Logan
By the time we land at the airport, I am about to run mad from all the nerves I have been feeling throughout the entire flight. Arya woke up midway through the flight and she resumed sulking and making me feel even worse.
It is nine in the morning when we arrive. I am certain the vampires wouldn’t be out at this hour of the day, especially the way the sun is already shining bright in the sky. The battle is definitely over.
Fuck!
I am too late.
I am just going to do the damage assessment. When I switch on my phone, there are only emails from my office and from the business colleagues I have left behind back in Zurich without notice. Nothing concerning my pack or the situation back home.
I turn and look at Arya who seems pretty numb. It would be a very bad idea to take her home with me.
There is a good number of hotels surrounding the airport. Getting our car, I drive her to the Grande Resto Hotel which seems to be the best judging by its appearance. I don’t have time to look up its ratings and reviews online so I just drive us there. Getting out, I hold Arya’s hand and lead her to the entrance.
“What do you want from a hotel? We should just go home. We don’t have any time to waste,” Arya says, giving me a quizzical look.
“I need you to stay here?” I tell her.
“What?” she yelps, pulling her hand out of mine.
“I don’t want to put you at risk, Arya. I will go by myself and check on the situation. I can’t just take you there and put you at risk when I am not even sure of the situation there,” I tell her.
“Si what am I supposed to do here, huh? Am I supposed to relax, have some cocktails, swim, get a back massage and make some new fancy friends? You know very well that I can’t do that. I am equally worried about our packs as much as you are. I want to know what is happening at home. It is necessary, I will have to fight for them,” she says.
I rub my face in frustration. I hold her by the shoulders like a little child trying to make her understand.
“Look, Arya. If the vampires get to know of your presence, they will take it as an advantage on their side. Look, what happened last time? What if they do it again, and kidnap you just to make this situation even worse?”
“No, Logan. I can’t stay behind. I can’t afford to wait in this darkness, I have already had enough of the ignorance about the situation while I was on the flight. I can’t take this anymore,” she says to me. I let go of her and sigh heavily.
“Logan, I know you want to protect me so much but I am not a child. I am a trained warrior. I can’t just stay behind. I can’t forsake my pack. I am the Luna of the Blacktooth Guardians. What will our pack members think if I stay hiding in here like a coward?” she says.
I thread my hands through my hair and tug hard at the roots. I know I am in a losing battle trying to convince my stubborn mate to reason with me. I know how stubborn she can be; when she says yes, then it is a clear yes and there is no debating about it. When she says no then it is a no and there is no debating about it, just like now.
“I am going with you, and if you are planning to force me to stay here, I want to assure you that I will escape regardless of go many guards you put to stop me. I am sure you know me well by now,” she warns.
“Damn it!” I curse through my breath and resign.
“Come, let’s go,” I hold her hand and lead her back to the car. We drive off to the town next to the Blacktooth Guardian’s territory. I pack the car in a garage where I pay to keep it there and then we walk into the woods. Getting rid of our clothes, we both shift into our wolves.
Arya’s white wolf will look at mine, in recognition.
“Let’s go,” I hear Arya’s voice through the mind link. I look at her with started eyes.
“Oh, my God! I didn’t know we could communicate through the mind link,” she says.
“Neither did I. This is fucking awesome!” I tell her.
“Oh, my. I love this. I thought the mind link only works for packmates.”
“I guess our case is different. Or maybe there is something we didn’t know.”
“Maybe. We will figure it out later.”
We race through the woods, up to the Misty river, crossing it and going directly to our pack territory.
We don’t find any clues through the woods until we find an area of the woods that is completely down to ashes. The burnt area is painfully large.
The settlement that is near the area has also been put to ashes.
Fuck!
I keep on looking around and land on a couple of beheaded bodies. Five females and six little children. I hear Arya’s heart rate accelerate.
The houses are all down to ashes. We also find two male bodies and one beheaded wolf. I think those were the owners of the homes that were destroyed.
Did they manage to get the weak pack members to refuge? Did they equally destroy all the other settlements all over the pack? What about the pack headquarters?
We run to the pack headquarters, bypassing a lot of dead bodies and ruined homes. The whole pack is quiet as if it is completely lifeless. Could the vampires have destroyed my pack completely? How is that even possible? Perhaps they just used black Magic to wipe out all the lives of my pack members.
