Shifters (Feline english version)

Chapter 31

This crazy business would never end. It was the only coherent thought that managed to come out of my exhausted brain, while I put my last strength into this umpteenth race through the woods. I had switched to automatic mode and relied more on my instinct than my reflexes to avoid obstacles. I still noticed that Jude didn't seem much more alert than I was and that we were not far from reaching our limits, both physically and emotionally. Finally, as far as I was concerned, because Jude's emotional behaviour remained an unsolvable mystery to me. I just followed him, without even trying to find my way through this maze of plants. My reflexes were so slow, that by the time I realized that Jude had stopped, I almost hit him.

He was on alert, with his bow stretched, and moving forward at slow and cautious steps. I imitated him immediately and pulled out the gun I had picked up after the fight. I looked intensely at the darkness around us in the hope of distinguishing what had put him on alert, but without success. Machinally, I stretched my mind towards him to ask him what he had seen or heard, before I realized that he couldn't hear me. Not like Feline anyway.

The strange emotional communion that Jude and I had briefly shared seemed over. "Seemed" was apparently the right word, because at the same time he turned around to give me an interrogating look. Even though he obviously didn't understand what I had intended, he still felt something. Given my failure, I decided to refocus on the present and the threat he had detected by approaching him and asking him orally, but he was quick to react. He came backwards towards me without ever letting go of his target and without making a sound.

- 'It only works when I'm in my animal form,' he told me gently in my ear. 'You will have to explain to me how you manage to do that by the way! Meanwhile, I feel one of our canine friends, straight ahead but... there's something different... Follow me and be ready, in case there are several.'

Great, I must have really been out of shape for not sensing them, because the last time I was the one who detected them first. Well, I decided to stop thinking and followed Jude, all my senses awakened. Nevertheless, despite all my concentration, my already injured foot caught in a root and I lost my balance again. I clumsily caught myself on Jude's shoulder. He grunted in pain and, out of reflex, pulled out of my grip. Deprived of my only support, I suddenly fell to my knees on the uneven ground of the forest. It was not so much the pain that surprised me as Jude's reaction. To get him to react like that, I must have hurt him pretty bad, because he was more of a stoic kind of guy. Besides, the dark spot I saw appear on his light t-shirt on his shoulder blade was proof of this.

- 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry!' I said to him quietly, trying to get up as silently as possible. 'I didn't know you were hurt.'

- 'It's nothing,' he told me as he rearmed himself and began to move forward as if nothing had happened.

- 'From where I stand, it doesn't look like nothing! Let me at least have a look, maybe I made it worse by leaning on it like that?'

He only turned around to glare at me and resumed his silent progression. Nothing had changed. It was reassuring to see that there were some things that were unalterable. Like Jude's bipolar pigheaded temper! I continued to follow him, worrying about this injury, because I saw his arm shaking more and more. Whatever he said, it made him suffer and obviously bothered him to hold his bow. I was about to insist on examining it, when the silence that had reigned for some time finally reached my conscience. If there was one of these monsters in front of us, how come we couldn't hear anything? They were only animals after all, they couldn't be totally silent. Especially since it wasn't a good sign for Worth either. Jude waved at me to stop and I saw him examining something on the ground a few meters away. As he laid his bow down, I understood that there was no immediate danger and, as he seemed to have temporarily forgotten me, decided to approach without waiting for his approval.