Chapter 54: What Happened to Seraphine?

Rowan-Valoria

Boy, did things unravel.

We hadn’t been able to sleep for long before Damian’s warriors found us again. Dad led us deeper into the forest, crossing the river and attempting to back track towards Mirage, but it was too late. The forest was full of wolves. We were two against an impossible force.

“What pack did that woman say she was from?’ Dad said, his voice cracking over the mind-link as we began to climb up the base of the mountains, our paws slipping on the uneven, fragile shale rock.

“Greenbriar, I think,’ I answered, my legs sore and hips aching from the exercise. I ran in my wolf from every single morning and had done so for years. But spending over twenty-four hours as a wolf was causing an indescribable exhaustion and something I had never experienced before.

Plus, I was watching my dad’s plans fall through, and he was pissed. Especially after we crested the top of a cliff face looking over the forest and our plane buzzed the top of our heads.

*Damnit!” he said, turning his head to watch it ascend into the clouds.

‘That was us, wasn’t it

‘Yes, obviously. Come on, we have no choice but to keep going. They’re pushing us into the mountains, and we’re outnumbered-‘

The mountains? What exactly are you planning,

‘I was wrong, Rowan. There’s too many of them. I hadn’t expected Damian to have made alliances with other packs in Valoria, especially without my knowledge. We have to get home

“By crossing the mountains? Are you insane? That’ll take us weeks!”

.

Howling drifted from the trees below as we continued to climb, and I winced, torn between two impossible paths.

How did I prefer to die? Being torn apart by wolves, or dying of exposure in the mountains between the North and Valoria?

‘We have no choice. They’re expecting us to travel through the forest until we reach the Northern Tier. Stop whining, let’s go.’

I followed him up and over another ridge, padding further and further into the clouds until I finally looked down, seeing a full view of what had once been Mirage. Fires burned in pockets across the city. I could see the destruction of the buildings from our perch. And there was the castle, standing like an untouchable fortress amongst fields of golden grass.

And ahead of us?

I looked up where Dad had stopped and stretched his legs.

Nothing but miles, and miles, and miles of stone.

***

One Week Later

* Who did these belong to?” I asked, pulling the jeans on and tucking in the sweater I had pulled over my head. Dad was lacing up a pair of boots, grimacing as he pulled the laces taunt.

“Really want to know?” he said through his teeth as he tied the other boot. We were sore and dead tired, having spent nearly a week trudging through overgrown valleys and over the peaks of snow capped mountains.

But the terrain we were in now was remarkably changed, the once perfectly sculpted mountains giving way to deep craters and sharp, uneven peaks. Nothing grew here, and fields and fields of boulders marked our journey between valleys. This hadn’t been what I was expecting. The mountains were far east, lined by thick, almost impenetrable forests.

We saw a flag. A familiar flag. Waving in the stiff, unrelenting breeze. The flag of Winter Forest.

The flag had marked the entrance to a narrow cave opening and inside we had found bodies.

Dad had stood at the cave’s entrance for a long time, peering into its depths. We didn’t speak as we inspected the bodies, still fully dressed under layers of rotting fabric. He counted them, one by one, and after we found their backpacks, we shifted and changed into the spare clothes they had brought on their journey.

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Chapter 54: What Happened to Seraphine?

“Who are they?” I asked, running my fingers through my matted, filthy hair. The bodies were nothing by bone by now, and must have been here for a long, long time. But their clothes were surprisingly modern compared to how old I thought they must have been.

“The missing explorers. They’ve been here for roughly fifteen years, give or take.”

“You mean the expedition you sent out when I was a kid? Really? This is them?” I looked down at the bones at my feet, my stomach tightening as the memory of their departure from Winter Forest, all of us watching and cheering them on as they disappeared into the forest, bound for the mountains.

I remembered looking back at Gemma, who had tears in her eyes as she watched her mother lead the group. Seraphine had looked back at her, smiling, and blew her a kiss.

They never came back.

“Seraphine? Is she-” I tried to remember what Seraphine might have been wearing, but they had dressed in a similar fashion for the journey. It was damn near impossible to tell them apart.

“Two are missing. I’m not sure,” Dad said briskly, tossing an empty backpack out of the cave opening.copy right hot novel pub