Running With Wolves

__________________________________________________________

Keya had led us to what appeared to be her personal trailer. The place smelt faintly of rose oil and pine. It was way too cramped of living quarters for my comfort but in these parts Keya’s home was considered roomy. There was an old pink couch pushed up against the wall, a radio on a table, wildflowers on the countertop of a sink; it was all rather quaint.

She rung out her hands, her back to us, anxiety rolling off her in waves.

“Keya,” Lukas started, his voice dangerously approaching a growl. I glanced to him and took his hand. My hot headed love couldn’t loose his temper right now.
I couldn’t blame him though, Lukas’s frustration was as high as mine was, only Lukas had a habit of making it known. I’m sure it didn’t help that he felt he was being given the run around. No one gave a Canis the run around.

Worry rolled off Keya in waves as she paced and fidgeted back and forth several feet away from us, dancing just out of Lukas’s range to lunge and refusing to look at us.

“I’m sorry,” The words left her in a rush as she spun on her heels having worked up the nerve to face us. “I’m sorry for Kaliska, it was out of line and not any way to treat a guest of Flacon Ridge.”

“I think Kaliska viewing Mia as a guest is a little presumptive don’t you think? Unwanted intruder maybe.” I offered wryly, my eyes narrowing at her. I was done with the politeness of just brushing over things. The time for secrets and dismissiveness was over, the facts would come forward if I had to beat them out.

Keya looked at me helplessly and licked her chapped lips. “I apologize for her actions.” It struck me then that Keya was afraid of me and the actions we might take against her and this tribe for the strike against Mia.

But then another thing crossed my mind, Keya was afraid of my actions because I was the daughter of two Alphas—a truth that she, and maybe she alone, had known all along.

“You’re afraid of me aren’t you?” I mused stepping out from around Lukas’s fuming frame. Keya looked away suddenly nervous. “You are afraid of me aren’t you?” I repeated my tone clipped. I wanted to hear her say it. I wanted to hear this one person who had been caught in the tangled web of lies that had been kept from me to say that she was afraid to feel my wrath. I was tired of being treated like a little girl that the lived in a sheltered little world of lies. I was tired of the games, the secrets, the lies. I was tired of all of it…my patience was at its end.

Keya’s eyes closed, willing herself to find courage, she swallowed hard and her chocolate orbs met mine. “Yes,” She said her voice unwavering. “Yes I am.” But I could nearly smell the fear on her.

I took another step toward her. “Why is that?” but I couldn’t bring myself to hear her response. “Could it be because now I know you’ve been playing games with me? Making me read books until my mind melts and the words make my eyes cross. Could it be because all of the truths I spent hours discovering could have come from your very lips in a fraction of the time? Or perhaps its the fact that you are just now realizing that you are not unlike all the other people I have had the unfortunate pleasure of discovering have woven a tangled web of lies around my life. Maybe Keya, you realize, that as girl who has buried father and eldest sister, was abandoned by her mother, and has a kidnapped younger sister, aunt, and cousin, was assaulted in the woods, and has now discovered she is the daughter of two alphas.

I mean I think the best part is that an offspring of two alphas is supposedly as unheard of as the Soulmate Principle, as in nonexistent.” I shrugged nonchalantly a bitter smile playing across my lips. “Then again maybe that’s just as big of a kicker as the fact that my real birth mother didn’t want me just like my other mom. Perhaps Keya you are realizing that all of these factors might make one just a little…unstable.” I didn’t realize how angry I was, not just with Keya but with my life until the words fell from my lips. In fact angry didn’t really do the emotion I felt justice—livid had a nicer ring to it. I was so angry I could taste the bitterness of it on my tongue, feel it in the tremble of my fingers. I was done with all of it. Fuck all of it. What did it matter? At the end of the day what did any of it really matter? None of it was going to bring me any closer to finding my sister, it wasn’t going to unite Eastern and Western, and it sure as hell had not brought me any closer to finding out who was hunting female Weres.

I could feel Lukas step closer to me, the back of his hand brushing lightly against the back of my arm. I understood the gesture well enough: ’I’m here’ it conveyed as well as ’calm down’. I was even making Lukas slightly uneasy and that was a damn near impossible fiet.

