Unattainable Fruit

Chapter 50: Recovery & Celebrations

Cody's POV

For the past three days I've been mostly sleeping. While my injuries were healed, my body still needed to recover from all the stress pain and stamina that I had to use.

So I've been napping and eating for three days straight, James coming up to check in me every few hours, James not having the luxury of missing a beat anymore.

The first thing he did the day after they saved me was kindly disband the Elder Council that refused to help or give him the support he needed, only keeping a few. James named Amelia Autumn the Head Councilmember much to Walter's annoyance.

Not that his opinion matters much anymore. According to James, around the pack he's now just treated as he should be, an outdated ignorant old man.

It's just little things like that that really warm the heart.

James has also been down at the beach, keeping an eye on the shores of Indrid, wanting to know if the Daemons are even in on this plan that Makayla had told us.

Though we haven't managed to get much out of her. Apparently they had brought her here, put her in wrist and ankle anti-mana cuffs and chained her to the floor of her cell that was also lined with runes and spells. They checked every hour until tweleve am when the Academy closes that she was there and obedient.

And yet, the next morning when they went back to interrogate her first thing about the conspiracies she was screaming at us and whatever plans Satan had, she was gone. Cell still locked, handcuffs still connected to the ground with no evidence of breaking in or out. Everyone checked and rechecked everything in the cell and Warriors from both packs have combed Vollmond and Wolf Woods confirming that whatever happened, she's no long our problem.

Only issue is, the leaves us with more questions than when we started, an an enemy with more information about the pack than is comfortable.

Between that and everything else, it's all just been a huge run around for James and a small small part of me is glad that I got to rest these past few days.

He hasn't been the only one to come and check on me. All of the Commanders, and Charlotte came to visit me, too, checking one me and updating me about things around the pack. Timari made sure to come and tell me about some of the new orphans that they had to bring down from the Rougelands. It made my stomach churn to think we played a part in those peoples deaths. James had tried to assure me that no one was sent here without proper cause, and while that may be the cause, who knows what all that time had done to them, especially if they managed to build families.

Who's to say what they're like when someone isn't controlling them through magic and Shadows?

How do we know what really happens there if this is the only time that any of us have actually stepped foot in that region?

Maybe it was staring mortality straight in the face and not blinking first, or surviving my first battle, but I've been thinking of things differently ever since the battle. Though honestly I've been slowly evolving since James woke me up from my waking slumber.

The world isn't so black and white, there's a whole array of colors that we know and don't that explains every inch of the world, and I'm realizing we're on a journey, few of many, to find each and every one.

I find myself thinking of the prophecy more and more. Because the Battle of Rougelands was eerily similar to the warning, or maybe call to arms, that the prophecy gave us.

Fangs, paws, mana, horns, and magic
if these cannot become one, the result is tragic

All of us were there.