She tried to roll over but was held back the strong arm that was wrapped tightly around her waist, even in his sleep. Artemis awoke in the middle of the night to be lying down on her back with Sol facing her on his side, his warm breath fanning the side of her neck as he slept peacefully.

She heard the sound again. The rustling from before, earlier that evening. Except this time, it seemed to be nearer and louder. Almost as if it was inside the house, whatever it was.

Her heartbeat spiked up in panic but she was quick to control her heartbeat and her breathing in fear of alerting the being downstairs. If it was a werewolf then they would surely know that she was awake and very much of their presence.

It didn't seem like a supernatural presence since the scent was off, but there were multiple of them and she wasn't willing to take any chances in case they used something to mask their scent.

Paranoia conquered her as her eyes fleeted across the room but it was too dark to make out anything very clearly despite her enhanced werewolf senses.

"Sol?" She whispered into the darkness of their bedroom, not wanting to be too loud or to move on the bed in fear of being heard by the intruders that were downstairs. She wished so much that it was a lone intruder but she wasn't fooling herself despite how much she wanted to. There were multiple scents downstairs, three if she wanted to be specific.

When he didn't respond, she called out to him again with no luck.

Groaning internally while being sure to not resonate any audible sound, she picked her hand off the bed slowly in attempt to not rustle the sheets. Raising her hand, her ears perked up to listen to the rustling that seemed to carry on downstairs.

She hadn't been heard. So far.

Placing her hand on his stubbly cheek, she applied light pressure. And when that didn't work, she pinched him. Before he could groan aloud however and give away the fact that she was very much awake and aware of their presence, she quickly covered his mouth with her hand.

A small, discernible sound still vibrated through her hand but it was quiet enough to go undetected by the human's downstairs. Hopefully.

His eyes shot open having both heard the sound and recognised her hand. For a few moments they both stared at each other in silence, his body facing hers while she had her head turned towards him. Her neck was starting to ache since she was still lying on her back, but she dared not make any sudden movement in fear of being discovered.

Leaning towards her a little, Sol raised his hand placed it over his, indicating to her silently that it was fine for her to remove it.

Her heart beat loudly against her chest as she moved her hand, keeping her eyes on him. "There's three of them," she whispered quietly to him. It was only because they were so close to each other, their faces now less than an inch away that he was able to hear her. "I don't know how long they've been here," she paused in fear, reminding herself to keep her voice down. "But I've been awake for about five minutes now."

Sol didn't say anything and he didn't move, but she could tell that he was trying to assess the situation, trying to figure out how they could both get out of it without getting hurt, or worse; killed.

"They're humans." He stated to no one in particular, merely voicing his findings after having tried to pick up their scents and track their movements. "It sounds like they're all in the kitchen." His warm breath fanned over her face. He must have noticed how scared she was for his eyes softened. "I won't let anything happen to you," he promised her and she believed him. Not because she needed to believe him to calm herself down and needed the reassurance even if she did suspect that it was false, but because she truly believed him. He had never lied to her before and she doubted that he would start now.

She trusted him with her life.

"What do we do?" She asked even though she knew what he was going to say.

"We have to go down there," he exhaled the words, being careful to only whisper loud enough for her to hear. "I don't think they're trying to steal from us." He attempted some light humour. It was pretty good, but the situation didn't give it the glory that it deserved.

"We're going to have to be very quiet. We can't have them hear us."

Artemis' eyes widened as Sol sat up swiftly in the bed. She gulped but didn't move as he very slowly swung his legs off the bed and onto the ground, wincing as one of the floorboards creaked slightly under his weight. Applying a little pressure over a small amount of time, he finally got off the bed and stood facing her.

Both of them remained both still and silent as they listened for any sudden movement downstairs.

None. They were still rustling, whatever that was.

When Sol held out his arms, she reached forward and grabbed his hand, following exactly what he had done and sat up quickly in her place but this time, he wrapped his arms around her as he picked her up, carrying her bridal style.

Artemis winced and Sol physically froze each time one of the floorboards audibly groaned under both of their weight. It was only when he reached the door did he motion for her to get out of his arms.

The door was slightly cracked open which made things slightly easier, though not by much.

Artemis looked at Sol and Sol looked at Artemis before he slipped his hand between the door and the crack, very, very slowly pushed it forward to increase the size of the gap enough that they would both be able to slip through it, one by one.

Her heart stilled as the door creaked but the rustling was louder now that she doubted any of the human trespassers downstairs heard. But that didn't mean she still didn't worry.

Once the door was just wide enough for them to pass through, Sol turned back to Artemis and held an arm out in front of her, hindering her from moving anymore forward. "I think you should stay in the bedroom."

"What? No!" She replied in exasperation, not actually believing that he would suggest such a thing.

"It'll be safe there." He tried to reason with her, not comfortable with the idea of her potentially getting hurt, or worse.

"I'll probably be safer by your side."

She had a point there but he wasn't completely convinced. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"And who's going to stop you from getting hurt?"

"You're not going to back off of this, are you?" He asked.

Artemis answered him with silence and a scowl. He sighed and ran a hand down his face before he turned back to her. "Make sure you stay by my side at all times. And no sudden movements."

"And don't throw yourself in front of me to protect me as if you're invincible." She snapped back at him, whisper shouting at him. If the situation wasn't so serious and if they didn't have a bunch of humans rummaging through all their stuff in the middle of their night, she might have laughed at how hilarious the situation was. But for now, she would have to save the laughter for another time.

Artemis released a sigh of relief each time one of the stairs didn't creak under her weight. She had put herself before Sol so she could test out which steps creaked the most since she weighed far less than he did. The ones that were loud for her, he skipped altogether.

