The Rogues Who Went Rogue
Chapter 103

The vigils and custodes only reached the beach and the abandoned hut two hours after the hybrids left. In the darkness around 11:30pm, it took them another thirty minutes to replace the entry of the hideout under the wrecked car. In the hideout itself, they could smell that the scents matched those found in the hideout of the Forest of Oderem. The only difference was that no belongings were left behind this time.

They searched the forest before Duica had the idea to start looking through the wooden hut again. The fact that the floorboards had uneven gaps in between and the plank walls weren't evenly constructed depicted that this shelter was not built by a professional. Perhaps it was a family project of sorts.

If there weren't any clues here that would lead them to the hybrids, maybe there was something that could tell them who this shelter belonged to. To his disappointment, there didn't seem to be any scent. This place was abandoned for a very long time. He could smell the thick dust and the rooms with closed windows and doors only smelled musty, nothing more.

He and five others ran their hands over the layers of dust of the furniture and walls, hoping to replace something hidden. When Bernadette decided that she wanted more ventilation, she took heavy footsteps to the slightly-opened window. She stepped on the floorboards so hard like she was punishing the hut for their dead end, and that was when one of the boards broke and her leg went right through the hole she created, alarming her colleagues who sprinted from all corners of the hut to her as she cursed at the pain. Dominic and Duica had to break the board around her leg before carefully pulling her out as she tried not to make a big deal out of the wood splinters that went through her flesh. Dominic and Portia started helping her take those out while Duica took out the broken floorboard and ran his fingers through the cobwebs and dust that filled the space underneath. When his fingers felt something solid, he froze for a second and his heart raced before he took out the small, slender object.

After flicking away the dust, Duica found that it was a pen.

'That's it?' Duica thought to himself. He opened and closed the cap, replaceing nothing out of the ordinary. After opening the cap for the second time, his fingertips ran over every inch once more. He felt a certain unevenness near the tip of the fountain pen, so he went to the window to get a clearer view of the engraving using the moonlight.

"Are you even going to share, Duica? You wouldn't have found that without me, you know?" Bernadette protested as Portia and Dominic continued trying to get all the splinters out.

Duica turned to his friend and said, "Well, it's good to know that your arguing abilities remain unaffected by the splinters."

He threw her the pen, which she caught with ease. Bernadette started looking at it while remaining seated on the ground. When she felt the engraving with her hands, she asked Duica, "What does this circular thing mean in lycan territory? Is it a company logo or something?" "That's a question for the lycans. We should check in with the others, and if there's nothing, we'll head back and report...and get you to a doctor, of course."

Half of the vigils stayed behind at the hut to wait for the synthetic scents from scent sprays to fade while the other half made their way back. The half who stayed discovered a few hours later that the scent sprays used weren't premium ones. It was nowhere near the 40-hour mark but they could tell the natural scents were becoming detectable with the fading of the fake ones left behind.

They began tracking for only five minutes before a heavy downpour ruined everything. It rained for two hours, and after it finally turned into a drizzle, both the natural and synthetic scents were no longer present. They explored the trail with the faint natural scent from earlier, but found nothing so they decided to return to the empire.