding within her mind. Something else had taken control at that moment to defend what belonged to her.

Her wolf, seemingly asleep had not allowed something like that to happen while Katie was conscious and had taken that one matter into her own hands. ‘Am I going to be impulsive like this when I shift tonight?’ Even as she tried to blame herself for losing control, she couldn’t stand by and let Jeremiah say such things about Cole. ‘If I was to do it again, I would.’

“Hey, Katie, what’s wrong? What are you doing here? I thought you had gone with...” Sandra’s voice cut through her thoughts and got her back to the world of the living. “What’s wrong, Katie? You’re shaking.”

“Nothing much... I just lost...” the words wouldn’t leave her lips.

“Is she fine?” Samantha was walking up to them. Katie took the time to look around and found that she’d unconsciously made her way back into the school and was currently at her locker. She opened it only to close it immediately as her nose was invaded by the worst scent anyone would have thought to find there. She brought her hand to her nose to soothe the itches that ravaged her nostrils.

“What the hell is in there?” she asked the two backing away from the locker.

Sandra opened it and froze at the sight of a leather jacket. Katie moved further as the smell continued to get stronger, her eyes tearing from the acrid smell of what she now knew was a poison. “It’s your jacket. I thought this wasn’t...”

“Never mind... Just lock that thing in there before it suffocates me,” Katie said, her mind completely alert. Her time hadn’t come yet, but without the drugs that inhibited the characteristics of a werewolf, some of her senses were starting to get altered. Her sense of smell wasn’t strong yet, but she was sensitive to the weaknesses that wolfsbane posed to her.

“Katie, calm down and tell us what happened with Jeremiah. He’s a noble now. We don’t need bad publicity...” Samantha asked, playing chaperone.

“Well, I slapped him when he started bad-mouthing Cole,” she summarized to ease the woman’s nerves.

“Wow, that’s quite direct. I’m on your side now... Would you like to talk about it?” Just as soon as Samantha had spoken, a commotion from outside the school reached their ears. The three females were on their way to its source. Having been placed on security, there was no time to waste on the details.

Humans were either running from the general direction or trying to go to it. Each had their own reasons for the direction they were running. From what Katie could tell, it wasn’t a danger to the citizens. “What do you think it is?” Sandra asked, matching her speed.

“Well, we’ll have to see...” Katie’s words got caught in her throat as she reached her destination. Three males were exchanging heavy blows. Cole, Jeremiah and Jason were going at it rough. The hunter was holding his ground against the two of them even though they weren’t backing down either, “for ourselves.”

Katie was frozen for a moment before she noticed Jeremiah preparing to hit Cole with a blow that was made to be fatal. Considering what she knew from his Prometheus gift, the hit was bound to put Cole in the hospital for sure, if not immobilize him for a couple of hours. The other hunters that were in the vicinity couldn’t find a way to break the clash that was taking place in front of them. The three males were moving at a pace that could only be matched by those with agility gifts and yet the force that their hits packed was lethal.

Jeremiah stopped an attack from Jason, making it seem like he was made of steel, shoving the latter a couple of metres away before taking his attention back to the Royal that was already mid-attack. ‘So this is how much he has trained, huh,’ she thought before walking forward. Sandra held Jason keeping him from getting back into the fight.

Right as the two were about to meet, she stepped between them, reinforcing her palms with her Prometheus gift, she stopped their blows, “That’s enough...”

“Oh no...” a fist to the gut knocked the wind out of Jeremiah as he tried to protest. His knees buckled and he fell to his knees, trying to catch his breath. His eyes bore a look of disbelief... This was the second time he was getting hit by her...

“I don’t want to hear it, Lawson,” she replied, grabbing Cole’s hand to lead him away from the scene.

“So, that’s who you’ve chosen,” Jeremiah said through gritted teeth.

Katie stopped walking and turned back to him, “You’ve been back one day... What makes you think you own the place? You’re going back to the capital tomorrow. I advise you enjoy the rest of the festival. I told you the rules of Brigadia. We don’t start fights between werewolves and humans...”

“What makes you think the werewolves didn’t start the fight?” he asked.

“Because...” she paused staring him straight in the eye, “A hunter would never start a fight with a Royal. We know what they stand for...”

“Well said, Katie Chase...” Anthony said, walking up to the scene. The hunters got Jeremiah up and took him away. Katie led Cole away, the Director nodding in confirmation to the course of action she was taking.