Chapter 5

Alec’s POV continued-

I wake up early to the sound of the alarm blaring on my phone. I’m not a morning person, but as the future Alpha I have to set a good example. Every morning during the week starts out with training so we can stay fit and able to protect our pack. Training is mandatory for all pack warriors, but everyone is welcome to attend if they want to better themselves. It seems pointless to me to ban someone for trying to better themselves, especially if it benefits the pack as a whole as well. Some packs won’t let Omegas or other weaker wolves train. Some say they don’t want them to get any ideas in their heads to try a coup or something. That’s ridiculous to me. Obviously if you’re worried about those lower than you standing up against you, then you are doing something wrong and not treating them with the amount of respect they deserve. One of the things that I love about my pack is that everyone is respected and everyone does their jobs to the best of their ability, no matter what that job is. My father has always been respectful of every wolf no matter what class or status they hold and made them feel like they were an important piece in our overall puzzle. It’s something that I hope to continue on once I take over. A pack is only as strong as its weakest link, so we want all of our links to be strong and happy, even if they are generally more submissive by nature. Those wolves support the stronger wolves, and those stronger wolves protect the weaker wolves. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Learned that phrase on Wild Kratts as a kid and I always love to use it with my pack.

Training begins with some light stretching while everyone arrives and starts to wake up. We do a quick run to the territory boundary and back, then we strip and shift into our wolves for a full run around the border. When we get back and dressed we either do fight training or weight training. Sometimes both, but not usually during the summer because it gets too hot once the sun has been up long enough. We train outside due to the number of people we have training, but we also have indoor training areas for anyone that wants to train on their own or for weaker wolves that don’t feel comfortable training with the group. For the few days it gets too hot we split up training in the facility so it’s not too crowded but everyone still gets their work in. We have a few warriors that cycle through as trainers at the facility so that someone is always there anytime somebody asks for or needs help outside of regular training. Today is a sparring day and those are the ones I lead with Zander and Kade. If there is anything new we want to teach or something that we want the warriors to focus on, we have 2 of us fighting each other with the third pointing out details and telling everyone what to look out for and why.

“Hey man! How do you wanna run today?” Zander asks as I walk up to him and Kade.

“Hey. I think we should have everyone work on defensive techniques in human form today. With all this rogue activity it feels like something is building up and I want to make sure everyone is up to speed if something flips the wrong way in a battle.”

“Makes sense,” Kade responds. “I have a couple moves I was studying up on that I think would help. You mind if I lead you and Zander to show everyone?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Thanks!” Kade beams back as he pulls out his phone to pull up some videos. Even though he’s so young, everyone respects him and knows how good of a fighter he is. This will be his first year on the football team with us since he just graduated from high school a few months ago. Since he has an in with us we took him to our spring practices and Coach immediately saw his talent and allowed him to join the team, even though he didn’t have any scouting from high school. We all went to the pack school so we didn’t have a competitive football team. We just played for fun and to let off some steam.

Once everyone was back from our run we got everyone together to start our sparring session.

“Alright everyone listen up!” I shouted and immediately got everyone’s attention. “Today for our sparring session we’re going to have everyone pair up and we’re going to work on some defensive moves. I know everyone loves going on offense but we can’t slack on the defense either. Today Kade will be instructing while Zander and I will be demonstrating. Let’s go!” All our warriors scatter to find a partner and get ready as soon as possible. Once everyone was situated Kade took over and led another successful session.

After training was over I pulled my guys aside to go over our patrol schedule. There were some changes that would need to be made with everything going on.

“So for the rest of this week patrol should be fine, but we need to update the rotation for when the semester starts. Also, I want to add some extra eyes to our Western border and along the Southwest where the hunters are as well.”

“Ok I can make that happen,” Zander replies. “There are 10 of us that will be going to campus this year and will have to switch rotations. Have they given their schedules to the Alpha yet?”

“I’m not sure. Why do you want to know school schedules?”

“Well I know that we have some days where we don’t have classes, or days where some classes start really early or end really late. Plus we will be starting practices too. I figured if we tried to align the rotations to accommodate for that it would make everyone happier and more productive.”

“See, this is why you’re gonna be the best beta,” I beam at him. He really does take his future job seriously, even if he is a goofball most times. He knows when to turn it on, and he has done a damn good job with all the responsibilities he has been given so far. “I’ll speak with my dad about that when we get back, and if they haven’t I’ll just tell them to send you their schedules directly. Just keep a copy for records in case we need them for anything else.”

“Perfect. Why do you want more shifts around the Western border though?”

