"Can you tell me why are we following that kid, again?" Asks Thalia after a couple of hours of hunting.
"Haven't you seen him?" I ask, stepping over a branch and hurrying my steps to keep the Thalia's pace. She was sniffing the air around constantly and pointing toward a new direction. "How does he smell?"
"If you ask if he's supernatural, I can't quite tell," she replies.
"He surely is, and I want to know why he run off after he figured out what I am."
"I wonder why..."
"Are you going to tell me about those threaths?" I divert the subject and she seems more than gadly to tell me the reason she meet with me in the first place. Probably she'll take off after talking and let me alone here, but I don't mind at all.
"When we returned to the conference room, everyone was talking about you and Asher..."
"Why?" I asked her immediately, not understanding the reason behind these talks at that meeting.
"Because every damned hunter there saw you leaving with the Prince of Lycans, Adeline," explains Thalia and
I thought everyone found out about Asher and I after my mother's trial against him made our relationship the hottest gossip in the whole community of hunters.
"So?" I ask, cluesslessly about how this fact could be a threat to me.
"So they wanted to send you not to Hy-Brasil, but to Annwn," Thalia is carefully choosing her words. "They drew the conclusion that it was too risky to send you in this mission, because the Lycans might start a war against the hunters after..."
"After what?" I continue to ask her, still trying to figure out what is she trying to explain me.
"Adeline, your mission... doesn't have a rescue plan."
Thalia's words leave me speechless for a moment, but I gather myself rapidly. I can't say that I'm surprised, ever since I heard about the mission I knew it's a kamikaze one. Having it confirmed it's a big disappointment for that tiny-bit of myself that still hoped that I may return home in the end, but nothing that can make me back down now. Even if I'll have to fight them to keep me on the team.
"I'm still going to Hy-Brasil," I tell her. "I don't give a crap about what they decided in my absence."
"You are," agrees Thalia and I raise a brow. "Your mother argued in your and your brother's favour, and because changing the plans now would cost us even more time, they decided to risk and send you to Hy-Brasil, as planned."
"Good call," I answer and I'm not surprised my mother fought for me to attend this suicide-mission. After all the trouble I brought, I can restore my family's name to its ancient glory, only by becoming one of their sacrificial lambs.
"Didn't you hear what I said? They're sending you there with an one-way ticket!" Thalia theatretically throws her hands in the air to emphasize the gravity of the problem, but I only roll my eyes.
"I know," I answer her. "I figured it since my mother told me about the mission and the semi-formal. What's the big deal?"
"You're joking right?" She looks dumbfounded by the easiness I took about my unpending doom, but after some many years of courting death in my mission, I'm not surprised I'm approaching my last waltz. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised.
"I'm surprised they talked about the danger of Lycans with an Heiress there," I redirect the conversation.
"Because I'm part of the mission, and not only as your 'escape-ticket' from Sydney," she says and my jaw clenches in annoyance. Why? But I don't have the chance the ask because Thalia hurries to continue her explanation. "The hunters chose an inner person from all the supernatural communities. I'm representing the shifters, giving insight and all. I've been working with them since I was little, because my father is a hunter."
My shock must've been obvious, because Thalia only giggled and further clarified. "My mother is the daughter of Queen Annélise, famous for running off with the enemy. She met dad during some charity ball the hunters were throwing and instantly felt the mate-bond," She stops, her eyes flashing with joy, like she was reliving her own memory. "Of course, dad thought that she was hot and this is why he is so attracted to the Lycan Princess. Like all hunters, was more than skeptical about soul-mates, until problems appeared and the threat of never seeing her almost drove him mad. They fought for their love like few couples do, being shunned by their families and living in a cottage in Québec for nearly a decade. Until I was born and both families accepted their relationship. They had a wedding and a mating ceremony, honouring both traditions and creating an unforeseen lineage between the Canadian hunters and the Lycans."
"My family didn't give a crap when they learned about Asher," I told her, thinking back to that day at St. Arthur's. "But again, I'm not a princess but the pariah of the family so they can't be surprised anymore." As long as my relationship with him doesn't affect my mission, they couldn't care less about my personal life. Or me, whatsover.
"Your family is more open to having healthy relationships with the supernatual community than the rest of the European hunters," Thalia adds and I agree. My mother, especially, worked hard to mantain some good acquintances within the other world. She is partly the reason I met Thomas, as he and his parents were ocasionally invited to our house parties while I was in secondary school.
"Don't believe this is a good thing," I warn her. "My family doesn't do anything aimlessly..."
She motions me to shut up and stop. I do exactly, but immediately reach for my knives and take in the surroudings. We were deep in the woods, not heading toward the pack's territory but in the exactly opposite direction, to the southern forest.
Vampires.
