Page 85 of The Kingdom of Eternal Ice
The Werebear Territory
*ROYAN*
My instincts as a warrior kick in instantly, and I’m relieved to see it’s the same for Shayan. His expression is calm all of the sudden, as if we weren’t amidst a whole group of werebears. Our only luck is that it’s night, and we approached stealthily.
Shayan touches my arm and gestures towards a path that leads us through the territory.
This feels like a suicide mission, but my princess and my kingdom are in danger, and I will not rest until I do my part to help them. Shayan and I tiptoe around the bears, moving excruciatingly slowly not to wake them up. On the horizon I can see the night getting dimmer and dimmer; letting us know that the sun will rise soon, and then we will be in major trouble. I have no doubt that Shayan is a skilled fighter, and so am I, but not against a hoard of bears.
One of the bears snorts and grunts, and I pause. I can hear Shayan’s heartbeat going up, and I grab his arm, showing him to breathe deeply. He nods, following my lead, and breathing with me until his heartbeat is back to normal.
We should have prepared better. Shayan and I can’t even mind link. Aylin was only able to help me with mind linking over such a long distance. Maybe if we returned first to talk to Aylin again, she would have come up with something, but we jumped on the first opportunity we had.
Maybe that’s our fate, and we just had to take it.
Shayan follows my lead further along the path, but I can see the worry etched on his face as he looks at the horizon.
He gestures to me to go faster, and maybe he is right, maybe we need to make a run for it and hope for the best, or we’ll end up being the dish of a horde of werebears. Another one of the bears stirs, making me halt once again.
It’s then that a sudden smell hits me, a hint of roses. It can’t be… flowers, here? I sniff slightly, realizing that the scent leads us towards a few huge rocks and a rock face behind them. Fuck it, we have nothing else to lose. I gesture for Shayan to follow me and target the rocks. He looks at me confused, but to my relief, indeed follows my lead. I stop, sniffing slightly. The scent is getting stronger, but where is it coming from?
Shayan grabs my arm and pushes past me. He carefully brushes away some snow, and to my surprise, reveals a crevice, barely big enough for us to squeeze through. I nod at him, and he pushes himself through, groaning slightly when he has to tug at his bad arm. Some of the bears stir again. The hell with it! I give Shayan a push, pressing him through the crevice, before following suit. Out of the corner of my eyes I can see one of the bears getting up, and then a thundering growl echoes through the area.
“Fuck,” Shayan curses, grabbing my arm and tugging at it.
“Harder!” I breathe out. Some of the bears have noticed me and start to chase towards me. I have no chance to defend myself against them if I’m stuck like that.
“Suck your stomach in!” Shayan says.
“I have no stomach,” I hiss.
“Then, suck your non-existent stomach in!” Shayan commands. “I’m not going to leave without you, so you better suck it up! Literally!”
“It’s you who has to return to your…” Mate, I want to say, but swallow the word down before I can say it.
“Maybe you have someone waiting for you, too,” Shayan retorts. “Don’t you wolves believe in fate!?”
We do. The sweet scent of roses hits me again and with newfound energy, I press myself further through the crevice. I can feel my side being twisted and my muscles being strained, before I finally free myself and stumble against Shayan.
Growls and hisses can be heard from the other side of the rock face and I pause my breath to see if the werebears can follow, but even in their human form, they tend to be bulkier than wolves, and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Did you get hurt?” Shayan asks.
“Just some cuts and scratches, but my wolf will heal me,” I assure him.
“Let’s get away from here. I don’t trust the bears not to follow us,” he says.
He is right. His words take me back to the present, and I turn around to look at our surroundings. We are inside of an underground passage, it seems. “Handy,” I mutter when the smell hits me again.
“Do you smell this too?” I ask. “Roses?”
Shayan looks at me like I have lost my mind. “No, I don’t smell anything aside from the rotten flesh of these bears outside.”
“It’s a sweet scent… it led me here, and helped me find this passage,” I say.
“Then, let’s follow it further,” he says. “It saved us once, so I will put my faith in you and your instincts.”
I nod, relieved that he isn’t questioning me, and push past him to lead the way. The underground passage happens to be a whole labyrinth and there are scents all over the place. It seems like several individuals pass through here, so maybe this is where we were supposed to walk through all along. I can’t believe our luck!
