Chapter VI: The Forbidden Forest part II

“What was that?” one of the humans calls to his friend.
“Sounded like one of the traps” another human says, “I’ll check the tracker.”  He then takes out a tablet and sure enough, on the map he sees a red dot flashing just a hundred feet from their location.. “got it! Trap 97. I hope it’s just a false alarm”
Both humans proceed to make their way to the trap.

Jahzara rushes to Ajani and covers his muzzle with her paw as he lets out a blood curling scream. Looking back, Jahzara grimaces as she sees the bear trap claimed tightly shut on his base of his tail, blood staining the white section of his tail.
“AJ quiet!” she hisses as tears stream down his face “the humans will hear you!”
Ajan in his current state of pain doesn’t listen. He breaks free of Jahzara’s hold and jumps forward, trying to free himself, giving off painful yelps. In the process of jumping forward, the pinned tail causes him faceplant the floor, his muzzle colliding with a rock with a sickening crack. As he tries to get up blood flows from his muzzle as Jahzara sees both his incisors have been smashes out of his mouth leaving two holes. The further injury makes Ajani squeal in pain.
“AJANI SHUT UP!” his best friend shouts, forgetting her earlier statement of staying quiet. Making a final attempt to silence him, she jumps on top of him, pinning him to the ground and shoves her paw in his mouth. All Ajani can do is sob and bite onto Jahzara’s paw at the feeling of his tail on fire and the taste of fresh blood filling his muzzle and covering Jahzara’s paw.
A few moments later, both teen wolves ears prick up to the sound of branches snapping as something large slowly makes their way towards them. 
Running off adrenalin and fear, Ajani makes one final effort to escape the trap, throwing Jahzara off and wriggling around like mad, desperate to get his tail free, making even more painful yelps and squeals. 
Looking at her best friend’s tail, Jahzara sees his once white and brown tail is covered in blood and dirt.

The sound of branches cracking and leaves crumpling gets louder and louder until two humans push their way though the undergrowth into the clearing 
“Aw shit Tod it’s a young pup!” one human says as he looks at the trapped wolf.
The other human gives a sympathetic look to them “look Ed, he has his tail trapped in the bear trap. Poor guy”
The humans take their bags off their backs and slowly move towards the trapped wolf. In return, he slowly start to back away from them. 

His thought process was simple. He was going to die. He didn’t want to, but he was going to die. All he could  do was stay by Jahzara and hope she would protect him.
Looking around, he expected his best friend to be right beside him, as she had been for as long as he can remember. This time however, he was met with no one. “Zara?” he calls out, looking behind him, thinking she’s making one more effort to free him. To his dismay, he sees no one. “JAHZARA?!” he calls out again as he begins to hyperventilate, frantically looking around for any sign of his orange best friend, causing himself even more injury to his already damaged tail. “Jahzara where are you?! Please help me! You’re my best friend where are you?!”

Seeing the animal in so much distress, both humans slow down and proceed with extra caution. 
Tod's expression remains sympathetic as he slowly moves closer to the distraught wolf. Realising what kind of wolf was in front of him, he freezes “Holy shit Ed its an Ethiopian wolf!”
Ed looks at Ajani with fascination “woah! I’ve seen pictures on the Internet but never seen one in person! We got to help him Tod! We got to! They are critically endangered!”
Tod gives a small chuckle “well we’d be bad members of the Ethiopian wolf conservation program if we didn’t help an Ethiopian wolf in distress. He isn’t the first Ethiopian wolf I’ve rescued”

Agreeing, both humans slowly advance towards Ajani. The young wolf freaking out even more, scrambling to get away and twisting and turning, making his trapped tail an even more bloody ruined mess causing him to yelp out even more.
“Woah woah! hey hey hey!” Tom calls out softly as he goes to touch the wolf “We’re not gonna hurt you.” 
Not understanding what was being said, Ajani struggled even more, tears streaming down his face as the fear and pain all surge into one overwhelming feeling of helplessness.
“Ellie this is Ed” Tom’s friend says into a radio on his jacket “we’ve found a young male Ethiopian wolf who’s caught his tail in trap 97. He’s been struggling a lot so I think we might need to bring him in to look at his tail. If he continues to struggle and we can’t free him we may have to tranquilize him. He’s getting pretty worked up and stressed. He also seems to have injury to his muzzle so possible teeth injury.”
The radio crackled with the voice of a female “Copy that Ed. That’s fine. I’ll get everything prepped here ready for our special guest’s arrival.”

