Running With Wolves

It is amazing how simply we take life for granted until one is lost.
It is easy, a simple task, to look toward to the future with such assuredness that the ones beside us will always remain so. It is when they aren’t any longer, ripped from our side, that we realize with such a grave severity how much we need them in our lives.

I miss my father.

That was all that I knew now. I missed my father and I cursed myself for being a spiteful selfish daughter and leaving him, assuming he would always be there no matter what. I could never imagine him not being here and so even if I was elsewhere just knowing that he was in the world was a comfort. But now that he is gone I feel lost and vulnerable and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to start.

My father being gone left a whole in my heart and a lot on my conscious telling me I should take the pack. But I didn’t want it, I really really didn’t.

I wanted Lukas, Knoll, Cheyenne, Conan, Rune, Mia, and even Jasmine who hated me. They were the people I wanted in my life, the people who always treated me like Sage the girl, not Sage the Alpha’s daughter and the closest thing to royalty Blackwood had. I wanted them, they were the ones I loved, the ones I would protect, and trust with my life.

I thought of Rune and the danger that she didn’t even know she was in. One change of heart from Mankato or Viktor and her life was threatened, a lone wolf who drifted between territories was technically trespassing; if Were’s were anything they were territorial.

I thought of Jasmine. She hated me but we had a clear understanding of each other and I think in a way Jasmine was just as lost as I was. She blamed me for the breakup of her and Conan, perfect high school sweethearts. I didn’t ask Conan to choose his loyalty to me over the loyalty to his girlfriend but he did it. Sometimes I wish he hadn’t chosen me. Jasmine is cold and strong but she needed Conan, she needed his warmth to warm her. I lost Seneca during the war, Rune lost both her parents but Jasmine had lost Conan. Jasmine’s parents sided with Viktor and in fear she went with them. She begged Conan to join her and he loved her enough that he almost went…except that I caught him packing. Loosing Conan scared me. It was before we lost Seneca and the idea of losing anyone in my tight knit family terrified me. But I told him to go, he loved Jaz and back then I thought he loved her as much as I loved Lukas; but he didn’t. I told him to go but the tears in my eyes betrayed me. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes but whatever it was it was enough to make him stay. After Jasmine found out that someone in Eastern Blackwood had killed Seneca she returned to Western Blackwood. Seneca had been a close friend to her and the idea that her murderer could very well be someone she sat next to at a coffee shop didn’t sit well with Jasmine.

I thought of Mia. Would she return to New York when she realized that me actually returning was dwindling rapidly or would she stay for Conan? If she did stay, Mia would become my responsibility more so than my brother’s. I’d brought Mia into this dangerous world and I had no right to. Now I was catching her fooling around with Conan and she growing more intermingled in Blackwood. She had no idea that the entire town was slowly encroaching on our home, whether they saw me as an ally or an enemy was irrelevant, they’d associate her with me and lump her in with all my misdoings. If I screwed up they’d hang Mia, a vulnerable human, with me.

I haven’t left my house much in the passing days and so the days pass in uneventful uninterrupted blurs. No one bother me, Mia and Conan are giving me space, so I stay up in my old bedroom that I had once shared with Cheyenne a lifetime ago. I lay on the old twin sized bed and stared up at the cracks in the old ceiling; I remembered how Cheyenne and I always lost count of how many there were.

I thought back to the times Cheyenne and I had hidden things away beneath our floorboards, concealed from prying parents and nosey older siblings.

I wonder if anything is still there?

I shifted and rolled off the bed and onto the floor, crawling a few feet on all fours until I touched the false board. It lifted against my prying fingers with a groan and a cloud of dust drifted up from the hole in the floor. A small wad of cash was wedged in the corner along with two of Conan’s old holographic Pokémon cards that Chey had stolen. My mother’s old locket I could never manage to pry open was also here along with a bracelet Seneca had made me. But atop all of these old buried treasures blanketed with dust and lint were letters piled up to the brim—these papers had not collected dust and so reasoning would say they had not been here nearly as long.

I sat crisscross on the floor and unfolded the top letter. I recognized it instantly as the familiar scrawl of Cheyenne and it sent a jolt through me as I read the black ball point inked words.

’Sage if you are reading this I’m probably gone. Whether or not I’m dead or kidnapped depends on how short of a straw I’ve drawn. In a way I’ve brought in myself, snooping where I shouldn’t have been but bold curiosity is a family trait amongst the Wolfe women.

