Running With Wolves

I sat in the silence, Lukas at my side, for a long time.

I was at a loss in more ways then one. Everywhere I turned the floor was falling out beneath me, very day seemed to bring with it a new truth that the things I had once believed in were lies. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do. How was I supposed to fix things when I couldn’t even be allowed to know the truth of things? Without the truth I was running blind, trying to patch things together that just kept falling apart.

The only thing I was sure of anymore was my pack and Lukas. Everything else as far as I was concerned would be treated like a lie. My father had lied to me, the woman who had raised me had lied to me, Eastern Blackwood and Western Blackwood alike had lied to us all. I wondered if anything could be fix if everyone who had the truth chose to lie instead. How could change occur?

That is where I believed the problems lie, those with the power to tell the truth and bring about change chose to lie and take the easy way out. The problem was, the easy way out was resulting in murders and kidnappings and it wasn’t something I could live with.

I recalled the things I knew to be the truth, the real truth.

This was what I knew:
• My oldest sister Seneca had died for a war that’s purpose was slowly becoming foggy.
• My youngest sister Cheyenne had been kidnapped by the people who murdered my father and also probably attacked myself and the other females in my pack.
• Cheyenne had managed to sneak into the Archives in an attempt to learn the truth of things our Elders hid from us. The Archives, I might add, was located in Eastern territory—someone had aided her.
• Cheyenne had discovered that our Aunt, Catalina Cornelia Delia Wolfe. and her daughter, my cousin, Coralie Karni Canis had simply left Blackwood. They had been taken and that truth had been covered up.
• The woman I had believed my whole life to be my mother was not.
• My birth mother was in fact an Alpha. This fact above all others was the most insane to me. How was that even possible? It went against nature, it went against everything Were. It wasn’t possible, Alphas didn’t mate with each other let alone breed. Their offspring would be powerful in a way that no one had ever come across. But it was possible, it was possible because the answer to this lay in two simple rules: Soulmate Principle.

These were things I knew to be true and they were all truths I had to read on paper to know. Not one person had come forth and told me these verities by word of mouth. Not one. Were people scared to speak the truth?

I couldn’t go to Cheyenne, or my birth mother, or my parents, they were dead and gone. People with information were either dying or going missing and I couldn’t wait around any longer for the information to come to me, I was going to have to go to it.

“I want to talk to Keya.” I announced quietly, staring at the journal in my lap and then around at all the books scattered and left fallen in every direction, there wasn’t a piece of carpet visible from here to the door. Eastern Blackwood had their elaborate library, White Bear Creek had a trailer but both had an equally expansive set of histories at their disposal. “Then tomorrow we go home.”

“You think she knows more than she lets on?” Lukas was always right there with my thoughts. It was one of the many things I loved about him, I rarely had to explain things to him, he was just right there with the same train of thought.

“She knew that woman, Christina, she knew she was my mother. She left me alone with books to find my answers, Luke, but we’re loosing precious time. We cant just sit here for days reading word for word old histories. Each pack has a history and then when two packs cross a new history is made. I don’t need every history in the Were line, what I do need is our history, it is the only one I care about. I don’t mean my lineage or your lineage but Blackwood’s history as a whole.”

“How can Keya help us with that?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed rubbing my forehead, the journal felt heavier in my hands now. “My father went looking for Christina and this pack for reason. Nearly twenty three years ago my father left Blackwood, he left his wife, a son, and a daughter, to find this place. He didn’t send his Beta, he didn’t send anyone else, he went personally. I want to know why.”

Lukas nodded slowly, “It may be nothing but we can’t leave any stone unturned. We aren’t any closer to finding Cheyenne or the people who took her than we were when you first came back.”

I couldn’t stop the frown that pulled at my chapped lips. “I know.” I said hopelessly. I felt like I was failing everyone’s expectations of me but most of all I was failing my own expectations for finding Chey.

Lukas rose to his feet first, stretching out his legs before he reached for my hand. His hand was large, rough, and calloused and it was one of the most familiar things to me. He pulled me to my feet but didn’t release my hand as he led the way out of the trailer and out into the humid air in search of Keya, in search of answers.

Luckily it wasn’t hard to find her, unfortunately it was to find her standing between a rigid Mia and a fuming older girl who was glaring at her. She could have only been a few years younger than Mia. She had olive skin and beautiful shiny wavy black hair but her eyes while alive with anger were a striking sea foam green color.

“That is enough.” Her voice was hardly raised but it was enough for both Mia and the girl’s jaw to lock in silence though their anger toward one each other rolled off them in waves and was nearly pliable. “Kaliska,” Keya’s eyes turned on her. “How disappointed I am in you, you have not seen Miakoda in a very long time…what has gotten over you?”

But the girl, Kaliska, did not even seem to hear Keya, her eyes were still carefully trained on Mia like a wolf after prey.