After the information is given and received, both humans slowly approach the teen wolf. Feeling a surge of newfound survival energy, Ajani starts to growl and bite whenever they get their hands close
“This is going to be more difficult than we thought” Tod says to his colleague as he puts on some heavy-duty bite proof gloves.
Ed goes into his bag and pulls out a muzzle “You distract him, I’ll sneak in and try and put this on him. If it doesn’t work we might have to go to plan B”
With an understanding nod, Tod slowly moves around to try and cause a distraction. Before Ajani knows what’s happening he feels a leather muzzle attempting to be placed on his face. Freaking out even more he does the only thing he can think of and bites down hard on the nearest thing to his mouth.
“AAH FUCK!” Ed screams as he’s bitten on the hand. Dropping the muzzle, he rushes to his bag and quickly applies an alcohol wipe and a bandage. Despite the loss of his incisors, Ajani’s teeth were still sharp.
Seeing how dangerous this was getting for not just their own safety but Ajani’s too, Tod reaches into his bag and pulls out a tranquilizer gun, loading a fluffy red dart into it. Walking up to Ajani, he slowly raises the gun “I’m sorry little guy. You’ll wake up feeling better soon, I promise”
Ajani, accepting there was no escape, Jahzara had left him, and Raza wasn’t coming to save either of them, simply looks at the sky in defeat and whispers “Goodbye Jahzara. I hope you get out safely and Raza finds you. I Lov-”
He never gets to finish his sentence as Tod fires the tranquilizer dart into Ajani’s side, casing him to let out a final yelp. Due to the stress and exhaustion of the situation, Ajani falls asleep within a few seconds, the last thing he sees being the humans slowly moving towards him.

From Ajani’s point of view, Jahzara had left him. From Jahzara’s point of  view, she very much hasn’t. Seeing the humans slowly approaching, she slowly backs away, finally realising how much she’s messed up. She had a few options. She could either run off and look for Raza, leaving her best friend at the mercy of the humans, or stay by his side like she’s been all her life, putting herself in the same situation Ajani was in. Thinking quickly, she picks a third option which is hide before they see her and attack them in an attempt to protect AJ and catch them off guard.
She takes one last look at her best friend, trapped, scared and in pain. Taking a deep breath, she starts to backup slowly. A few moments later she finds herself in a bush, watching the humans break through the branches and find Ajani. Her heart breaks as she feels guilt and regret flood her body as her best friend calls out for her, watching him fight to free himself and get away from the humans.
She watches with hope and admiration as the humans attempt to touch him but Ajani bites one of them. Seeing her best friends newfound energy she prepares to rush out and help. However just as she’s about to step out she freezes as she sees one human take out a black L shaped object from their bag. Time seems to slow down as the human puts something fluffy and red into it before raising it up, pointing it at Ajani. As quickly as the human lifts the object up, a small ‘pfft’ is heard. 
She watches in horror as she hears her best friend yelp and slowly slump over on the floor. Feeling herself struggling to breath she shoves a paw over her mouth and lets out a sob full of regret and guilt. With guilt and regret filling her thoughts she does the only thing she could think of. Run.

Through blurred tear-filled vision she runs. She doesn’t know where she’s running, but in her mind, one thing is certain. Her best friend is dead and it’s all her fault. Ignoring the searing pain in her leg she continues to run deeper and deeper into the forest. The pain in her heart much stronger than the pain in her leg. She fails to notice some heavy drops of rain starting to land on her dirty fur as the dry terrain quickly becomes a mud swamp.
Not paying attention to her surroundings, she fails to see a large furry orange wall ahead.
The large furry orange wall, seeing an animal running straight towards them, swings around and kicks Jahzara HARD square in the diaphragm, winding her badly and making her collapse on the dirty muddy ground.
Getting into a fighting stance the orange furry wall widens its eyes in both relief, surprise and horror once it realises who they hit.
“JAHZARA?!” it calls out.
Jahzara groans and rolls onto her back, clutching her diaphragm, severely winded from the kick. Once she gets her breath back, she looks up at the orange animal who by this time is dripping wet due to the heavy rain. “AJ?”
The orange animal gives a relieved sigh seeing she was OK “Nope. I’m a little older, a little bigger, a little bit smarter and am related to you by blood”
“RAZA!” She cries out, as she realises who’s in front of her. Using the last remaining strength she has, she launches herself at him, not caring about her broken leg. This time Raza is prepared and wraps his paws around her in a hug, falling to the dirty mud, completely forgetting he was supposed to be mad at her and instead, focusing on the fact she was ok.

