Alpha's Divine Commandments

Chapter 19

~Lilyan's POV~

I was soaked by the time I made it back to the tunnel passageway. It was idiotic of me to dismount the only horse capable of traversing this landscape just for it to turn around fee back without me. It serves me right for not holding my ground to warn them. For everything I've done, I need the warning to stop meddling with her plans.

I've lost Zale, now I'll lose Eden.

I still could turn back and follow their scent. Shift into my beast and track them through the frost graveyard... but then I could be tracked, leading them right into a fight.

It wasn't my fight to start, nor my duty to prevent it. I signed my name up for this to happen and traded my life for another to die.

A life for a life is the deal. Break your bond and join or trade yours for another of servitude.

"Please forgive me," I said softly, crossing over the panels above the rapids.

The water is freezing and lapping against each bend around the channels. Far off by the entrance, a crow quirked its head around, its ominous eyes pinned on my movements. Watching me move closer and closer as it took off by the time I crossed over to the other side.

And with that, she knew I tried to betray our deal yet again.

*~*~*

~Eden's POV~

I was lost in a trance. Stuck between the warm body holding me to their chest and the heavy empty feeling growing in my own. It was as if I could sense something was still there but stung like it was being ripped from my soul and bound away in chains.

Lost and empty but held so tight I could barely breathe.

His hand pressed against my forehead, and my brows frowned and grimaced. We had been moving like this for the past hour, passing an array of dead trees, decaying from the dead soil and rotting away. I once read that the dying forest housed fairies who embodied the trees to watch over the precious seedlings. A dead forest hides its own young from the outside world.

It had stopped raining as his steps echoed loudly. I struggled to open my eyes wide enough to see us move from the forest to a cave hidden in shadow. He brought my body to rest against the damp wall lining the cave entrance, a hollow chamber with mounds of sand and rock and the sounds of water gushing below us.

Where were we?

I felt weak, but small surges of energy pulsed through as my senses kicked in. Sand dunes in a cave with an underground stream, dead forest fairies, and sand dunes. I run my hand over the sand, picking it up as it slips through my fingers. No environment dome came to mind from my past studies. I pick out another handful, this time shifting through till I feel something solid. Rolling the two stones in my hand and bringing them up to my nose as hints of rotten egg make my eyes water.

Sulfer... Limestone!

We were at the capital's territory baseline. The last landmark surrounding the protective zone was a ring of mountains. Storms and flooding waterways must have carved a facet deep into the rock face.

I shift my gaze, looking for Thaddeus for confirmation.

Darting around and shifting to stand, I look around frantically, expecting him to be nearby.

I could smell traces of his scent, but it was old... where...

My goddess, he did not.

"Hush little fox, I'm right here." He cooed, wrapping a blanket around my bare body.

Startled, I wrap it around me and hold it tight, almost forgetting about my nudity. He watched in amusement as if he hadn't been the fool to expose me. If he didn't look so devilish with that smouldering smirk I would have smacked it clean.