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Wolves and Men
Book 3 Chapter 12b

Book 3 Chapter 12b

The laughter continued for some time. It seemed to echo around them and through the mist itself. William wished that somebody would let him in on the joke. Then just as suddenly as it had started it stopped. Somehow the following silence was much more intimidating than the laughter had been.

Charles helped Katherine to her feet. She was pressing her own claws into the deep wounds on her sides. William was regretful that he had to do it to her but it was either that or let her kill herself or be driven completely insane by this place.

Katherine looked at him and even through the pain of the wounds she smiled and nodded to him. “Thank you, William.”

William didn’t feel right accepting thanks for having to hurt her but he nodded back to her anyway.

“Where is Aceso?” Charles asked.

William pointed toward where he could still feel her. She was still moving. William looked over at Charles. The tracker seemed very composed. “Are you alright?”

Charles looked at William and Katherine, he stood upright and proud. “I’m fine.”

William shot a glance at Katherine, because there was nothing else to look at in the Whyte Plain. “What happened to whatever was stalking us?”

Charles looked at the blood that was seeping down Katherine’s side. “Up until a few minutes ago it was still there.” Charles raised his nose to the sir and inhaled deeply. “Now however it seems to have multiplied and encircled us.”

“Can we escape?” William asked looking around himself trying to identify their attackers before they struck.

“We don’t have to,” Charles said.

William jerked his head around and stared at his friend. “What do you mean?”

Charles raised himself to his full height. “I couldn’t shake the feeling of this place to tell you the truth.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I was afraid and my sense of smell was betraying me.” He looked all around their surroundings. “I could smell predators at every turn, hidden just inside the veil of mist that we were walking through.” He lowered his head as he heaved a heavy sigh. “I was terrified. But then I noticed something.” He looked at William and back at Katherine. “I can smell predators four feet away, but I couldn’t smell you only two feet away.” Charles stepped over in between William and Katherine. “That added with the pain of the injury that you gave me.” Charles leaned down and showed a much uglier wound than anything William had inflicted. “The more I dug into the wound the less the smells terrified me. After I discovered I couldn’t smell you the fear of the smell in my nose disappeared, although the smell itself has not.”

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“I’m glad you’re…” William stopped and jerked his head back around over his shoulder. He cocked his head to the side for the briefest of moments then whipped his head back around. “It’s Aceso. We have to go.”

“Has Aceso stopped?” Katherine asked pain was laced heavily through her voice.

“I’m not sure. But something is off.”

Charles and William helped Katherine as they started running through the Whyte Plain. Charles’s steps were not as fluid as William’s. Katherine was lumbering along trying to hold herself as tightly as possible. Blood was still seeping through the wounds and every jounce of their running pace only added to the steady collection of red ichor on the cream werewolf’s fur.

William felt no side effects from the wounds that his other had given him in the void. The pain from those wounds had been in his mind. Of course his body wouldn’t feel any adverse effects. Katherine was getting heavier. After a while she couldn’t even try to support herself. She was doing everything she could just to hold herself together. He knew that the only way she was going to heal from those wounds here would be by being aided by either Aceso or Achelois. He could sense where Aceso was but trying to gauge distance in this place was next to impossible.

William could feel through Katherine that Charles was having some real trouble getting into a rhythm. Katherine’s body was shaking and jerking as William tried to adapt to the way that Charles was running. It was hopeless. William would have decided to slow down to a walk if they had been anywhere else in the world. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing sideways at his friends. Charles seemed to be putting every ounce of concentration into running. His face was pointed toward the mist covered ground that they were running on and his eyes had a glazed over countenance. Charles looked like his was in deep thought or about ready to pass out from exhaustion. William felt for his friend. But they couldn’t stop here either.

William could feel Aceso. She was either moving very slowly or had stopped. The idea of not knowing exactly what was going on was taxing for him. Aceso had trusted him to be there, just like his pack in his forest had trusted him. Aceso had saved his life more than once and he was not going to let her down.

The run was agonizing. Katherine was audibly grunting now with the pain of her injuries. William wished there was another way to do this, but he couldn’t think of anything. He was being forced to support more and more of her dead body weight. Charles was breathing hard on the other side of Katherine. William could only hope that it wasn’t going to be too much farther. He would have thought that finding a seven-foot-tall black werewolf in all this whiteness would have been easy. It proved to be more difficult than he expected.

William crashed into a wall of black fur that sent him and Katherine sprawling across the mist covered floor. Katherine cried out in pain as her whole body twisted around William adding even greater amounts of pain to the wounds in her sides. William looked around. He shot his head up off the cold surface of the ground and stared at Aceso. She stood there as she folded her arms across her chest.

“What happened?” she asked calmly.

William looked around. He could see nothing except white mist and fog. It was a great camouflage for Nicolas who was standing two feet directly in front of Aceso. William tried to make sense of his mistake. He had felt something. He knew that Aceso had needed him. Where was Achelois?

“We’ve had some problems,” Charles answered. “William felt you needed us.” There was something in the way Charles answered. William couldn’t place the emotion. It wasn’t cold, but far from warm. It sounded very unlike Charles. “Where is Achelois?”