Black Ice-Completed
Chapter 7

Gnashing her teeth together in anger she had to bite her tongue to keep from yelling out. There was no telling who or what was in the area and she didn’t want to notify them that she was around or alone. There were still thieves and traders in the forest. She didn’t want to be found and sold in market.

Sighing, Nyota looked around and knew she had no clue where she was at. The forest was huge and could take several weeks to traverse from the river to the rocky sea shore. But this part of the forest was completely different from hers, it was darker and thicker.

For the first time in a long time, fear flickered against her soul. She had never been this far away from home and wondered if she would be able to get home within the day. Sighing, she looked up and growled out. There was no sun to point her which way was East and West, so she just started to walk, and instantly turned back around to walk in a different direction when a small voice deep in her mind said, “Go the other way.”

As Nyota walked, she frowned in confusion, “who are you?” would the voice answer her or was she going crazy?

“You,” came the cryptic answer. Nyota didn’t understand but continued to walk the way the voice had said. She was watching for familiar landmarks when the voice whispered across her mind once again, “We’re very far from the cabin.”

Nyota bit her lip in apprehension and nodded. Why did the wolf do this to her? Why abandon her in the middle of the woods? But neither Nyota nor the voice commented on the actions taken against them.

Crying out in frustration, Nyota had to stop for the fifth time to take a break. Her legs felt numb from the cold and from walking so far in the snow. Her short legs could only take her so far before she needed to take a break. “How much further?” she asked the voice as she rubbed her legs. It was starting to get dark and she had never stayed outside when it became night.

Emotions were the first answer to her question, apprehension and rage, “We still have several miles to go,” there was a calculated pause, “It will be well into the next morning before we make it home and that is if we walk through the night.”

Nyota felt close to tears at that point. Her legs were numb and exhaustion was eating at her. There was no way she would be able to walk through the whole night.

Comfort and reassurance flitted up against her and the image of making camp was heavy on Nyota’s mind.

A fire was going to be impossible because she had no flint. It wasn’t something she often carried around because she was always so close to home. She decided she would start, just because she didn’t know if that wolf would continue to do this sort of deviousness again.

Looking around, she felt the compulsion to head to several large boulders. Slowly she walked around them and found a small niche that she could sleep in where there was no snow. The boulders would suck her body heat in and keep the place nice and warm through the night.

Ducking down, Nyota leaned back so she was looking up at the night sky, wishing the stars were shining. “It’d be lovely if it wasn’t cloudy,” the voice whispered softly.

“How can you see what I am seeing?” she asked quietly as she pulled her hood up around her ears.

“I am you, and you are me. I see what you see and hear what you hear.”

Nyota smiled, “We’re not super humans are we?”

She heard laughter deep in her mind, “No, we are like Patou.”

Scrunching up her nose and she shook her head, “No, I am nothing like that ill-tempered, aggravating, lonesome wolf!” she spat out.

Amusement was evident but no laughter was heard. Instead, silence permeated the area and Nyota was able to think clearly about what the voice said. “If I am like Patou, then I am a wolf too?”

“Our bloodline is that of the Black Ice wolves, once a noble race that protected people in the far North,” there was pride in the voice but Nyota caught the once that was implied and instantly asked what that meant. There was silence, contemplation, and calculation and Nyota had to sigh, another being that was only going to give her half answers or deflect from the truth.

“If you can handle the truth, the whole truth, then I will show you. But you have to be sure! If you have even an ounce of doubt, voice it now!”

Nyota stayed silent, she wanted to know! She could hear the exhaustion in the voice, “lay your head down and look up into the night sky.”

Doing as she was bid, Nyota watched the sky start to swirl, twisting and turning until everything was a blur and she didn’t know what was up and what was down.

And then the voice started to speak.

“The Black Ice wolves were the protectors of the North. We started as one and then split into two. The werewolves who could turn into human and the wolves who had human consciousness but stayed as animals, the two worked in harmony for many centuries as brothers. But disaster struck and many of the wolf packs were decimated. The land had changed and with it the ways of the two brothers.”

As the voice spoke, images of the past flashed across Nyota’s eyes and she watched the start of the Black Ice wolves and the Thurian wolves, their promise to the great Wolf God. Then disaster that tore them apart and the start of the fall of the Black Ice wolves. The meeting between Liliana, the witch, and Dimetrov, the betrayal he resorted to and her curse, and what it led to for survival.

Nyota’s breath hitched as she witnessed the birth of twins, a girl and a boy. “You are the first living girl born since the curse had been enacted,” the voice whispered with a touch of reverence. She watched the man who was alpha, turning into a giant black wolf and killed all the woman dressed in black. “It was to protect you so none of the other wolves would hear about a girl that was born. If you had been exposed, Braytek would not have been able to protect you. The moment you would turn into a woman, you would be used and abused, dying by one of the betas hands because you wouldn’t submit.” Nyota frowned as she watched her Aunt Veronica hug the other woman in the room, who was her mother, and before Nyota could get a decent look at her, the image changed. It showed the flight across Azgeta to where her aunt and she now lived.

And then a completely different vision occurred, one that didn’t involve Nyota or Veronica. Instead it showed her mother and father.