Chapter 201: Damsel for a Rat
((Hello thank you for being with me till Chapter 201 ! so exciting dont worry not ending any time soon, i cant even see the end of this book like sure i wrote it but its soooo far away.))
"I’ll obliterate the whole mountain," Victor growled, his wings unfurling, feathers blazing with unstable, nuclear light. "I’ll incinerate this entire range until nothing remains but her."
Dimitri blocked Victor’s path, his face a mask of frozen calm as the Eagle’s power threatened to liquefy the air. "Victor, stop. If you raze this peak, you erase the only clues we have."
"He’s right," a calm, resonant voice broke through the madness. Richard, the Orca-beastman of Leaf Team, stepped forward. He wasn’t looking at the scent-mark or the silk. He was looking at a patch of empty air in the centre of the room, his eyes narrowed as he manipulated the pressure density of the space.
He thrust up a hand, silenced the shouting husbands, and aimed his finger.
"Look at the fabric of the air," Richard commanded. "There’s a thinning here. A rift."
The husbands went silent. They watched as the air shimmered, like heat rising off a highway. It wasn’t a physical hole, but a scar in reality.
"They teleported," Richard explained, his voice clinical. "And not a short hop. This is a deep-fold jump. They’ve gone a significant distance, possibly all the way to the northern peaks. They didn’t just walk out of here; they stepped through the layers."
"Then he took her," Ivan said, his lion’s mane bristling as he stepped into the centre of the room. He took a deep, shuddering breath of the air passing through the rift. "But she wasn’t forced. Not entirely."
The husbands glared at him, their expressions lethal.
"Look at the footprints," Ivan pointed to the dust. "He was carrying her, yes. But the scent she left on the wall... It’s deliberate. It’s calm. If she were being dragged, the scent would be smeared, frantic. This was a placement. She convinced him."
"She charmed the Jackal," Lucan murmured, a dark, twisted smirk tugging at his lips despite the agony in his chest. "She made him think he was saving her. She’s leading him away from his own people, isolating him."
"She’s making herself a target so we can find him alone," Damien hissed, his jealousy flaring even as his admiration peaked. "She’s playing the damsel for a rat so we can execute him without the whole Convoy interference."
Victor looked at the rift, his golden eyes tracking the invisible line of the jump. He didn’t care about the strategy. He didn’t care about her cleverness. All he cared about was the void in his arms where she was supposed to be.
"Richard," Victor said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet whisper. "Can you track the destination?"
Richard closed his eyes, his hands weaving through the air as he felt the weight of the displacement. "The jump was sloppy. Wanderer was exhausted; he was carrying a Level 100 anchor. A girl like Felicity... she’s heavy in the spirit, even if she’s light in the arms. He leaked energy all the way to the drop point."
Richard snapped his eyes open, pointing toward the high, jagged spires of the northern range, where the clouds were heavy with an approaching storm. "There. The High Lookout. The Jackal’s den."
As if on cue, the wind shifted. It blew down from the peaks, carrying the biting chill of the high altitude. And with it, a faint, almost imperceptible ghost of a scent.
Jasmine and the sweetness of a fox in the sun.
Exile let out a low, predatory hiss, his massive body coiling as he prepared to launch himself from the bunker. "I smell her."
"We all do, and she smells scared," Victor said.
The others didn’t need a command. They flowed out of the dark, gloomy cell like a river of black ink and golden fire. The Feral Convoy was dead, but the real hunt had only just begun.
They weren’t just a team anymore; they were a collective nightmare heading for a single mountain peak.
Up in the clouds, the Jackal thought he was safe. He thought he had a girl who needed saving. He had no idea that the wind he was breathing was already carried on the wings of an eagle who had forgotten how to be merciful.
Victor stepped out into the mountain air, his wings snapping open with a sound like a lightning strike. He looked toward the High Lookout, his eyes locking onto the distant, spatial distortion.
"Hold on, Felicity," he whispered into the wind, his voice carried by the frost. "We’re coming to take you home and God help anyone standing in the way."
The pack vanished into the trees, a blur of Level 90 and 95 powerhouses, their sanity held together by a single, disappearing trail of white silk and fox-scent. The mountain range was about to learn why you never, ever take the heart out of a pack.
The distance between the coal mines and the High Lookout was a jagged stretch of vertical cliffs and treacherous ridgelines, a journey that would take a normal traveller days. For the pack, it was a race against the sun. Even at a punishing, bone-breaking pace, it would take the ground teams twenty minutes to scale the ascent.
Thane and Victor, pushing their wings to the point of structural failure, were clocking the distance in fifteen.
They screamed through the air, two golden blurs against the bruised twilight sky. But their worry in the bond wasn’t just about her safety. It was also about her confidence. They knew Felicity. Since her heat, her wit had sharpened into something lethal. They were terrified of what she would do and what risks she would take to prove she could handle herself.
"She’s going to overplay her hand," Thane shrieked through the wind, his future-sight flickering with fragmented, chaotic possibilities. "She thinks she’s the hunter now!"
Victor didn’t reply. He only tucked his wings tighter, his body becoming a kinetic missile aimed straight at the Jackal’s Nest.