Chapter 421: Chapter 421

421 My! How the Tables have Turned

The cracks were now quite pronounced and spread out to the distant front of the steep escarpments which was where the prince was supposed to be going. Further ahead, it looked as though the Mountain pass would cave in at any moment, however, this was not the same for the back of the gorge.

Coincidentally, Drake was standing at the centre of this chaos, his destination riddled with uncertainty, yet the start of the gorge still looked perfectly safe.

Looking back, the prince could see that he’d already run a decent distance, however, it was nothing compared to what he had left to travel. ‘Is there some other way to cross the mountains without going around them? That trip would be far too long and I’m sure my speed devil of a sister could make it in much less time than I ever could...’

“Ugh, why do you have to be such a worthy adversary, Lina?” he screamed internally. To the standby observer, this large black and white wolf was howling in frustration.

The wolf hung its head low to the ground in desperate thought, but his decision was soon made for him as a low groaning sound made it to his keen sense of hearing. ‘I just had to open my big mouth...’

One more crack but this time in the direction he just come was enough for him to tell him that the Mountain pass was completely unsafe. As if confirming his conclusion, the mountain groaned with more cracks riddling the two walls of the crumbling gorge... It was coming down.

The prince turned on his heels, “Why now of all times... you’ve been standing for centuries... Oh, goddess of the moon that lights up the night sky, I was not meant to die like this... My Little Sister will think she’s better than me.”

..............

“Wyatt, wake up... it’s time to go. For goddess’s sake, you sleep like a log,” Crysta shook the alpha awake, trying to understand how one werewolf could sleep so much. It was the third time she was trying to wake him up in the same morning. After having tried to wake him up twice before sunrise.

.....

The sun was now out and clearly telling them how late they were. The two tents belonging to the princess and the delta had been neatly packed, but without being able to wake the alpha, it was impossible for them to work on packing his tent.

“Out of the way, Crysta,” Lina growled furiously. The delta looked back and saw her friend walking up to her with a mischievous grin. There was a slight twitch in Royal’s eye which made her look borderline insane and in her hand, she held one of their water cans... The same water cans that were supposed to sustain them till they got to the creek.

“No, Lina, we need that water. Him, most of all,” Crysta tried.

“We’ll get more water when we reach the stream. He, on the other hand, is wasting far more time than we can spare,” Lina replied, trying to push past her friend and spill water on the sleeping alpha.

“We have to be smart about this, Lina. We don’t know what the future holds. What happens when one of us gets injured and we can’t make it to the stream as fast as you expect us to do?” the delta suddenly asked. It was a plausible scenario.

“No, that won’t be happening,” the Royal growled stubbornly, “Because we will make it to the finish line before my big brother and this one measly alpha won’t slow us down any more than...”

“Lina, if it was Bree, would you do the same?” Crysta interrupted the rampaging Royal. Surprisingly, the princess wasn’t forcing her way past her friend and the thought that she was holding back only lightly crossed Crysta’s mind.

This statement, however, had a negative effect, “Bree knew what we were doing when we came on this journey. She would have woken up before I did and we would have already started our journey. In terms of consistency, she would be a much better travel companion,” Lina fumed.

“But she’s not here now and it’s because she knew we would do better with him than we could with her...”

“Did she though? When we set off, none of us thought he prove weaker than you are. In fact, he made it seem like he was stronger than you,” Lina argued, “At this rate, the colour of his eyes could be nothing but a fluke.”

“Hearing that coming from you, of all people. My, how the tables have turned? How the might have fallen?” a male voice interrupted the quarrelling females.

Wyatt was standing with both backpacks assigned to him slung over his shoulders and the tent he’d been sleeping in already packed, “Maybe you would try to think of the weight of carrying these bags. I am not exactly running empty-handed here.”

“Can you feel the weight of the bags when you shift?” Crysta was suddenly curious. It’s not like she knew what it was like to have your belongings stay with you after a shift.

“Yes, yes, I can. And running with them for three-hour periods is even worse,” the man replied with a yawn, “Now can we get going?”

Lina sighed and turned to the alpha, “I’m sorry for everything you just heard. I just don’t want to lose to my dorky brother. I can already imagine the grin on his face when he finally says... ‘You still have a little way to go, Little Sister.'”

Chuckling, “I don’t consider him the type to brag. Although I see no shame in losing to your brother. He’s tough to beat. In the last Royal games, he was able to go head-to-head with Cole Lycaon, the one people nicknamed The Impervious tank back in the day. So don’t get yourself too worked up,” Wyatt spoke up, seemingly unbothered by the insults that had been indirectly hurled at him during the girls’ argument.

“I guess you’re right about that, but...” Lina balled her fists, “I’ll be the one going against Cole this year. All you’ve said would be true if I hadn’t worked so hard to make myself powerful enough to face my brother. I can’t lose to him. I refuse to lose to him.”

The princess walked up to Wyatt and yanked a bag from one of his shoulders, slinging it over hers before shifting, “You better run like losing will kill you... because if it doesn’t, I just might.”

During Lina’s conversation with Wyatt, Crysta hid behind a tree and changed out of her clothes before shifting. The tone in Lina’s voice sent shivers down her spine. The Trials were getting Lina more worked up than the delta had ever seen her... ever.

She didn’t know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing... to see Lina want to win something so badly. ‘Could there be something Lina hasn’t told me yet?’

Wyatt being the only one left in human form was tasked with packing Crysta’s clothes before shifting into his black wolf himself.

In a few minutes, they were running again with Crysta leading the way.