Chapter 215

215 Chapter Two Hundred Fifteen

“It’s not like they will exploit you...” Lina continued.

“Exploit... Who said anything about that?” Caden asked.

“How about one of you turns on a flashlight? The moon lotuses are here. Honour was leading us in the right direction all along,” Katie said with a hint of finality on the matter. Lina sighed, ‘Then you take me to be the pathetic one...’

‘No... I’ve never. You’re stronger than you know and I’ll keep saying it until the day you believe it,’ Katie’s voice replied to her sister privately.

Three flashlights jumped to life and illuminated the clearing. They all saw nothing for a while as their eyes adjusted before gasping all at once... Right at their feet was a large collection of grey plants... They looked as though they were suspended between life and death. It was a rather horrid sight...

“They haven’t seen the light of the moon in so long. It could be centuries for them to be drained of this much light,” Honour spoke up.

“If it had been centuries, they would be dead and rotting by now,” Derrick interfered.

“You claim to know something about these flowers, then go and say something as uninformed as that,” Honour replied, holding back the insulting words she wanted to use.

Derrick froze at the girl’s statement, “How long has this streak of talking back been going?”

.....

Honour’s mind had already moved on and his words only passed by her ears without making much sense. She brought her hand to the tapering end of one of the grey flowers... ‘How I wish the canopy above us could clear up and let the moonlight through?’ the girl’s thoughts soared.

Katie’s attention was all of a sudden drawn to the nature girl kneeling down in the centre of the clearing lightly touching one of the dead flower’s petals. A familiar sensation of power was coming from her. She’d felt the power somewhere once before, but couldn’t quite put her finger on it... Where had she felt that power before... Without having much time to think it through, a light wind went through the enclosed clearing...

Along with the wind, small streams of moonlight began to pierce through the canopy. Their eyes snapped upwards into the sky just in time to see the canopy opening up in the rarest of displays. The leaves blew out of the way and the branches began to shrink away from the centre of the canopy. It was a bizarre sight to witness with one’s own eyes, but it happened before them and the branches cleared the way and let the full light of the moon reach the forest floor...

With the moon’s light, came a wave of blue light coming from the luminous flowers. The grey of the flowers vanished and was gradually replaced with a glowing blue that snuffed out the light of their flashlights and lit up the forest floor in an undeniably marvellous glow that had the group speechless. They moved about the clearing marvelling at the flowers before them, “As I live and breathe, I never thought I’d ever get the chance to see them...”

Katie was about to comment when she noticed something else that had slipped everyone’s vision. Honour... The girl was covered in the same glow of the moon lotuses. Katie walked up to her and lifted her chin from the flower she wouldn’t take her eyes off. The girl’s glowing face held an unnatural beauty that brought a crashing wave of nostalgia to the royal when she saw her. There was a delicate yet powerful and deadly air to the girl at the moment.

“Is something wrong?” Derrick asked Katie. “Why can’t she move? Honour aren’t you happy that you found them. They are more beautiful than I thought they would be.”

Lina fell silent when she saw the girl, “Yes, they are breathtaking...” Honour sighed. ‘Katie, Lina, do I look different?’ the girl asked through the mind link.

‘Yes, you’re glowing,’ Lina replied, ‘What are you?’

‘I am the same person you’ve always known,’ the girl replied, pulling her scarf to cover part of her face. The scarf lit up in an intricate pattern when she touched it... ‘I don’t even want to know what any of this means.’

‘But you must...’

‘My mother will be able to explain everything when I get home,’ she replied, getting up from the ground.

“Aren’t you going to take one of them?” Lina asked her.

The girl looked around her... at the field of flowers at her feet, which was glowing the same colour as her skin at the moment... “No, I think I will leave them where nature dictated them to live. The flowers are sacred to the werewolves... And they affect the growth of plants wherever they grow. It would be best if they were left here...”

