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59

ELEANOR

“ELEANOR, RUN!!"

A voice boomed inside my head. I feel my heart pounding violently against my chest as I tried to

locate the source of that gruff voice.

"ELEANOR, WHEREVER YOU ARE, I'M BEGGING YOU... RUN!!" My eyes widened realizing who it

could belong to.

“A-Alex?’ He had reached out to me through mind link. I haven't been able to realize it “til now.

'C-Can you see me?’ I stutter.

“No, I can feel you panicking out there, Eleanor. I can sense there's danger too. We're mates, Ellie.

It's just how it works,” He explains but before I could even give him a response, I saw a huge gray

wolf pounced right at me from the corner of my eye.

My breath hitched, and I stagger backwards as I force my legs to move from its frozen state.

Ducking right under the wolf's gray stomach, I sprinted towards the opposite side. He landed

directly on the brown wolf's head who whimpered as they rolled on the solid ground.

I then took it as an opportunity to jump high above their heads. They looked up at me wide-eyed

and visibly stunned.

My shiny blood-red fur gleamed under the bright sunlight, and I wasted no time in looking back at

the six wolves who growled as they watch me run far away from the Blue Mountains Pack territory.

Of all places... How have I let myself end up here?

I was panting heavily, my four legs catching a thousand splinters each time I cut through the broken

tree branches. I pray to the moon goddess the path I'm taking blindly right now would lead me far

away from my old pack's territory.

It's a dead end. The light I just saw was merely an illusion from too much hope and yearning for

some independence and a little freedom. A sob of frustration and despair then raked my parched

throat.

My legs suddenly began to tremble. My body slowly getting weak. Had it not been for that one

ounce of determination and courage persisting inside of me, I would have let myself fall to the

ground from extreme exhaustion.

From the corner of my eye, I spotted a different path. No wonder I hadn't noticed it before in this

part of the woods. The lack of light will play tricks in your mind and make anyone think of it as

nothing more than a dead end.

Ares knew better. It was an old path draped with ivy and thoroughly covered with a pile of leaves

and rocks someone had so carefully placed in all the right places.

No one will surely follow me there. I decide to take a swift turn, hoping these men fast approaching

right behind me wouldn't be able to catch up with me any longer.

I'm tired. Too damn tired running for my life. For freedom that I had long been yearning for after

that one fateful night.

“Where did she go?!”

"Sniff her! She's here somewhere. I know it."

Lifting my head, I look up with eyes gleaming with hope at the brightly-lit sky, praying.

“Help me’ I heard people say you could ask the fates one sincere thing coming from your heart and

they will give it to you.

If 1 ask them to help me now, would they give me what I'm asking for? I've never wished anything

from the fates my whole life. Even at difficult times when I'm bruised all over and wincing in

insufferable pain inflicted all over my body, I didn't utter a word to them.

Would asking them for help now really make any difference?

Ares abruptly halted and I stopped right in my tracks. Her breathing was anything but normal. I

paused, letting her catch her breath when a voice made me jolt my head east.

“There she is!!!"

I locked eyes with each one of the six men who looked at me with a deathly as well as lustful glare.

One by one, they each shifted to their wolves. All with fur coats of gray and brown, typical colors for

normal werewolves of almost all packs.

I got up and sprinted towards the opposite direction, adrenaline coursing through my body as I ran

nonstop, until my legs finally gave up and I stumbled on my current path. My body rolled on the

surface, the pain and exhausting forcing me to shift back into my original human form.

A hand suddenly grabbed my hair and yanked it towards one of the men chasing after me.

“Let me go! I'm warning you,” I shout as loud as I possibly could, clawing my hands on the man’s

chest and arms out of sheer desperation and anger.

He hurled me unceremoniously to the muddy part of the ground. The part that dries last after a

heavy thunderstorm, and it covered most parts of my naked body in mud and dirt. I felt something

icky in my mouth, urging me to spit some of the mud that got into my mouth on the solid ground.

“You're ours for the taking, kitty” One well-muscled man said, grinning ear to ear while looking me

up and down. I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was enjoying how I struggled to get up

from the mud.

Tears welled up around my eyes, sobbing as I use my heel to push me off the muddy ground.

“Please...” That single word came out through a whisper. My lips trembled as I looked up at the six

men hovering over me in utter fear.

Just when they reached their hand towards me in my embarrassing state of undress, I hear a

thundering roar reverberate through the earth beneath my shaking body, making the trees rattle

and birds flap their wings away from their nests in a hurry, as if the thundering road scared them to

an unimaginable death.

Silence fell across the wild forest, but only for a short moment.

“Take your fucking hands off her!”

A familiar voice rumbled from a close distance, causing the six men to stop and turn their heads to

the source of that voice.