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3.11% The Moon Goddess' Chosen / Chapter 19: Chapter Nineteen

章 19: Chapter Nineteen

The scent of fresh sap from the fallen tree had a calming effect on Cole along with the calm atmosphere in the air. The normally crushing tense moods that hang about when a wolf was failing the evaluation did not exist here. The evaluation existed to save the lives of those who still had a chance at redemption and as a result, each and every rogue that surrendered to either the hunters or the royals was immediately taken through the evaluation which would decide whether they were worth saving. Rumours that Prometheus would look into someone's future for any chances of betrayal to the werewolves were among the speculations of the guidelines that he used to judge who was worth letting to live or not.

Regardless of how rare it was for rogues to come out of the ordeal alive, there were still some that were known to have come out of it and sometimes they asked to meet with the rogues before they were thrown into such a feat. Over the past century, it had come to be known that when a former rogue got a chance to talk to another that was about to take the Prometheus evaluation, the chances of survival drastically went high which usually raised numerous questions on what exactly they would talk about and if at all there was any cheating involved. As a result, former rogues were banned from meeting those who were about to go through the evaluation.

They waited for ten more minutes before the Lycaon pack symbol vanished from the head of the rogue. The rogue's dirty grey fur began to shimmer and glow changing into a silky smooth sandy brown coat that looked far more beautiful and dignified compared to what it had before. Katie stood up from her position at the fallen tree, suspicion written all over her face along with curiosity. She came over and watched the wolf stagger onto its feet too weak to hold itself up. "Shift," Cole commanded, his eyes glowing with intensity as he said it as though to emphasize that it was a command rather than a request.

The discomforting sound of bones breaking filled the air as the wolf reverted to its human form. Katie watched, her eyes not leaving the body of the wolf, her feet unconsciously getting him around so that she could have a look at the face of the person that emerged. Something in her dark blue eyes caught Cole's attention, a glint of recognition perhaps. He looked back to see the fur finally disappear from the wolf's face, still looking at the ground. From the looks of it, the rogue before them was a boy. The boy rose up to his full height. His black hair clung to his face… something was familiar about his face though Cole could not quite figure out why that was so. At first, seeming like sweat before Cole realized it was gel and the hairstyle was intentional. The boy rose to his full height that was barely Cole's height, he was young.

The boy along with Katie vanished for an instant… reappearing a distance away, specifically the nearest tree that was standing, with Katie's hand around the boy's throat pinned to a tree. "Katie, let him go…" Cole yelled at her trying to get her to let go of the boy, but the hunter's murderous look spoke multitudes in just one expression, her grip on the boy's neck was firm. The boy struggled against her hold, trying to breathe.

"How many are you?" Katie's voice was calm, but yet she spoke with so much anger that it stopped Cole from making any more attempts at calming her down. He then noticed the hint of recognition in her eye, Katie knew the boy. "Tell me, Ash." The boy was suffocating from Katie's hold.

"How is he supposed to tell you when you are choking him to death?" Cole asked, doing his best to keep his cool. Katie stayed in that position for a bit before letting the boy fall to the ground.

"I can't stand to look at you and hold myself back from killing you at the same time. Cole, make sure Sandra gets home safe for me," she said walking away.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going for a run," she replied before vanishing, her Prometheus gift making her imperceptible to the human eye or rather more like a blur.

"Who knew Katie had anger issues?"

"She doesn't," Sandra stopped him there, her fist clenched. Unlike Katie, Sandra was more composed, but she shared the same look of anger and recognition.

"Who is this boy?"

"On the day before you came, we stopped Dexter from beating up a human boy in the halls of the main school building. I don't understand… we saved a human boy. What's he doing shifting into a filthy rogue right before our eyes?" she seethed.

The boy stayed on the ground and bowed his head low to the ground, "I beg for your forgiveness, Sandra. I had no choice."

"No choice to what… explain everything starting from your name…" Sandra yelled at him.

"Fine, my name is Ash Bradford. Up until a few minutes ago, I was a rogue, just like I have been my entire life," he said.

"Why didn't you come across us as a werewolf when we met?" Sandra asked him.

"Before a werewolf turns eighteen, there is a portion or rather some medicine that can be used to conceal their werewolf side," he said, a gasp came from Sandra at the mention of the concealment. "But werewolves that young aren't so useful in battle and so the Rogue King uses them for infiltration missions such as the one I was sent on to this school," he explained. Sandra was frozen, unable to continue questioning the boy.

"What was your mission?" Cole asked, taking over for her.

"At first, my mission was simple... to find out why this school was on top for the school with the least violence. Suspicions were going around that for that to happen, there had to be someone that was strong there," Ash explained, "but when we got there, we heard of the famous Katie Chase, but she never once fought so there was no way that we could actually tell that she was as strong as everyone claimed."

