Fated To The Dragon King

40. Chanting To The Gods

A/N: in case of confusion, Lilly wasn't high, just hallucinating because of a high fever😅 

Phoenix:

I'd been flying for about forty minutes when Deryl's beast informed me a guard had spotted a horse running alone. The saddle was on and Lilly had used the horse because her scent was all over but Lilly was nowhere to be found. 

That scared the shit out of me, and quickly flew east back to palace ground, pushing my beast to go faster.

I might arrive back to where the horse was found in twenty-five minutes, due to flying slowly to be able to spot anything out of place was the reason it took me forty minutes to get where I am right now. But in twenty-five minutes, anything could happen and who knows what had happened to Lilly. I didn't know the exact moment Lilly disappeared, so who knows, she could have been out alone for hours, and anything can happen in that amount of time.

The staff that were attending to her informed me that she was a little bit delirious by the fever, so there's no way to know for sure what was she thinking when she decided to leave our quarters and ride a horse into the forest. She doesn't know the land, and I was so mad about her disappearing act. What was she thinking? Anything could happen to her. My enemies could find her in this vulnerable state she was in and take advantage of her. Just the mere thought made me push harder on my wings.

I hear Brax whimper on my back. He should have realized by now that we were going back.

When we arrived, before I could even shift, Brax jumped off my back onto the horse's back, which spooked the animal and it moved uneasily, but the guard holding it calmed it down. Brax started sniffing the saddle, he could smell his mother in it. He whines and raises his head, looking into the dark of the forest.

"Where was the horse coming from?" I asked Deryl.

"It was coming from the north, Your Majesty"

I nod my head.

"I'm going north. I'll take right, you take your men to the left of the forest. Inform me if you spot anything,"

They all bow and I shift, calling out for Brax. He flies onto my back and I rise to the skies and start going north, my eyes on the forest below me, eager to find Lilly. But she must be further away. Horses are fast, and if the horse came running back home, Lilly should be at least half an hour away at least, considering the sweat covering the horse fur, it'd been running for a while.

Even knowing this, I keep my eyes on the floor. I notice that at some point, the horse's tracks leave the main road to enter the woods and I lower myself to the ground to continue my search by foot. I shift looking around. The horse's tracks were faint, but they were there, and I could also smell Lilly.

Brax climbed a tree and while I walked with my eyes on the ground, he jumped from branch to branch following me.

At some point, the tracks stopped going in a straight line, making a sharp turn. That should be when Lilly left the horseback. I noticed then her track, which wasn't subtle. There were brunches broken and patches of grass missing. I wonder why she had decided to go on foot unless she fell off the horse. That only unsettled me.

That must have hurt!

I growl, displeased at my discovery.

I continue tracking my mate until I find a waterfall, but I also notice more tracks, and that only aggravated me.

Someone found her!

I ran into the cave behind the waterfall, and indeed, her scent was all over, but there was also the scent of more people. They weren't human, but they weren't any shifters I had encountered before. Who were they?