*Arealla*Time passed quickly after I had come back from the city. Things seemed to be falling into place a little better now. I couldn't say that all of our troubles were behind us, but there was no doubt in my mind that everything was easier than before.At the very least, I wasn't trying to run away at every chance I got.I still ran. But as a wolf.Marcus had allowed me to join the guard that patrolled our borders. It wasn't the most becoming thing for a Luna to do, but he agreed that I should familiarise myself with the pack's territories.Or at the very least, our borders.I still had no idea who I was and where I came from, but that didn't have as much importance to me as it once had. I think that what I had wanted more than anything was just for me to confirm that Lucille really hadn't been my mother.And I had gotten that.She hadn't had much more information for me other than that, but I didn't really expect her to. She wasn't a wolf. And I had gone and come b
*Arealla*"Whether it's trustworthy, I can't answer to that," she said, shaking her head. "I have no idea as to the truthfulness of the source. But how I know, that question I can answer. I know that you're from the Diamante Pack, because the Alpha and Luna are at our door, claiming that you're their long lost daughter."I stared at Liana. How could that be true? But before I could ask her anything further, she turned to Marcus."They've requested passage as the rules denote," she told him. "Shall I see that everything is arranged?"Marcus looked at her for a moment, and then nodded tersely.I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what the rules of passage were, but now was not the time for me to object to anything. And now was definitely not the time for me to demand answers.I needed to speak to these wolves that were claiming to be my parents.Both of them wolves. And an Alpha and Luna pair, too. There was no way that I would ever have imagined that. But then agai
*Arealla*I nodded as I spoke. No one hauled a baby blanket around to put on a kidnapped baby, and anyone who would kidnap a baby would just grab the baby with its blanket. If I was found with a blanket around me, there shouldn't be a blanket left in the crib.Nothing these people were saying was making any kind of sense."The only thing that makes any kind of rationale in their defence in all of this," I said, continuing my point. "Is that it just makes no sense for them to be lying.""Not entirely," Ben interjected. "We don't know their motive yet. And as long as we don't know that, then we can't say that they have no reason to lie."I hadn't thought of it like that just yet."We need to go back to them," Marcus said, pushing himself up from the seat that he was in."What are you going to tell them?" Ben asked his Alpha.Marcus pursed his lips."We won't accept that Arealla is from them," he said simply. "They have provided no evidence. But besides that, I think tha
*Arealla*"And if it is not honored," Tessa growled. "Then I will take my daughter back. I will drag her back to the pack by her fur if I have to."I wanted to snarl at the man and woman that had just given us that ultimatum. But my thoughts surprised me a little. Us. I thought of myself as part of this pack now. In the moment, it felt like it had just come out.But the more that I thought about it, the truer it felt. I was part of this pack. Like Liana was. Like Ben was. Like Marcus was.It was the wolves of this pack that had protected me, that had brought me back here. Back home. It was wolves of this pack that were helping me to discover where I came from. But there was no doubt that now, I was part of them.And I didn't take too kindly to being told that I was going to be removed from them.And there was no way that I was going to accept that I could be bought."How dare you," I stared at the man and woman.I expected Marcus to stop me. But I wouldn't have let him.
*Arealla*I stared in shock at the little boy that had just climbed out of the very small hole in the floor."As you can see, I'm not in any danger at all," the boy said, coming inside the room properly. "Oh, and they just lied to you."He squeezed his little body through the hole in the wall, and then with a little further effort, pushed himself out of it.I had never seen him before. But I was kind of glad that I hadn't. If I hadn't known who he was, before seeing him, I would have said that he was Marcus' son. He was an almost exact likeness to him, down to the brown hair, down to the amber eyes.I almost expected his eyes to glow red in a moment."Jake!" Marcus exclaimed, running to his nephew, he scooped him up in his arms.And if I had seen him behave with Jake like this, I would have said that he was his son.For a moment, I got a flash of what the future could be. If Marcus and I ever had any children of our own. If the mate bond ever became more than just the p
*Arealla*I remained in place as Marcus ordered his guards to have Gregor and Tessa brought back in. I wondered what they thought was going to happen.We waited the full three hours out. We didn't want them to think that we had given in so quickly. And we also didn't want them to think that we had reached some kind of easy resolution.It had just been better to make sure that we just stayed the entire wait time out, and then we called them back.It also gave Ben a good amount of time to make headway with his plan. They also probably wouldn't notice that he was gone. After a three hour debate, the rational thing to conclude would be that someone needed to see something being done around the pack.But we weren't going to give them that long to notice his absence in any case.The truth was that we needed to keep them talking for as long as we could. And to get as much information out of them as we could. That was going to be a little difficult. They had already tried to cut to
*Arealla*"That pack is our sworn enemy," Marcus said with a sigh, wiping a hand over his face. "It might actually have been better for you to just have been a human."I stared at Marcus for a moment before I spoke. There was something so wrong with his words. It didn't match up with what he had told me earlier.I understood the reticence he had against the Diamante Pack."I don't understand," I told Marcus. "They weren't on your map. They weren't counted as an enemy pack. I don't even remember their territory."But as I said it, I thought back to the huge piece of land that had been unmarked on the map. Marcus had given no name and no explanation for it. Could that have been the Crystal Mist Pack?"We don't classify them really as an enemy," Marcus went on to explain. "Because we don't recognize their autonomy."I frowned."How long have they been declaring themselves independent?" I asked."A hundred years," Marcus shrugged. "Give or take."I stared at him in shoc
*Arealla*I hated that he had reduced me to this. I hated that this was what I had become. But here I was, crying on my bed. Brought to tears because of a boy.Well, a man. A wolf. I wasn't entirely sure. And that was what stung the most of all of this.He was supposed to be my mate. It had been one thing when the weakness from the mate bond came because of me. It was one thing when I was the reason that we weren't connected. But I had an excuse.I had been raised human, completely unaware of the wolf world. I had thought that was what I was. I had never had any reason to think otherwise. And then, when my wolf had come to me, every part of being a wolf had come slowly. It had been hard and difficult to draw each part of the wolf out of me.I had never once thought that I would be able to get to the point where I could communicate through the mate bond, like every other mated wolf could. I had never even thought that I would be able to consolidate the bond.And then, I had