Blood Ties

47

A new dawn rises
~
Cadence
~

Swords clashed against claws and arrows collided into fur.

Cadence could nearly smell it, the stench of the foulness of torn skin and fur, they were drawing back. The threat had shifted its course.

"Kill every single one, none of them leaves this pack!" Cadence bellowed.

The last remaining hunters listened, intuning the Larren hunter's commandments and barricaded the door.

Had they won? Cadence didn't know, she couldn't hear the outcries of the others from above the stairs, but she knew something had changed.

The werewolves were trying to run, draw their armies back and Cadence couldn't allow it to happen.

Hunters dying, werewolves and lycans too, Cadence would leave no room for these last wolves to flee.

Tristan reloaded his gun and shot bullet after bullet at the wolves stuck with them in the dungeon.

Erisa had to put her strength into pulling the arrow out of the dead werewolf's chest and strung her bow back to shoot again.

"That's my girl!" Cole cheered.

Ignoring him, Erisa dashed back over to Cadence, her hair disarray and face coloured red.

"He's trying to piss us off." Erisa hissed at Cadence who pierced her sword through and through, stabbing into skin, bones and fur.

Cadence knew that, for whatever reason was motivating him, he had wiggled his way through the cracks and jabbed at the last standing hunters with pitiful mutterings that reaped with sarcasm and under-the-breath threats.

Perhaps he was bored, maybe he was biding his time, perhaps he had nothing else. They knew his indifference and how little he cared.

He had a human body with no fragment of a soul, he was rotting away as these dead wolves would, the only difference is he would live ... for now.

"Well, it's working!" Cadence shouted in response and swung her sword back.

"Why would the wolves be running away? They can't free their Alpha, so they admit defeat?" Erisa asked the person that had no answer.

Maybe they had run out of fighters, maybe they were losing and needed to regroup — recruit more soldiers to return to finish what they started.

"It's because they got what they came for," Cole answered for Erisa, the tease in his voice cheeky with mischief.

Without warning, Cadence and Erisa whipped around, their faces stricken with anger.

"Got what?" Cadence questioned, sensing the air around her alter. They didn't get Cole.

Did they find Rexton? Cadence shook her head thoughtlessly at the slightest consideration. No, he was safe — safe in the underground where no one could find him.

Footprints were retreating, scattering out of the dungeon and back upstairs. Tristan and his followers tried with all they could to stop their enemies' escape.

Cole said nothing and rolled his shoulders back, looking stiff and uncomfortable from being stuck in metal and chains for hours on end.

"GOT WHAT?" Cadence roared and gestured the sword at him, the blade peering through the bars and toward his head.

Cole showed no fear and even leant toward the tip, his skin meeting the silver point with a sly grin echoing across his cracked lips.

Cadence had grown sick of Cole's antics, telling so little with so much more lingering behind his words. She was eager to finish him off, pierce that sword straight through his skull and have one more enemy gone.