Her mouth opened and then closed as she thought it through. When she didn't argue with my logic, I nodded and turned back to the path, but I definitely saw the satisfied grin on her face.
The time seemed to pass quickly, and soon we arrived at a fairly steep hill where I heard some of the girls ahead of us saying they could see water. Once I got close enough, I could easily spot the small pool of water that collected at the base of the hill. The stream fed into it via a small, bubbling waterfall and then flowed out at the opposite side, continuing through the forest. It was beautiful.
"Wow," Isla said.
"It's gorgeous out here," Kael agreed.
And it was, but I couldn't shake the feeling of unease. "Where are the royals?"
"Eager to see how many you can get with today?" Belinda commented, brushing imaginary dirt from her skirt. Some of the girls standing with her laughed and glanced my way.
"No woman here is more eager than you," Rivka replied coolly.
I ignored her and the laughs from the group. They could think whatever they wanted, but little did they know, I was of no threat to them when it came to those asshole princes. I turned to Kael. "Isn't it weird that they're not here? We were supposed to meet them at the stream, right?"
He scanned the area. "There aren't even any tracks in the mud by the water."
I looked, and sure enough, nothing. No boot prints, hoof prints, nothing. It was as though nobody had been here in days.
"Well, I don't know about you ladies, but I really need to, um, relieve myself," one of the girls said, embarrassed. I think her name was Cynthia.
"Seconded," another said.
Kael tossed a look over his shoulder in the direction we'd come from. "Alright, ladies. I saw a spot just over that way. I can stand guard. Come along."
Now that someone mentioned it, I did need to pee as well. Isla and I followed Kael and four other girls to a thicket. Plenty of large trees and green bushes. Kael leaned against a tree. "I'll wait here."
The five of us disappeared into the thicket.
"My mother would have an absolute fit if she knew I was peeing in a bush right now," Cynthia whined.
Undeterred, I squatted behind a thick tree trunk and listened to them all whine and complain. I was going to rip my hair out if this was what it was going to be like the entire time. A branch creaked overhead, and I looked up. There was no wind, so no reason a tree should be creaking like that, but I couldn’t identify the source. I quickly finished up and stood, something inside urging me to get moving. "I think we should hurry up," I whispered to the others.
"Honestly, Evie, you need to chill out. You've been being ridic—"
A flash of orange seemed to drop from the sky and land directly on Cynthia, her shriek of fear ending immediately following the sound of a loud snap. My eyes nearly popped out when my brain caught up with my sight. The world seemed to tilt on its axis as I stood there, frozen. A massive tiger stood over the still-form of Cynthia's body. Dead.Dead.She was dead.
Another creak from above snapped me out of my shocked state. "Run!" I screamed as loudly as possible, grabbing Isla by the arm and pulling her with me. It was just in time, too, as a second huge cat pounced from above and landed right where she'd been standing. More screams pierced the air as we dashed out of the thicket, finding a wild-eyed Kael.
"What the devil—" he started to ask, but we didn't slow our pace. I grabbed him with my free hand and sprinted.
"We have to warn the others," I panted as we raced back to the place we'd left the group.
Right away, it was clear they already knew. Women and guards were running around, some of them rolling down the ravine to get to the stream below.
A whistle had us looking to our right. I breathed a sigh of relief to see Riv standing off the path, waving us over. The howls of wolves joined the chaos, and Isla whimpered. "Come on," I urged. "We need to get out of this area."
We ran over to Riv, all of us out of breath. "Bloody wolf pack showed up. Took out at least five people that I saw, but they're still prowling. They were massive."
"Let's run and worry about talking later," Kael barked, the soldier in him taking over.
"Good plan," I agreed, and the four of us took off, not so much concerned with the direction we were running. That wasn't of much importance. We just needed to get far away from the smell of fresh blood and fear in the air. It would be like a beacon for any other predators in the area.
After what felt like an hour, but was probably only twenty minutes, we began to slow. I collapsed onto a fallen tree. "I need a second. Do you think we're far enough away?"
"We have time for a quick rest, but we should really keep moving... look for some kind of shelter," Kael said, scoping out the area.
"Did you know there were tigers on this island?" Isla asked no one in particular, hunched over with her hands on her knees.
