Chapter 155
ACHILLES.
I shift into my wolf form, roaring as I meet the closest Rogues halfway and bulldoze them with my body, slashing at them with my claws.
The first thing I notice is how more resilient they are than the old Rogues, who just needed to get hit in the head to disintegrate and fall apart. These ones, despite getting rammed in the head and getting their faces scratched open, are still fighting me. I know that they are people, and that is the reason why they are stronger.
I don’t want to hurt them, but if I don’t at least do some kind of damage, they will eat me alive.
I ram them down with my head, pinning them on the ground and biting at their stomach so they would get hurt, but not enough to make them bleed out. I shift back into my human form just as they start to crowd around me, my smaller form allowing me to escape freely.
Now they’re chasing me around the alleys. I know I won’t be able to run forever, and I dread the time my exhaustion keeps up and makes me stop. I keep going for now, looking at my surroundings and trying to see if there is something I could use against them. I’m approaching the palace and I’m eyeing the iron fences, but as I get closer and closer, I see something inside the guard house.
Or at least, someone in the guard house.
I lock eyes with the person hiding inside, and that’s when he opens the door and says, “Keep going! You’re walking them into our trap! Just try to avoid that brick in front of the gate!”
The person who just ordered me to do something is Gamma Jacob… or at least he’s Alpha Jacob now. He closes the window of the guard house before the Rogues can see him, and I just do as he says. I find a little red brick in front of the gates and I skip over it, expecting the Rogues to slam against my back as I narrowly collide against the gate.
But they don’t.
Instead, they seem to have stopped in their tracks completely. I can still hear their growls but it ends there. I slowly turn around, cautious in case they are in there and they’re just waiting to eat my face, but then I find that they’re trapped behind some sort of net.
I take a careful step back, and that’s when the net sparks with electricity.
“No,” I whisper, looking at the guard house again. “No, stop that!”
The electricity stops. Alpha Jacob gets out of the guard house. He seems to be confused about why I ordered him to stop. “What’s going on? Are you caught in it?”
“No,” I say, stepping away from the net that’s surprisingly containing the Rogues properly. “They’re people too, and they have been turned into Rogues. It would be best not to kill them. We are going to find an antidote for them and turn them back into people.”
At first Alpha Jacob seems confused, but then he sighs. “So that’s why many villages have been disappearing. I didn’t know that, and I’m glad you told me.”
“It would be best to shock them just enough to make them pass out,” I say, and he presses a button on the side of the guard house, and an electric shock passes through the net.
Silence passes through us as the electric shocks pass over the Rogues. They twitch and thrash around, ending up biting one another. But the cuts they give don’t seem to be enough to merit real damage anyway. The electric shocks keep pulsing until they all get weaker, and with that, they all pass out in a heavy breathing heap that doesn’t give off the same smell as the old Rogues.
Alpha Jacob and I just watch them for a couple of moments. Then he turns to me and asks, “Um… why are you here?”
“I came to gather your citizens so we could put them all in Sangria Amori,” I say. “Would you help me do that?”
He bows to me. “It would be my pleasure.”
“I’m glad,” I say, taking a deep breath. It feels weird. I should be happy with my achievement. I should be happy that everyone is still here and they will be safe, and I am. But I just can’t feel it in my chest. Right now it’s just an empty emotion. I know it, I know that I should feel it, but I don’t know how to feel it.
Not without Claudia.
I can’t feel anything with Claudia.
“I will call everyone, and we will come with you,” Alpha Jacob says. “We will find an antidote, then we will beat them all.”
I nod. Wordlessly, I take one of the syringes from my pocket and get close to the Rogues. I insert the needle and get a whole vial of blood, and with that, we’re off.
* * *
Traveling to Sangria Amori with hundreds of people wasn’t easy, but we made it before the sun set. The people were exhausted, because apparently they had been in hiding for a couple of days now, surviving off of small portions of food because they were too afraid to go out. They had heard of the raids and they didn’t want to be a part of it, so Alpha Jacob tried his best to hide them and set traps for those who would come.
“Back then it was men who would go and hunt,” Henry told me when we held a meeting. “They still did that in the other villages. I think they know that you would come, and that’s the reason they set those full Rogues on you.”
“I would not doubt that,” I replied, and that’s a hundred percent true and honest.
Aristea and Nana looked over the people while we were gone. Carlos came back after me bringing a different pack in tow. The whole Sangria Amori has never been this packed, but our residents are generous, opening their homes to the displaced families while we find a way to build them new shelters. Men and women alike have approached me to volunteer to fight back, and I accepted them all.
The plan is coming together. We are keeping the people safe and building a strong enough force.
Now only one problem remains.
The antidote.
Aristea is busy guiding the people when I approach her. She flinches when seeing me, which I think is driven by guilt and fear, but I just shake it off.
“I have the sample ready,” I tell her. “It’s time to make the antidote.”
She nods mutely, and together we head to Kiernan’s lab. I have captured one of the Rogues and kept it there for safety, and it’s drugged out of its consciousness. She immediately got to work when we get there, using the same things that I watched Kiernan use. She mixes the chemicals, looking at the Rogue from time to time. We don’t speak to each other, but I can tell we’re sharing the same thought: we need this to work.
After a couple of hours, she’s done. She made a whole bottle of the stuff. She extracts a bit in a syringe and approaches the Rogue, sliding the needle under its skin.
Slowly, we watch as the Rogue starts to shrink, its fur slinking back into its skin until it’s all gone. Everything gets smaller and smaller, until eventually, there’s a human sitting in the cage. A human in the form of a woman.
And that woman is Sahari.