Journey 'The Chosen One Trilogy: Book Two' (20 page)

He looked at me and smiled. “Hayden
fights for life with no thought to herself. Did you know, Kacey,
when she healed you, she gave you some of her energy, her life, so
that you could live?”

Kacey looked at me, amazed.
“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense; all
this killing because of me. Whether I choose it or not, this is my
fault and it’s the least I can do to make it better.”

Everyone was listening
intently.

“I won’t be used to destroy anyone, but
I will fight to protect innocent beings. Following orders isn’t a
good enough reason for a death sentence, not to me, anyway.” I
sounded as tired as I felt. I was having trouble keeping my eyes
open.

Dodge swished his tail. You need to
rest.

“He’s right, Hayden.” Zane walked over
with a blanket. “Where Kacey looks a hundred percent, you don’t.
You should get some sleep. You only have a few more days to make up
the energy you gave him.” He draped the blanket around my
shoulders.

“Thanks, Zane.”

He smiled down at me. “Get some sleep.
We’ll keep watch.”

The night was starting to cool and I
shivered. Luke shifted and lay beside me to keep me
warm.

“Thanks, everyone,” I mumbled as I fell
asleep.

*****

“Here, I’ll get on Dodge, pass her up
to me.” I felt myself being lifted. I tried to open my eyes but
couldn’t.

“Is she alright?” That sounded like
Kacey.

“Yeah. This is nothing. You should have
seen her after she healed Jasper on the ridge. If he hadn’t told me
to stop her I’m pretty sure she would have died. The more sleep she
gets the better.” Zane was passing me up.

“So she is like this because of me?”
Kacey sounded so guilty. A small smile managed to make its way to
my lips.

“She’s fine, see? She can hear you.”
Luke was holding me.

I heard someone pat someone else on the
back.

“Well, if you can hear me, Hayden, I
fight for you now.” I felt a hand on my arm.

Luke tightened his hold on me as we
started moving again. “Sleep, sweet sister,” he whispered and I let
myself drift back into the darkness.

*****

It was dark when I finally managed to
open my eyes. The lids still felt as if they were full of lead, but
at least I could see. We had stopped and Luke passed me down to
Zane.

Zane smiled, his black eyes lighting up
when he saw me looking at him. “How are you feeling?” He set me
down on a blanket.

“Still tired, but a bit hungry.” Luke
brought me some bread and squeezed my shoulder as he sat beside
me.

“Thanks.” I took a bite of bread. “How
much farther?” I asked.

“We made good time today. Maybe four
more.”

I nodded.

“Will you be better by then?” He looked
at me.

“I’m not the one we should be worried
about.” I looked down at my bread to keep him from seeing how
anxious I was.

He wasn’t fooled. “We’ll get him back,
Hayden.”

Zane put an arm around me from the
other side. “They won’t know what hit them.” He smiled.

“I know.” I tried to smile back. “It’s
just...I know they’re hurting him.”

Everyone was quiet. Tara handed me some
cheese. “And that is why you need to eat and get some more sleep,”
she said.

I shivered with cold and worry as I
finished my cheese and I pulled the blanket around me.

Zane shifted and lay behind me. I
leaned back and fell asleep against him.

When morning came, I was able to open
my eyes completely without them feeling heavy. I sat up and laughed
at Zane’s snoring.

“How does Dawn get any sleep with you,”
I murmured to myself. Alex chuckled as he shifted back into a
human. He had been sleeping between me and Leslie.

“No wonder I was warm!”

He smiled. I’d had a panther as a
pillow and a lion and a wolf on either side of me. Everyone else
was still sleeping.

“Why are you awake?” I whispered to
him. It was still fairly dark.

He shrugged. “Just couldn’t sleep. Too
many things running through my head,” he whispered back.

“Like what?”

He was quiet for a moment as he
arranged his thoughts. “I was thinking about what Jasper had said
the day he made me kiss you. About how maybe we were fated because
he wasn’t going to be around much longer.”

My heart dropped and the feeling must
have shown on my face.

“No! No. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not
hoping for that, not at all. I will die to save him if I have to.
It’s so strange that’s all. I’m just confused. I’m glad we’re not
fated. I just would like to know why I see you.”

“You still do?” I was trying to keep my
whisper as quiet as possible. I wasn’t sure if he had told Leslie
about the dreams.

“Yes.”

“What are the dreams about?”

“Nothing, really. Usually you are just
busy doing something, like cooking or picking herbs. You know, just
everyday things and then you look up and smile at me. That’s it.
Always just a variation of that.”

“Well, definitely not a fated dream.” I
grinned at him.

“Why? What are they like?”

I blushed. “Let’s just say they are a
bit more intimate.”

He turned red to match me.
“Oh.”

We were quiet for a moment. “Maybe the
dreams are just to keep me close to you. Maybe I’m like Dodge.” He
looked over at me. “Maybe I’m just meant to watch over
you.”

“I guess that could be it. Does Dodge
dream of me too?”

Alex nodded. “I asked him about it
once.”

“So you’re like my own personal body
guard.”

He grinned. “It makes
sense.”

I frowned. “Do you think you will
become fated?”

He shrugged. “Not everyone is. Most
lions become fated early on. I’d rather it didn’t happen, really.
If I became fated, I would have to leave Leslie. I don’t want to do
that. I thought it was odd before meeting your crew, you know, the
fact that I love her and we are different. Now, I just hope it
lasts.”

“You guys are great
together.”

We were quiet again. He looked down at
Leslie and smiled to himself.

