AVA
Problems are like buses.
For a while, everything is all hunky dory and there are no problems for anyone to worry about (apart from Paula being MIA, which she now had been for a week). But they are like buses. So after a period of calm… three come at once.
We were woken up in the middle of the night by an emergency alert across the pack. Rogues.
“Ava, you need to get to the safe room,” Jacob insisted. “They’re here for you, you know that.”
“I’m not hiding, Jacob,” I replied as I ran around pulling shorts and a t-shirt on, before sprinting out of the room with my Kings behind me, the six members of my Queen’s Guard who were on duty quickly catching up. The other six were out looking for Paula still, but six is still a good chunk of backup that would stick to me like glue.
“What’s happening?” I asked him when I skidded to a halt next to him just in front of the packhouse.
“We’ve got anyone that is unable to fight in the safe room. The rest of us are spreading out, there are three border breaches.”
“Where do you want us?”
“I can’t make you stay behind, can I, Ava,” Jacob’s voice was tense, but he showed a small smile.
“Nope, and I will pull rank if I need to,” I smiled back.
He nodded with a sigh. “I have teams at each breach. If you can cover the border and pick off stragglers, that would be great.”
I nodded, before shifting to my Lycan form. It’s easier to quickly cross some of the terrain like that. My Kings and Queen’s Guard all followed suit, and we took off towards the border at a sprint.
Over the first hour of the assault, my group took out seventeen lone rogues, and from the sounds of the fighting around us, the teams at the breaches took out many, many more.
“We need to move further out,” I linked to my Kings and Guard. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
They all nodded in agreement. A mile further out from the north border, we stumbled across it. A small fight, a skirmish, between a group led by one of Matthew’s pack members, and one of Elijah’s generals.
“The left is Matthew, right is Elijah,” I growled through the link.
“How do you know…?” Theo asked.
“I can smell them. The right smells like Elijah and rogues. The left smells like the Blue Mountain pack, it’s just faded slightly, so they haven’t been anywhere near the pack in a while.”
“What do we do?” Noah asked. “Do we let them take each other out, or do we do it?”
“We let them fight,” Callum replied. “We’ll round up any survivors.”
The fight was brutal. Only the leaders of both groups and half a dozen wolves between them survived. But not for long. Jeremiah and Callum made light work of the survivors.
“Jacob, how are things looking?” I linked.
“Nearly clear, Ava,” he replied, his voice stressed.
“Jacob… is everyone okay?”
“We’ve lost three wolves, and we’re taking another seventeen to hospital as we speak.”
Fuck.
“We’re on the way back, Jacob. We can help with cleanup.”
Cleanup took hours. The pack territory was a mess.
By the time we’d finished, it was way past lunchtime, and we were all starving. Today, Jacob didn’t insist on myself and my Kings having our own table at the head of the room. For once, he didn’t fight us on it and we all mingled together. Not just myself and my Kings, but my Queen’s Guard was here too.
But shortly after lunch… the first refugees came.
“My Queen, Alpha Jacob,” the wolf leading the border patrol reached out. “I have wolves here seeking sanctuary.”
I glanced up at Jacob, meeting his eyes, the concern on his face matching my own. “What do we know, Peter?”
“There’s a group from Blue Mountain, my Queen, plus Shadow Moon and Crimson Ridge.”
Both Shadow Moon and Crimson Ridge were very small packs in between us and Eclipse Mountain. They were the two closest to us, so that begged the question… had the rest gone to Michael for sanctuary?
“Let’s go talk to them, Jacob,” I added.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes, Peter,” Jacob replied, closing the link.
Jacob and I stood in sync, before giving a brief explanation to Alex, Amelia and my Kings. The eight of us, flanked by my Queen’s Guard, made it to the border well within our guesstimated timeframe. And it was a good thing we did, because by the time we got there, they had been joined by another group from Frozen Canyon.
Fortunately, all of them, excluding Blue Mountain, are packs we have a close alliance with. That meant they were trusted. Blue Mountain, however…
That was a different story.
Our allied packs had sent anyone that couldn’t fight or needed to be protected along with enough warriors to defend them, with the message that if possible, once everyone is safe, they probably need backup. That meant that across the three packs, we had nearly 180 wolves to find temporary accommodation for.
We had a few houses that could house a good chunk of the families, but they’d be crammed in rooms to do it. But, it was something.
Whilst Jacob organised that and tried to work out what to do about Blue Mountain, I reached out to Michael. “Alpha Michael, have you had refugees turn up from neighbouring packs?”
“A few, my Queen,” he replied, voice stressed. “Have you…?”
“We’ve got one hundred and eighty wolves from allied packs, plus another thirty from Blue Mountain that we haven’t worked out what to do with yet.”
“Eclipse Mountain has space to take in Blue Mountain, my Queen, if you need us to.”
“Is it somewhere they can be closely watched?”
“Yes, my Queen. We have a hotel that is getting ready to be refurbished, so it is currently empty. It only has two entrances and most of the windows cannot be unlocked, so it can easily be guarded.”
“That sounds great, Michael, thank you.”
Once we arranged everything… It was time to call it a night. And at the end of a long, arduous day, there was nothing better than spending a night wrapped up in the arms of my Kings.