“You should leave Miakoda,” She stated her voice like razors. “It isn’t like you want to be here, it isn’t like you’ll stay.” Through the anger there was also a ring of hurt in Kaliska’s tone.

A snarl slipped passed the girl’s lips, her teeth gnashed together as she sidestepped the tribe’s elder and lunged at Mia.
I’m not quite sure how the following events happened only that I had gone from Luke’s side twenty feet away to standing directly in Kaliska’s way in an instant. My body was ridged, my shoulders back, my fists clenched, and a growl itching its way up my throat. Kaliska’s heels dug into the dirt to stop herself from slamming into me.

“Back off.” I growled, a snarl slipping past my lips a little too wolfishly. I could feel her under my skin, her teeth barred, hackles up, and ready to do whatever it took to protect what was hers. Salvie would have none of this and neither would I.

Pack. Mia. Pack. Protect. Pack. Mia. Protect.

Kaliska stopped dead, her eyes wide as saucers. “I don’t know how you do things around here,” I started lowly. “But in my part of the woods, Alpha’s don’t take kindly to outsider pups threatening someone in their pack. It tends to end badly.”

“Sage…” Mia murmured weakly from behind me but I couldn’t acknowledge her, I couldn’t bring myself to settle down. I didn’t know this person who threatened Mia. What I did know was that Mia was Pack, my Pack and this girl had lunged at Mia with full intent to cause bodily harm.

“I-“ Kaliska swallowed hard unable to find her voice.

I hadn’t noticed several people who had been nearby now quite a bit nearer to the scene unfolding then they were before; their eyes intently focused on Kaliska and I. They were focused wolfishly, like a cat after a mouse… I could nearly hear them: Fight. Fight. Fight. Blood. Fight. Protect. Fight.

I wasn’t sure if they were itching to fight me or just to watch me fight Kaliska, either way in a foreign territory it made me more wary than I’d like at the stares.

Lukas did not appear to like the idea either for I suddenly found him at my side. His glare bore down on Kaliska but his stance subtly shifted in a way of protection as he put himself between White Bear Pack and myself.

Kaliska whined, her eyes flickering back and forth between Lukas and I not backing down. I had to give her credit, two Alphas standing between her and her target and she had yet to run with her tail between her legs.

Lukas took a purposeful step toward her. “Run along now.” There was an Alpha’s command in his voice and I didn’t know if Kaliska felt the power behind it or the threat that barred down with it.

Kaliska let out a wordless cry and clutched at her head before she turned on her heels and disappeared amongst the crowd that had gathered there. It was only when she was out of my line of sight that the tension in my body diminished and my muscles relaxed.

My eyes flickered to the crowd, the thirst in their eyes had been replaced by disappoint and they slowly began to return to their daily chores. My eyes locked with Keya then. I was not sure what Keya would think about me taking the situation into my own hands and overriding her command but I couldn’t bring myself to care about either. Between Keya being less than straightforward with her information and the threat of a fight breaking out against one of my own I could not bring myself to care about what Keya thought.

Keya opened her mouth to speak, I could read the apology in her face but then her mouth closed and her gaze turned to Mia. Mine too then turned to my friend whom I’d defended in such a way that could have broken any alliance we had here.

“Mia,” Keya said quietly. “I’m sorry…” she seemed shocked, not at my reaction but at the initial fight itself. “I don’t—I don’t know what got into her.”

Mia looked worn down in a way I had never seen her. It wasn’t a tiredness that could be cured by sleep. It was a sort of tired sadness that seeped into your very bones and ate away at your spirit, sucking away your life until you give into the misery.

It was then that I saw why Mia had left. It was explained more in her stance and appearance now more than she could ever tell me in words. Her skin was pale, dark circles lined her eyes, her shoulders haunched, her posture slack.

“Do not be foolish, Keya.” Mia’s words were quietly strung together but they were heard loud and clear by everyone nearby. “Do not be foolish enough to think Kali’s outburst came out of no where. Do not be cowardly and luxuriously allow yourself to believe you do not know where her bitterness stems from. Do not act as though you do not know the resentment in her veins, Keya. Do not apology for my sister but do not insult me either.”

“Your sister,” I piped up in surprise. “That was your sister?” She had stated as much but I was having trouble comprehending Mia with siblings for she had never mentioned having any. Although, neither had I back when we met.

Mia’s eyes slid to me tiredly and wordlessly she nodded, any strength she had abandoned her now after the confrontation with her sister.

“I think I’ll go lie down now.” She inclined her head slightly to Keya in a sign of respect then her eyes turned to Luke and I and she mumbled our names respectively and then she turned slowly on her heels and quietly retreated toward a tent near the tree line. My eyes followed her until she climbed into the pine green tent and zipped it up behind her.

Then my eyes turned to Keya, we had things to discuss…