I shouldn’t have delved any deeper than when I stumbled upon some information in the old archives. Forty-five years ago something happened and the Blackwood pack was at odds with one another and threatening to split. I couldn’t figure out what caused it, the only thing that seemed the most prevalent subject during that time was a string of women who went missing or were murdered. I couldn’t find anything else but when I searched the archives of missing people in Blackwood two names came up that caught my eye. They went missing just before our war and just between me and you sis I think these names are enough to start a war:

Coralie Karni Canis and Catalina Cornelia Delia Wolfe.’

“Holy shit,”I whispered, a chill running down my spine at the names.

’They lied to us Sage, all of them, our father, Viktor, Erik, and all the other elders. They said they left the pack but they lied they didn’t leave they were taken. I don’t know what is going on but whatever it is the elders are behind it. All of them.

Sage you have to find out what happened, what went wrong, if I’m missing it means I’ve become a part of the secret but it also means I’m not the last.

Find out what happened Sage, not just to me but to our pack.

Find me Sage. Find Coralie and Aunt Cat.

Show them all that Wolfes aren’t anything to be messed with.’

I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything. The things Seneca was insisting upon was nearly blasphemous in many eyes. To say our elders were somehow behind the missing people was a severe accusation. To say our own father had knowledge about them was impossible. But a little voice in my head said that no one really knew exactly how the war came about only that it did and when Viktor and my father threw their power and command at the pack and forced them to pick a side the pack turned on each other like rapid dogs and yet no one questioned it.

I snatched greedily for the next letter.

’Conan is angry with me. He knows I’m up to something and that it’s nothing good. I wont tell him what I’m doing though, Conan is too loyal to Dad, he’ll turn against me. I’ve been searching for Rune but she’s impossible to find. I wish Sage was here, she’d know what to do, she’d take my side, and I think she is the only one that can find Rune now.

I’m beginning to understand why Rune spends so much time in those woods. Falcon Ridge is a dangerous place but it is also safe if you’re hiding from Eastern and Western. I found the old tree house there, I feel safer there than I do in Western Blackwood these days. Maybe I’m getting paranoid but I don’t trust our elders.

Something is coming I can feel it.

I need Seneca and Sage. Seneca, the baddest bitch in Blackwood and Sage the bravest and strongest. I need them, I need my sisters.

He tells me I have him, isn’t that enough?

I wonder if Lukas ever asked Sage if he was enough?

What would she say? Would she choose him over our packs? Would she just abandon her search for the truth, her search for our family and friends?

No, I don’t think she would.
I wish he’d understand that.
Sometimes enough isn’t enough, sometimes you’d risk everything even love. ‘

I folded the letter back up and reached for the next one, the third most recent to the other two.

’I asked Dad about the missing women and he told me it wasn’t my concern. Of course its not, I’m the youngest and nothing concerns me. I asked him if Moma and Sage were a part of it. For the first time I was actually afraid of Conan. He got so angry at me, how dare I, he said. Dad calmed him down with just a hand to his shoulder and told him to leave. I’ve never seen Dad look so old and tired in my life. I’m just like them, he said, no different then Mom or Seneca or Sage, our demand for the truth was always stronger than any Alpha decree he told me.

I begged him to tell me what happened but all he would say was to stay out of Falcon Ridge. Falcon Ridge was the only place all of the missing people and murders have in common. He also assured me that Moma and Sage left for their own reasons, they were not taken against their will and he assures me they are both safe. Is that supposed to be a comfort?’

The pen changed then, suggesting it was the same day but written later on.

’I need Sage so bad. I don’t know what to do. Dad will break I know he will. How could he handle knowing he can’t protect his final daughter, that each and every one of us has fallen through the cracks of his protection.

I know now why Sage left and I don’t blame her.

I love him so much but I don’t want to, it is too hard to.


My mind was racing and my body was numb. How could I have left Cheyenne? How could I have possibly? She needed me and I left her, what does that say about me? Who is she talking about? Who is the guy she is talking about?

Then dread filled me as I wondered the final question I had. Did Cheyenne become a Soulmate? No, she was just confused. If she meant what she said Chey was in love for the first time. She didn’t know the difference between a Soulmate and teenage love.

I don’t know what was going on, only that now I knew this was much greater than Cheyenne just being missing. Cheyenne was just a small part of a whole, as was I, we were all just small pieces to a puzzle. We were pawns and someone was playing us, Cheyenne had figured as much. Something had happened and the elders, even Erik and Viktor, covered it up. That meant that even Mankato couldn’t be trusted. Who could I trust then?

Of course, stupid me.

I picked up the phone and called the people I did trust.