The Moon Goddess' Chosen

489 A Need For Speed

The ride to the Great Arena was a long and stressful one for an impatient Seeker. Whitney knew that… Beatrice knew that… But that didn’t prepare them for just how long they were going to sit there. Lyra had tried—on multiple occasions—to lighten the mood with some form of small talk.

Asking random questions about this and that. How Whitney and Beatrice came to know each other. It was soon apparent that the young-looking Beatrice was actually an entire generation older than Whitney and that the two had become acquainted through Beatrice’s late daughter, Madeline’s deceased mother.

This group of travellers had already had two stops to restock on supplies and some to relieve themselves and stretch their muscles.

Peter wiped his brow and sighed in the passenger seat. This action earned a twitch from Trevor’s eyebrows, “You’re not even driving!”

“Yeah, about that. Thank you, Trevor. I don’t think I would have made this drive,” Peter admitted.

“No kidding! You’re tired from sitting. What do you think I’m going through?” Trevor whined.

“Well… you’re probably feeling alright. Don’t you train for this sort of thing?” Peter asked.

This was true.

“Hmph!!! I see milk only gets you a lazier body,” Trevor huffed.

.....

“Hey, take that back. What’s your deal? You’re probably getting paid a lot of money for this, aren’t you?” Peter argued.

“Well, obviously I get…” the hunter stopped talking for a few seconds, paying attention to the eerie silence of the woods that surrounded them, then completed in a more serious tone, “…get paid for this exact sort of thing. Buckle your seatbelts.”

Trevor’s hand flew to the gear lever and the hum of the vehicle changed. They were cruising across the asphalt much faster than the normal speed limit.

Trevor’s eyes flew to the side and driving mirrors with a look of concern, “What is it, Trevor?”

“We are being followed. I thought this trip would be dangerous… but this is next-level. Bloody alphas!” Trevor cursed, flooring the accelerator and switching to a higher gear.

“You don’t think they can keep up with the car, do you?” Peter asked, fastening his seatbelt and turning to the females in the back to ensure they had done the same.

He gave his girlfriend’s hand a squeeze and an assuring smile.

“How did they know where to find me?” Beatrice mumbled to herself.

“Let’s not push the blame around. Rogues are always looking for another victim to sink their teeth into,” Trevor said, his voice raised with a shaken amount of urgency.

As the car sped across the asphalt, the rushing sound of running wolves became incredibly clear along with the hostile feral growls coming from the forest surrounding them.

“How is it that they can keep up?” Peter squealed, turning to look out the window for some sign of their locations.

“They are probably high-ranking rogues. We can only hope that they aren’t among the generals. This will get really complicated if we go up against one of those freaks of nature,” Trevor replied calmly, pushing his foot even harder on the accelerator as they tore through the forest’s road.

As it so happened, against his liking, the road began to wind through the woods and he found that he had to break to keep the car from skidding off the asphalt with the sharp winding turns.

This, in turn, slowed their speed considerably, making the journey even more excruciating. At this rate, there was simply no way they could escape the hunting rogues.

Trevor’s passengers went silent, allowing him to focus solely on the task of keeping them alive and getting them through this tight situation. To this, he was grateful. There was nothing easy about saving a panicking group of civilians.

During his training, he even had to learn how to calm down such a panicking crowd… and it wasn’t the easiest thing to do.

After a few minutes, Trevor had gotten used to the pattern of the swerving road and was able to keep the car moving at the fastest possible speed without causing an accident.

The only problem was:

The rogues had now gone silent.

And this silence only made him more anxious. Where were they? Had they stopped chasing them down?

As though answering his questions, the car jerked to the right suddenly, forcing the hunter to spin the wheel and floor the accelerator in the hopes of regaining control of the swerving car.

One of the rogues had rammed into the car.

Just as he was about to regain the car’s balance on the road, another large creature rammed into it on the other side. This time, the car spun a whole one-eighty, facing the opposite direction from which they had come.

Trevor was not willing to drive backwards, but what choice did he have? He wanted to shake the rogues off their tail… and there wasn’t much time to think about this.

On the other hand, his instincts flared with suspicions of being led back into a trap. His brows furrowed with unbridled frustration, “These mutts are getting on my nerves.”

Trevor stepped on the accelerator and brought the car to an abrupt halt, drifting through a neat arc that let the car turn completely on the narrow road, facing the direction in which they should have been going. The smell of burnt rubber filled the air and a deep sense of urgency and danger gripped his nerves.

