62

62

Lana's POV

He seems to understand exactly what I want from him, and he nods. I do have some insight as to how to continue.

"I think the most likely place that they are in is the Poison Valley," he says. I found myself being a little afraid, biting on my lips with trepidation.

"No, it's not actual poison," he says, shaking his head at me. "At least not if you are careful enough. It is actually quite harmless most of the time."

I think about it for a while before nodding. If he says that it's not that dangerous, I'm sure that we can go there.

"Let's go," he says, and we set out. Before long, we get there, and indeed, all of them that we had brought with us were there, waiting for something. I noticed that they were ambushed, and there were some people around them who were obviously about to cause some trouble from the looks of things. They simply had my people encircled, and seeing this alone, I know that there's a lot of trouble brewing.

I decide not to act immediately because I think it's a better idea for me to stay in the background and judge as much as I can what is actually going on in order to know how to proceed. I hide in the shadows, tapping the man beside me to do exactly what I'm doing, and he obeys instantly, catching the message even though I don't say a word.

"So, who else is here?" someone asks them. They are terribly outnumbered, my people. And the rogue werewolves seem to have completely encircled them. How they had managed to bring them all into one place, bundle them up, and have them completely helpless and ambushed was a mystery to me.

However, I know that I have to do my best if I'm going to actually succeed in getting them out of this mess. From the looks of it and from the way people are shifting, from the body language alone, I can be sure that they don't already know everything. Not yet—they haven't passed the crucial information over to an important person like Valeria and the other rogue leaders. They were not aware yet that some spies were here to get their plan. In other words, I can still quell the damage before it becomes anything serious.

I can still make sure that nobody else knows about this. I know that it's going to be very difficult for me to achieve, but I'm determined to do my best to make it come to fruition. I'm going to do everything within my power to make sure that whatever seems to have gone wrong stays here, and that these rogues don't see the next couple of hours and don't have the opportunity to pass the critical information away.

"Any plans?" I ask him as low as I can manage. He seems to be surprised that I would expect something like that from him, and he seems to start thinking. Well, he should. Personally, I don't have any ideas because I know that if anything's going to work out, I'm going to really need a lot of courage and abilities that I don't have yet.

I don't see how I'm going to manage to finally get them out after everything because the numbers are overwhelming. Already, just the numbers alone are enough to tell me exactly how bad the situation is. We have the element of surprise now on our side. I see my gaze sharpening as I notice all the details of the surroundings.

I take in a deep breath, closing my eyes and shifting into my wolf as silently as possible. The man beside me is shocked, jumping a little as he sees the way the human suddenly transformed into a wolf. I stand there blending into the night, thinking as much as possible, and taking everything that I could into account as it happens.

Turning into my wolf is advantageous in itself because of how it seems to make me completely aware of everything around me. I'm blending into nature at the moment, and at the same time, nature seems to be one with me. Something that I can completely observe from my standpoint here.

Finally, I have everything in mind, every detail taken into account, but it's not enough yet. I shake my head at the odds. Unless I can somehow use the environment to my advantage, they are going to win because of the numbers.

"Maybe we can pick out their leader," he says suddenly. I look at him and then decide that maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.

"Do you think you can handle him?" I question. It's a gamble, but I think we should do our best. I'm back in my human form now, and he frowns as if he's thinking about it. Finally, he narrows his eyes and tilts his head slightly as if judging as much as he can. Finally, he shakes his head.

"No, I don't think I can handle him. Maybe you can—you are the Luna after all."

I don't really believe what he's saying. How can he not be able to handle just one rogue leader? He smiles at me sheepishly, and I shake my head. With the way he says it, I know that I have no choice as leader here.

Can I handle the rogue leader? Well, it depends on how strong he is. I don't know what he saw in the man to make him decide that he couldn't take him on by himself, but I was pretty sure that that factor was going to make it very difficult for me, if I'm able to do it at all.

I'm the Luna of my pack, and therefore I have some innate abilities bestowed upon me, some really nice tricks that I can use to my advantage—but only if I get the opportunity to do so. Right now, I'm not quite sure how much I will be able to perform on my own because I have not received the proper training. I can't yet harness the power of the moon to my advantage as Luna. Hell, there's hardly any difference between me and a normal person at the moment, so I'm pretty sure that he will be able to take me on without much deliberation if everything goes his way.

"Don't worry, there's the element of surprise on our part," I say finally. "You do the distraction. You try to get as many of them around you as you can and try to hold them all off. Your people are going to join when they see you acting, knowing that it's a desperate attempt at escaping. With all of you guys sacrificing your lives to join them instead of running away yourselves and saving yourselves," I tell him, smiling, "they are going to really have to kill them, and I'm going to take it as my opportunity. I'll sneak up on the leader and fight him. Once I have taken him down, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't continue attacking, and then we've won. We'll be able to take them captive or maybe even kill them all if we are smart enough and we use enough tactics."

He nods in agreement. "Okay then, it's a plan," he says.

I take a final look at the terrain, ready for action but knowing that I can't be rash about it. Timing is everything—if not, I'm going to lose the one advantage that we have, and I'm not about to make that brutally critical mistake now when things are looking up, finally, when everything seems to be pointing at this one moment.

A moment passes but suddenly the leader of the rogues looks up and I find myself holding my breath. How could it be that he seems to know where I am? Or does he know maybe it's just a hunch on his part and he's not sure yet? The way he's looking directly at me at the moment is exactly the way Valeria had looked at me that last time. Even though she didn't exactly see me and in the end she brushed it off. How on earth do they have such a hidden sense of awareness? I think to myself wondering why he had detected my presence even if he's probably going to brush it off the same way he did. If only they decide to follow their hunches it's going to be a very big headache for me. But hopefully, thankfully they don't and it's something I have come to rely on. Maybe it's because I'm staring at him and he feels my gaze on him. I think to myself deciding that it's a bad idea for me to keep looking at these people because of how it always ends up.

Maybe I should break my look into a series of seconds and then look away. I think to myself as a solution. I'm still holding my breath but finally he looks away back at his targets and smiles. When he looks relaxed I know that I've caught him.