Chapter 199: Wanderer POV
"Please," Felicity begged, her voice trembling with desperation as she grabbed the hem of his jacket. Fear flooded her eyes, making her words quiver. "Take me away from the monsters."
Wanderer grinned, a sharp, jackal-like expression twisting his lips but leaving his eyes cold. As he wrapped his arm around her waist, a thrill of possessive excitement surged through him. His spatial energy began to hum audibly, the air shimmering with urgent, violet distortion.
"Don’t worry, little one," he whispered, his face leaning uncomfortably close to hers. "I’m going to keep you all to myself."
As the world began to fold and tear, a jolt of panic shot through Felicity, her pulse thundering in her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut, her hand gripping the cracked marble with white-knuckled force. A sense of unreality pressed in as she moved, leaving the trail and plunging into the unknown with a man she intended to break.
She just hoped Victor and the pack were fast enough to hear the echoes of the space she was leaving behind.
Wanderer POV
Wanderer adjusted his hold on his girl, his heart hammering a rhythm that had nothing to do with the spatial exhaustion of a Level 92 jump and everything to do with the warmth radiating through his thin tactical jacket. He had lived his entire life in the margins, a scavenger who thrived on being overlooked, the man who moved through the world’s cracks while the broad-shouldered "fridges" like Krux pounded their chests and claimed the spotlight. But right now, as Felicity clung to him, he felt like the centre of the universe.
He looked down at her. For a moment, his sharp, jackal-like features softened—his pupils blown wide with an almost manic need. She was so small. Her head tucked against his shoulder, her blonde hair spilling over his arm like liquid silk, while each shuddering, terrified breath from her sent a surging, protective arrogance roaring through his chest.
He wasn’t a tank like Victor or a nightmare of shadows like that snake-beastman, Damien. He was lean, built for speed and evasion, often mocked by the Feral Convoy for looking more like a pre-Apocalypse office worker than a warlord.
But who had her now? Not the "King." Not the husbands.
Me, he thought, his fingers twitching with a possessive energy. I plucked a goddess right out of the hands of a god. I’ll be the one to keep her. I’ll be the hero.
"We’re almost there," Wanderer whispered, his voice gaining a feverish, obsessive edge. "The Jackal’s Nest. It’s a high-altitude lookout masked by a spatial fold I’ve spent months perfecting. It’s okay now, Felicity. You don’t have to be scared of those predators anymore. They just used you, didn’t they? My old Convoy... those dogs... they used me too. They thought I was just a tool to fetch their toys. Well, now I’m using them. I’m taking the only thing that matters and leaving them to rot in the valley."
He leaned down, his breath warm against her ear, his eyes wide and slightly glazed with a frantic sort of devotion. "I can take care of you by myself. I’ve hoarded everything we need. Silk, canned luxuries, books... I’ll protect this tiny, innocent little thing from all of them. You’re safe in my hands and only my hands."
Felicity didn’t pull away, though inside her chest, her heart was cold with a calculated disgust. She tightened her grip on his jacket, her small hands trembling against his chest in a perfect imitation of a shattered spirit finding its only anchor. "Thank you, Wanderer," she breathed, the sound of his name on her lips acting like a catalyst, hitting him straight in the heart. "I... I don’t know what I would have done. Those men, they were so heavy... so suffocating. You move like the wind. You’re so much faster than they were. You’re the only one who truly saw me, aren’t you?"
Wanderer preened, chest swelling with a dangerous, unstable pride, blind to the storm of calculation masked by Felicity’s tear-filled eyes. He missed the way her trembling fingers discreetly rubbed her scent into his collar—focusing instead on the tenderness he thought he saw there.
All he saw was his girl, a miracle he had snatched from the jaws of fate. "They’re brutes," Wanderer spat, his spatial energy flaring, turning a violent, sickly violet. He was pushing his Level 92 limits, his mind already weaving a future where he was the sole master of her light.
"They think Level 100 means you own the world. But space... space is the only thing that matters. I can put an ocean between them and us in a heartbeat. I’ll show them all. I’ll show the Boss what a ’utility’ beastman can really do when he has something worth keeping."
He pulled her closer, his arm locking around her waist with a strength that was surprising for his lean frame. He liked the way she fit against him—she was delicate, a stark contrast to the rough, scarred world he inhabited. He was tired of being the Jackal who fetched for the pack. He was the Saviour now.
"Hold your breath," he commanded, his voice trembling with a mixture of exhaustion and manic joy. "This jump is deep. We’re going to step between the layers of the world.
Just you and me, little fox. Forever."
Felicity nodded, face pressed against his neck to hide the jagged, predatory gleam in her eyes. With each pulse of spatial distortion, anxiety coiled tighter in her chest, breath catching at the electric, suffocating pressure in the air. She felt his muscles tremble under her hands—a strain hidden behind his act of strength.
Take me away, you little rat, Felicity thought, her heart clenching with cold fury even as she swallowed bile. Take me far enough that the Convoy can’t find us, and far enough that you’ll collapse from exhaustion—so you can’t fight when my husbands catch the scent I left all over you.
She made sure her tail, tucked tightly under the silk of her dress, brushed against the iron frame of the cell door one last time before they vanished. It was a faint trace, a ghost of a fox, but she knew the husbands. She knew the way Lucan would taste the air until his lungs burned, the way Victor would scorch the earth until her scent rose from the ash.