Lina rushed up to her friend before she reached the edge of the clearing, only to stop when she watched the trees moving out of the way for the girl to walk past them without the hustle they’d gone through when they were getting there. Honour walked off, leaving the royal too stunned for words.

.......

The group returned to the hotel that night without much spoken amongst them. The only one that seemed to find their silence weird was Derrick and none of them bothered to fill him in on what had happened in the field of flowers. Katie was astonished, but what she had seen and was now trying to figure out was keeping Honour on edge about it all. She’d tried a few attempts at conversation, but the girl had not paid any attention to anything she had to say.

'

Eventually, the hunter had given up and walked the crew back to the hotel. “Lina...” Caden’s voice finally cut through the silence when they started seeing the lights of the hotel.

“Yeah.”

“Did you find what you were looking for tonight?” the alpha asked.

Lina thought to herself for a while. She was supposed to be happy about what they had found in the woods, but the person that had needed this the most had only become sad the moment something magical happened to her. The glow that had taken over her body started to fade the further they moved away from the clearing and they had all watched the clearing close up the moment they all left, almost like no one was ever meant to go inside.

Taking on the responsibility for the two of them, “Yes, yes we did,” she replied.

“Well... Isn’t that cause for celebration? I remember someone saying these flowers haven’t been seen in a very long time,” Caden tried.

“What we found today, isn’t an answer to a question, but a doorway to more questions. Questions to which I don’t know the answers or where to begin looking. I can say one thing though... Honour...” the girl with the slight glow about her face turned to look at her best friend. Thin streams of tears were evident on her face. None of them had heard her cry, but the connection through the mind link that shattered to reveal the girl’s true emotions spoke volumes. Lina reached for her friend and wrapped her arms around her, “We’ll figure it out together, Honour. You know that, right?”

Honour did not reply to her friend’s comforting words... She merely leaned on her shoulder and let the tears flow... The glow about the girl’s body and that within her scarf finally died down, but her tears didn’t. Katie beckoned for the males to proceed and leave the girls to her. With a short farewell, the two males were gone.

Katie watched the two girls... Their connection reminded her of Sandra. The two grew up together and were soon separated by the amount of skill they’d acquired growing up. If it hadn’t been for her becoming a mentor to her best friend, they would have stopped seeing each other as soon as the hunters saw no use for her being the head hunter of Brigadia high school.

“The two of you... Stay with each other tonight... I don’t want to have to look for one of you when the other is nowhere to be found. Honour, the power coming off you. It’s familiar... It’s not hostile. I wouldn’t feel down if I had it. Nonetheless, you do have to look for answers. I suggest you start with the scarf that seemed to glow along with everything else in that place,” Katie told them, beckoning for them to follow her back to the hotel.

“Katie, could Derrick see Honour glow back there?” Lina asked the hunter.

“Can we not talk about me like I’m some lab experiment?” Honour interfered.

“It’s that kind of thinking that I wish you could keep out of your mind, Honour. I wasn’t normal either and there were always different hunters wishing to know what made me different from the rest, but I didn’t let that catch up to me,” Katie tried.

“Well, did they ever see you glow like a freaking light bulb?” Honour nearly snapped at her.

“Well, no... But picture what they will say when they find out that I can speak to animals... I don’t even think I will be telling anyone that,” she scoffed, looking away from the two girls before her.

“So that’s who you were talking to back at the clearing...” the girl replied, “Is that also how you know there are rogues in the forest?”

“That’s something else... but the animals can tell me of everything happening in the forest with more detail than I’m capable of gathering on my own,” Katie replied.

“You know, Katie... Werewolves value the ability to communicate with the wild. After all, it is a part of this world that they feel they have a right to belong to. It’s an ability rarely found amongst us, but not unheard of. And every time there is someone that is granted that ability, they are respected and treated with the utmost respect. I don’t know what the moon goddess intends to do by giving one person so much power, but it definitely isn’t normal,” Honour said out loud, “Maybe you just don’t know enough about your kind yet.”