"I will get this contract ready by tomorrow morning," Biham murmured. He wouldn't delay it even for a bit. He lay down on the couch on his side with his hands across his chest, watching Kinshra sleep. It was his favorite view. Her steady and heartbeat was like a metronome for him. It lulled him to sleep. His dreams were full of little pups with beautiful ocean eyes and dark hair.
When Kinshra woke up in the morning, she found him sitting on the edge of the bed. "Biham?" she said as she pulled the blanket up and stifled a yawn.
With a wide smile he lifted his hand up which was holding a scroll. "The contract. Signed and sealed."
"So soon!" Kinshra was surprised. She got up and shifted back to rest against the headboard. Biham's hair was all tousled up and he was looking so sexy. She took the scroll from him. It was sealed with lac on which the official seal was embedded. She broke the seal and rolled the scroll out. It was a long one and she felt embarrassed initially that she had written so many points. Nonetheless, she reached the end of the scroll and was satisfied when she saw his signatures with his seal. "Thank you," she said in a soft voice. "This means a lot to me."
"This means a lot to me too," he said. "I have memorized the conditions and I am going to work for them. There was only one condition that caught my eye very urgently."
She tilted her head and asked innocently, "What condition?"
The armor that the blacksmiths had sent was sent by the next morning. Felis and his men shifted into their wolves and the Nyxers made them wear the armor.
Felis opened his mind link with the commanders and the Nyxers. 'Keep your mind links open with me at all times. We all are going to run together in a single file. Do not, and I repeat, do not stray. We will rest every five hours. We have to quickly cover the distance of the Ivory Forest.'
'Yes, Your Highness!'
When the night fell, along with his thirteen commanders and ten best Nyxers, Felis started for his destination. They didn't run during the day within the Hydra border for the fear that the spies would sense the movement. They reached the point of entry of the Ivory Forest by midnight. Just before entering, Felis stopped. Others too stopped with him.
Through his mind link he said to his wolves, 'I will be leading from here onwards. You all are going to maintain the same pace as me. Each one of us is going to maintain a ten meters distance between each other. We will stop after five hours for rest and you stop in your place only for fifteen minutes. You will not overstep or come close to another one in front of you or behind you. Is that clear?'
'Yes, Your Highness!' they said in unison.
'We will be exiting only at Cetus. If one of you becomes the food of a tree in this forest, no one is going to stop. The rest will continue their journey.' Felis knew that this was a dangerous mission and so did all of them.
A wave of silence passed through them. Felis turned towards the forest. He peeled his lips back and let out a snarl. And then he dashed inside the forest. Brix waited for him to cover ten meters and he went in after him. One by one every Nyxer entered the forest and relied on their king to show the way.
Felis didn't run very fast because he had miles and miles to cover. He didn't want to exhaust his wolves. But he ran at a steady pace that others could follow at a comfortable speed. He had memorized the route on the map and then too it wasn't easy to navigate through the Ivory Forest. As they ran further inside, it became darker and the path narrower. Occasionally they heard branches groaning.