Chapter 486 Worlds Collide   - Part 2

~ HARTH ~

Dawn was just creeping up over the distant mountains when Harth crept out of the encampment. Although the hunters and cooks would be up, the landscape of this strange land offered a great deal of cover. Once she got out of the tent town it was never difficult to avoid the eyes of her brothers and sisters.

It was, in part, why she'd gotten away with her subterfuge for so long. Still, Kyelle wouldn't be pleased. Harth's stomach tingled with nerves at the thought of what might happen if she was caught travelling again. Kyelle had nearly shifted last time—

her talons were razor sharp, and that hooked beak!

Harth knew she shouldn't be leaving. Had resolved the night before that she wouldn't! Then she'd once again woken with that undeniable knot in her stomach.

Something was wrong, but she couldn't know what.

It was the most terrifying and frustrating feeling of her existence.

She had endured the separation from her people. She'd lived through experimentation, and the threat of being harvested like a crop for the good of a human population that didn't even know she existed.

Sasha-don and Zev-dan had found this perfect place for them, and though it was strange, it was full of life—and more importantly, empty of humans.

She should have been ecstatic. And yet, from the moment she'd arrived, something within her was driven forward. Always forward. Always away.

Mae had spoken up for her the first time they'd discovered her running through the forest, far beyond the boundaries that only hunters were allowed to cross, and with great caution.

She'd heard Kyelle-don's concerns, and agreed.

They still didn't know this world. Still hadn't found all the creatures who'd come through the Gateway first. Still didn't know if there were other inhabitants of this land. And Harth, having spent most of her adult life in the "sanctuary" of the humans, was not the Chimera to find out.

She was supposed to stay within the three-mile territory they had claimed around the encampment. Never out of earshot of one of the guards, just in case. None of the others seemed to have struggled with that.

But Harth felt as if a piece of her was missing. As if a chunk had been torn out of her heart, but was still connected by a steel thread that dragged her out of this place.

Go, it said. Go. Go. Go.

So, go she did. She fled. First one mile past the boundary. Then three. Then five. Some days she resisted. Some days she could distract herself. But the last two days had been painfully, desperately hard.

Go.

She had to go. And she didn't know why. She didn't even know where. Only that it was far from here and her soul bled with the aching for it.

And so, having slept fitfully for only a few hours, just as the light of the sun began to creep up and turn the mountains purple, she'd donned the stretching bodysuit the humans had made them that would allow her to shift without tearing her clothes, clipped two waterskins to her belt, and slipped out of her tent, darted between the trees and weaved her way through the forest on the path that she knew would avoid any eyes. She sloshed up a creek for the last mile out of the territory to hide her scent and avoid the patrols, then leaped back onto dry ground, shifting into her wolf mid-flight, landing on paws instead of feet, and then she began to run.

Run like the wind.

Guilt fluttered behind her like the fur on her tail. She shook her head so hard her ears snapped, but she did not slow. The urge within her ached so acutely, she worried it might make her sick.

Something was wrong. Something was desperately wrong.

But what?

Harth didn't know. Couldn't know. Didn't even know where she was going.

This world was unfathomable to her. Where Thana's winterscape turned green for a few weeks a year and the land exploded with bounty that would keep them for the nine months of winter, this place was… abundance made flesh.

Thick, green leaves everywhere. Damp earth springing seedlings and underbrush that prickled or bushed and seemed to grow almost so quickly it could be observed.

There was clear, healthy water at every turn, and the rains came briefly, but regularly in mountains, sometimes all the way down to the foothills, but even when they stayed dry, the water ran from those heights to swell the streams and rivers.

The place seemed as fertile as the Chimeran females were barren. And perhaps that was what drove her? Perhaps something within in her yearned to flee the desolation of her body and be absorbed by this impossible flourishing?

Something is wrong. Go. Go! Questions still unanswered, Harth went. Running as fast as her four paws could carry her, darting between trees and through meadows, reaching ever-farther. For a moment she pictured what would happen when Kyelle discovered that she'd run again, and her stomach clenched in fear.

But they'd never found her out here. They never came this far themselves. When they'd caught her, it was always that they learned about her disappearance, or stumbled on her return.

Harth blinked, her tongue lolling, flapping in the wind of her passage as she darted through the trees.

She could hunt—certainly the smaller mammals here. She could drink the streams, and sleep under the leaves… she could keep herself alive. Perhaps… Perhaps this time she wouldn't return until she'd found whatever it was that her heart sought?

She blinked, huffing.

Those thoughts were desperately near treason. Kyelle had been very clear. None of them were to explore on their own. As they settled and strengthened, the leaders among them would begin to reach out and discover the land. But while they were still finding their feet in this place, they would take the blessing of the bounty and stick close to each other.

But Harth ran on, and as she did, her resolve strengthened.

Whatever drove her forward refused to be denied. And so… she would pursue it. She would follow this scent-trail until she found its source, or it died on the wind. But she would not spend another night in that tent, aching from her soul.

*****

She'd been running for hours, stopping only for water and to quickly swallow a small rodent. The sun was high now, and despite that clawing drive in her chest to keep going, something within her was more at peace now that she'd decided she wouldn't return.

The wind rose around her, a strange scent on it—dry, cracked earth, dust. Something much more barren than any of this land that she'd seen before.

Looking ahead between the trees, she saw the light growing as they thinned. Had she finally reached the end of the forest? She didn't think so. Lars had seen this land from the air. He'd told the tale countless times of viewing it before they all went through the gateway. The forest was days-travel across, he was certain of it. The mountains curling around a massive swathe of land peppered by meadows and canyons, but still forest.

So what could she smell that seemed so… dead in this place so full of life?

And then, a bare breath… the smallest hint on the wind of a scent that had every hair on Harth's wolf standing tall. It was there, then gone, but it called to her. Sang in her bones.

This was what she sought!

Nose high to meet the wind, Harth pushed for greater speed, her heart pounding.

Go.

Go.

Go!