Behind Enemy Lines | 2

Chapter Five

Hey everyone! I'm sorry for the lack of uploads for these few weeks; I've been on holiday with my family, then I was caught up with Uni/College things that I literally had no time to upload. The next three days are literally the only days I have to myself! To make it up to you, I'm doing a THREE DAY UPLOAD. One chapter a day for the next three days; One Tuesday (today), one Wednesday, one Thursday. They'll vary depending on time, but definitely within those days [AUS EST SYD].

I hope you look forward to tomorrow's chapter, and I hope you like this one! It's short, but it's meant to be :P There are long chapters in the run through, it's not a short paged book. [10,000 up to Chap. 5]

Again, Enjoy!

Libby xx

Thalia’s jealousy was too much. Elijah only smirked as Thalia carried Raven with no difficulty, bar the frown on her dirty face. He’d reached for Raven to carry them back to their next camp but Thalia quickly intercepted.
“Shut up.” Thalia snarled as she walked faster. Raven’s head bobbled against Thalia’s shoulder, her eyes still firmly shut from the vampire ambush. Elijah threw his head back in laughter. His green eyes danced as he looked to his Princess.
“I said nothing!” Elijah taunted, nudging her Raven-free shoulder in glee. Thalia snarled at him, but her brown eyes held amusement.
“You were thinking it!” Thalia snapped, glaring at her mate. She was embarrassed by her jealousy but her wolf would not have her Elijah hold another female. “It’s one of the most dominant traits in wolves, I’m allowed to be jealous!”
“So you were jealous?” Elijah coaxed. He raised an eyebrow and adjusted the camper bag on his back as he stared into Thalia’s dark eyes. She only snarled viciously in response before Elijah’s laugh ran through the forest around them. Raven stirred in Thalia’s arms, as though she sensed the amusement in Thalia and was repulsed. The mood dimmed to sorrow immediately, washing away all traces of the laughter before.
“What do you think happened?” Thalia whispered, but Elijah heard her. He stared at the scars covering the pale red-head and compared them to his own.
“She has knife scars, no bullet wounds.” Elijah stated. “Of course, needle marks. Probably from whatever those suckers injected into Raven… There are burn marks from the silver cuffs so it wasn’t that… There are small nicks on her hands, probably from her nails when they were-“
“Elijah.” Thalia pleaded. The green-eyed hunter looked up to the Princess and saw just how broken she was. Her brown eyes were wide in shock and horror, but more importantly guilt. After an unwavering stare she looked back down at the girl in her arms.
“Sorry…” Elijah stammered, “I didn’t realise…”
“Elijah, Raven was our mission. She was meant to be rescued by us.” Thalia spoke. “We should have gotten her out sooner.”
“We didn’t know then Thalia!” Elijah snapped, but the guilt was eating at him. “Take justice in that we actually got her out, and not just left that door unlocked. The only guilt we should carry is that   she was left in there longer than she deserved; and she deserved none of her time there.”
Thalia glared at her mate with such ferocity that he stilled under her dark gaze. It was the same look that a variety of his former superiors had, the look of a predator. “It is my duty as Princess of the Wolves that things like this don’t happen to my packs.” Thalia spoke with a new sense of wisdom. “I failed Raven Elijah, that’s something I cannot just let go.”
Elijah fell into silence after that, trekking ahead of the stubborn Princess to find out about their next camp location. It was the final stop before their home base, and while they had only been travelling for two days, Elijah worried about his comrades at the base. They knew their orders, but if they were ambushed then the chances that they were as well are high… he just hoped that his training for them worked.
The hunter spotted a small marking on the trunk of a tree, near its roots. If someone had been looking for it, they would have easily found it. But to those who were merely running or walking past, they wouldn’t have paid attention to the missing bark on the trunk, removed in such a way that it gave off a symbol of a claw. It was the symbol of the hunters, a canine. Resembling the fangs of a wolf and a vampire, it was the symbol of their prey, their targets. Elijah halted in his steps, Thalia stilling behind him. While she used her heightened senses to determine the danger, Elijah checked the area around them. It hadn’t been moved, there were no physical traces of vampires or wolves running through; they always left broken shrubs in their wake.
“Clear.” They spoke in unison, making eye contact briefly before Thalia set Raven down against the trunk once more. Lulling at the movement, Raven’s head dipped in fatigue before she shakily opened her eyes. Her haunted hues looked between the hunter and the princess before she slowly blinked. Still affected by the rapid exhaustion of her unconsciousness, she tried to get back to sleep. Elijah, however, saw the opportunity of her weak state of mind.
“Raven?” He asked, earning another dark glare from his woman. “Raven can I ask you something?”
Raven blinked heavily, before a small smile overcame her features. The slightest trace of dimples on her cheeks showed as she replied.
“You… You just did.” She smiled, as though remembering her youthful spites. Thalia’s eyes filled with sorrow slightly, before confusion filled on what Elijah was planning.
“Raven,” Elijah continued as though she hadn’t made the first joke out of her involuntary jail time. “What happened in the vampire house?”
Thalia snarled at Elijah’s questioning, but his dark green gaze was locked with the small red-head before him. The slight smile on her pale face had disappeared in that instant, her grey eyes darkening not because of the topic, but how grave it was. Raven trembled with emotional pain as she recalled everything about her… her… what could she even call it? It wasn’t a jail sentence; she had committed no crime worthy of her time. Torture? It was only a segment of the time she had spent there.