“Should we start waking people
up?”

He nodded.

I leaned back and poked Zane in the
ribs. “Zane!” I whispered loudly. “It’s time to wake
up!”

Zane twitched awake, his hind leg
catching Luke in the back.

Luke grunted and shifted. “Ugh! What in
the world was that for?”

Zane shifted back. “Sorry.” He turned
to me. “That wasn’t very nice.”

I chuckled. “Sorry.”

Everyone else was getting up as
well.

“Well, that was a boring few hours,”
complained Nate. He had taken the last watch.

“Boring is good, Nate. Boring is good.”
Alex gave him a pat on the back.

We all quickly ate and set off again,
anxious to get where we were going.

Nate came to jog by Dodge and shifted
so he could talk to me.

“Could I ask you a few questions about
the healing?”

“Sure. What do you want to
know?”

Dodge slowed to match the shorter man’s
stride.

“How do you know what to
heal?”

“When I touch a being it’s almost like
I can see the damage no matter where it is. And it’s not really me
that heals the person. They heal themselves. I just concentrate the
energy where it needs to be.”

“And that is why there are different
ways to do it?”

I nodded. “There are three ways
actually. The first I used on you. You use your own energy. The
second one I had to use on Kacey. If the being is too hurt and
doesn’t have enough energy to heal itself, I give it some of mine.
The third is the hardest. I haven’t been able to get it, and I’m
not sure I would want to. It requires me to take energy from
another being and transferring it to the one being
healed.”

“Why don’t you want to use that
one?”

“Well, it seems to me that killing one
being to save another defeats the purpose of healing. Maybe that’s
why I can’t do it. I can’t justify it.”

He nodded and looked around.

I looked up as well and noticed we had
fallen back quite a way. I glanced down as Nate put a hand on my
leg.

“I’m sorry, Hayden. It seems it’s not
just will power that breaks bonds, otherwise I would have done it.”
He yanked me off of Dodge.

I was surprised at how strong he was.
He clamped a hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream and kept me
between Dodge and himself so my horse wouldn’t kick him.

He started to drag me away and I tried
to plead with Dodge to leave me and run to the others. I bit Nate’s
hand and tasted blood, but he kept his grip on me.

Panic started to set in and the colors
moved in front of my face. I got an idea.

I let go of Nate’s arm and picked a red
wave. I threw it at a tree that stood between us and the rest of
the group.

Everyone but Zane, Alex, and Luke
ducked. Those three ran back toward us.

I felt Nate’s composure slip and he let
go. I tripped and fell. Dodge saw his opening and turned, firing
with both hind legs. Nate’s breath left his body in a sickly
wheezing sound as his chest imploded and he collapsed to the
ground.

Alex shifted and pulled me up. “Are you
alright?”

I nodded then shook my head as Zane
checked Nate for signs of life. “Don’t bother, Zane. He’s
gone.”

“So much for the bodyguard idea,”
mumbled Alex.

“You can’t protect me from my own
stupidity, Alex.”

I caught sight of Kacey as the rest of
the group reached us. “Did you know about his plans?”

His grey eyes widened. “No! I
swear!”

We all stared at him. “God, I wish
there was a way to test this bond breaking thing.” I looked at him
closely. “I don’t like fighting. I don’t like people hurting each
other. I don’t like killing. But I promise you this, Kacey. If you
are lying and I find out about it, I will burn you to a crisp
myself! Is that understood?”

He nodded eagerly.

Instead of lessening, my anger
escalated with my outburst. I turned and threw a red wave at Nate’s
body and watched it burn down to ashes.

Everyone stood in shocked silence, my
friends included. I stomped over to Dodge, giving the ashes a final
farewell kick, sending them scattering everywhere.

I swung onto my horse and urged him
into a canter.

Everyone else followed
wordlessly.

Later that evening we stopped for the
final night of our journey. I got off of Dodge and gave him a hug.
“Sorry about that, buddy. I should have been paying more
attention.”

He shook his head.
Don’t worry about it. Everything worked out
fine
.

Zane came to stand beside me. He was
grinning from ear to ear.

I turned red. “What?

He lost control and started to
laugh.

Everyone stopped what they were doing
and stared at us.

“It’s just...” He tried to catch his
breath. “The look on your face when you threatened Kacey… It’s been
a long time since you lost your temper like that! I was just
remembering how when that used to happen you would just randomly
set things on fire!” He laughed again. “But nothing... nothing was
as funny as the look on everyone’s faces when you torched that
stupid fox and kicked his ashes around!”

Luke was sitting on the ground trying
to keep his laughter in.

I turned a deeper shade of red. “I was
just making sure no one could see we had been there,” I muttered
lamely.

Luke lost the battle and lay on the
ground, tears running down his face.

I smiled. “Ok, fine. I lost my temper.
I’m sorry if I scared anyone.” I looked around. “Kacey?”

He came walking up to us, unsure of
what was coming.

“Kacey, I’m sorry. Jumping to
conclusions about your involvement was wrong.”

“It’s alright, Hayden. Quite honestly,
I’m surprised I’m still allowed to live after that. Most people
wouldn’t take the chance.”

“Yes, well, my friends and I aren’t
most people.” I smiled at him. “Now, I have a tiger I would like to
get home. Let’s figure out how to do that.”

Since Luke only knew of the cave, Kacey
took over.

“If we keep anyone there, it is usually
on the right side because those two rooms have the shackles.” Kacey
looked at me. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

Kacey was about to go on when I thought
of something. “Will there be any other prisoners there?”