Page 27 of Destined to the Lycan (The Shadow Realms #3)

Remus

A s I ran back to the road, I used all the calming techniques I had developed over the years to help rein in my feral side when the full moon approached.

My blood still boiled with the lust to kill.

While I didn’t fear harming my mate in any way, I didn’t want her seeing this unbridled side of me.

At least, not so early in our relationship.

She trusted me, of this I had no doubt. She also felt a great deal of affection for me. I wanted it to blossom into a deep and undying love. With all the challenges facing us right now, making her feel unsafe in my presence was the last thing we needed.

I sprang out of the woods onto the path, running on all fours in my wolf form.

I would have preferred coming to her as a human, but I didn’t run as fast that way.

Strangely enough, I also felt self-conscious at the thought of running buck naked in front of her.

That made absolutely no sense considering nudity was normal among Lycans.

Furthermore, I could honestly say that I had a very nice body.

So this sudden shyness was completely irrational.

But as I raced down the path, those wandering thoughts quickly faded from my mind.

By now, I should either be hearing the sound of our horses galloping in the distance or at least get a glimpse of her silhouette ahead.

Granted, I chased the Aegarims fairly deep into the woods.

Still, I hadn’t been gone so long that my mate could have traveled that far, even pushing the horses to their maximum.

My stomach twisted with a sense of unease, and I redoubled the speed at which I ran. The complete silence further fueled my growing panic. The mystifiers and evil spirits wouldn’t sing for me as my blood was poison to them. But I should hear their whispers to my woman had she been in range.

My gorge rose at the thought that another pack of Aegarims might have been lurking even farther ahead. It shouldn’t be the case as those beasts hunted over a large territory that they fiercely defended against other packs.

But this pack counted far more members than they normally do.

I shouldn’t have left her. It had been reckless and arrogant of me to think she would be fine because I could easily dispatch the threat. If anything happened because of my negligence…

My blood turned into ice in my veins, and I howled in despair as I finally noticed Amara’s footprints on the packed dirt where she dismounted her horse.

But it was the presence of a second set of footsteps that truly destroyed me.

Something—or rather someone —had walked out of the woods onto the path.

Nothing good could safely travel the Haunted Woods.

Worse still, I couldn’t pick any scent that might identify the interloper.

All I perceived was Amara’s scent and the one from our horses.

My mind raced as I mentally reviewed the limited number of creatures I knew that either possessed no scent or excelled at masking it enough to make it nearly impossible to detect. All of them were dreadful.

I rushed into the forest, following what lingered of my woman’s distinct aroma.

Traipsing through these cursed woods always felt like diving into a concentrated pool of evil.

To my dismay, I couldn’t see any sign on the ground of the horses’ hooves or of my mate’s footsteps.

A part of me began to wonder if I was under the effect of an illusion making me think I was actually following her scent.

But I didn’t feel any magic directly affecting me.

Could the creature who took her be winged and flew a short distance above ground?

Without slowing down, I glanced up at the trees overhead.

There were no signs of any broken or disturbed branches that might indicate something big had flown through them.

Each branch was so thick and long they almost created a canopy overhead.

Only smaller creatures could fly by without the risk of crashing into one of them.

And then her scent vanished altogether.

I stopped dead in my tracks and sniffed the air in vain.

Heart pounding, I backtracked until I picked up the scent again.

To my dismay, it was now leading me in a completely different direction than the one I had been following.

Five or ten minutes later—I couldn’t tell anymore as time seemed to have lost all meaning—the same thing happened again.

Rage, confusion, and growing despair had my chest so constricted I could barely breathe as I retraced my steps until I picked up her trail again heading in yet another direction.

By then, I no longer doubted that I was trapped in some sort of illusion.

The question was which type. As I still couldn’t feel any magic being used on me, I could only speculate that I was either being physically controlled by a creature or a plant, or that a powerful mystifier had taken control of me.

Was I even moving in the real world or just standing still like a statue? Was I being wrapped inside the cocoon of a fiendish creature? Was a beast eating me alive even as I wandered aimlessly in this nightmare?

Whatever the case might be, I had to keep moving forward. Giving into despair would guarantee my demise, and with it my mate’s as well. If only for her, I couldn’t fail.

I shifted back into my human form before climbing on one of the trees to get a better long-range view of my surroundings. To my shock, I spotted what looked like a cozy wooden house in the distance. The light smoke rising from the chimney indicated that a fire was burning inside.

This house shouldn’t exist.

My every instinct told me it was a bait to lure me into a trap.

But I had nothing else to go on. I jumped down from the branch I had been perched on, intent on turning back into my wolf form to race towards my new destination.

However as soon as I hit the ground, an acute pain stung the back of my leg.

I stumbled forward. Just as I was about to regain my balance, thorny vines wrapped around my leg yanking it backwards.

The ground rushed towards me, and I barely managed to throw my hands in front of me to avoid face planting.

Sharp cutting pain stabbed every inch of my body as the vines continued to wrap around me like a boa constrictor, with countless sharp needles stinging me with their numbing venom.

I couldn’t believe an Arraphilon would attack me.

Those wretched creatures looked like a four-meter-long centipede whose cylindrical body resembled a thorny branch covered with leaves.

Its upper body had a few extra limbs that could almost pass for two sets of arms without hands.

It had no eyes to speak of or even anything that could be deemed a face.

If not for the series of horns around its head, the latter could have belonged to a lamprey with its circular mouth filled with needle teeth.

Most people would be oblivious to the creature’s presence as it usually lay flat on the ground, often around the base of a tree.

It would lie in wait, wrapped in a way to look like a pile of fallen leaves or just random greenery in the underbrush.

In my desperation to get to my woman, I’d neglected to pay better attention to my surroundings.

Still, that creature never should have attacked me.

It could smell the toxin in me. And yet, it continued to sting me with its thorns and even gave me a couple of bites in its impatience to feed.

I didn’t waste time and energy trying to fight it in my human form.

Although the Arraphilon and I possessed comparable strength—mine likely a bit greater—I would sustain far too many wounds from its thorns and be slowed down by its numbing venom if I tried to pursue this fight like this.

Instead, I immediately shifted into my wolf form.

Not only would my fur provide non negligible protection from the thorns, but I also regenerated faster as a wolf.

Furthermore, my bigger size in that form made it harder for that creature to constrain or crush me.

As expected, the Arraphilon soon loosened its grip to avoid being ripped apart by my significantly wider girth.

I swiped my claws at it, splitting it in half.

The creature’s shrill screech had my ears painfully ringing.

From the pain and shock, the Arraphilon released me for barely a couple of seconds, which sufficed for me to escape its clutch.

However, the creature would never be defeated so easily.

Both halves thrashed on the ground for another beat before chasing after me.

My skin tingled from the numbing effect of my attacker’s paralytic toxins. Thankfully, they weren’t strong enough to truly impede or incapacitate me. But sustained exposure to a greater amount would eventually leave me in a vulnerable position.

To my dismay, the ground started moving all around me with many more Arraphilons coming out of hiding and springing into action.

I cursed inwardly that I should find myself in such a trap.

Granted, even with my heightened sense of smell, detecting their presence was extremely difficult as their scent matched too closely that of other plants and vegetation in the forest. The fact that most creatures never bothered with me due to my condition had also made me a little careless and overconfident when it came to my own safety while wandering in dangerous places.