Time seems to stand still for the two wolves as the smaller one hugs the larger one as tight as she can. The larger one embraces her, waiting for her to finish her hug, however long she might take. After 5 minutes she slowly releases the hug, sitting in front of Raza staring at the floor
“I’m Sorry Raza”
Raza wasn’t just angry with Jahzara. He was furious. Unbelievably furious. He looks down at the orange wolf in front of him and takes a deep break. Looking at the state she was in he made the decision not to talk to her about it now and wait till she’s back in the safety of the den. Then it suddenly dawned on him that Malik told him that both her and Ajani went into the woods, but only Jahzara was in front of him. Seeing the tears in her eyes he had a horrible feeling but knowing better then to not ask, he asked the question Jahzara didn’t want to answer.
“Jahzara… where is Ajani”
At the mention of her fallen best friends name, she burst into hard guilt-ridden tears and dives into Raza’s chest again. 
Looking down at his sobbing sister, Raza gently pushes her away and forces her to look into his eyes and asks gently yet firmly “Jahzara. What. Happened. To Ajani?”
At the mention of his name again Jahzara tears up all over again. Reaching out for Raza’s thick bushy tale, she hugs it before a look of further realisation comes over her
“He… He…” she fights to control her breathing “He… hurt his tail”
Seeing how upset she is, Raza just waits for her to continue.
“He… got his tail stuck in a big shiny circle thing”
Hearing this new information, Raza’s eyes widened.
“It got stuck and we couldn’t get it out. Then… Then… humans came. I hid in a bush and then…” fresh tears well up in her bloodshot eyes “they used this black thing on him and… and…” she breaks down and clutches Raza, giving high pitched sobs into his chest.

For Raza, he has mixed emotions right now. On the one paw, he is even more furious at Jahzara for leaving Ajani and not even trying to help. On the other paw, part of him was thankful she chose to hide so they would eventually find each other. On the third paw, she had just watched her best friend since birth die in front of her. She will need a LOT of time to heal both physically and emotionally.
“Zara… what sound did the black thing make?”
Giving heavy sniffs, Jahzara looks up at him with a questioning look “um…” she thinks for a moment before she then blows a raspberry at him “kind of like that”
Giving a small chuckle at her attempt to recreate the sound, relaxing relaxes a little “Zara, AJ isn’t dead. You said humans got to him and he was injured right? I know me and Malik always say that all humans are bad. Well… we lied. Some humans are good Sometimes, humans use what’s called a gun. Some guns are big, long and loud. Some are small and quiet. If some good humans find an injured animal such as AJ, they will shoot the animal with what’s called a dart gun. These guns fire fluffy red darts that make you fall asleep so the humans can help you without getting hurt. Countering that, if bad humans use a different kind of gun, which is almost always loud, then most likely the animal on the receiving end of the shot will die or be seriously injured”
Jahzara looks at her brother with confusion and amazement “Raz… how do you know all this stuff about humans?”
Raza looks away, Jahzara can tell he is uncomfortable “I just do alright.” He notices the sky getting darker and the rain getting heavier “Now there isn’t any point going after AJ tonight. The only thing we can do is wait till sunrise and go find him tomorrow”
“Promise?” Jahzara asks out
“Have I ever broken a promise?”
“No”
“Then you have your answer” Raza replies with a smirk before he quickly looks for a place to spend the night. Seeing a burrow under a tree a few hundred meters away, he slides under Jahzara, picking her up and carrying her on her back and makes his way to burrow. Upon reaching it he quickly inspects it and sees its only big enough for one of them. With the rain getting harder he slides Jahzara down into it before curling himself around the entrance in a protective way. He jumps slightly when he feels something push its way through the gap in the circle he’s made. Looking to the centre of his body he sees Jahzara’s head pop out and rest on his back
“Goodnight Raz. I’m sorry”
Raza, for the first time ever, just gives her the silent treatment. A small snippet of the anger he feels on the inside. After waiting and realising she wouldn’t get a response, Jahzara slides back into the burrow. Looking at the makeshift splint Ajani made, she tears up again and sniffs it, faintly smelling his scent “I’m sorry AJ. I never wanted you to be hurt. This is all my fault!” 
Feeling the exhaustion overcome her, she falls to sleep in record time, her nose resting on the splint and Ajani’s scent filling her nose. Raza chooses not to sleep so he can keep watch for threats and go over in his mind how he will rescue AJ from the humans tomorrow.