Chapter 203: Pale Ghost in the Moonlight
Alice sat up, smoothing her tangled white and brown fur with a trembling hand. She pulled a small, cracked mirror from her pocket, checking her reflection despite the soot and the chaos. Her big blue eyes were still watery, but a flicker of her usual vanity was returning.
She shuddered, a mix of fear and envy crossing her face. "It would be a lot of work to manage one, but at least I wouldn’t have to hide in a cellar every time a Jackal looks my way. Come on, let’s get moving before the ’gods’ come back down that mountain. I don’t want to be here when they realise the valley is empty."
Up on the cliffs, far above Alice and the cellar, the air was screaming.
Sarge slammed his fist into a ledge, hauling himself thirty feet higher. "Twenty minutes is too long! My systems are red-lining, but that doesn’t matter. If she’s crying, I’m spending a month training. This ’slow’ pace will get her killed!"
Marx didn’t respond. His lungs burned as he leapt from spire to spire. He was deteriorating, youthful energy eaten by the effort. I’m weak, he thought. Just a kid playing soldier. After this, no more games. I’ll train until I can outrun the sun.
Thane blinked, seeing flashes of what was next: the Jackal waking, Felicity running. "She’s so resilient," Thane choked, gold wings shedding burnt feathers. "But she’s alone. Victor, we’re almost through!"
Dawn felt his aura flicker. As a Bull Shark beastman, he wasn’t made for high-altitude sprints, but he pushed his body to adapt, muscles tearing and healing in agonising growth. "Big training session," he grunted, eyes on the shimmering air. "We all need it. We’ve relied on Victor too much. We get her back, then we rebuild. We don’t let this happen again."
The air pulsed with violet light, the Jackal’s Nest materializing just beyond Felicity’s awareness. An electric bruise in the sky, sensed rather than seen, threatened to crack the world around her.
Victor didn’t slow down. He didn’t signal. He folded his wings and became a spear of white-gold light, leading the pack straight into the heart of the fold. Behind him, the husbands followed—a line of unhinged, protective monsters ready to reclaim their hearts.
The hunt was over. The execution was about to begin.
The silence of the High Lookout was absolute, broken only by the thin, whistling wind that whipped across the jagged peaks. When Felicity stepped inside the spatial fold, the air felt artificial, pressurised in a way that made her head throb with a rhythmic, pounding ache.
As the adrenaline from her manipulation of Wanderer began to ebb, a wave of crushing exhaustion hit her. It wasn’t just the mental strain of the kidnapping or the heat she had just endured; it was a deep, bone-weary fatigue that seemed to seep out from her very marrow.
Suddenly, her stomach did a violent, sickening flip.
Felicity scrambled away from the sleeping Jackal, her hands scraping against the rough stone floor as she lurched toward the mouth of the cave. She barely made it to the edge of the rocky shelf before she doubled over, a bitter, acidic heat rising in her throat. She vomited until her ribs ached, her small frame shaking with the effort.
"Gods," she whispered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes watering.
She felt wretched. Every sense was dialled to an unbearable eleven. The scent of the damp stone was too sharp; the faint smell of Wanderer’s musk from across the cave made her stomach churn all over again. She felt heavy, her body dragging as if the gravity pylons from the valley were still pinning her down.
And then there was the pressure in her bladder. It was the third time in an hour she’d felt that insistent, nagging urge.
What is wrong with me? she thought, her mind fuzzy and slow. Is it the jump? Did the spatial distortion mess with my internal organs?
She tried to stand, but her knees felt like water. The world tilted dangerously, the horizon spinning in a blur of bruised purples and greys. She was so incredibly tired—a type of tired she hadn’t felt since the early days of the apocalypse. It was a physical weight, a curtain of lead falling over her eyes.
She couldn’t stay near the Jackal. Even asleep, he felt like a threat, a tether to a reality she wanted to escape.
Dragging herself along the ledge, Felicity moved toward the very front of the cliff, where the air was freshest, and the scent of the coming storm was strongest. She found a small, sheltered nook behind a jagged spur of rock, just inches from the sheer drop-off.
She curled into a tight ball, her white silk dress catching on the stones, her tail tucked protectively around her middle. She felt dizzy, nauseous, and utterly spent. She knew she should stay awake, knew she should be watching the sky for the golden flash of Victor’s wings, but her body was no longer listening to her will.
Her head fell back against the cool stone, and her eyes drifted shut.
Just for a second, she told herself, her breathing shallow and ragged. Just a second of peace.
Meanwhile, below her, the mountain was a war zone. The air was screaming with the approach of twenty-five elite beastmen who were currently turning the atmosphere into a vacuum in their rush to find her. The scent of her discarded clothes was leading them like a beacon, and the fury of a Level 100 eagle was about to collide with the Jackal’s sanctuary.
But Felicity didn’t hear the roar of the wind or the distant thunder of Sarge’s footsteps. She didn’t feel the heat of the pack’s bond or the frantic, psychic reaching of Thane’s visions.
She lay on the edge of the world, a small, pale ghost in the moonlight, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep as the monsters she had tamed prepared to set the horizon ablaze.