Craig couldn’t understand why she’d left. Everything she’d come with lay discarded in her room. Jessica-Lyn’s choice must have come from her experience with Alrick. Craig felt his respect for his friend lessen thinking she’d felt herself better off alone and hunted that living with the Silver Ridge Pack. Jessica-Lyn has said nothing of her actual intentions to those that knew her. A couple received a goodbye, and she’d just walked out. No one questioned her or stopped her.
Alrick returned with the clothes Craig was sure he’d last seen her in his hands not long after dawn. Jessica-Lyn left her people behind in Alrick’s care.
Slacking his sexual need on her and then discarding her. Craig could not understand what words Alrick said to her. But for her believe she was better off outside of a pack?
Stories were coming in from many
Alrick had never felt like this before. Even in the icy wind that should have taken his breath. He felt like he could breathe. Jessica-Lyn stood before him in her wolf form. He wanted to call her beautiful, and he believed he would have. But right now, he saw the delicate form of a starving wolf. This wasn’t something you saw in a wolf shifter. Unless they’d gone feral long before this. He noticed his sudden appearance triggered her flight reaction before her. But unlike a feral shifter or even a natural wolf, her fighting instincts weren’t apparent. That’s when it hit him. She’d never resisted him. She’d just let him have his way. It hadn’t mattered whether he’d been right or wrong. She’d let him have his way as an honourable and
Alrick slipped out of his apartment and locked the door behind him. He felt bad for tying Jessica-Lyn to his bed. But look at what she’d done when he gave her a small amount of freedom. Alrick knew he couldn’t do that again until he had her trust. She must have misunderstood in her confusion or something. She thought dying alone was better than dealing with him. Then being a member of his pack.He’d to admit that he’d approached her the wrong way. But she needed to learn her lesson, not run from it. Alrick never hurt her. He worried she wasn’t in her right mind, and he feared what she would say if the investigator talked to her. She’d not understood what he was doing. Jessica-Lyn may incriminate herself in something she was not guilty of.This trip into her lands. Seeing the outer buildings and the state the Iron Hill Pack lived in did change Alrick’s impression. She was nothing like the other Alpha family members he’d ev
Alrick agreed with Craig. He’d take the enforcer to see the mess on the Iron Hill lands. He’d go with them to the contested lands and view the drug lab later. Alrick’s men moved the vehicles from pack land earlier to prevent human law enforcement entering their territory and stumbling upon something they shouldn’t. He tried to maintain a polite presence with the enforcer as best as he could. But he left Craig with her as he felt confident Craig would put his full attention into keeping her out of the mess, they were in. Alrick needed to get back to Jessica-Lyn. Unlocking his apartment, he slipped in. She lay on his bed tied with silver to the headboard. He hated to do that. But
He’d seen no one do this before. She wasn’t crying, nor was she putting off any discernible emotional scent. It was almost foreign to him. No, he could see her fear. “Jessica-Lyn look at me. Talk to me now. What were you planning?” Now the fun was over. He’d lost where the pit of his stomach was. He couldn’t stop the dread from forming in his stomach. The thrill of the hunt and having her here with him. It was pleasurable to him. Now he saw something different in her. She wasn’t like the others. Jessica-Lyn wasn’t expecting him to play with her. She expected him to chase her, but not for fun and games.“Jessica!” She just flinched against the headboard but did nothing more. “What did you plan to do?”“Nothing.” Her head slid from his hand. She turned away from him. “I would do nothing. I know where I stand and what the laws say.” That was it. She fell silent again.&l
Alrick carried a tray of food and bags with him. He juggled the items around until he could open the door to his apartment. Once inside, he stopped and looked at the bed. She was there on the bed. Quiet. Too quiet. “Hey.” Words failed him for a bit. “I brought you some clothes to wear.” He paused again. “And some food. You must be hungry.” “So?” She didn’t look his way. If the quiet didn’t dominate. Alrick wouldn’t have heard Jessica-Lyn. He put the tray down on a table near the foot of the bed. Then dropped the bags on the bed. Alrick pulled his keys out of a drawer and walked back to the bed. He unlocked the cuff holding
Jessie took her time in the bathroom. She dragged her heals out of fear of what lies she would hear. What would Alrick say to raise her hopes to dash again? How would she know his words were true or not? Jessie felt like she was on an emotional roller coaster with Alrick. The clothes were big but not. She assumed size seven would be too small. Clothing in size eight was a pain to find. Time was ticking away, though. She’d even taken the time to dry her hair. The bag didn’t have shoes or boots. That wasn’t important. If she left again, she wouldn’t be doing it in human form. She watched herself in the mirror; she pondered how this would play out. If she were lucky, he’d get interrupted. Alrick would decide to stop this new line of torture.&nbs
If a pin dropped, it would shatter the moment. Jessie sat there with a glass halfway to her mouth. Her mouth opens, Jessie’s eyes riveted on Alrick’s in disbelief. She’d stopped breathing long enough to gauge the situation. “No.” Her words came fast and with strength, Alrick wasn’t expecting. “No, you’ve just found an alternative way to torture me. I don’t want to hear it and I don’t want to talk about it. You’re lying.” Alrick had not expected her to be overjoyed at the first mention of it. But he hadn’t expected the shock of hearing her reject it and him. “It’s a little late for that. I may have been too blind to see it. But Craig wasn’t blind. He fixed things so that we wouldn’t suffer if NARC
Alrick watchedthe woman who sat there.Who’d picked his life choices apart and put all his failings on display?Gods,what he’dbeen doing to his people?She was correct. Here he was obsessing about her and wallowing in his recent experiences. While all this time,he’d been ignoring his people’s needs.