As I thought about it, two tall figures appeared before Thalia and I. They were watching me, hatred coursing through the black veins under their blood-thirsty eyes. Thirsty for my blood, surely. "What a pleasure running into you, little huntress," says one of them, hissing near the end of the sentence.
"And I see you've got yourself a new wolf-bodyguard," notes the other and I carefully look over to Thalia. Her eyes were redder than the rubies, her claws out and shining under the cold light of the setting sun.
"I'm Heiress Thalia Yancy, granddaughther of Queen Annélise and I command you to let us leave," speaks the blonde in an authorian voice and I nearly laugh. Oh, God...
"I'm sorry princess, but Lycans no longer have any protection in our territory ever since her boyfriend murdered our Leader," explains one of them and Thalia immediately looks at me like she wants to kill me.
"When the hell were you going to tell me that you're a wanted person on the vampire's territory?" She asks, narrrowing her eyes and clenching her claws in annoyance.
"I thought you knew, it was the hottest gossip in the pack for a week or so," I casually, like I wasn't fully acknowledging the threat in front of me. But I was fully aware and trying to steal some time for a back-up plan to surface.
"I don't train in Taylor's pack," she explains, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. "My Lycan family is from Europe, Adeline, so I was sent to London."
"I thought everyone trained at the Supreme Pack," I ask, tilting my head like a clueless doll.
"There's a Supreme Pack on every region, you idiot," answers one of the vampires and I continue to play along. I glance around, trying to look like I was scoffing off the insult. There was a faint bustle around us, a circle of shadows trapping Thalia and I. If we try to run, we'll be ambushed. But I know for a fact that vampires love to play with their victims, some I'm putting on the best show I can to stall them. I have to find some miraculous solution.
"But Hayder is British," I further ask and one of the vampires laugh at my friend's name.
"He was kicked out of both Sevenoaks Pack in England and Puerto Iguazú Pack in Argentina in less than a week," explains Thalia, "it was either Boulder or Malhwi-ri in North Korea."
"Are you giving her a lesson about Lycans right now?" Asks the unamused vampire and I shrug at him.
"I'm a very curious person," I defend myself, but he scoffs.
"Then it's true that the curious ones die sooner," is his replies, showing off his flesh-piercing fangs. The circle of vampires around us closed in, Thalia and I standing back to back and looking frantically for a way out.
"I should've stayed home today..."
I retain any comment at her words, focusing on the monsters before me. I doubt they'll be stupid like the last time I encountered them, and attack me one by one. This time they are synchronised, working like a single body of blood-thirsty creatures and annihilating all my chances of survival.
This time Asher won't come and save me, I won't let him risk his life against this entire army. It was my foolishness that blocked my rational thinking and made me end up on enemy territory. My recklessness and idiocy always paired up together nicely, bringing my way the shittiest situations someone could think of. I should apologise to Thalia for bringing her here, but I'm not that much of a decent person. All I can do is create an opportunity for her, give the Lycan a way out of this. Because it doesn't have to be the end of the line for both of us. At least I was used to the idea of dying on the battlefield very soon, even if the surroundings aren't the ones I imagined.
"I'll distract them," I murmur to her, my voice almost inaudible with all the vampires' rustling around. "When you see a way out, you run like hell."
"I'm not leaving you here, idiot," she says and I almost want to kick her ass back to campus myself. "If we can get past that tree," I follow her gaze to an old oak tree that had some brand crested on it. "We're safe. They can't hunt us on neutral territory."
"And what's your strategy?" I ask, my right hand slowly reaching for one of my silver knives.
"We go right through them."
Just as her words are whispered, my knife hits my first target. I jump on the wounded vampires and twist the knife three times on his chest, retrieving my weapon before his body turned to stone. I attack another one. And another. And another.
Thalia was ripping their hearts out with her claws, her body now half-turned into a Lycan. While I was building our way out of their territory, Thalia was keeping my back and slashing every vampire on sight. We were moving slow, because my weapons weren't ideal for fighting those creatures. My wooden arrows and bows worked like a charm on the den I battled a few weeks ago, but the job is messier when silver knives are involved. If I count badly and I don't twist the knife exactly three times through their chest, then those bastards could be revived by their friends into Strigoi. And no one wants to battle those creatures. Not even an army of Lycans.
A vampire dodged my knife with his shoulder. My left arm was already ready to give another try, but it was caught by another monster. My eyes went wide when I felt my body lifted from the ground and thrown away like a piece of garbage. I landed face-first on a pile of dried leaves and fallen branches, rolling like a tumbleweed until my back crashed with the trunck of a tree. I was barely conscious, hearing only roaring and yelling around me. Before I drifted into unconsciousness, a voice brought me back to my sense.
"Get up, now!"