Chapter 97

The rest of the day proved to be uneventful for the pack. Most of the time, it was not quiet in the slightest. Maia and Kali had fun with making sure that Bryden learned as fast as he could. They were just quite vocal about the areas he needed to improve. Shannon had worked to get better at navigating, so they would not have to rely on only Natalie to know where they had to go. Thus, a lot of her time was spent reading a map to follow their current course. She was getting better at it, but still had to ask questions to Natalie on a fairly regular basis. Otherwise the only thing she did was correct the two female wolves whenever they made a wrong statement. That happened very rarely though. As for Bryden, he was improving at an astronomical rate. Though the look on his face and his grunts of frustration showed that it was more to try and get the two women off his back. They were persistent, and insisted to make sure that he was getting better, but their smiles betrayed how much fun they were having, making him only get that much more infuriated with his current situation.

Meanwhile Natalie was working hard on diversifying the range of her abilities. She had not been able to make nearly as much progress compared to the week off, but it was not due to lack of effort. Each day, the amount of reward she got for her efforts was diminishing, and her skill with it was hardly improving. Something was missing from having her progress further, be it just a time element, or if she needed to grow in a certain way first. She spent all of their time on the highway just working on enhancing her vision with the energy. Using her medical knowledge, she experimented with injecting her power into the individual parts of her eye. While most parts did not seem to provide any noticeable changes, there were two that stood out. When she infused the lens of her eyes, the distance she could see improved greatly. The more she put in, the further her view magnified, allowing her to see quite far into the distance. However, the drain it imposed on her also increased with the higher levels of energy infusion. If she instead infused her energy towards her pupil, it would apply a sort of filter over her vision. This one did not feel draining in the slightest, but it was what allowed her to see the energy both inside and what came off from her surroundings. The wolves and plants around her all gave off the same green energy as she had always seen, and the road gave off miniscule amounts of the black mist. Was this due to them being unnatural?

Nothing of interest stood out to them as they travelled. Apparently, they had passed a town that sit further west, but only Nat was able to clearly make it out at that distance. They would not have even noticed it if not for Shannon's focus on the map. Eventually, they came up to a sign that stated they were about to come up to High River. With where the sun sat in the sky, they all agreed to stop for the night before reaching the town. Moving through a town as the sun set and night fell felt like a dangerous idea. So much so that Shannon was quite adamant about her dislike of the unneeded risk. Thankfully, everyone agreed with her readily on the subject. They had already witnessed death once before today, they had no desire to see it again so soon.

They quickly found a farmhouse that sat beside the road, and made sure that it was all clear before starting to set up their camp. However, there were tracks that lead through the camp this time, mostly hob and gob tracks seemed to mill about, but all of them led out of the property. After making sure that the coyote team knew what they had seen, everyone started to relax and settle into their nightly practices. Tonight, Seeka was Shannon's main helper while Scout got his first go at walking upright. He probably had the most ease at first compared to everyone else, though that was probably due to the fact that he had spent more time around people than any other canine in the group. When this happened though, Bryden let out a loud sigh of relief, as Maia and Kali's sights had shifted to a new target. They were having difficulty critiquing Bryden and his ability as they came upon the end of their travelling, and quickly got into it with poor Scout, not holding any of their views back. Throughout all of this, Seeka just watched on with mirth, satisfied to see the cute little worrywart of hers get pushed through his paces.

Dinner ended up being some pork chops, with some potatoes on the side for all of the adults. Feeling that their training had been slacking recently, the pups were all made to go hunt for their meals. However, they could no longer hunt in groups. This time, they were now solo hunting, and it had varied levels of success. Some of them were too used to being the distraction, and made far too much noise. Spirit was exceptionally notable in this regard, scaring off not just his prey, but the prey of two others due to his excessive energy. However, they were saved by the ones who did well. Rogue seemed to be so good at disappearing, her name was becoming the most fitting. They never knew she had finished hunting till she was already back among the group, digging into her fresh meat. She was growing up to be exceptional as a huntress, as most of the females were. Ares was the only male wolf who successfully hunted on his own, but Bob and Joe were taken pity on, due to Spirit's behaviour. This was going to become the norm though, and eventually all of them would be able to hopefully act as the murderous predators that they descended from.

Before going to bed, Natalie made sure to try and train as much as possible, exhausting herself just outside her tent. However, this time she did not train alone. Shannon started moving through some forms, working on getting back into a better shape for martial arts. With everything that she had seen and heard from Natalie, the ability to control one's body freely would most likely be a boon once she had her own bonded partners in crime. She was so into it; she did not notice any of the times that Natalie had gotten distracted and just watched her move and exert herself until she had finally finished. When both were exhausted, they each retreated to their own tents, each heavily blushing at the whole thing. Thankfully, at least to their minds, sleep came fast and both were snoring quickly, dreaming about one another.

Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Selvaria, Viktor, Saganatsu, Eeleater, Eric, Lachlan, Adam, John, Nicholas, Jacob, Onean, Erudual, Hades, Krimson, Neal, Juuso, Sebastian, Sir Hellington, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 50 patrons, which I will then spend more time each month writing some side stories and shorts that show other perspectives throughout my stories!

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