Nereyda

Chapter 9 || White is Fading

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Chapter 9 - White is Fading

Nereyda

The wolf chased me down a corridor of nothing. My naked feet clashed against the infinite black repetitively but the lack of anything around me meant that I travelled nowhere. I just ran and ran, away from the murderous white wolf and towards nothing. I glanced over my shoulder several times, wanting to ascertain that there was a reason for my desperation and I was not running from nothing as well as into nothing.

I could not let the white wolf catch me, I had to get back to the castle. I looked behind me once more and tripped over air. The white wolf was in fact not white at all. He was light consuming black, opaque, matt and growling.

My stomach fell out from under me, plunging into the deep black pits below. The black wolf pounced, blue eyes glowing and salivating jaws snapping.

I fell further into the darkness, the wolf slipping further and further away from my line of thought. I had somehow managed to rid myself of the ghastly, somewhat macabre image. I welcomed the nothing and drifted through it easily.

My legs shifted slightly, rubbing against the familiar silk of my dress but also against the rougher texture of what I could only assume was linen. I could feel my soft hair curling at my neck and the restrictive corset, tight around my rib cage.

The smell of the forest reached me, pine trees and undergrowth. My limbs felt achey, unused.

My sticky eyelids blinked awake, eyes spinning to take in my surroundings. The grey space around me was foreign, the low roof of the tent hanging just a couple of metres above me. Somehow I knew that I was not on Snow Leopard territory anymore.

Fear crept up my spine at the rustle of the trees outside, the wind blowing through the hanging branches unforgivingly. There were male voices shouting outside, sounding as if there was some serious commotion. One voice rose dramatically and I caught the words, "What the fuck!" before a fleshy thud reached my ears. I knew that there was a fight breaking out outside and I had no idea how to react.

I felt like I was seeing the world through a thick, heavy mist. The back of my head still throbbed with the remainder of my headache and my vision continued to blur in and out of focus. The thought of my headache brought my thoughts back to what had caused it in the first place and I felt my face heat with the blood of a blush. The headache worsened.

I knew that I needed to get a hold on myself, I couldn't just go on fainting whenever I felt any kind of emotion. However, as much as I wanted to be able to control my leopard, I had no means of doing so. I had tried everything over the years, both with my tutor and by myself but the only thing that allowed me to stay composed was when I blocked out my beast completely. There was no other way.

I rose from where I lay sprawled on a palette of black silk blankets and hesitantly started to make my way out of the tent. The small space had started to echo with the pitter patter of falling raindrops, the deafeningly sharp sounds incensing me to leave the tent. That and I was insanely curious about the fight outside. I wondered where Braeden was.

I crouched low as I crawled out of the tent, ducking under the hanging canvas covering the entrance. The grass was wet under my bare feet, the mud sinking in between my toes. The howling of the wind was twice as loud now that I was out of the tent, my hair whipped around me.

I wrapped my arms around myself as goosebumps sprung up all over my skin. I squinted through the darkness and my flailing hair, trying to see where I was.