Three months since the mine returned to the Silver Ridge Pack’s control. It’d been out of their hands for almost six months in total. The miners could finally return to the mine safely. Oddly, the Fae never returned to the region. Perhaps the Fae thought better of returning for some unknown reason? Either way, the pack now settled into their new way of life. Everyone lived more closely together and now grew closer to each other every day. Kelly and Kyle focused on themselves and the things going on in the tavern. Making changes where needed to make life easier for the suddenly overflowing pack living and working under the tavern’s roof. Not everyone initially was a pack member, which meant there were strangers among them, but they were in the same position as the pack. They would come to find their places in the pack. It wasn’t smo
Kyle left Craig’s office and went back to the tavern. The changes around here didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t know how he’d tell Kelly the truth about him. He’d told Alpha Alrick when he approached him to ask for membership, and they both agreed that they would take it easy and not tell anyone about it. He entered the warmth of the tavern and went in search of Kelly. There were more people staying here. Kyle would need to get used to it. On a good note, someone started preparing the bar for tonight. He wondered who that was. He’d need to find out and see what he could arrange. It would be nice to have someone else behind the bar a few nights per week. He’d have time to focus on Kelly and Eddie. Here’s hoping it wasn’t Kelly. She would have so much on her hands right now. He w
In the Chamber, Dean found his people working hard to document everything they could. He thought of the worst-case scenario. His mind worked out vague plans on how they’d evacuate the entire pack or packs. He didn’t know where the blast radius would be. If they could use this magical leak to their advantage, they could use it to attract the magically starved Fae here. Because they’d attacked several wells of power in Europe. Well, ancient wells, wells that ran dry over a thousand years ago of their magic. “Sir! I think you need to see this.” One of the portal experts brought in to review what they’d found. “I need to show you what we have. Though I think we just might have a weapon on our hands that we can use.&r
Dean left the Alpha’s office and moved towards the vehicle that would take him to the mine. His heart sank. Because of the lies he must tell these shifters. But the mage’s council ordered the information with a need to know thing. Those runes weren’t the mystery. It’s the placement of them. Dates and times didn’t add up for them. The meaning of the runes was what they wanted, kept quiet. Mages or even druids opened these portals. It’d been the humans, but that wasn’t the shocking thing. Humans didn’t possess magic, meaning someone was powering them. Someone supernatural, and the traces of power he’d found at the other site told him far too much. It took him several weeks to discover what supern
Alrick sat back in his chair as he watched Jessie walk from the room. He hated doing that, but the future didn’t look like it would be any easier. If Kelly and Kyle possessed any chance at happiness, they must work things out by themselves. Interfering with any part of the process would cause complications and all involved would suffer for it. He couldn’t stand for that. Now he needed to focus on the issues at hand and put out as many of the dumpster fires as possible. Craig found three incidents already where he’d forced wolves into time out, meaning they’d locked them away for a time to cool off. To wolves, this was like putting a drunk into a drunk tank to sober up. Territorial instinct still lingered within wolf shifter’s minds.&nbs
Jessie now sat in Alrick’s office again. Alrick returned to the office and instantly went to his computer and copying something to everyone. There were two mages in there with them and they were watching a video Alrick took of the portal. “Well, it’s definitely not natural, and whatever is trapped inside the crystal isn’t as secure as we hoped. Look at this crack here. When the wall came down, it must have damaged it. We’ll get it secured as soon as we’re done here. But the runes are fascinating. I’ve not seen anything similar to this. We need to get copies of them. Then we’ll get people in translating them. But I know these aren’t from the local area. They didn’t have a written language when these runes appeared, that’s for sure. Someone came here and did this long
Kyle couldn’t believe this. It took him several attempts to discover why this summons came so suddenly. When the enforcers first entered the tavern, he thought they were there to take him away from everything and everyone that he’d grown to love within the last few years. Now, with Kelly so close all the time, he didn’t want to deal with this. He just wanted to live a quiet life. Thank the gods he didn’t go off on them. Because what they called them in for was far more unbelievable. The Fae were back. Gods, the Fae. Now here they were setting up people to stay above the tavern. Several would stay in the restaurant, studying the human media for mentions of their actions. Others looked after the cattle. The mine would one day return to the pack, and only the gods knew when it would happen. NARC sent a motley cr
Kelly couldn’t believe what was going on. Her heart pounded as they escorted everyone to the Audience Chamber. Her confusion increased when she saw everyone entering at the same time. Was there something wrong with the refugees? Before entering she asked several people but all she learnt was, it was an emergency. Once inside, though, she learnt quickly about some very unbelievable things. The Fae were back and roaming the world again. How could that happen? No one was aware of that. They could only find out that one enforcer on duty at the mine experienced an attack by an unknown Fae. Where and why were both great mysteries? Kelly quickly found Petra and retriev
Alrick sent the first force back to the Audience Chamber to help with organizing nearly three hundred shifters. They would fan out throughout the emergency land. When this pack first settled here, they laid out the main buildings in such a way that they could guard them easier, and the pack could monitor each others’ safety. The issue with this is it didn’t take into the changes within fighting over time. With machine flight, and now Fae using the Dream Realm as their public transit. They literally popped in and out at will. But at least it gave protection from physical attack and a false belief that everything would be okay. He prepared to go with his second set of forces for a short time. He needed to assess what truly was there. Not that he didn’t believe Herald. If Herald said he saw this, then Alrick believed