Etched in Honor #2
I shook my head, remembering the Talon Pack lioness who now lived in a Pack of wolves as I did.
She was strong, mated to the Healer, and could handle anything on her own.
At least, that’s what I figured. It wasn’t like I could truly speak to her often these days, not with my needing to be with the Aspens as much as I was.
I turned to see Steele coming towards me, a glare on his face as always. I didn’t know him well, though that was only because I had to hide my true loyalties for so long that I didn’t know my Pack as I should.
He gave me a tight nod as he looked around at his lieutenants. “What happened here?”
I raised a brow because he wasn’t as dominant as I was. The only person that was within this Pack was Chase, and even then, some days, it didn’t feel like it.
Steele just shook his head, his own wolf understanding that he didn’t get to growl at me like that in front of others.
We were all still finding our place, figuring out how to work together as a cohesive unit.
The fact that I hadn’t had a cohesive unit with the previous hierarchy spoke volumes.
We were taking our cues from the Redwoods and Talons.
But even then, the Redwoods had decades of learning to work together and were an actual family.
The hierarchy before the current generation was still around, guiding them.
They weren’t elders per se, but they were a tight unit.
The Talons, on the other hand, had to rebuild from the ground up at one point, and so we were trying to follow their lead. Much like the Central Pack was doing. Though their Pack had been completely demolished, only coming back with a blessing from the actual moon goddess, the goddess of wolves.
I shook my head and looked over at Steele. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out myself.”
I explained about the dark claws and the fact that it had spoken even after we had shoved a dagger into its eye. Steele raised a brow, then pulled out his phone. “We should talk with the Redwoods and the Talons. They might have seen something when they were down south.”
I frowned, then remembered that nearly a year ago the Tracker for the Redwood Pack had gone down south to meet another Pack of all things and had come up with something similar. The dark smudges and black bite marks.
“Do you think it’s that? I thought that those were genetically modified rogues or whatever that they had found.”
“Not exactly. The dead bodies that piled up happened to be because of that rogue, the wolf that had gotten out thanks to the drug that is no longer a problem within our borders. However, the black marks seemed to be something different.”
I cursed under my breath. “I didn’t know that.”
“I only think I know it because I was talking with Gina.”
Gina was the Enforcer of the Redwood Pack, his counterpart, and had more experience than he did, but only barely.
“Okay. I’ll talk with Chase then. Do you guys have this settled?”
“We do. We’ll meet up with Wren.”
A smile slid over my face at the mention of my best friend’s name. Wren was a lynx shifter and our Healer.
As long as she was connected to the Pack, she could use those bonds to heal those around her.
She was also an MD and kept up with her medical studies throughout her years.
She had been a doctor before the goddesses had called on her to become the Healer of our Pack.
It had fit, and now she worked on the mystical side and the medical side.
“Hopefully, she’ll figure it out, and hey, I hear there’s a new geneticist joining the Pacific Northwest Pack Alliance.”
I grinned. “Is that the name that you’re going with now?” I asked.
Steele rolled his eyes. “I think Cruz is having a little too much fun with the other Packs forming names. But since we’re working so close together, the Pacific Northwest Pack Alliance seems to be working with the four of us.”
That made me smile because it wasn’t just the Redwoods and the Talons any longer. The Aspens were going to bring things to the table, and I knew the Centrals were doing the same. Even though the Centrals had a dark past with the Redwoods, we had just as much of a dark one with the Talons.
My stomach ached at that thought, and my cat scratched at me, so I pushed that thought away and sighed. “I need to go meet with Chase.”
“I take it training’s over then?” he asked, looking at Ronin.
Ronin lowered his head, and if he were in wolf form, his tail would’ve been tucked between his legs. I moved forward, went on my tiptoes, and ran my hand through his hair. “You’re fine. We’ll finish up the day after tomorrow. I know you have your studies.”