Keya’s expression changed from fear and apology then. It softened then to understanding and her eyes grew warm and kind. She opened and closed her mouth several times before she could find her voice.
“Christine loved you Sage,” Keya’s eyes were shinning with unshed tears now. Her hands were fisted at her side, her fingernails digging into her palms and forming little half moons were the only thing keeping her fear at bay. “You must know that. You’re mother loved you, she didn’t wish to leave you.”

It was enough to break me. “But she did!” I screamed my voice cracking as unshed tears now filled my own eyes. “She left me!” I yelled. I was bordering toward hysterics but I was too far gone to be reeled back in now. I was done with being somber contained Sage. I was tired of being the Alpha who was supposed to have it together and didn’t show weakness. Because now all I felt was weak; all I felt standing here was like an abandoned little girl. “She left me! My mom left me! My sister left me! Half my fucking pack disowned me!” I fell silent suddenly, tears streaming freely down my cheeks. “I got tired of loosing the people I love. So I left….apparently its hereditary.” I murmured quietly, bitterness falling off my tongue with ease…it was too easy for me to jump to bitterness these days. It was like a coldness that had settled into my bones and reared its ugly head unexpectantly.

Lukas was silent beside me, I could feel him there but I don’t think he knew what to say. Truth be told I don’t think Lukas wanted to say anything because only Lukas knew that there was nothing to be said, no magic words to take away my bitterness, no consoling to could change the past. Lukas knew I’d rather have his presence then have him trip over comforting words that didn’t help anyone.

Keya looked as though she was staring at me like cornered prey. I could hardly blame her, I was coming undone and I wasn’t exactly a yapping little Yorkie when angered.

She closed her eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks, and her hands fisting together in front of her to stop their shakes. When her gaze rose to meet me again she swallowed hard and gathered herself together. An inner strength arose in Keya that had not been present when I first confronted her.

“Your mother loved you.” She stated evenly, biting back any emotion she felt then. “She loved you more than you could ever comprehend but she was also very scared for you. You, her only daughter, was the product of two alpha’s and it was something an innocent babe had never asked for. Your mother loved you dearly but she also felt a great deal of guilt for your parentage. She raised you here you know, for the first six months of your life this was your home.”

Surprise settled into my bones and left my mouth dry. Here? I couldn’t comprehend a life here, a life that varied so drastically from Blackwood.

“Oh yes, you were quite the apple of everyone’s eye. I do believe the saying, ‘it takes a village to raise a child comes to mind’.” Keya smiled softly as she remembered a time that I could not. “It was a perfect little place to raise a child.”

“But she left,” I stated brokenly. None of this mattered, what mattered was she had left. What mattered was that I felt like an orphaned little girl who was in desperate need of guidance and a hug. I needed her and I hated it. I hated that seventy-two hours ago I didn’t even know she existed and now I found myself caring too much about someone I had never even known. Now here I was looking for information about her.

“You mistake her absence for abandonment.”

Anger flashed across my eyes. “Its the very meaning of the word!”

“No,” she took a daring step closer, her eyes never wavering from me. “It’s not. Your mother left because she sensed the evil the prowls these woods. She feared it would come for her, for you.” For a moment her jaw locked and she swallowed hard as though to be rid of a bitter taste in her mouth. When she spoke again her voice was much quieter, graver. “You know of the evil I speak, it is the very reason in which you came. Surely you must at the very least have an instinct to believe that this is not perhaps the first time females in Were packs have gone missing. Did you read nothing in those archives?” I wasn’t sure if my heart had stopped or sped up in that moment and the surprise must have shown plainly on my face. Keya nodded, “if that is the affirmation you came here looking for the answer is yes, this is not the first time females have gone ‘missing’ from Were packs.”

Lukas spoke up then for I couldn’t find my voice. “Why do you say it like that?”

Her eyes flickered to him then, a nearly impatient edge to her voice. “Come now, you are sharper than most, Luke Canis, you know the answer to that.” She licked her lips and sighed, sensing we needed to hear her say it just the same. “They went missing in the very same manor your dear sister probably did—as in, they didn’t go missing but were kidnapped. Yes, kidnapped, the bitter acid word that every Alpha within one hundred miles cringes away from. Kidnapped, a term that would rightly strike upset, vengeance, fear, and distrust within a pack.”

