Forgotten Ties (Ties, Book 3.5) | ✓

Chapter 15

Early the next morning, Nim and Skye returned to the entrance of the tunnel together. Nim had half expected it to have disappeared, changed in some way, or some other weird shit, but it appeared to be exactly as it had been the night before.

Skye bent down to peer into it and frowned. "Can I go first?"

"First?" Nim asked. "You don't want me to go first and make sure it's clear?"

"Last time the monster came into the tunnel from behind me. It can't do that if you're there."

"But..." Nim started to say, then he shook his head. Skye didn't need the thought that the monster could just as easily be in front of him put in his head. "Sure."

Skye took a deep breath, got down on all fours, and started crawling.

Nim didn't shift to go through the tunnel this time, and it definitely made the experience worse. He could run like the wind on four legs as a wolf, but crawling in human form was slow. He wasn't alone this time, though. Somehow, having Skye with him made the whole thing more bearable, even if Skye wasn't much of a fighter. Having someone he needed to protect made him feel less afraid for himself.

Skye was braver about the whole thing than Nim had been expecting. He usually was. It was easy to perceive him as someone who was sensitive and delicate, and sometimes and in some ways he was, but then he'd just shrug off things that would be traumatic for anyone else. There was a certain sense of calm in looking into his eyes and realising his only concern was some mundane thing like licking the chocolate from a wrapper. It wasn't that he was unaware of everything else going on. He just didn't let it bog him down.

They emerged into bright sunlight once more and Nim let out a sigh of relief, though he knew that wouldn't be his last time making the trip. Someone had to go back and help Marigold get the kids through once the cabin was cleaned up, and Nim wasn't about to make Skye go through again.

Nim's sense of smell wasn't as good in this form, and for once that was a good thing. The cabin smelled awful. They filled a bucket they found with water from a nearby river, scavenged some soap, a scrubbing brush, and some strips of old cloth from the supplies that had been left behind, and got to work.

Skye made faces and said 'yuck' a lot, but he didn't actually seem as disturbed by the blood as Nim was. Maybe he wasn't thinking about where it had come from. About how someone could come in the night and do the same to them. Nim liked to think he could defend the others if that happened, but if a panther shifter had been caught off guard, why should he think he would do any better?

They spent hours scrubbing out every drop of blood they could find, but eventually they reached a point where all there was left to do was open the door and all of the windows and let things air out and dry. They went and sat in the garden while they waited.

"Thanks for coming with me," Nim said. "Nobody would have blamed you if you hadn't wanted to, but you did anyway."

"Well, I do what I can do, and I could do this," Skye said. "And if I do this, even though everyone thinks it's hard, then when I don't do something everyone thinks is easy, maybe they will believe me that it's actually not easy."

"If you tell me something's difficult for you, I'll believe you. I promise."

"Oh. Well, sometimes I forget the part where I tell people that."

"That may be more the issue than them not believing you, you know."

"Maybe," Skye said as he pulled up a handful of weeds. "It's a mystery and nobody knows for sure."