Claimed And Marked By Her Stepbrother Mates - Chapter 396

Chapter 396: 396-The Barbarians
Helanie:

“Take this,” Hans quickly opened the bag he carried with some food and water in it and placed an ice pack over my eye.

“You can still run?” he asked me. Sydney had run away to join her team.

“What the fuck happened?” While Lamar’s team was passing us, he slowed down to check on me.

“Dude, go!” I yelled at him, eyeing him with my one eye so he wouldn’t lose the test because of me. He reluctantly ran away. Many people passed us. We even got to find out that Penn’s team got the riddle wrong on the first attempt.

“I can, let’s go.” Without wasting another minute, I was up on my feet again. Now we knew they could attack us from all directions, so we were cautious.

We began to sprint as fast as we could, and I realized I still needed more strength from my wolf. While running, I got so anxious and hyper that I started calling for my wolf.

‘Listen, I know you don’t want to be my wolf—hence you don’t want to come out. But please, give me a chance. I won’t put all the work on you.’ I just had a feeling that maybe my wolf found out that she belonged to a loser like me and decided to fucking dip.

‘Please—help me—’ I begged as I felt my legs giving up.

However, I felt a tingling sensation in my legs as if they were giving me a hint. I followed them and turned toward the water passing by.

“What are you doing?” Hans yelled after me when I jumped into the water. I had never even seen or taken a single lesson on swimming. So the minute I was in the water, I started to fucking drown.

“Oh no,” I heard Hans yell and jump after me. In the next few minutes, he had dragged me out and was glaring me down.

“I will not ask you to explain yourself. But maybe your body caught the heat from your wolf trying to put pressure to help,” he just made up an excuse and then gestured for us to keep running.

I didn’t understand. If I was devastated before, this act of deception from my wolf—or whatever caused me to jump in the water—really kicked me down. I could not even ask my wolf to come out for help anymore. She almost drowned me.

So I kept going and reached the other mountain. We took a little break to drink some water and hand food over to the other teammates.

“All the teams have gone barbarian. They are attacking us and hitting us. Why aren’t we doing anything?” One of the guys from our team raised a concern, and Hans looked over at me.

“I have told you guys, we cannot divert our attention away from the main goal. Our goal is to find the item and reach the finish line,” I reminded them again, but I could tell they were not satisfied.

“But there is also a part where the trainers said we could delay others,” one of the girls spoke up this time.

“I guess you can, but have you not seen the other teams yet? They are so busy attacking each other’s teammates that they keep getting their riddles wrong. Remember what Trainer Norman said? This is not the end of the world. We must not fight—we are defenders.” I watched Hans nod his head and then turn to the team.

“You heard her. We are saving our energy for the main goal. And also, lay low. Don’t become someone’s target by attacking them.” Thankfully, he was really good at this stuff. I had expected him to mess up, but I guess it was because of the messy cage fight with the Frogster. I could now tell that it was Sydney and Salem who made him lose that fight.

“Okay now, let’s go,” I said as I gestured at everyone. We spread out again, and this time, we reached the main area of the waterfall.

“Careful, everyone. I heard there are many traps here,” Hans said as he raised his hands to stop everyone.

“There is a mine!” a girl yelled, pointing at something hiding in the dirt.

“These are wolfsbane mines. You should not step on them!” Hans yelled for everyone, and they listened to him. But I could see the fear in everyone’s eyes now. The wind was so strong here that every whooshing sound scared us.

“Yikes!” We heard a loud scream from one of the members of Penn’s team as they pushed one of the girls onto the mine and ran away.

The mine exploded, and it hit our member. She screamed in pain and then writhed.

We all ran to her and saw the burn rashes all over her skin.

“It fucking hurts!” She was crying so much that I began to panic.

“Should we take her back?” I asked Hans, worried for her.

“It wouldn’t do anything. One of you stay with her and calm her down. We will go find the item and then meet you here. We will then proceed to head back, but I will need one of you to carry her,” Hans said, his eyes searching through the crowd and landing on a guy who was a fast runner.

“You! You will carry her,” he decided, and the guy nodded his head.

“Helanie and I will start moving forward—” Hans suddenly stopped and then turned to me. “Actually, Helanie will go and take the first steps to clear out the mines. She doesn’t have an active wolf, so she won’t be affected by the wolfsbane like we would.”

He made a good observation, and I was all set for it. Except— I did have a little wolf power, and I was using it to run beside them.

But I had a desire to sound and look powerful, so I didn’t deny it and took the lead. I would let my foot hover over the grass and mud and then clear them gently before I took a step forward. It took most of our time, but we were finally here—at the cave near the waterfall.