Werewolves heal, she thought to herself, trying to force her fear-addled brain to cooperate with her. Werewolves have the ability to regenerate most wounds.

"That’s great but not what I’m looking for," she told herself. "Now come on, brain, give me something!"

Werewolves mostly track by scent.

That’s mildly more useful, she thought to herself. What can I do with that?

The answer came to her suddenly after running past a muddy puddle. If she could cover her scent, they wouldn’t be able to track her as easily. She backtracked to the puddle and threw herself into it as quietly as she could. In seconds, she had a layer of mud and gunk spread all over her entire body. It was cold and having it caked on her so thickly leached the warmth right out of her body. She started shivering almost instantly but a few minutes of running all out warmed her up a little bit. She was still cold but it wasn’t as bad.

“You’re only making this worse for yourself, you stupid bitch,” one of them called, his voice a loud bellow. “When we catch up to you, and we will catch up to you, I will be cutting bits off you and eating them while you watch.”

She tried to ignore him, tried to focus on getting as far away as possible, but his voice tore through everything she tried to throw up to push it away.

“I can’t smell her no more, Drake,” one of the werewolves said. The voice was far away but still loud enough to where she could faintly hear it.

“Hey, me either,” another one said, this one a female. “It’s disappeared.”

She wasn’t sure how far away she was but if she could still hear them it meant they were still too close. The problem, however, was that her body was starting to give up on her. The rabbit-skin boots she wore felt soaked in blood now. Her pants were ripped in several spots and she could feel gashes and cuts burning as she ran. The coldness of the mud caked to her body made her muscles want to seize up every few seconds. She stumbled and tripped more often and her eyes kept wanting to lose focus. The forest around her got blurry and hard to make out and the fact that it was night and dark didn’t make it any easier. The moon hanging in the sky gave her a little bit of light to see by but the thick branches of the trees blocked a lot of it.

"Keep…" she huffed. "Going…Keep…Going."

But she couldn’t. She tried so hard to listen to her inner commands and the promise she made to get revenge, but no matter how much she pushed herself, she couldn’t do it. There was nothing left to give. Her body finally failed her and the only thing left to do was to try and find some sort of hiding spot and hope the wolves would somehow not find her.

Her legs gave out and she fell to the ground. Behind her, she heard the werewolves still coming for her. They weren’t being quiet either. In fact, they made it a point to stomp and crash through the woods as loudly as possible. Part of the mind games, she was sure, meant to scare her even more.

She hated herself knowing that their scare tactics were working so effectively.

Eventually, she managed to crawl forward and eventually found a fallen tree with just enough of a gap underneath for her to hide under. More cuts and scratches were flayed into her skin when she did but she didn’t care. She physically couldn’t run anymore. This tree was her best option for staying hidden and staying alive. She thought about praying but told herself it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Gods were fickle beings.

What’s the point? she asked herself. It was a depressing question but it was also a realistic one. Her fate wouldn’t rest on some god to rescue her. She was almost certain that within the next ten or even five minutes, the werewolves would find her, do unspeakable things to her, and then kill her.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to witness what was about to come next.

“I see you.”

Lola’s blood went ice cold.