The Mission
2299 Words
THALINA’S POV
I stood there right in front of the very men who mocked and abused me before raising my snout and letting out a powerful howl.
The rogue wolves shrieked in fear. Some even scrambled and ran away tumbling into the forest. Greg looked at me with pride in his eyes while Felix continued drinking his wine.
“f**k! She is a cursed wolf!” Dirk wailed, pointing his fingers at me hastily. “This might be the punishment of the moon goddess after we ransacked the monastery!”
“Shut up!” shouted another rogue wolf. “She’s just another wolf. Let’s kill her and sell her body parts and fur to the collectors!”
“Dave is right!” said another. “No matter how strong she is, she can’t win over our number!”
They erupted into a consensus. Seconds after, Dirk leapt up from his seat ready to shift to attack me first but before he could do any of that, Greg already unsheathed his sword, jumped in the middle of us and put the edge of the blade on Dirk’s throat.
“Take another step and I’ll have your head rolling before your very feet,” he warned and bared out his fang.
Everyone gasped seeing how serious Greg is.
“Ah, the knight-in-shining armor!” Dirk laughed mockingly at him but took a side step to avoid the sword. “I never knew you’d take a liking to our slave girl.”
He spat on the ground cackling at the murderous glint in Greg’s eyes.
“Did you f**k her already? Man, you should have told us so we could share her!”
The rogue wolves hooted jeering with each other prompting Dirk to continue.
“Is she delicious? Did she bleed? I bet it’s her first time.”
Greg blinked and then coldly swung the sword in the air, cutting Dirk’s right ear precisely. Blood spurt out sprinkling the ground.
“f**k it!” he cried in pain holding his mutilated ear. “Greg Sullivan!”
“Enough!” the captain howled and shattered the glass on his hands. “Leave us alone! All of you!”
Instead of obeying right away, Greg removed his coat and covered me with it as I shifted back into my human form.
“I will be just around,” he whispered before disappearing into the dead of the night.
Felix motioned me to sit opposite him on the destroyed table and offered me another glass of wine.
“You have a majestic wolf. It will be a waste to keep you here only as our slave.”
Coming from the high of shifting into my wolf, I felt nauseated and overwhelmed rendering me speechless.
“I have a proposition for you. If you successfully finish it, then I will free you from being my slave.”
My eyes widened and I quickly lifted my head at him. “A-Are you sure?”
Is he telling the truth or he’s just trapping me?
“Only if you can complete the mission.”
“What is it?” I eagerly asked.
I will do anything for me to get out of this hell!
He leaned back and took out a dagger from his pants. “You will infiltrate the Royal Noble Academy disguised as a noble.”
The Royal Academy Noble? I heard from Sister Celine in the monastery about it. It’s a prestigious and the most expensive school for the wealthiest and most powerful werewolves in the whole state of Moonshrine.
Sure, I can do that. I can pretend to be a noble. I can learn it.
But what should I do there?
As if reading my mind, the captain revealed my mission.
“Once you are there, you have to make sure that you will blend in the crowd as their own in order to kill the son of the lycan king.”
Blood drained out of my head as cold sweat broke out of my back.
“W-What?! K-Kill the lycan king’s son?”
My heart twists in a mix of doubt and fear. This mission is atrociously dangerous and one that comes at a very high price.
I will kill someone. I will have blood in my hands. And there is no guarantee that I will not end as a cold corpse in the process.
I hesitated.
But this might be my only chance to break free from the rogue pack. This is better than being stuck here and be continuously violated by these f*****g rogue wolves.
“Why? You can’t do it? Then this conversation is over. You!” he ordered a rogue wolf on standby. “Chain this slave right now!”
“Wait!” I finally found my voice after a brief contemplation.
I locked eyes with the rogue wolf captain before making a decision. “I can do it! I can kill the lycan king’s son.”
A grin crawled out of his mouth. “Really?”
“Yes. I can do it,” I firmly declared, shutting down the doubts in my head. “I will surely complete the mission and you will fulfill the end of the deal by freeing me.”
Felix reached for my cup, cut his own palm, and squeezed his blood on it and did the same with his own cup. It’s a blood promise, a compact made to ensure that our contract was binding. Anyone who will not abide will be cursed forever.
“Good but I have to warn you this early, Thalina.”
He pushed the cup back into my hands, his cold eyes squinting into a threatening glare.
“If you fail… your freedom won’t be the only thing you lose.”
I felt acid rising into my throat before I gulped it down with the wine and the blood of the captain. Given the situation, I am very much aware that he can definitely kill me without batting an eye.
“I won’t fail.”
That is why I definitely have to kill the lycan king’s son! For my freedom! For my new life ahead!
“You’re not doing that.”
I heard Greg’s voice behind me but I just kept on looking at the moon above while holding the necklace around my neck. After settling things with the captain and agreeing to leave by the next day, I came to our secret spot in the forest where he taught me the basics in fighting.
“Do I have a choice?” I uttered softly weighing the non-existent choices that I have.
Being a slave or a murderer. Those are just the two things that I can be now.
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me enough to make my tears fall. “Damn it, Thalina! The Lycan King’s son is the most protected werewolf in the entire state! Sure, you have an extraordinary wolf but you are not trained for that!”