From the bottom of the steps they could make out that two of the humans were in the kitchen, the door hallway closed and their backs were facing it as they remained occupied with going through all of the drawers. The third human was in the living room, sat back on the sofa, rifling through the book that Artemis had left on the coffee table earlier.

That really irked her.

But what was most strange about the situation was that they all seemed to be dressed in radioactive suits which didn't make any sense since they lived in an isolated cabin in the woods, not a radioactive powerplant that was in danger of blowing up at any moment.

Sol and Artemis shared a knowing look as they finally stepped down on the landing of the first floor of their cabin. The human in the living room would probably be the easiest to take down since he or she was alone and seemingly off guard as they flipped through the pages as if they were meaningless.

They clearly didn't appreciate good literature.

It was surprisingly easy for Sol to walk up behind the sofa without being detected. But he must have stood behind the human for too long as their eyes met through the reflection of the glass of the plasma screen TV, but it was already too late.

In under a second Sol had his wrapped around the neck of human, cutting out their air supply. His grip was firm and tight, leaving just enough room so that they wouldn't die, only pass out but not enough room to chance an impromptu escape.

Luckily the suit seemed to muffle out most of the sound. Definitely enough so the humans in the kitchen didn't catch wind of it.

Artemis caught the human before they fell to the ground with a thud and laid him down on the sofa.

The two werewolves hovered over the body for a few moments to make sure that they had really passed out before Artemis grabbed the blanket that she had left downstairs earlier and tied both their arms together behind its back, turning the body over onto its stomach, making it even more difficult for it to escape and alert the others in the off chance that woke up very suddenly and tried anything funny.

The humans in the kitchen were slightly harder to tame. They must have wondered back into the living because by the time Sol and Artemis had diverted their attention away from the human lying down on the sofa, they turned around to find the other two standing at the entrance of the kitchen, watching them in bewilderment. As if it was so hard to believe that they had actually woken up and started pinning them down, one by one.

Well, that was what they deserved for breaking into someone else's house, especially a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods, much less in radioactive suits and gas masks.

The humans didn't have much time to react as Artemis and Sol each dived at them, though they probably should have discussed this before as they ended up lunging at the same human, leaving the other one to panic and run back into the kitchen.

Sol grunted and pinned down the human, pushing Artemis away slightly as he applied pressure to its chest, crushing it down to the ground with the weight of his body.

This one was clearly a man, judging by the larger build and taller than average height, but Sol struggled very minimally before the human gave up. Though Sol was determined not to be fooled as he jabbed his knee over his throat, silently threatening to permanently cut off his air supply if he struggled any further.

Thankfully, Artemis was a smart cookie as she had ran into the kitchen just after Sol had shoved her away. She was faster than the human and so had leaped onto her back and pinned her to the ground before it could make a grab for one of the knives.

This one was smaller and far daintier than the human that Sol had taken down, a female for sure, or maybe even a lean teenage boy. Either way, Artemis stood on the human's back as she grabbed a large butcher's knife from the knife rack.

Holding the knife to the human's neck, she pushed it into the living room where the other human had also passed out. He had thrown the body on top of the other human on the couch, but that would soon change once they both woke up.

These humans were smart if they managed to break into the cabin undetected.

The human grunted in her arms but she just applied some more pressure against its neck with the knife.

It was cold and it was dark, and she didn't appreciate being woken up by a bunch of human trespassers who felt like it was absolutely fine to invade someone else's privacy. Artemis was started to get irritated.

"We need to tie them up," she informed Sol as she passed the human into his arms. He nodded his head as he took the knife from her.

Artemis stayed just long enough to watch Sol push the human to the ground, pointing the knife to its chest in warning before she ran up the stairs and back into their bedroom.

They didn't exactly have any ropes, but Artemis had some scarves that she used when she went out due to the cold this time of year. But today, they would serve a far more different purpose.

Running down the stairs with two scarves and a large towel that she had managed to grab from the bathroom as an afterthought, she dumped them on the coffee table before leaning on the ground and using one of the scarves to tie

"I have some rope," Sol suddenly remembered as he popped into the kitchen briefly before returning with said rope.

Rope was much better than material so Artemis ditched the scarf and Sol helped her tie up their assailants now gone victims. Served them right for disrupting their sleep.

By the end of it, the female sat on the ground with both her arms and feet tied up, the gas mask no longer on her face as Sol had ripped it off. The other two human lay unconscious on the sofa with the addition of both their legs being shackled to each other, meaning that they wouldn't be able to run unless they did it in unison. Artemis had also grabbed another knife from the kitchen, not wanting to take any chances in case of these humans tried something funny.

"You need to let us go," the human female cried with a few tears ran down her face.

Sol snarled at her, indicating her to shut up as he turned to face Artemis, silently assessing her from top to bottom, making sure that she wasn't hurt.

Sitting down on the coffee table, she looked up at him. "We should probably call the elders."

Sol nodded and did just that. The conversation lasted less than a minute as Sol quickly informed elder Jackson of what had happened. "They should be here in a few hours."

"What do we with these ones while we wait?" She asked him.

"We torture them."

The female whimpered and Artemis rolled her eyes. Clearly the human wasn't smart enough to tell that he was joking.

"Or we could just get some information out of them."

Sol shrugged and sat down on the floor, his legs spread in front of him as he played with the knife. "That works too." He muttered nonchalantly.

Sparing each other another look, they both turned to the human. She must have noticed the way they were looking at her for she started crying, not that they cared. Actual wailing, blubbering, scared for their life kind of crying.

Sighing, Sol pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned forward to rest his head down on Artemis' thigh. This was going to be a long night.

-

You can wait for the next chapter which will be uploaded on 28/02/2020

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Layla Knight 

20.09.18