"So you fed Shaemus with ideas in an attempt to make Katie fight and see her strength," Sandra spoke up.

"I don't know the details about that. Everyone had a separate mission and mine did not involve that. I was merely summoned to help them with this ambush when the time came…" he explained before continuing his story. Later on, I was given orders to confirm the arrival of the Royal that was coming to the safest school on the planet. The Rogue king does not allow everyone to find out every part of what he wants to know. That way, if one of us is caught, he doesn't lose all the information and he does it in a way that each rogue's piece of information does not make sense to anyone other than him without the rest of the information that he is gathering all together," Ash explained, looking up with his eyes full of tears. He was crying and none of the people present was aware of when it was that he began to cry.

"How many were you?"

"Seven, just like you saw us today. Six of which you have killed… I can be sure that the other one is to die as well. It would be best if you got the information he was supposed to gather as well if you are to make more sense of what the Rogue king has in mind," he said, his tears starting to fall to the ground slowly.

"You can stop crying now. No one is going to hurt you now that you aren't a rogue anymore," Cole tried soothing the crying boy. Regardless of what he had been put through, he only looked fifteen at most. The idea of using kids to do his dirty work made Cole sick to the stomach even though his instincts told him to focus on the crying boy.

"Why are you still crying?" Sandra asked him softly noticing Cole's words had no effect.

"I know I won't be harmed now that I am not a rogue. Katie made sure I knew that besides… she's the reason I passed the Prometheus evaluation in the first place…" a heavy silence filled the air after this was revealed. None of what the boy was saying now was making sense and yet, he said it with a smile on his face while he let his tears continue flowing.

"How is Katie related to you passing the Prometheus evaluation?"

"Katie is powerful… so powerful that if the Rogue king ever knew what I found out, he would shiver in his boots," the boy said, shivering even as he said it, "but even with all that strength, she treated me with kindness and equality as though I was her comrade when we met. She bore me no hostility, even when she took care of Dexter after he'd bullied me. She made sure nothing happened while at the same time, she made her point clear… Rogues are raised to hate Royals, hunters and ordinary werewolves alike, feeding lies into our heads that make it impossible to believe anything that the Royals stand for… Katie was able to show me something else with a few kind gestures. I could go on, but after seeing this, I was able to get the confidence to take the Prometheus evaluation."


next chapter

章 20: Chapter Twenty

It was clear that Katie was not going to come back to this place, though it made Ash sad that he wouldn't get to talk to her, there was nothing the rest could do to help the situation. "Jason, Caden, take Ash to our place. He will be living with us until he finds his calling," Cole ordered them.

"Don't take too long outside. The hunters won't be happy about it if you run into their night patrols," Jason said, picking up a weak Ash and helping him walk. "There you go, slow and steady…" the soothing words continued along with the constant nagging questions, "So do rogues like… get to have mates or it's some brutal breeding mashup?"

Cole brought his hands to meet his face in disappointment, "That boy is done for. I wonder what I was thinking leaving him with Jason."

Sandra continued giggling from the way Jason was attacking the young boy with numerous questions, "Jason is an interesting character."

"Oh…" Cole said, eyeing her through his hands with a smirk on his face, "Do you like him?"

Sandra watched the alpha walk away thinking over the question, her eyes wandering up into the night sky before she answered the question, "I don't think so. I can't tell."

"Such a confused girl… this is why I love being a werewolf. There is nothing like not being sure of such a thing. The goddess handpicks our perfect matches," Cole said, puffing out his chest proudly.

"Oh, is that why you cannot stop staring at Katie every time you get a chance to?"

"Hey, don't tease me for being curious about her. Although now that I know about her and the power she wields, she scares me more than I would like to admit," he said thoughtfully.

"Were you doubtful that she could beat you in a one on one fight?" Sandra asked after careful consideration of wording, keeping her voice levelled as the subject was a touchy one.

"Normally when a pro hunter states that they can beat a Royal, they mean it through hard work and that it would be a close match, but ultimately what they are saying is that their power is comparable… but that's not the case with Katie," he explained. Shivers ran down Sandra's spine when she remembered the last detail of Katie being a royal as well. Was it really fair for the gods to grant someone so much power?

"I have known her a long time and to be honest, I can barely keep up with her. Every time she trains with me, she leaps in milestones and learns fast. It is like she has a talent for it and yet, she never once likes to show it. I decided to ask her to train me so that I could always have someone to chase after. She trains me well, teaching me new things each time she does so, she is always patient with me. When something proves to be too hard, sometimes she even helps me find a way around it," Sandra got carried away speaking about her master, her aim to show Cole that regardless of the power she held, she was still just as kind and humble as anyone else who didn't have that much power.

