Helping the Wolves (Madison Joshi and the Wolves series- Book 2)

|34| Madison

The door that they were now supposed to walk through was different than the one that they came in through. Just before they were supposed to walk in, a faerie came in with a tray with eight glasses. Maddy eyed the drink carefully. If it was faerie wine, Maddy didn't want to be near it itself, forget drinking it. Without hesitation Brigette, Cordelia, Axel and Nick took one glass each and drunk it. Maddy, Xander, Alexa and Jeremy were still contemplating whether they should drink.

"This drink has been spelled. It is some sort of simulator. Only once you drink it, will the competition start," Tatiana assured them.

Maddy sighed and picked up one glass. They would have to drink the liquid anyway. If they didn't delay the process, they could reach Leia faster. When Maddy finished drinking the liquid, she opened her eyes to find that nothing seemed unusual. Nothing was blurry so the liquid definitely wasn't faerie wine.

When Tatiana talked about simulators, Maddy imagined that it would be something like the simulator in the Divergent series. However, they weren't strapped down to any chair. Neither did anything seem unusual.

"You have only an hour. Five minutes before the competition ends, a clock will appear in front of you so that you can time your actions accordingly. There is only one rule- no one should get killed in the simulation."

Several faeries came in. There were ten in total. All of them together were carrying the two guns that the participants would be using in the simulation. Maddy grinned when she saw that it needed ten faeries to carry two guns. That would mean that the faeries wouldn't be able to carry it while flying.

One gun was handed over to Xander and Alexa. The two of them together managed to carry the gun. Unlike the werewolves, the faeries didn't have additional strength. They were as strong as humans. It took all the four faeries from the opposite teams to carry their gun.

When Maddy stepped outside the door, all she could see was snow. So that was what the dink was for. The entire place was covered with layers of snow and at some distance was a huge mountain. The mountain looked to be never ending. Kind of like the plant from Jack and the Bean Stalk. Maddy felt dizzy just thinking about climbing it.

As she started walking, she started shivering because of the cold. Wearing a simple top seemed stupid. She barely had her arms covered and it was snowing.

"Remember, it is just a simulation. It isn't actually cold. The drink is tricking our brain into thinking that it's cold. This isn't real," Jeremy murmured.

He was the only one who wasn't shivering. Even Alexa and Xander's teeth were chattering.

Alexa bent down and scooped a lump of snow. "Seems pretty real to me."

Jeremy shrugged. "I don't know how this works exactly but I did stop feeling cold when I told myself that it wasn't real."

Maddy figured that she could try it. Only when they stopped themselves from getting hypothermia, could they go search for the egg. The faeries had flown away, as soon as they had stepped into the mountainous region. They left their gun in the snow just like what Jeremy had anticipated.

Maddy closed her eyes and imagined that the sun was shining brightly overhead. It was so sunny that Maddy was sweating even though all she was doing was standing in one place. And just like that, Maddy stopped feeling the biting cold. She stopped shivering. Hell, she was starting to feel warm and sweaty now!

Maddy opened her eyes to see that the others too, had stopped shivering.

"Now what? Do we leave the gun or take it with us?" Alexa asked

"Let's leave it. There is only one bullet in the gun anyway. We'll take the bullet from this gun and the gun that the faeries left behind. That way they won't be able to hurt us even if they decide to use the gun," Jeremy suggested.

The idea was really good. Maddy didn't know anything about guns so she just inspected the surroundings. Pack training included knowing about all sorts of guns so the other three knew exactly what to do.

One they were done, they started walking towards the mountain. Everyone knew that egg was most likely kept at the peak of the mountain. Tatiana would definitely want the faeries to win which was why she would have kept it in the highest place possible, that is, the mountain peak.

It took some time to trudge through the snow. It slowed them down which was another advantage that the faeries had. When they did reach near the foothill of the mountain, Maddy knew there was no way that they could climb the mountain. It was too steep and there wasn't any readymade path for them to take. They didn't even have any ropes to help their ascent.

"I could try climbing it," Xander said but even he sounded uncertain.

Jeremy shook her head. "No one is going to climb the mountain. That is suicide. We need to find a better way to do things."

"Maybe we could search for the egg in another location," Maddy said. At least they could do something and not just stand at the base of the mountain and wonder what to do.

Alexa shook her head. "We should wait for the faeries and then steal the egg from them when they climb down the mountain. Remember what Tatiana said? The competition isn't about who gets the egg but who has the egg at the end of the hour."

"But why would they climb down the mountain? They know that they are safest up in the air."

"They will most likely try to put an illusion on the egg and then bring it down. They think that we will try to climb the mountain. They wouldn't want to take the risk of us reaching there. They'll hide it somewhere after putting an illusion," Xander said as he looked around as though he was searching for the faeries.

The four of them agreed that it was better to wait for the faeries and then ambush them. There were some huge pine trees that were covered in snow. The four of them hid there. Now all they had to do was wait.