Clarke Of The Grounders

Part 18 - Making Camp

Octavia POV

We come to a clearing and Clarke slows down. "We should make camp here." She says as she dismounts her horse and I notice her favoring her left shoulder. I was about to approach her, but Bellamy speaks up.

"Why are we stopping to make camp? We need to keep moving." He tells her. 'Here he goes again with trying to take charge. He needs to learn that Clarke is and always will be a better leader than him.' I think to myself.

"Are you serious?" I hear Clarke ask him. "You just told me that the 100 want me back as their leader and now you are telling me what to do."

"I didn't mean it like that." He says to her in a soft tone, like that's going to do anything. "I meant we need to keep moving or other animals will find us."

"No, the night is when the animals sit and wait. So, that is what we are going to do unless you want to get bitten or eaten by another panther." I hear her almost yell at him and see her wince from moving her shoulder. Bellamy only nods and walks away defeated.

As Lincoln makes a small fire, I walk over to Clarke and pull her to the side. "Clarke, I saw that Panther bite you." I tell her.

"No, it missed." She simply says. I shook my head in annoyance.

"Clarke, don't do that. I saw you favoring your shoulder and wince when you moved it. Let me see it." I told her sternly yet in a whisper so the others couldn't hear. She looked over to them and back at me before sighing.

"You can't tell the others." She tells me while pulling me further away from the others. I nod and help take her armor off. When we get it off, Clarke pulled her sleeve down and I can see that there are teeth holes all around her shoulder that was covered in blood.

"Wait here, I'll be right back." I tell her and walk over to my horse getting my canteen of water and some cloth. I walk back to Clarke and pour a small amount of water on it to clean it. She winced slightly and turned away. I take the cloth I grabbed and wrap it around her shoulder. Once I finish, she looks at it and lightly laughs. "What?" I ask confused.

"I guess you were paying attention when we were in the camp." She says and we both start to laugh. "Okay, now help me put my armor back on." She requests and I stop laughing.

"Why, it will only put more weight on it." I tell her.

"I know, but if I don't have it on, they can see the blood on the cloth." She tells me. I sigh and help her.

We walk back to the others laughing. "Where were you two?" Lincoln asks.

"Just catching up." Clarke responds and we are the last ones asleep as Clarke says she doesn't sleep that much. I try staying up to watch her and making sure she is okay. I don't get why she doesn't want the others to know that she was injured. Maybe she thinks she will appear weak or something.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I see is Lincoln sitting next to me smiling. "Well hello." He says. I smile back at him.

"Hi, what time is it?" I ask looking at the sky.

"It's around seven in the morning." He tells me. I look around to see Clarke walking towards us with a serious face.

"What's wrong?" Lincoln asked her.

"Two of our horses got free over the night." She tells him and he sighs.

"We are only about, ten or fifteen minutes from the shelter." I tell them and we all agree that we can double up on the horses for that long. While we are packing up, Abby comes up to me.

"Is every okay with Clarke?" She asks. I can tell she knows something up but just doesn't know what.

"Yeah, she just, she doesn't know how the 100 will take her coming back." I tell her knowing that there's some truth to it. She nods and walks away.

We all mount our horses. Lincoln and me, Bellamy and Abby, and Clarke by herself. We ride for about ten minutes when I can see Clarke leaning towards her left side. Her shoulder must be bothering her.

About two minutes later we hear voices and can see the gate. I immediately notice everyone get quiet as we enter the gate, no doubt from Clarke's Grounder armor and sword. We all jumped off our horses and everyone suddenly start to cheer. I see Clarke smile, but it soon fades, and she turns to me. She starts walking towards me, she reaches me and pulls me away from Lincoln before whispering in my ear.

I nod and take her to the medical tent we had set up a while ago. When we enter, Monty and Jasper were in the tent. They turn around and rush to pull her into a tight hug. I hear a whimper and pull them off her, telling them to go outside to greet Bellamy and Abby. They nod and leave the tent.