“Because that is where all the runner rogues have been coming from,” Kade answers for me.

“Yep. I looked back yesterday and all the unusual rogues have been coming from that direction or from the hunters, who happen to be close to that same border anyway.” I say to add on to what Kade said. He has always been a very good strategist and always looked at the details. That’s why playing games with him as a kid sucked. We’re all very competitive but that little shit would always win the strategy games despite being 2 years younger. We still love him though. That’s another reason that he was one of the top warriors at such a young age and no one got upset about it. “Ok with that decided let’s go get some grub.”

We headed back to the packhouse so we could eat breakfast. Training so early definitely gets our appetites up. Werewolves always eat a lot anyway to keep up with the energy we burn, but on sparring days we usually tend to eat even more if that’s possible. Thank you werewolf metabolism. With that in mind our kitchen staff prepares a ton of breakfast food buffet style in 2 shifts. The first shift is for those that aren’t at training so they can get to their jobs. We can all come in whenever but once training is over, that’s when the staff brings out all fresh food. A ton of it too, and it’s always delicious. I grab a plate and make my way to the tables. I pile my plate full of eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausage, a ham steak and toast, then I decide to grab a second plate and fill that full of pancakes and fresh fruit. Instead of waiting until after I finish my little feast, I figure it would be easier to just mindlink my dad about the schedules instead of having to go up to his office. Once I do he tells me that he hasn’t had a need for the schedules so he never asked. Well, we have a need now. I do a mass link to the others I know will be attending this year. Basically like a big group text in our minds.

Hey, I need all the warriors attending this college semester to get Zander your class schedules by the end of the day so that we can adjust patrol rotations accordingly.

Yes sir! I hear back from all of them.

“Thanks man,” Zander tells me as he grabs a seat next to me. Kade sits down on my other side, with Noah, Tanner, and another warrior Jace also coming to our table.

“Hey Zander, I’ll get my schedule to you right after breakfast,” Amara says as she throws a wink in Kade’s direction before sitting with some of the other female warriors. She’s made it known that she has a thing for Kade, obviously, but since they both turned 18 and realized they weren’t mates Kade hasn’t reciprocated. He just put his head down and kept eating without giving her any attention. He wants to wait for his fated mate like me. I’ve hung out with Zander’s sister Kiera a bit since we grew up together, but after we turned 18 we stopped. Not saying we didn’t fool around a bit, but we never took it all the way to avoid confrontations whenever we do meet our mates. Plus I would never do that to Zander. Bro code and all.

“You guys ready for the season?” I ask since all the guys around us are the ones on the football team with me.

“Hell yeah! Can’t wait to show these guys what we can do,” Noah says.

“Just remember we gotta keep it low key. We can’t give any indication that we’re more than human. Well, maybe a little bit, but not enough to bring suspicion,” I smirk back. The guys all chuckle and finish off their plates.

“I know we got the defense on lock. Even though I don’t really like the guy, Dean is a good captain and he’s got some skill. What do you guys think the offense is gonna do this year?” Zander asks.

“Our QB is decent. The young receiver we got looked like he was picking up the routes pretty good at spring practice. Just hope he studied the playbook this off season,” I said.

“The line wasn’t bad, but it’s hard to open holes and protect the QB when you’ve got us coming at you!” Tanner said.

“Haha very true,” I replied. Just then we got a link that there was a disturbance at the border. It was quickly taken care of but we were all told to go to the Alpha’s office to discuss what happened. It was strange because it wasn’t a usual debrief request, it was only the ranked members and a few select warriors.

When we got to the office my father had a very somber look on his face, which was odd because he has always been more of a calm, collected Alpha and never really showed his emotion. Once we all took our spots he looked at us all, sighed, and sat down heavily on his chair.

“I’m sure you’re all aware that something happened on our border. One of the warriors on patrol heard someone crying and came across a woman stumbling through our territory. A human woman, and not a hunter. She looked bruised and beaten and had no idea where she was. She saw one of the guards shift back to his human form and it didn’t phase her, so either she was too shocked to register it or she has seen it before. I asked a few of our female warriors to take her inside and get her cleaned up. After that we will need to speak with her to find out what she knows and who she was running from. Once we’ve established what we can, we have to decide what we tell the hunters about what we find.”

We were all too stunned to speak at first. It isn’t common for people to just wander into our land. This territory is deep in the forest along the mountains. It’s definitely not a flat area where most people like to live or even camp. To be safe the area is considered “protected lands” to avoid people coming up from the city and trying to camp out here when it gets too hot further south. Add the fact that this woman seemed to be abused and it was hard to think of how she ended up where she did.

