“I am her friend.” Eric choked. “I was helping her in our travels. She met another man. He kidnapped her. She contacted me with telepathy.”
Eric fell down as the man let go of his neck. He sat there gasping, trying to recover.
“Follow me,” Dominque said. Eric was reluctant to follow him, especially after what had happened. Then, he remembered the horrible dream he had and Bellatrix’s voice as she asked for help. He couldn’t leave her alone. He couldn’t.
∞∞∞
Eric stood in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by a group of men. He assumed that this was Bellatrix’s pack, and that all of these were werewolves.
“Tell us everything, clearly,” Dominque said.
Eric narrated everything that had happened, starting from his first meeting with her and how they had become best friends. He explained the sudden appearance of Antoine, and how suspicious he was. He skipped the part where he had confessed his feelings to Bella and they had made love; he didn’t think they would appreciate it.
“I believe he is telling the truth, Dominque,” an elderly looking man said.
“Elder Lawson, do you truly believe him?” Dominque asked.
“Yes. I can sense it,” the man called Elder Lawson replied. Dominque gave a curt nod and walked away. Another man came forward towards Eric and said, “I am Taylor. I am the right hand of Dominque. Why don’t you come with us? We need you to tell us every detail that you remember about this man."
Eric spent the next few hours telling every little detail that he could remember. Everything from Antoine’s look to his behaviour had to be explained. It was made complicated by the fact that the wolves weren’t aware of much about the human world.
“You have no idea where that man took Bellatrix?” Taylor asked.
“No. I can tell you the city he lives in and the places he frequented. I have a very strong reason to believe he sent the Teil wolf behind me. I was getting too close to his past,” Eric replied.
“Are you sure it was a Teil wolf?” the elder asked.
“That’s what Bella called it,” Eric said. “I don’t know anything about it, except what she told me. She said that they were hybrids. Humans forced to turn into wolves?”
“Yes,” Dominque replied. “I have never seen one myself, and there is only one man I know who has dealt with it.”
Dominque turned around and looked at the elder. “Marco Farkas. He is the only one I know.”
“Marco Farkas?” Taylor asked frowning. “Why does the name sound so familiar?”
“The wolves of Kuluni used to be one huge pack, many, many moons ago. Then there was a divide. Half of the pack wanted to integrate into the world of the humans. They wanted to travel and explore. The other half believed in staying here in the woods, following the traditional way of life,” Elder Lawson said.
“Eventually we divided into two, with one pack living with humans and the other living in the forest. The two sisterly packs eventually even developed some differences, such as their belief on the Oracle, and ours on the seer,” the elder continued after a pause. “The leader of that pack is Marco, and ours is Dominque.”
“Yet, both the packs are wolves of Kuluni. They are our sisterly pack, and they have always been willing to help us,” Dominque said.
“They are a part of us,” the elder said.
“And currently, our only hope.”
Chapter 16
Bellatrix
Bellatrix was thirsty. She didn’t know how many days it had been since she had been kidnapped. Antoine would often visit, just to gloat and tell her how much limited time she had. She was glad that she managed to get in touch with Eric, and she hoped that he had somehow managed to get to the pack.
She swallowed her saliva, closing her eyes and trying to concentrate. She felt her wolf awake deep inside of her; it was weak but alert. She mustered the power of her wolf together, pulling it into a concentrated ball. She imagined her home, her forest. She mustered the force of her wolf, and then lashed it out.
“Dominque!” she shouted with her mind. “Can you hear me?”
She had been trying to contact her brother for days, but the walls around her held some sort of spell. It caused her telepathy to rebound and disperse, instead of reaching her brother. Eric had been close enough that she had managed to force her thoughts through the walls and into his mind, but she was too weak now. She could not overcome the spell on the walls, and all her attempts led to failure.
Blood began to leak out of her nose, as it did when she overexerted her mental powers. She started to struggle against the chains holding her once again, but they were impossible for her to break. She stopped eventually, realising that she needed to conserve energy.