Even Hell seemed too light for what happened to her.

Raven’s eyes broke and flashed with nostalgia and fear as what happened to her flowed through her eyes. Her hand shook as she grasped the roots beneath her, needing that stability of what was reality and what was in her mind. Her grey eyes were wide as she witnessed again and again what her demons did to her.  Elijah leaned back as Raven started to twitch, Thalia pushing him away from her. He landed in the dirt, winded, before he blazed with anger and glared at the Princess.
“THALIA!” He shouted in anger, spitting out remnants of dirt from the fall. His wolf mate stood over him at his feet, her dark brown eyes almost black from the surface of her wolf.
“She’s. My. Wolf.” She snarled, a ferocious wild beast coming forward from her mind. “Under. My.  Guard.”
Elijah slowly backed up from the black-eyed chaos, not daring to make a move for his strapped weapons without a clear opening to knock her out. Thalia watched him with night eyes, not moving an inch in her verbal attack. “Thalia…” Elijah tried, but her eyes darkened another shade. Raven whimpered at the onslaught, immediately taking Thalia’s attention. She sprang into her golden wolf, huddling up close to Raven.  Her huge head snuggled under Raven’s shaking arms, her body curling up next to her in comfort. Raven’s hands still shook as she rested them on Thalia’s coarse fur, her body instinctively curling towards the warmth, but her gaze was locked on a lone leaf on the ground. Unwavering.

The sheathing of a long sliver of blade from a case…

The scars adorning the backs of her knees and on the joints of her arms throbbed, like it was happening all over again. Thalia’s warmth ran through her arms, immediately erasing the mental illusion. This was reality… You’re not back there… Raven assured herself, before slipping into another memory.

The gory sound as it cut into her veins, squelching dark red blood from her… Screams as high as the clouds and as pain-filled as a mother losing her daughter to monsters…

 Light green, grey eyes jumped into her vision as she remembered her screams. Raven started to hyperventilate, her grey eyes darting back and forth as she recalled the worst part of it all.

Evil, manic laughter behind it all, cackling as his plan came together…

Raven flinched. Thalia gently nudged her starving stomach, bringing her out of her demonic dreams. Her breathing settled as she laid her knotted head on the Princess’s back. Curling around her, Raven embraced the light warding off her darkness. Her eyes were still wide as she clutched her powerful beacon, desperate for the darkness to go.

But Raven knew it wouldn’t.

Her dark wolf smiled in the back of her mind, eyes sparkling in an evil similar to that circling her mind. The laugh ran clear and true like the needles he imbedded into her… Raven shivered, causing Thalia to press more against her.  Raven calmed her breathing yet again, slowly closing her eyes.  She heard Elijah making a sling for him to sleep in, and the buckles attaching it to the tree to their left. Focusing on the reality around her, she attempted to ignore the darkness in her mind.
Again, Raven knew she couldn’t ignore it for long. It lingered, slowly crawling forward to her subconscious, and it would soon cloud her vision.

She couldn’t ignore what was part of her from the beginning.

No apologies for cliffhangers... just saying ;) xx