Chapter Sixteen

"Everyone, get to the centre of the clearing now," Katie yelled putting all the urgency she could into her voice. Silence took over the clearing, the low sound of werewolf growling breaking through it, the silence of the crowd was enough to let the growl get heard by everyone in the vicinity. Panic filled the whole crowd like a storm. The lot of them ran to the centre of clearing in no particular order. The one most barred by their fellow humans were the safest as logic would have it. "Hunters, surround the group and take on defensive stances. Do not let the rogues anywhere near the civilians." Katie yelled her orders while she got Shaemus' body out of the fray of panic and placed him beside the gathering crowd. It would have been easy to get him trampled in that chaos. She then stationed two hunters to guard his body.

The rogues did nothing to attack and only came out once everyone was cornered in a tight circle. A quick headcount of the snarling wolves gave seven as the result. The delay in their arrival was something that Katie still didn't understand. "Katie, how did you know they were coming?" Cole's voice came as he walked up to her, leaving his alphas to guard different sides of the group.

"A hunch," Katie said, keeping the fact that she had received the clue from Shaemus to herself.

The rogues that surrounded them were seven in total. Katie's eyes darted back and forth gathering all the necessary information and his mind working faster than it normally did to find the best effective way to solve the problem at hand. The Seven wolves that surrounded them flanked them from the seven different directions all around them cutting off all routes of escape. Katie currently stood with Cole by his side, facing one of them, Sandra not too far to the right, facing another. The two alphas whose names he was yet to learn were each blocking another one. Dexter, along with the other six wolves he was with covered the others while the rest of the hunters stood around the crowd in one defensive circle, their numbers easily reaching twenty.

Despite the good defences, rogues would only stop attacking once they realized that this path only led to their demise. Unfortunately for them, Katie had no intention of letting them live. "Cole, help the others, there is a team of werewolves under Dexter on that side," Katie spoke up.

"What's our primary objective?"

"Kill them all," she said, without a hint of malice in her voice. It was just plain and simple, that's how the hunters worked. There was no room for tolerating rogues when they attacked humans or werewolves alike. Any rogue found was to be killed immediately to cut off communication between it and the rest of the pack.

Katie darted forward after relaying the order, vanishing almost instantly to the normal eye due to her Prometheus gift. The battle raged on for a short while, the civilians in fear the whole time as they were forced to watch wolves fight wolves and hunters alike in an effort to strip them of their lives. Katie made swift work of her kill, dashing forward and hitting all weak points that were the joints of the wolf's limbs before it had time to react. While the wolf was on the ground, Katie looped her hand around its semi-thick neck and with all her might snapped it without a second to waste. It had been swift and easy because she had kept the element of surprise and killed the unsuspecting wolf under the span of thirty seconds.

She turned around in time to see Sandra evade the jaw of the wolf she was engaged with, backing her up a few meters and not allowing her to recover before attacking again. She was on the defensive, only being capable of evading the wolf's attacks. The skill with which she avoided the wolf probably told it that this was someone skilled and therefore kept her on her toes the whole time. A quick assessment of the situation told Katie that she would be just fine in the end, not like she could have let her step in any way.

"Agility, is that the Prometheus gift she possesses?" one of the hunters in the defence line asked his neighbour, speculating based on how fast he was moving.

"That's what I want to believe, but by the way, she snapped that Rogue's neck like it was nothing. Is that strength even human?" the friend close by laughed shivers running through them.

"I know… that's what makes it so hard to believe. Is it possible for her to have both…"

"Shut up, that's not possible and we both know it."

"And yet, look…" the comrade pointed a shaky finger at the unstoppable hunter as she rushed over Dexter's wolves, grabbing the throat of the wolf they pinned down and smashing it before vanishing from sight, in pursuit of yet another target.

............

Katie returned to Sandra after finishing off the wolf that was giving Dexter's comrades a hard time. She couldn't blame them since neither of them had ever had to take a life before. It wasn't something that could come naturally and the purpose of the hunters was also to make sure that no one would be forced into taking such an action out of necessity. Humanity still lived on even within werewolves, as they were born that way and did not choose it. Taking a life wasn't easy on anyone, whether human or werewolf and Katie knew that completely.

She rushed back to Sandra just in time to see the rogue she was fighting turn tail and run, heading for the forest. One other rogue darted in the same direction, and the last one walked up to Katie and lowered itself to the ground in submission. A quick scan of the clearing confirmed that four of the rogues were dead, one had surrendered and two were escaping. Cole came up to her jogging, "Hey, Katie, shall I initiate the Prometheus evaluation?"

"Yes, please do. Sandra, we are going after them. None of them shall escape," Katie said getting ready to follow in the directions the rogues were headed.

"KATIE," someone yelled from within the crowd… Kyle. His hand hastily rummaged through the bag he had been given to hold, producing a black leather sleeveless jacket. He threw it at Katie who wasted no time in putting it on and darting into the woods, in pursuit of the rogues, Sandra in tow close behind.

Cole snapped his eyes away from the two hunters that had given chase and put his hand on the forehead of the rogue that still stayed down, head bowed in submission with its eyes closed. White carving lines began to trace all over the rogue's forehead, sketching an image of a howling wolf before glowing blue. This was the mark of the Lycaon royal family and putting it on any Rogue is what could kick start the Prometheus evaluation. Through this process, the wolf that was put under it would be unconscious throughout the whole process making them practically harmless.

"Stay and guard the people just in case there are others lurking around," he ordered Jason and Caden before running in the direction Katie and Sandra were last seen headed.

"Cole, be careful…" Caden called, a hint of urgency in his voice urged Cole to look back at him, "that jacket…"

"Yes, I noticed," he replied, before calling on his wolf. 'The smell from that coat is one that no werewolf can forget once they know what it is… the smell of wolfsbane.' If there was any way he was going to catch up to them. His human legs would not make it easy with how much time he had used already used up.

A swift numbness took over his entire body preparing her for the change it was about to go through. He surrendered control to the wolf within him, leaping high into the air.

The sound of bones snapping and reforming rapidly could be heard while he was still shifting. His entire body was reforming and growing larger and taking on the animalistic form of a wolf. Cole's clothes fused with his body while fur, pitch black fur, burst forth from his pores covering his entire body while the transformation ended. A large pitch-black wolf, easily towering to two and a half times the size of a normal one landed with a heavy thud, vanishing into the cover of the forest as soon as it landed on its paws. The transformation froze everyone in the crowd including the werewolves that saw it.

Cole ran through the forest, the scents of the four people he was chasing along with the wolfsbane in the jacket that Katie was carrying became clearer to him in this form. He pushed his powerful legs to go faster, zipping through the forest in hot pursuit. He could tell he was getting close. The heartbeats of the scared rogues were impossible to ignore. They too could smell the wolfsbane and no matter how fast they tried to push on, they were unable to outrun the two hunters tailing them. 'These two… are simply unbelievable…' Cole thought to himself when the chase finally came into sight looking as one-sided as this entire encounter had been looking so far.