7: She has to be somewhere near.
**Kala pov**
The women looked at me like I was the crazy one for asking the question, not them for not noticing. When one of them finally turned around to look at the tent entrance, she gasped, “the cub! She’s gone!”
Well, it wasn’t like I unknowingly warned them, right? No, of course not - they had to panic, run around like a bunch of headless chicken and scream first, probably to make a statement or something.
“Ladies!” I called out, but none of them listened. Goddess, as nice as they were, they were clueless. Slowly, I slid off the makeshift bed and whistled at them, raising my voice right after, “ladies! Calm down.”
Their heads snapped in my direction, faces pale, eyes wide. “Leader Khan,” one of them muttered. “He’ll- he will execute us if we don’t find the cub. You don’t understand,” her voice broke mid-sentence.
I arched an eyebrow and slowly walked towards her, steps measured and careful so I wouldn’t alert her even more. As gently as I could, I placed my hand on her shoulder and sucked in deep breaths until she followed my example and stopped shaking.
“Now,” I whispered. “Breathe, focus on breathing slowly before you faint, okay? And don’t think about your leader, Aife has to be somewhere around here, she couldn’t have gone far. I know her, that girl simply doesn’t like large crowds, so it makes sense that she stepped out. First, we calm down, and then, we go look for her, okay?”
The woman nodded eagerly so I looked around at the rest of them, “do you agree? We all calm down and go look for her.”
Reluctantly, all of them agreed, one by one, sucking in deep breaths and slowly exhaling until the suffocating tension slowly faded from the tent.
It couldn’t have been more than five minutes until they finally calmed somewhat and I could lead them out of the tent. I had no idea where to go, where was what, so one of the women stepped up. “How about we check the meals tent? She could’ve gotten hungry and went there.”
Truth be told, there wasn’t even a tiny hope within me that Aife sneaked off to have a snack, but for the sake of these women, and quite frankly myself too, I agreed to follow them.
Quite hurriedly, we checked it out, then went to other tents to see if she was there. I was amazed to see how much bigger the tents were inside than they looked from the outside. The amount of stuff they could store in there was truly surprising.
“How many tents are there around this camp?” I asked absentmindedly, still hovering over the trinkets they kept in the tent we just entered.
“About a hundred or so,” one of the women perked up. “There’s many of us, even if you don’t see everyone walking around the camp during daylight. We all have personal belongings and whatnot. Plus, there are tents for everything - food, resources, weapons, medicine, clothes, anything you can imagine.”
I listened carefully and nodded, humming along.
The difference was insane. I had lived with the witches, knew their way and everyday life, then learned so much about wolves when I mated Zion, and now, I was learning even more from the lions.
Fascinating, really.
I was so amazed by their ways that I almost forgot that we were wandering the tents in the camp with the goal of finding Aife.
Surely, she wasn’t foolish enough to run to the line of fire and face Bane, right? Yeah, that would be foolish.
“Come along, child, we’re going to check more tents, she has to be somewhere near, I just know it,” a woman waved me over and I followed her like an eager mutt.
As awful as our life had been the past few weeks, if not months, I kind of enjoyed this.
Yes, I was selfish, terribly so, but for once, I got the taste of normalcy again and I couldn’t resist the temptation to bask in it.
Following the crowd of the women, I looked around again. I liked how friendly they were to outsiders, but even more, I liked how loving they were to each other.
Every lion in our way smiled and greeted us. I didn’t see even one sour face, almost as if whatever was happening outside the camp center was truly irreverent for everyone living here.
Huh, like two worlds, so close yet so terribly apart. Maybe this was some kind of twilight zone..
“Child, are you coming?” One of the women called out and I rushed to catch up with them.
Darn it, I really needed to stop living with my head so far up in the clouds.
By the time I reached the woman who stood by the tent, waiting for me, the rest were already inside, shouting that Aife wasn’t there.
“Let’s go check out the next tent while they look carefully, maybe the cub hid from the chaos and fell asleep.” She suggested.
Yeah, that was unlikely.. not that I’d ever tell her she was wrong, especially since it was clear that she had Aife’s best interest at heart.
So, like a good, helpful friend, I only nodded and followed her to the next tent.
This one was more impressive - stacked with different furrs, loads of scarfs, hats and gloves.
As I looked around, the woman next to me chuckled. “This is a clothing tent, as you can see. However, this is also a resources tent, we keep these for outsiders if they wander into our territory. Humans are funny little things, it turns out they can’t even regulate the temperature of their own bodies.” She scoffed and started looking around, mumbling, “where could you be?”
I sniffed the air and shook my head. “She’s not here. In fact, she didn’t even come here since I can’t catch even a whiff of her scent.”
Her head snapped up, eyes wide. “Why didn’t I think about sniffing the place?”
I shrugged and followed her out of the tent, laughing at her mumbling something under her breath.
As amused as I was, the humor faded quickly when an unbearable stench of blood washed over the camp. Worst of all, I recognized it.
I didn’t wait for the woman to notice, I just ran back towards where I knew the medical tent was and screamed, “Zion!”
**IF YOU READ THE CHAPTER PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT, I'M TRYING TO CHECK SOMETHING. EVEN ONE WORD WILL DO <3**
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