in his face.
Over the next two weeks, Lexia was in a world of her own. She followed her schedule to plan, never missed a training session but her thoughts were elsewhere. With each passing day, she looked more and more tired. Dark circles formed under her eyes and she’d lost weight. She looked as if she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a long time.
Derrick tried to talk to her. He said he only wanted to help but she knocked him back every time, telling him he was safer not knowing.
So Derrick chose to do the one thing he could help her with…Alice. The anger and resentment Alice felt toward Lexia was twisting her mind. Every time Lexia came within sight of Alice, he saw the agony she felt. Each snide remark and nasty comment was like a knife to Lexia’s heart.
“Alice,” he called sharply across the training center as she piled out with the rest of her unit.
“Yes?” she replied.
Derrick waited until Alice had reached him before speaking again. “You are to have extra training sessions with me every morning before breakfast. I will see you here at five hundred hours.”
“What, why?” she whined.
“Because you have an excess amount of anger running through you and I want to put it to better use,” he replied calmly.
“Did Lex- Maura put you up to this?” she yelled, releasing her agitation and pent up anger.
Derrick spoke slowly, venom lacing his words as he replied, “Lexia has nothing to do with this. I’ve simply had enough of you blaming her for what has been done to you.”
He left her standing there looking stunned and lost. Just before the door closed behind him, he heard the faintest of whispers, “You called her Lexia.”
Chapter 21
For two weeks, Lexia had been patient. She’d kept to her schedule but during the early hours of the morning, she’d been following Lucy. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Lucy used the same route Lexia had to leave the compound. She’d tramp through the forest to the building Lexia had followed her to those few weeks earlier.
Now, Lexia glanced at her watch, waiting for shift change. She was standing by the door waiting to escape into the early evening. It would still be light so she had to get to the fence, under it and reach the cover of the trees in the few minutes it took for the guards to change. Getting back would have to wait until midnight when the skeleton crew took over and the exit was conveniently left unguarded.
When she’d first stumbled across her escape, she’d wondered why no one had noticed a weakness in the compound’s defense, but now she knew, and she wondered just how long Lucy had been making these trips.
Her blood raced with excitement as she dived for the fence, her skin scraping the ground as she rolled beneath the chain mesh. The freedom of the forest sizzled through her veins and for a brief moment, she smiled and fantasized this was just an ordinary day, and she was running through the trails near her home.
The wolves had moved away from the compound since she’d spoken to them. She suspected they didn’t trust her even though she’d delivered Sahara unharmed. Finding them took her more time than she’d have liked. She’d be having no sleep tonight by the time she’d made the trek back to the compound.
Resting for a minute, her hands on her knees, Lexia dragged some much-needed oxygen into her lungs and calmed her thoughts, opening her mind up to the life around her, feeling for the life forces of the alpha pack.
A laugh left her as she felt one nearby. Standing, she peered through the darkness but was unable to see him. “How long have you been watching me try to find you? Does it amuse you wearing me out?”
Grey’s voice spoke from her right but still she couldn’t see him. “I wanted to make sure you were alone.”
“I’m alone. No other hunter would be foolish enough to venture this far into the forest at night.”
“You may have been followed,” he replied from the darkness.
“Unlikely, and even so, they’d have never kept up, and now will be wandering the forest trying to find their way home.”
“So why is it you can run this land, hunter?”
Lexia smiled into the shadows, knowing he could see her. “Because I was trained by a panther, not by a hunter. This is my home as much as yours. I wonder if you could scale