“But why hide from it?” I hissed in frustration. “Why cover it up? Members of packs went missing and they did nothing! For what?”

“I could not speak for every Alpha dear, I imagine the same song rings true for nearly all of them though. A kidnapped Were, stolen away from a pack, breeds question to the strength of that Alpha. An Alpha that cant protect its pack is hardly an Alpha at all.”

“Perhaps for some that is true, but not Blackwood. It can’t be just that for Blackwood. If what your say is true it would mean my father ignored a threat against his Soulmate twenty-three years ago, it would mean he ignored it when I was a child when his twin sister and niece were kidnapped. My father would not ignore that, not when it came to family. Nor would Viktor—“ my throat caught at the words that left my lips before I could even process their meaning. But they were true.
I thought of what I knew; interactions, conversations, birthdays, barbecues. I hated Viktor but Cora was his neice, his blood, Viktor would not have let her absence go lying down. After all Lukas got his possessiveness and short fuse from somewhere.

I hated Viktor, I truely did. But Viktor was growing on the list of things that did not add up with the things I had been led to believe were true.

Viktor, to my own grim understanding, would require a visit in the near future…

“My father and Viktor are many things, but threats made against their family is not something either of them are keen to take lightly. I can believe your idea as truth for other packs, Keya, but not my own. Something worst has its grip on Blackwood to keep both Corneliu and Viktor from not only doing absolutely nothing but by covering it up as well.” My mind wondered, forming plots, ideas, a list of things I would have to continue searching for in an attempt to make the puzzle come together…

“What happened here specifically that caused Christina to flee?” Lukas questioned quietly.

Keya looked away momentarily and closed her eyes as if she recalled something that brought her pain. “Our pack, if you could call it that, was never made of strength. We had never known the true hold of an Alpha decree, the force of a pack. We were misfits, cast outs, lone wolves in search of sanctuary. None of us came from Alpha blood, none of us had the ability to command, all aside from Christine. Christine had come here seeking refuge, refuge from what she never said. But it was Christine who had Alpha blood. It was an unusual thing, something not normally heard of in Christine’s case. Christine was not an only child you see, she had a brother very much alive and who was an alpha elsewhere. It was all she told me of her old life but it made us wonder, if one came from Alpha lineage, did the power perhaps not simply go to next in line but those who were simply strong enough to weld it. Did it simply need to be tapped into like a spring?

But I digress, in any matter Christine became our leader in the rare occasion we were in need of one. A few of the Weres had claimed they were picking up a scent in the wood around White Bear. At first we thought nothing of it, it was not unusual for an unknown Were to stumble upon our family. But the scent never left and no Were made an appearance. It also became clear that it was not one lone wolf but several, that was what was unusual and made us begin to wonder. Then one day a young girl about seventeen, Lydia was her name, went missing; you were two months old at the time. It was then we got a taste of what Christine the Alpha was made of. Instantly we knew she had been kidnapped, we are miles from the nearest pack or highway and Lydia would have never have left on her own accord. She sent a voluntary party out to try to pick up Lydia’s scent. I hadn’t gone—“

“Why not?”

A flash of annoyance momentarily shone across her eyes. “If you must know, it was because I was charged with the care of you, Miakoda, and several of the other young ones while their parents were away.”

