赤裸裸的滑稽故事

“So…” Caleb began, dipping his toast into his egg. “Did you really spend two months trying to find an answer about how to reach me in Moonguard? It seemed like you had already accepted that wasn’t the case when you told Myka to return to Winter.”

Ashleigh looked up from her plate and into his eyes. She shook her head as she swallowed.

“No,” she said sadly. “That was just how long it took me to find him.”

[Almost Six Months After the War Ended]

Ashleigh had kept her word.

Every three days, she pulled out her phone and sent a message to Fiona, letting her know she was alive and well. But beyond these check-ins, she had yet to contact anyone during the two months she trekked through the mountains of Moonguard.

Occasionally, Fiona would send her a message from someone else or an update on the goings on of the packs.

The twins had been born just over a week into Ashleigh’s trip. Fiona had sent her a message informing her of their birth and, a few days later, a picture.

Looking at the image brought strange emotions into Ashleigh’s chest. Part of her felt happy and excited for her brother. She felt the slight curve at the corner of her mouth as she gazed at the beautiful boys.

But another part of her felt… bitter.

She looked away from the image. It wasn’t their fault. None of them. She didn’t want to look at her nephews with these feelings overwhelming her. She wanted to see them as them, not as the things she regretted in her life.

When she saw their names, she was both shocked and unsurprised. It made sense. Axel had always admired Jonas, and in recent times, he had received a lot of guidance from him. So had Caleb. He was special to them both.

Wyatt. Even seeing his name typed on her phone screen made her heart ache.

Ashleigh still missed her father daily. There had been so much that happened in the past two years. Even the loss of her father had been rolled up into the rest of it. Had she really taken the time to mourn him?

Based on her gut's painful and uncomfortable feeling, she assumed the answer was no. But now wasn’t the time for that. She had come back to Moonguard with a purpose.

When Myka confirmed that the ley line was not present on the mountain, Ashleigh had given up hope that she would find the answers she sought about how to reach Caleb there. But, after the attack, after witnessing Sadie and Stefan almost die in front of her eyes because she had put them at risk. Something inside of Ashleigh changed.

As much as she wanted to find Caleb, as much as she knew that he was still out there, she was starting to understand that she couldn’t keep doing the things she had been doing.

Her family and friends all meant well, but none of them could understand, and she couldn’t understand them. She couldn’t be with them right now. It hurt too much, and it had become too easy for her to hurt them.

Ashleigh never thought for a moment that she would ever put anyone else at risk for her own selfish needs.

Stefan, Sadie, and Myka were all right, and she would carry the scars of that day for the rest of her life. But she and they had healed and would not suffer from long-term damage.

But the scout was still missing.

When she found his knife, she was surprised. Obviously, she knew that a scout had been sent to Moonguard, and he had encountered danger. But she had assumed that once he sent his report, he had left and returned to his route away from the mountain without issue.

The knife, the drag marks, and the treant’s root made it abundantly clear that was not the case. The search parties that had been sent found no trace of him, but they also couldn’t get far enough up the mountain to search the area where she had found the knife.

It took Ashleigh two weeks and a lot of sleeping in trees and skirmishes with bats, frogs, and other fae creatures. But she had made her way up the mountain toward the village.

She had found the place where he had escaped the treant. She followed the path she believed he had taken. It didn’t take long for her to run into trouble. The number of fae she had fought since she arrived, she had lost count in the first days.

It was almost another two weeks before she found any other sign that the scout had been in the area she was searching.

The path she had followed went deeper into the mountains. She felt the rise and fall of the slopes as she walked and knew she was heading toward the mound. The number of fae she saw each day was growing. But more often than not, she could avoid a direct confrontation.

She had witnessed several times while she hid high in the trees that the newer creatures, the ones she had fought at the lake, were aggressive toward the other fae. From what she could see, there was a territorial dispute happening.

The older ones claimed the mound, while the newer ones claimed the lake. The village was contested, belonging to whichever group could hold it for however long they could. And the forest that lay between was a free for all battleground.

Ashleigh had found the scout’s journal by chance as she ducked to hide from a passing patrol of bats. He had left it tucked inside a fallen tree. As soon as she recognized what it was, she climbed as high as she could into one of the nearby trees and began to read.

The journal confirmed many of her own observations. Looking through his notes from before he sent the report, he had made sketches of the lake creature and noted its aggression toward the others.

In a previous entry, from the time he had visited before Ashleigh’s request was made, he talked about how the fae at the mound were peaceful with each other. They worked together and stayed close to their home.

The only danger he had reported back then was how fast their numbers were growing. The lake creatures hadn’t been spotted until his second trip. After that, the scout had made it into the village without incident. He had slept in one of the houses. Still, when he woke up the following day, he was stunned to find that the village had been overrun.

He escaped undetected and got high into the trees to observe what he could. That was when he witnessed the power struggle between the two kinds of fae. From up in that tree, he had sent a coded message with his report to both Winter and Bustling Bush.

After the battle was over and the losing group scattered, the scout followed one of the new creatures, and that was when he saw it go into the lake. He waited for hours, but it never came back. The scout had planned to send another report, but the signal was lost near the lake.

When he made his way back down into the forest and had a signal again, he was discovered by a group of bats. But, unfortunately, his phone was lost, and so was his ability to report back.

According to the journal, the small group that had found him chased him all over the mountain for days. When he finally thought he had evaded them and could go off the mountain, he spotted the smoke from Myka and Ashleigh’s camp.