I head to the pack house, only finding many headless vampire bodies, very many as if there was a vampire execution that took place in there. Perhaps they were just put in here after being killed somewhere. There is a strange feeling of satisfaction seeing this many dead vampires.
I head out of the pack house and to the Council building where the offices of the pack leaders are, hoping to find someone but it is empty of life.
“Where is everyone?” Arya asks through the mind link.
“I don’t know. It is like they are somewhere else. If they had all been killed, we would at least find a carpet of corpses all over the pack territory, but that’s not the case. They are missing, it a like they run away, but it doesn’t add up to the whole Blacktooth Guardians pack, big as it is, running away from their territory. Where could they be?”
“Perhaps, they went to the Blue Blood pack. They were also attacked. Perhaps they went there to fight for them, and then the females and pups were taken to a refuge,” she says.
That is very probable.
We race to the Blue Blood territory immediately.
Most of their settlements were destroyed too. It is just strange how the vampires use sure as a weapon yet they are the ones most vulnerable to it.
The Blue Blood pack is equally silent. They killed quite a big number of vampires, actually way more than we found in the pack house. The vampire population is way less than the werewolf settlement; about only five per cent that of the werewolves. If they killed thus many during the battle, how many are the ones left?
The pack Headquarters of the Blue Blood pack are still intact. The settlements far from the pack headquarters, next to the misty river are the only ones that succumbed to destruction. The destruction was not as massive as that of the previous attack.
We stand there having no idea what to do next.
There is movement in the woods behind us. We turn to see, a large number of wolves running toward us. There is a brown wolf in the lead. It’s Jordan. I have never been happier to see my beta. I manage to recognize Cole and Eric’s gamma by his side. There seems to be an endless trail of wolves behind them, a mixed army of the Black tooth Guardians and the Blue Bloods.
“Alpha!” Jordan’s voice cuts through the mind link.
“What happened? Is the battle over? Where is Alpha Eric?” I ask.
“Alpha Eric is badly injured. He faced Donovan personally and he nearly tore him to death,” he responds.
“Donovan? I thought he is dead.”
“That’s what we all thought but he is alive and well. I don’t know how he managed to survive the explosion but all I know is that he is alive and he is still after the minerals. He also wants to destroy you and the Blacktooth Guardian. He is just up to destroying these two packs so that he can get to his goal.”
Shit! Shit!
“Where is Donovan?” I ask
“We all don’t know, but we managed to clear off almost all if his disciples. It was so easy this time around. He ran away, and we followed him but we lost track of him,” he responds.
“We can’t claim victory yet, as long as he is still alive. We need to get rid if him once and for all. That bastard is capable of anything. He will get another army and come back. We need to get him,” I speak to all the warriors.
“Yes, alpha,” they respond in firm unison.
“Where were the other pack members taken for refuge?” I ask.
“They were taken to the Red Mountain pack and those of the Blue Blood pack to the Moon Howlers pack. They accepted them without questioning and offered their warriors to fight for us,” he responds.
“Good,” I say. It is in times like this that you realize the importance of keeping good inter-pack relations. It’s very worth it.
“We should spread out and go hunting for Donovan, and the rest of his disciples. We should put this to an end,” I tell them.
“We are all, at your service, Alpha,” they all proclaim.
We spread out, heading to vampire land, to the White Mountains. The residence at the White mountains is still in ruins after the fire west on it when we were here last time.
One thing I am sure of is that they are insurers somewhere because they can’t be out in the sunlight.
They could be in the city, hiding. It would be very difficult to capture then in the human world. We gave managed to keep this peace between us and the human world and putting this battle out in the human world would cause a lot of chaos which is so uncalled for.
We have been keeping track of all the vampire residences in the country. I try to map them out in my head just like we had gathered in our last council meeting. I divide the army with me and we all depart to those different places. They have four houses in this city and twenty three in the whole country. They couldn’t have gone very far from this state. They are either still in this State or in a state next to this.
I tried to convince Arya to go with some if the warriors to check on her brother but she was too stubborn to let me go without her. I know how dangerous this mission is, and she should also know, but she doesn’t give a damn! I decided to force her to do it anyway. I have her my command as her Alpha not to follow me, and her wolf obeyed immediately and she stayed and watched me go away. After a few minutes, she went down the mountain to the Moon Howlers pack where her brother is.
Good girl.
I go away through the woods, heading to the North of the state, where another possible vampire residence is.