“Which direction did she come from?” Kade asked.

“She came in from the west,” my father said.

“Just like the suspicious rogues,” I continued.

“Yes, that seems to be the case. We will have to wait until we speak to her to see if there is a correlation, or if it’s just a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences. Not in this case,” I say.

“While that may be true it is still dangerous to jump to conclusions. We need to find the facts before we place blame or try to make wild guesses. While we wait for her to be ready, we need to talk about where she will go after.”

“We can just take her to the police after we talk to her. Tell them we found her when we were out hiking and we wanted to make sure she could find her family,” I suggest.

“And when she tells them that she saw a bunch of people turning into wolves and back again, what then?” Zanders' dad asks.

“We tell her the truth, about everything that goes on here, who we are and why it’s not a good idea to tell anyone else.”

“What if she is in too much shock with all of us here and just agrees to whatever we say until she can get away from us? It wouldn’t be the first time a human couldn’t handle the truth.”

“I think we are capable of taking care of one human's mental health enough to know she won’t break as soon as she’s out of our territory,” I tell him with determination on my face. I have faith in my pack. We’re not monsters and we’ve had to tell a few others the truth in the past. We haven’t had any issues before.

“While I admire your enthusiasm son, this isn’t just about the female’s well being. It’s also about our pack’s well being and the treaty we have with the hunters,” my dad says.

“If this has something to do with the rogues then it’s our concern and our issue to handle. It has nothing to do with them,” Zander says.

“I agree that we need to handle the issue with the rogues, but whether or not they are involved, we know for sure that at least one human is involved. As part of our agreement we need to tell them if there is an issue that has a direct impact on the humans in the area,” my father says.

“The treaty doesn’t say when we have to tell them though right?” I ask.

“Well, no.”

“Ok, then why don’t we hold off for now, find out what happened to her and what she knows, then ask her what she wants to do? We can keep her here and let her know that we will not harm her and she can stay for a bit if she wants, or we can try to find her family on our own and take her back there. If it turns out that this has nothing to do with the mythical world, then we can take her to the police if she wants to file a report or we can take her home. It could even be a one off weird human situation that doesn’t have any implications at all. After it’s all taken care of we can tell the hunters. We can ask her if she’s ok with us giving them her information to follow up with her if necessary,” I say to everyone.

“And what if another human is taken while we’re waiting for this situation to be handled? What if that could have been avoided by telling the hunters? Would you be able to live with yourself then? Would the hunters feel the treaty is still in effect if they find out we withheld information from them that could have prevented an abduction?” my dad asks me. I didn’t have an answer for that and he knew it. He knows how guilty I would feel if I could have prevented harm coming to someone, human or otherwise, and didn’t do it because I didn’t want to talk to the hunters. Mostly because he would feel the same way. So I do the smart thing, I shut up and defer to him. “We can’t let personal feelings get in the way of safety. We will speak with the victim and find out what we can, if she is even able to tell us. We will get a dossier together and give it to the hunters so they know what we know, and depending on how she feels we can either take her home or let the hunters know if she wants to file a report. They have a contact within the local authorities that can help and make sure that the wrong information doesn’t get reported.” As soon as he finishes speaking his eyes get a far away look in them, meaning that someone is mind linking him. “There was another rogue spotted near the western border but it turned. We have holes in the patrol perimeter after this morning's incident.”

“I’ll cover it Alpha. Who relayed the report?” Kade stands and offers his assistance. I know he hates meetings so of course he would jump at the opportunity to get out of here.

“Head to the western border and contact Jace, he’s the one that saw it. Keep us informed if anything comes out of it.”

“Yes sir!” Kade says as he turns to run out the door.

“I understand that a lot has happened recently but we need to make sure we are all on top of our assignments and in our best form to keep this pack safe. Everyone keep your eyes and ears open, let someone know of even the smallest thing that looks out of the ordinary. It’s usually the small overlooked things that tend to break an investigation wide open. And even if it’s uncomfortable and you don’t like it, do whatever you need to do to take care of this mess.”

“Yes sir!” We all say as we get up to leave. I know he meant that last point for me. He knows I don’t like working with the hunters. Well, one of them at least. Maybe if I can set aside my own emotions and solve this it will be the push my father needs to pass on the title and allow me to take over. I know there is still more to learn, but I have the trust and loyalty of the pack and a lot of times that is what matters most. I just need to make sure that I do my best to keep earning it, each and every day.