I look down at Joey to see that he hasn’t moved his head from the spot on my chest as his hands shake against my thighs. I kiss the top of his head, leaning down to be next to his ear. Did you hear him ?
He lightly nods his head against my chest and I start to get worried because I’ve never dealt with Joey like this, which means I have no idea what I should do to make him feel better. Since he wasn’t talking, I was assuming it was because there were people around us, so I started to concentrate on contacting him through our mind link. Talk to me. What’s going on ?
His hands stop shaking as he moves to set his head on my shoulder instead of my chest to show his face with tear trails running down it. I can literally feel my heart break in that moment when I see him look so broken and so tired and I realize that his job, being an alpha, must take so much out of him because lives are literally in his hands. Joey, it’s okay. Everyone’s okay. You’re doing so good.
He looks up at me with a small smile. Really ?
Really, I whisper to him, reaching up to wipe away his tears. He recovers quickly after hearing my compliment, sitting up to look around the room at Conner and Lila still holding each other while Cody and Melissa watch all of us.
We all jump when there’s a knock on the door and Cody makes the first move to go let whoever it is in. I get off of Joey’s lap so he can stand up to follow his beta to the front door while keeping his hand intertwined in mine. I watch as the door swings open to reveal a blonde man with a friendly face giving us a smile. He’s wearing some black dress pants with a light blue polo shirt as he has a backpack slung over his shoulder. I’m assuming this is Elder Collins by the way everyone instantly gives him a hug like they’ve known him for years.
When he reaches me, he puts his hand out to shake mine which I immediately do. Hi, you must be Kade, I’m Elder Collins.
Nice to meet you, I tell him with a smile before settling back against Joey’s side as we all move towards the living room to sit on the huge couch. We all watch as the elder pulls out a binder with papers held together by the rings before flipping through to find the paper he was looking for. He takes out a picture of the same wolf that chased us two weeks ago and I turn away, not being able to look at it anymore since I was only a few feet away as he died.
This is a member of the Red Guardian R rogue pack, he tells us and I notice the way Joey turns his head to look at Cody. They both think for a second, like the name is familiar to them or something and the beta’s eyes widen before looking up at his alpha.
What is it ? I ask, extremely curious at to what he just remembered.
They’re a neighboring pack with the one that attacked us about a month ago, Cody says, making memories flash of Lila, Melissa, and I sitting on this very couch while all of our men were outside fighting the rogue pack that had raided into the camp. I remember that they told us that most of the members were killed in the attack while a few of them were able to get away during the fight.
That was the Sentinel Canines R and after the elders council did some research, we figured out that their camps are only five miles away from each other, so we’re under the assumption that after the rogue attack that happened to the pack, they went there for refuge, Elder Collins tells us.
What’s with the R at the end of the names ? I whisper to Joey.
It’s so werewolves know who’s who. If you’re a part of a traditional werewolf pack, then there’s no R, but if you’re a part of a rogue pack, you use the R, he tells me.
But why would someone a part of a rogue pack out themselves like that though ? I mean, if they don’t put the R at the end, then people would just assume they’re a part of a traditional pack, so why don’t they just pretend so they blend in instead of standing out as a rogue ?
Rogues hate other werewolves that aren’t rogues because they’ve been kicked out of their packs, obviously, so they feel betrayed by everyone who’s still a part of a pack, he tells me.
Oh, okay, I tell him before looking back up at Elder Collins who still flips through the binder before taking out another picture to hold up for us and I can instantly feel the tension heighten in the room. I look around to see Joey looking to the side and I can feel the anger radiating off of him while Cody looks super guilty along with Melissa.
Reece Sutter, remember him ? Elder Collins ask and he even looks a bit angry and I immediately realize that something huge had happened between everyone in the house, including the elders and Cody must’ve caused it by the way he was acting.
What’s going on ? I ask, needing to know what had happened to help give advice on how to figure out how to deal with this situation.
Lila sighs, looking a bit tired as she looked between her son and Cody. Reece Sutter was a member of the pack, his brother was assigned to help the elders with a mission. If we ever had some hunters poking into our stuff, then the elders would sometimes assign someone to look into them.
And hunters are people who try to kill werewolves, right ? I ask.
Yeah, Joey whispers to me, gripping my hand in his and I can truly feel his anger by how hard he’s holding it. Cody sighs, leaning back against the couch as his face looks even guiltier than before.
Elder Collins speaks up. The elders sometimes have secret missions where we have someone that’s prepared sneak in with the hunters to get inside information for us if we have an idea that they’re planning to hurt a member of our pack.
So Reece’s brother, Alfie, had done these secret missions for them in the past and he’d gotten really good, so the elders always went to him first when they needed to do things like this. One time, we had gotten word from another pack that a hunter had gotten onto their property a few weeks prior and as they had been tracking them, they realized that they were coming towards ours camp so they wanted to warn us, Conner explained.
Okay, so he pretended to be a hunter and joined the group of them that were coming close to the pack ? I asked, still extremely confused.
Cody nodded his head, finally speaking up for the first time since Reece’s name had been brought up. Yeah, we prepared him for about a week before sending him in to pretend to be a hunter that was being transferred into this new group. Alfie was very good on his feet and whenever something bad was about to happen, he always made contact with us to warn us before slipping away. But this time, it was a lot more extreme than we had through and the group that we had placed him with, the one that was planning to attack us, was practically planning to start a war with us.
The entire time that Alfie was with them, we didn’t get any contact from him and we assumed that it was because he was trying to figure everything out. Then the hunters show up to our camp, Joey said and I realize how shaken up he still is about this whole situation.
They had figured out that he was actually a wolf and instead of killing him on the spot, they decided to use him. Joey, Conner, all the elders that were already here, and I go out where the guards told us they were and when we go out there, we see Alfie has a gun to the back of his head and he also has one in his hand, Cody tells me.
What happens ? I ask.
We figure out that they were basically using him as a shield because they believed that we wouldn’t kill someone that was in our pack. So we try to come up with an agreement with the hunters, but they weren’t budging, Conner says.
We notice how they’re telling stuff to Alfie and all of a sudden, we notice how he points his gun at Joey and obviously, he didn’t do it by choice because they would have killed him if he didn’t do what he was told, Cody tells me.
He’s dead, isn’t he ? I ask, looking up at my boyfriend.
I noticed that the man who holds the gun to the back of Alfie’s head doesn’t even have his finger on the trigger, which means if I planned it right, then we could get Alfie out of there alive, Joey tells me before motioning to Cody, who now looks so upset as his fingers ring together.