The kid, and he really was a kid, only in his early twenties, beamed at me. “Yes, true. Thank you so much for your help. I know I’m getting better, right?”
“You are. You fought well today. We weren’t expecting this, but we made it out because we had each other. So thank you.”
His eyes widened before he walked away, speaking with another wolf his age that was a Lieutenant. That Lieutenant was far stronger in dominance but had just an edge of maternal nature to her that she seemed to ease Ronin’s wolf.
“You’re good with him.”
I looked at Steele. “I’m trying. Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing.”
He swallowed hard. “I feel like that too. Even though you’ve been Beta for longer, you had to be a different Beta before.”
I knew he’d said it as a compliment, but it felt like a slap nonetheless. “I know. But we have new wolves joining the Pack every week, it seems.”
“We do. And that’s something that Chase is going to want to talk to you about,” he added with a grimace.
“What?”
“Allister’s here.”
I blinked at his mention of the Thames Pack Alpha. The Thames Pack was over by the actual Thames River in England. “I didn’t realize he was visiting.”
“He wanted to meet with our alliance, or whatever else he wants to call it. And in doing so, he brought with him a lone wolf that’s been with them for a while but wanted to come back to the United States.
And since the Centrals and the Aspens are pretty much recruiting for Pack members at this point, he figured this guy would work out well with us. ”
“Oh. Okay. What does it have to do with me?”
“As Beta, Chase wants you to help him get acclimated to the den. He’s going to blood him in later today.”
“Him? Just one?”
“There are two women that are joining the Central Pack, from what I can tell. But we get the Tracker.”
My lion perked up, her tail swishing back and forth. “He’s a Tracker?”
“He is, and has the talent for it, and since our Pack doesn’t actually have one as part of the hierarchy, Chase says the moon goddess will bestow the new guy with the title.”
A Tracker was someone who could follow the Pack lines and use extrasensory abilities to find anyone within the Pack.
If magic or other impediments were in the way, it didn’t always work, but a Tracker was great to have.
We hadn’t had one in a decade. Not since our former Alpha had killed him for daring to disobey him.
I swallowed hard, thinking of another Tracker that I’d met in my lifetime. One I didn’t want to think about too hard because it hurt even to imagine.
“I guess since I’m the Beta, it’s my job to see to the needs of the Pack.”
Steele saluted me as he turned back to work with the dead bodies that I had left behind, and I shook my hair out before making my way towards the den.
The den was situated in the northern part of California, amongst the Redwood trees, much like the Redwood namesake Pack that was a little more north of us. We took over Washington, Oregon, and California once you put all of the Pack territories together. We were a large group, but insular.
Our wards protected the den itself, but a lot of our Pack lived outside the den, within the communities of humans and witches. That was how it should be. A den was a place to come home to.
It hadn’t been like that for so long that it almost felt odd to think that now this den could be healthy once again.
I walked through the wards, past the sentries, and let the magic settle over my skin. My cat preened, enjoying the tingles of magic, and I shook my head at it.
Silly cat.
She wanted to run, to let the world look at her glorious golden pelt, but I ignored her. We had things to do. We could laze in the sun later.
I turned the corner, my cat perking up, an odd scent hitting her nose.
I frowned, wondering why it scented so familiar.
“Audrey. You’re here. Good,” Chase, my Alpha, stated as I came towards him, but my heart stuttered, my skin breaking out into a cold sweat. I couldn’t focus. Not on him.
It couldn’t be.
This wasn’t him.
It was a ghost, a death. This was nothing. I was dreaming. Maybe I had been bitten by whatever I just fought, and now I was dead.
Because this couldn’t be true.
“Audrey, you know Allister, and this is Gavin. He’ll be a new member of the Aspen Pack.”
Gavin. That was the name of the stranger, the stranger with the eyes.
This wasn’t Gavin.
No, the man before me was the replica of Basil.
My mate.
My dead mate.
Meet the Aspen Pack with Etched in Honor!