The Wolves and the Vipers

Chapter 50 - Where The Wild Things Are

There will be another update on Friday, you lucky ducks :)

"Which way?" Tyler asked. We were barely a mile from the territory, and we were approaching our first roundabout. Rhys had refused to even point out a vague area of the map to us, so we were driving blindly, relying on his directions.

"Second exit," he said from the back seat. "And then a quick left."

"You know the roads around my territory," Jace observed. "Do I want to know why?"

Rhys shrugged at him. "There isn't a pack in Snowdonia I haven't raided. Well ... except Shadowless. But that's political."

Zach gave him an incredulous look. "Are you shitting me? You were on my territory not even two weeks ago."

"Yeah. Spying, not raiding."

"Oh, right," Zach said dryly. "My mistake."

It was lovely in this car. Everyone got along so beautifully, and the scenery was just magical, and I absolutely didn't feel like throwing myself out of a moving vehicle only five minutes into our road-trip. We'd already had a second bickering match from Zach and Jaden. We'd had someone spill Lucozade all over the seats. And we'd discovered that the heater wasn't working, leaving us all freezing cold.

"I've done the left," Tyler interjected from the front. "What now?"

"Keep going west until I tell you otherwise," the rogue said.

I rested my head against the car window. Memories of last night kept reeling through my mind, and they were a welcome distraction. I was going to have to learn more about Zoe. We'd shared a bed, but I knew astonishingly little about her. She followed me around all day — she knew plenty about my life. But what she did off-shift was a mystery to me. I didn't even know where she lived.

We were driving along an unfamiliar road, heading up into the mountain range that bordered the territory. The road itself was clear, but there were deep snow drifts on either side, and the higher we went, the more there was. It was not good weather to be trekking into the wilderness with no idea where we were going.

Twenty minutes later, Rhys had us turn down a rocky single-track road, and our mountain view turned into a thick conifer woodland. Before we had got very far, the road ended abruptly in a muddy clearing. Tyler pulled to a stop.

"This is the camp?" Jace asked. There was a definite note of scepticism in his voice.

"No, this is a forestry car park," the rogue told him. "We'll have to walk from here."

I opened my car door and winced as the wind nipped at my bare skin. It turned out the seven of us had managed to warm the car up quite nicely in comparison to the outside world. I pulled my coat tighter around me and eyed the trees around us. The conifers were taller than they had any right to be, and they were keeping all but the most determined rays of sun from reaching us.

The others were getting out, too. Jace pulled the rogue from the backseat and kept a hand on him until they had him mostly surrounded. I, for my part, stayed out of the way.

"How long will that take?" Jaden demanded.

He grinned at us. "I don't know. Two or three hours. Not afraid of a little walk, are you?"

Afraid? No. But I would much rather not spend hours traipsing through the snowy woods if I could help it. Kara and I had spent enough time doing that before coming to New Dawn, and I didn't have fond memories of that time. Cold, wet, hungry and tired.

The other four wore expressions similar to mine — frowns and scowls, mostly. And it just made the rogue's grin wider. "It would be a lot faster if we shifted..."