They had to move. His nerves screamed in agony as an oppressive dark aura locked on the black car.

As the hunter placed his foot on the accelerator again, he noticed something from the corner of his eye. A tinge of red rushed towards the car at an alarming speed. At a speed far greater than that of any wolf he had ever seen… well, any wolf that wasn’t Katie or Lina Sirius.

What made this worse, however, was the killing intent behind the creature that was attacking them and the way it bowed its massive head close to the ground as it came closer to the car.

‘Since when do wolves trust their skulls like bulls…’

The tires of the powerful truck spun in place, puffing a great amount of smoke and sulphur from the friction…

If only this hadn’t caused a slight delay, Trevor thought, maybe then they could have got away.

A moment of inertia held them in place. While only momentous, it was enough for the wolf that was already barreling towards them at top speed.

The large charging wolf collided with the car, throwing them clean off the road and crashing through the woods on their right.

“Hold on to something,” he screamed as the car continued to tumble through the forest. As it turned out, the right side of the road, was a slope steeper than he would have liked… and the car just kept on rolling till it came to a stop in a relatively flat clearing with a scattering of a few trees.

A pair of red eyes stood at the edge of the road, staring down at the car that had just crashed down. Surprisingly, the car was not as mangled as it should have been. Courtesy of it being issued for the hunter’s mission.

This armoured vehicle had managed to keep intact despite the terrible tumble it had been put through. The wolf shook its head, trying to dismiss the pain that rhythmically pulsed through its skull.

Trevor groaned as he struggled to keep himself conscious. The fact that he was upside down, held up by a seatbelt didn’t help with the dizziness that ravaged his mind.

The feral growl that made it to his ears was the only thing that kept him from completely banishing his urge to succumb to his subconscious need to pass out. The hunter pressed the red button on his seatbelt and shielded his head as he dropped to the roof of the car.

His other hand flew to the dashboard and slammed it, allowing a long chain with two short steel scythes attached to the ends to tumble out with a metallic clang.

Careful not to cut anything or anyone, Trevor crawled out of the shattered window, ignoring the pain from the cuts he got from the shattered glass. He had a mission to fulfil. Protecting the people in that car… and that’s what he wanted to do.

Looking up the slope, he locked eyes with a pair of red eyes… ‘Ugh, were-mushrooms…’ he cursed, before pulling on the chains and holding onto the sickles by their handles.

In his hands, they looked like two short scythes with a silver chain joining them together. He kept his eyes on the wolf as he strained his ears for another presence. Something was not right about all this… Wasn’t there supposed to be at least a dozen wolves chasing them?

He finally tore his eyes off the wolf for a second and glanced to his right before looking back up.

There was nothing. The alpha rogue hadn’t taken a step towards them… which he found odd, ‘Damn it, what is it?’ Somehow, not being attacked felt even more dangerous than being attacked.

He tore his eyes to the left this time… for another split second.

There was nothing.

His nerves were getting the better of him and he was starting to feel nervous and afraid. ‘I’m a hunter… I shouldn’t be afraid. I trained for this… I earned my gift once I learned what made Katie so special. I know I can never measure up to that prodigy but I’m still special enough to get one gift.’

As he stared at the rogue ahead of him, he noticed something. Another source of his fear.

Normally the rogue would have attacked by now and he wouldn’t have to think so much… but this one was standing still. And as he looked closer, he noticed that it wasn’t looking at him either.

It looked tense… tenser than he’d ever seen a rogue. Not to mention, a rogue of this much power, no less. From the sheer size and murderous aura that rolled off this creature, he could it was at least a rogue general.

And it was staring behind him.

Trevor knew what was behind him… a car, right?

But as he slowly turned his head back, he nearly forgot about the rogue he was defending against and dropped to the ground, crawling away from the car. A strong sense of fear instinctively gripped every fibre of his being.

‘I thought the car had stopped rolling abruptly…’

Indeed the car had stopped abruptly… and not simply because it had collided with a tree. But because it had crashed into the largest white wolf he’d ever seen… a wolf so large, that it seemed bigger than the armoured truck itself.

The wolf had a black patch on its back… and it seemed to be stirring awake from a seemingly deep slumber.

‘We’re trapped…’ Trevor gulped… as the wolf lifted its large bear-like head and fluffed its white rounded ears, it stared up at the top of the slope with deep incandescent blue sapphires.