The two walked on for a while, Sandra leading Cole to her home so that she could also let him get back to his and call it a night. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure…"

"Why was she so angry when she saw Ash?" Sandra was somewhat stunned by the question, her mind quickly explaining to her that Cole knew nothing of the town that she had grown up in and this wasn't something that could have occurred to him in the slightest.

"Katie is the one in charge of protecting the school and where she can, this town. That means every rogue that is in sight should be wary of her and yet… they were right under her nose."

"How was she to know that there was a way that werewolves below the age of eighteen could suppress their wolf sides?" Cole said, thrusting his hands in the air in exasperation.

Sandra was speechless for a bit before answering him, "Yeah… but still, it's unforgivable… to use children as spies."

"Yeah, I hear you on tha…" a scent hit Cole's nose all of a sudden. One that he knew all too well from the brief moment he had gotten a whiff of it at the school. He hadn't had the chance to track down the source when he was still with Sandra there, but this time, he wasn't going to miss it.

"What is it?" Sandra asked him when she noticed her friend's odd behaviour.

"I smell something… wonderful," was his reply, "How close is your home?"

"We have almost reached. It's at least a ten-minute walk from here," she said.

"Get on my back. I'll get you there in a flash…"

"You don't have to… Oh, he's doing it," Cole was already halfway through the transformation, his pitch-black wolf towering almost the height of two fully grown men when he was done shifting. He got down allowing Sandra to grab hold of him and climb upon his black coat. The fur of the wolf she touched was so smooth and silky that Sandra felt like sleeping in it.

The moment Sandra was comfortable on his back, he zipped through the trees, leaping over fallen trees and weaving through the forest faster than Sandra's eyes could follow. Before she knew it, the backyard of her house, along with many others came into view. The wolf stopped exactly where the tree line ended and let her slip down. "Thank you, Cole," a pat on the head seemed appropriate even though Cole snarled when she did it, getting a laugh out of Sandra, "I know I haven't met many werewolves, but your fur is beautiful. Your mate is one lucky girl."

Sandra bid the stunned black wolf farewell before running off to the back gate and leaping over it in a series of well-timed steps on the walls and pillars. This was something she had done more than once before and once she was in, she turned on the lock procedures for the house which immediately lined wolfsbane around the entire house sealing out any werewolf and sealing any that would have already entered. Cole stayed still, a bit stunned by the readiness of these households. A close look at all the other houses told him that every other person who lived in this neighbourhood had turned on the same kind of thing. The discomforting smell of wolfsbane reached his nose forcing him back into the woods.

Once Cole was back in the woods, the alluring scent that had plagued his memory for days came back to his nostrils. He took in a deep breath, his eyes closed, allowing his senses to give him all the information they were capable of giving him. There was no telling how far the source of this scent was, though that did not matter to him. He was going to find its source no matter what. 'Mum, how will I know when I find my mate?' memory of him asking his mother came to mind.

'That is a question that many don't ask. Her scent will be the first thing you will pick up,' she would say, although every time she would say it, she would cry.

Cole started running through the forest going as fast as his legs could carry him, weaving through the forest at threatening speeds. He could smell others, hunters, as he went through the forest, which made his journey longer as he had to take a long route around them. This spurred him to run even faster than he already was, getting even more anxious to find the source. The scent kept getting stronger and stronger as he ran through the forest. 'It's impossible for me to have smelt something that is this far,' he thought to himself when he noticed that he was well beyond the borders of the town. Beyond that was dangerous territory and it was dangerous to be running in this territory. Any territory that did not fall into the protection of the hunters was labelled a dangerous zone since it meant rogues would camp in such places.

A sense of urgency and caution was starting to creep into him when he realized he was going really far from city boundaries and this was pushing his luck. The only reason he was still going was the fact the scent was only getting stronger the farther he went. He could feel himself getting closer and closer and right when he felt like he was almost there, the scent vanished. He slid to a stop, standing still, his breath coming out laboured and noisy. He had been running at top speed for twenty minutes.

He stayed silent for a while or at least tried to make his breath as quiet as he could manage using his ears to the best of his abilities to at least hear out who it was he had been tracking. A few minutes of waiting got him the first sound, "What might you be doing here?"

He quickly turned around to the voice that had managed to sneak upon him. Fear struck through him like lightning rooting him to the ground when he recognized the face of who it was that had found him or that he had found. 'What was she doing this far from the town?' What was Katie freakin' Chase doing this far from the town he was so eager to protect? The memories of the demonstration of her fear and strength were as clear as day in his memory, as well as that of how angry she was when she left them back at the hunter's training ground.


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