He threw me a piece of wooden stick from the ground to which I immediately caught beckoning me to fight him.
I stood up, my knees shaking and blocked his attack.
“Greg, I want to live a normal life. This is the only shot of freedom I have.”
We circled each other, breathless, the ground littered with broken twigs beneath our bare feet. Every strike against each other was more than what we are showing.
It was restraint frustration for him while mine is a mix of guilt, fear, and determination.
His blows came heavy and punishing, as if he could make me bend to him through sheer force. Mine were frantic, each swing fueled by the storm inside me.
“You cannot do this!” He easily knocked the stick clean from my hand and gripped my face. “Listen to me, Thalina. This is practically a suicide!”
“I will complete the mission and I will kill that son of the lycan king no matter how much it costs me!” I snapped, shoving him away with a sharp twist of his wrist.
“I cannot live being a slave forever! I am so sick of being mistreated and abused. I want… I want a different kind of life this time and if I have to kill someone to do that then I will!”
My tears continued streaming down my face as he stared at me without any emotion in his eyes.
After a while, he slowly wiped my tears away and held me in his arms.
“Can you protect yourself now? Can you promise me that you are not going to be the same kind of girl I came upon here? Abused. Bullied. Hopeless.”
“You taught me enough. Thank you so much,” I said, a little bit detached and dismissive.
Greg smirked before he slowly let me go and turned his back without sparing me a single glance.
A Painful Goodbye
THALINA’S POV
Since our conversation in the forest, I felt Greg slipping away from me as he tried to keep a distance from me. Sure, he still growled at Dirk and any rogue in the pack who mocks me any time they want but any more than that, he grew distant from me or at least tried to.
But tonight, I decided to talk to him because tomorrow would be the an entirely different scenario. I might not survive the Royal Noble Academy and I can’t lose my chance to talk to him before I go.
I sat by the fire with some of the snorting disagreeing rogues who can’t accept that they lost a slave in me. Staring into the flames waiting for that familiar scent to surface, pretending I want its warmth when all I want is to see Greg safe from their looting nearby.
“The little wolf is waiting for her knight-in-shining-armor,” Dirk began the teasing game followed by the jests from the other rogue wolves.
“Greg’s not coming back. The hyenas might be having a feast on his bones right now,” Jason egged on, his lustful eyes boring at my body wrapped in big clothes.
The captain led some of the rogues to a nearby clan of hyenas to ransack and to steal their supplies.
“Shut up!” I growled at him. “He’ll be back. He’s got a very strong wolf unlike all of you here.”
I felt it every time he’s teaching me. His wolf is very near to the surface, always itching to come forth every now and then passing that beastly reserved power into Greg himself.
“Ohh! She’s fighting back!” another rogue commented while eating a raw beef, blood dripping to his boots. “The captain’s words got into her tiny head!”
“The child’s got spike burying you, Jason!”
Hearing that, he got up ready to pounce on me because his fragile ego must have been broken.
“You b***h! What did you say to me?!” he stormed on my front pointing his claws at me.
I met his eyes without any tinge of fear in me. “Scratch me and you will have a lot of explaining to do to Felix.”
“Damn f*****g b***h!”
I grinned afterwards. The captain considered me a weapon so I might as well begin acting as early as now.
“She just wants to be banged tonight before she departs to her death tomorrow,” Jason said, still pissed off.
“Greg should hurry up. He should mate with his little tamed virgin before he leaves tonight,” Dirk rode back the mockery.
I was frozen on the spot, wide-eyed.
What did he say? Greg is leaving the pack tonight?
The look on my face gave away my feelings earning more laugh from the chauvinistic males.
“The b***h did not know!”
“Oh, Greg kept her in the dark!”
“That f*****g bastard is a player!”
Footsteps crunched softly behind me and I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.
The mix of heady blend of raw earth and blood made me heady. Greg’s scent was wild, untamed just like his personality assaulting me.
Excitement rushed through me but was quickly replaced by sadness seeing his ripped body soaked with the blood of hyenas while he’s wearing a grin on his face.
The rogue wolves erupted into a celebration huddling around the fire drinking and merrying after another successful looting.
Feeling left out, I withdrew from the group and made my own fire away from them. Not long after, I sensed Grey on my side.
He brushes a strand of hair from my face, his hand lingering too long before giving me a cup of wine. My heart beat rapidly feeling a kind of unique pull to touch him but he immediately he pulls back sharply, cursing.
“You should be asleep by now. Tomorrow won’t be easy for you,” he said in a low voice and drank the wine that I did not receive.
“Neither will be tonight,” I answered knowing that he will leave me tonight without ever saying goodbye.
Greg crouched beside me, the dim fire throwing shadows across his face. For a moment, he only stared at me, a bit too intently, before caressing my cheeks. His hard, penetrating stare was heating my blood.
My wolf growled in satisfaction relishing the feeling of Greg’s touch.
“You mean more than you should to me,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with hunger that both thrilled and startled me. It made my wolf growl in excitement.
I shot him a surprised look with parted mouth.
What does he mean by that?
- Writer
