Raeliana's Heroes

A Punishing Victory

After the quick realization that Leo hadn't put any saddles into the wolf houses, he ran through the house to get some and came back with his trusted pal, Fire, the wolf. Boris wasn't much of a riding dog, so Leo was forced to find another dog to fit his needs for success. Fire fit all of them. Quick, smart, strong, agile. There were rare occasions Fire was beaten in a race. Though, most of the time Leo let newcomers win. There were certain exceptions for certain people he had to let by. But this time, Leo was going to try his hardest to win.

Just as Leo came threw the door to the multi-color room, Amelia walked out of the Girl's door with Rocky.

Damn it. Leo thought, immediately knowing why Amelia had picked that particular wolf.

She walked up to him with a smile. "So.....Jasmine Barra. Who is she?"

"A friend of mine." Leo smiled back. "Like everyone else who made it to the Champions Rooms. Why do you ask?"

"You know why I'm asking." Amelia said. "No friends for two years? Then who is Jasmine?"

Leo sighed. "Okay, well I guess I should explain myself-"

Leo was interrupted when there was tremendous thumping in the Boy's room and Jamie burst through the door with Trevor on his heels as Jamie held up a dark brown wolf to Leo's face. "Jack Riley! Who is he!?"

"Ah, so you noticed that too?" Leo laughed.

"Why the hell are you laughing? Tell me who he is!" Jamie demanded.

"Okay, okay guys." Leo said, setting down the saddles, still smiling, which annoyed Jamie to the extreme. "Both Jasmine and Jack were really good friends of mine. They knew ever single fact about me, every secret, and took it all in without judging me and swore not to tell anyone else. Unfortunately, Jack eventually got curious. Wanted to see what everyone else wanted to see. What I told them about. I'd already warned him for so long that if he decided to go, it would be dangerous, and he'd be alone. He said he was going anyway. He seemed like he wanted to know something. Something important."

"What did he want to know?" Amelia asked.

"At this point, I can only guess." Leo explained. "He left February 1, 2014. A week later, we hadn't heard back. Jasmine left February 7, 2014. Hadn't seen either of them since. I'm so glad we had two rounds of Wolf Racing the day before jack left, seeing as I may never see them again. I lost on purpose so that they could have their names in the Champion room once again. Something I could remember them by."

Trevor, Jamie, and Liz looked at Leo longingly, wishing they could say something to help him. Before they could say anything, however, his frown turned to a small smile.

"It's in the past." Leo exclaimed. "Time to start new. With you guys."

Trevor and Liz smiled and looked at each other. Jamie forced a smile, knowing that, because of this, Leo had twisted this interrogation into a longer vacation from what the trio had set out to do. 

They were going to stay longer. However, this only gave Jamie more time to find out what Leo was hiding.

"Anyway, if you guys are done with interrogating me, we should head out to the track," Leo said.

Everyone followed Leo through more series of doors until finally they were lead through a last wood oak door that shone light when it creaked open.

Not only were the stone fence area surrounding the track in superb state, but the track itself was lined with gravel with the finish line spray-painted in a three dark lines of black and white pattern. There was announcers booth right beside the race track, reminding Liz and Jamie of a small horse race stadium back home where they bet on horses all the time. (Trevor didn't go to betting places or racing stadiums.)