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“They had split up, evidentially, in their search and when they returned Christine had been visibly shaken up. Her hair was awry, she had bruises forming on her chin and it wasn’t until later she showed me her bruised ribs and the bite marks on her legs.” Keya hesitated for a moment, remembering the moment, before she swallowed and continued. “She told me she had found someone. A Rogue she told me and a half wild one at that. The way she described him was as though he was very much his were in the most primal sense of the word; he was wild. He attacked Christine but it was her belief his intent was more so disarm her to the point to where she too could be taken—I’ve never seen Christine so scared, which is saying a lot because I very much see her in you.” A ghost of a smile momentarily flickered on her lips. “Christine began to believe that with Lydia’s kidnapping and her attack that the two must have been connected. It was very quickly believed that someone was trying to take female Were’s.” She swallowed hard and wrung out her hands. “It was, it was, a-uh, very scary time for all of us. To feel hunted, to feel like prey, there is nothing scarier. After Christine was attacked the scent slowly faded away and we began to believe that as a whole, we were no longer a target and we began again to try to search for Lydia, albeit now much more apprehensive as to what we would find. Micah was the next to be taken, she was nineteen and out gathering berries, you were five months old. At that point we felt like sitting ducks. Even with Christine as a standing Alpha we were not considered a strong pack who could throw their weight around like Blackwood. None of this helped with the addition of the fact that we also out numbered the males here 3 to 1—looking back that alone is what made us prime targets. Christine sent out a Falcon to Blackwood, in a plea for their help. We could smell the Rogues then constantly when the breeze blew in, like a haunting reminder that they were right there watching and waiting.
Corneliu arrived alone two weeks later,” making me five months and two weeks old—I only stayed in White Bear until I was six months old. “…Three days after that a child, Miakoda’s older brother Matoskah had been a toddler at the time and he had wondered out of the camp. Christine had gone out after him and had found the boy cornered by a mangy Were. She fought it off but it left Christine more shaken, if possible than before. Matoskah’s encounter with the Rouge did not fit in with the theory of hunted females but we also believed that wild, crazed, Weres might make an exception to prey on an innocent child no matter the gender if given the chance. Matoskah barely escaped with his life, to this day he bares the scars.

When Corneliu arrived here Christine stopped confiding in me and instead turned to him. Because of that I cannot say for certain what was said only that by everyone’s account Christine broke down to Corneliu, the problem with living in close quarters you see. She was visibly in fear not only for the tribe and herself but for you. What Christine did tell me was that these were not random attacks, but attacks with a purpose. She had intervened and fought off these Weres numerous times and it could only be assumed that she angered them to such a degree it made her their number one target. She believed very strongly that it was only a matter of time before they came for her. It is worth noting that with each attack, came a different Were. Christine was confident she could fight off one Were but three?” Keya shook her head and her gaze fell to the floor. “Christine was a stubborn woman, once she made up her mind she rarely changed it.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Lukas chimed.

“Yes,” A tight smile appeared on her lips, “You are very much her daughter.”

“When my father left White Bear, he left with me didn’t he?”

When Keya met my gaze there were tears in her eyes. “Yes, he did.” She swallowed hard. “I had begged her to think differently, selfishly albeit I wanted you to stay with us. I had been with you since the day of your birth and I had grown to love you very much. I had not wanted you to go, none of us had, but as I said Christine’s decisions could hardly be swayed. Corneliu was with us for three days to assess the situation and when Christine had not only arrived to greet him not only visibly upset but with a baby on her hip, he understood instantly that he was your father.” She smiled fondly then. “I remember thinking what a special man it took to not skip a beat from not knowing he had a daughter to being fully immersed in your life; he never let you out of his sight.
The two of them had narrowed down the territory to where they believed the Rogues to be down to one area. Corneliu had plan to bring back some of his pack to help protect us and uncover the Rogues.”

“That never happened.” I assumed. No one in Blackwood had ever gone to White Bear aside from my father…what had happened?

“The day after your father left to take you back to Blackwood Christine left us…by the time Corneliu reached Blackwood there was a Falcon waiting for him written by my own hand to inform him as much.”

“Why didn’t he bring reinforcements anyway?”

“He did,” Keya murmured quietly. “But with your mother’s absence the Rogues moved on and never returned. The Weres of Blackwood stayed for only a short while before it became evident that there was no longer a threat.”

My blood ran cold at the thought of what had become of the mother I had never known.“They took her didn’t they?”

Keya pursed her lips and looked years beyond her age. “I wonder that every day, child.” She admitted. “But the truth is we might never know. We never found evidence of your mother or the others. It was as though they all just disappeared into thin air.”

My jaw locked as the protective edge I felt over my pack reached out and extended to Christina. “Not thin air.” I ground out. “They went somewhere. The fact that this is happening all over again leads me to believe with every fiber of my being that where ever they went it was not far.” Keya said nothing but an aged sadness had settled into her very bones, her posture bowing with it.

“I’m going to find out what happened to her Keya.” I promised. I would just add it to the list of things. In truth I believed that all of this, every last bit of it was tangled and connected in some way. There was no such thing as independent tragedy or coincidence anymore; all of it was connected.

She smiled sadly, “I know you will.” Keya just hoped she would not meet a similar fate to all the other females in her’s family…