Once Betrayed Never Forgotten

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Chapter 45: Trapped in the Dark

“DON’T MOVE!” Luka’s instruction echoes down the mate hond. There’s a loud rumbling and crashing sound, like an earthquake, knocking me off my feet. I feel the shockwaves ripple through the stone, and then the whole tunnel is filled with dust and debris.

I can barely see the others through all the dust in the air, only vague silhouettes up ahead pressed against the tunnel walls.

“Mircea?!” I call out, crawling forward and feeling loose stones beneath my hands and knees.

“I’m here,” I hear her voice nearby.

“What happened?” I hear the fragile voice of the little boy cry

out.

“The tunnel up ahead caved–in,” Luka says, as he comes into view, closely followed by Mircea’s floating ball of flames.

The dust is settling quickly now, and I can see the whole scene more clearly. Mircea and the little boy are pressed up against the tunnel’s walls, just a few feet away from a thick wall of rocks completely blocking the way forward.

“Damn the Gods!” Mircea curses, walking forward to lay a shaking hand against the obstacle in our path. “This is the only way out unless we want to go back the way we came and face the villagers. We’re trapped.”

“Maybe I can dig a way through,” Luka says, tackling the outermost rocks. He begins to shift aside a massive stone. Smaller rocks fall out and tumble down as he shifts aside the boulder, lying off his muscular frame like pebbles

Luka grunts as she puts all his strength into shifting aside another larger, heavier boulder, which just reveals more tightly–packed boulders behind it, a literal, impenetrable wall of stone.

“Luka, stop,” Mircea says. “It’s pointless. We have no way of knowing how much of the tunnel up ahead is caved in, but I’m willing to bet it’s at least a quarter mile. It would take days – maybe weeks to clear the way.”

“Dammit!” Luka curses, slamming a fist into the nearest boulder. “What now, then? Going back is risky, I could take on forty of those bastards – but that mob is at least a hundred. And the ones guarding the perimeter are armed with silver.”

n kill a werewolf, but I didn’t realise it

Mircea nods. I vaguely recall reading something in a book once about silver bullets being the only thing that can kil was literally any silver weapon.

“That’s right,” Luka says silently directly into my mind, sending the words down the mate hond as he stands several feet away leaning in the shadows against the tunnel wall. “Any weapon forged from silver can harm me – whether it’s a dagger or a sword, a bullet or a silver–tipped arrow head… hell, a good enough fighter could probably wield a silver spoon against me if they dared. It’s my Achilles heel

“Quit reading my mind without permission,” I snap at him as my ch*eks flush, I HATE how none of my thoughts are private anymore.

“Sorry to break up your private conversation,” Mircea says, carefully placing a hand on my shoulder so as not to startle me out of my thoughts. “But we need to discuss our next move. Luka? Can you come here?”

Luka nods and joins us.

“We have two choices,” Mircea begins. “Tither, we head back the way we came, and take our chances with Father Codrin and the villagers. Or, we wait down here until the new moon in fourteen days” time. That’s the one time that the villagers‘ silver weapons will be ineffective against you, right Luka?”

Luka nods.

“Two weeks?” I burst out. “That’s ages! We can’t live on air for two weeks – what about food and water?”

*I have some provisions on me, and there is plenty of water,” she says, swiping her finger over the damp walls.

I don’t know if I could stay sane for two weeks down here in the dark with a witch, a terrified child and a werewolf who thinks I’m his mate. We need to

get out sooner.

“Wait, wasn’t there a third tunnel?ely remembering seeing one. “Where does that lead?”

“Nowhere,” Mircea says, her voice suddenly icy, flat.

10

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Chapter 45 Trapped in the Dark

“If we go that way, we go to our deaths,” she says.

“Better than sitting around here and waiting to die of thirst or starvation,” I say, and Luka nods his head in silent agreement.

Mircea just shakes her head wearily as Laika pulls her to her feet.

“Fine,” she says, her shoulders slumped. “We have no choice but to walk into the jaws of the monster. We can only pray we make it out alive.”

Before I can ask her what exactly she’s so afraid of, the little boy has grabbed her hand and is pulling her eagerly down the passageway that leads to the take.

Towards an unknown, imminent danger.

Towards death.

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