by Eden Beck
A few of them walk forward and Romulus steps ahead to meet them. A woman puts her hand out to shake hands with Romulus and I watch as he smiles at her with the most grateful and happy smile that I have ever seen him have.
“You came,” he says.
And in that instant, I know what’s happened.
The other packs heeded his call after all.
31
Sabrina
Almost all of the other packs that Romulus reached out to are now here standing before us. I can’t believe it, and from the looks on the boys’ faces, neither can they.
Maybe all is not lost.
“I didn’t know if you would come,” Romulus says, looking between the faces of the other pack leaders.
“I have to admit,” the woman before him says, “we were all a bit reluctant at first, but we all owe you an apology for our hesitation. When we heard about what you were doing … we knew that we had to come and help you.”
A man beside her starts to nod his head.
“You have helped us all,” he says to Romulus. “You have spent decades of work helping all of the packs in the alliance. If you are willing to accept the human girl, then so are we. It’s the least that we can do to repay you for all that you have done for us.”
Romulus reaches out with two hands to shake the man’s hand.
There’s a sincerity to his voice that makes a lump rise in my throat.
“Thank you.”
For saving us.
Or, at the very least, giving us a chance.
“You lost your pack once,” the woman says, “and you spent near the last century building and protecting others so that the same thing didn’t happen to any of us. As far as we’re concerned, you are the head of all of our packs. We will follow you into any fight that you need us for. We would all die to protect you if need be, Romulus.”
Vivian turns back around to keep an eye on Remus and his pack, who are now nearly at the top of the hill. They’ve slowed slightly at the sight of our ever-increasing numbers.
Romulus bows his head to the other pack leaders in a beautiful gesture of diplomacy as they fill in around us. As if they haven’t already, the move forward to make their presence known to Remus and his attacking pack.
Let them see our numbers.
Let them see that we are not alone.
Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb all come to stand around me, forming such a tight semi-circle that our shoulders press together.
As Remus gets close enough to see us all, he stops a few yards away and his pack stops with him. Some flank his sides, but the rest are right behind him. He looks first at me and although he tries not to show his surprise, it’s obvious.
He didn’t expect me to be standing here, brazenly before him. He expected me to be sick and weak. He expected me to be pregnant.
Vulnerable.
He looks around to see where the baby he was expecting to still be in my stomach is, and notices almost immediately that Lydia is not here.
“Clever,” he says. “Although I’m not sure which laws of nature you managed to defy in order to birth your child.”
He looks at Romulus next.
“I wouldn’t expect such a thing from you brother, sending your mate away unguarded doesn’t seem like a move that you would make.”
“She doesn’t need to be guarded,” Romulus growls at him. “Because neither you nor any of your pack will ever lay a hand on her.”
“And I suppose the fact that you have all of this muscle behind you is supposed to scare me?” Remus asks, much too arrogantly for the sudden change in odds.
This is no longer a guaranteed fight.
A swell of hope rises in me. There’s a chance we might actually win now.
Just thinking it makes me realize how futile our efforts were before. How close to death we really all were.
Sure, death is still knocking … but there’s a chance it won’t claim us today.
“It’s supposed to make you act smarter than you are,” Romulus says to his brother. “There’s no way you can attack us now and survive. You are desperately outmatched. If you try to move against me, it would be a suicide mission for both you and your entire pack. Back down and don’t make this foolish attempt again.”
Remus looks between the three boys, letting his gaze linger on Rory longer than it does on Marlowe and Kaleb.
“You had such promise,” he said to Rory. “I supposed that it was your mother’s dirty bloodline that tainted you.”
Rory starts to make a low growl and his muscles tighten beneath his shirt.
“Easy,” Romulus says to his son, surprisingly gently.
“That’s right,” Remus mocks. “Calm your mangy pack of mutts down. I suppose now that you have a new half-breed pup in the mix that will only add to your rescued herd of shifters.”
Remus looks at me with a hateful disdain in his eyes. I’ve seen eyes like his before.
They remind me of my father.
There’s no rational sense to them, nothing that I have done to deserve the hate behind them. The anger and the lacking comes from deep within themselves. There’s no reasoning with people like that.
The only way to deal with it is to remove them from your lives completely.
And I think Romulus knows that.
Yet still, he tries.
“Why do you continue to try to provoke me, brother?” Romulus asks. “Have you not done enough damage already? Look around you, there is nothing left for you here. No one here neither fears you nor respects you. None of this had to be this way, but you kept pushing and pushing … even while I tried to bury the past behind us and tried to live in peace with you. I should have known that peace was not a construct you could understand.”
“I understand things perfectly,” Remus hissed. “It is you who are deceived by what is right in front of your face. You learned nothing from our past. You just try to incite it again by turning more humans and letting them breed, as if you don’t know what will happen.”
Romulus pauses for a moment. I know that whatever he’s getting ready to say will be the last thing he would ever say to his brother. One way or the other, blows come next.
I can just tell by the heaviness in his expression and the weighty breath that he’s carefully taking to put behind his words.
“Remus, you are very wrong. You are so wrong that there is no fixing you, that much I have finally come to realize.” He takes another, even heavier, breath.
“I’m sorry that the path you took was not the path I chose to take. I wish that I could have helped you more, but I am done trying now. You have attacked my family. You’ve tried to hurt my children and poison the woman who carried their pups.”
“Pups?” Remus asks. “There’s more than one child?”
“There are three,” Romulus says.
The flare of outrage in Remus’ eyes flashes brilliantly and violently against the night sky. Not only did he fail to prevent my turning and fail to kill me; he failed to kill our pups and now there are three more “abominations” that have become a part of Romulus’ ever-growing and ever-strengthening pack.
Remus’ fury is palpable.
“Now,” Romulus says to him calmly. “I suggest that you turn around with your pack and walk away from this needless confrontation. You and I have no further need to ever speak or see each other again.”
As vehemently angry as Remus is, there is nothing he can do. He has been humiliated and outmatched in front of his pack and they can all sense his emotions. Now he will have to walk away with his tail between his legs. Not only did his mission fail, but it has cost him the respect of his pack.
It’s already palpable in the air—this loss.
Remus stares at Romulus for a long minute. When he breaks his gaze, he looks at all of the other packs behind us … all shifters that have mixed packs with turned humans.
All packs that he hates.
He looks lastly at the boys and then finally at me. He has saved his most p
otent hatred for me, the human girl who was the spark that lit the flame now threatening to burn him to the ground.
He has been outdone by what he considers to be a repugnant and lesser species—a human woman. Or what once was. I’m far too aware of the wolf inside me ready to burst forth for me to consider myself a human any longer.
Knowing that there’s nothing left to do but retreat, Remus turns slowly to walk away.
But something in his pack seems off. Something feels like it’s still charged with an impulsive energy—like the moment just before you see lightning strike the ground. Something isn’t right in that split moment when he turns his back to us.
It is only the smallest fraction of a second that in which Remus pretends to withdraw that the chaotic energy is there.
As soon as he lunges back around, heading straight for me with his jaw widened and his canines showing, Romulus reaches forward and grabs his brother by the neck with both hands.
There’s no time for me to react.
No time for the silvery moon just peeking out of the clouds above to trigger my first shift early.
It all happens so fast that it is hard to see everything at once.
The boys immediately form a barrier around me as Kaleb pulls me backward into the other packs with him and Rory and Marlowe jump in front of us to block Remus from reaching me. I watch in suspended shock as Romulus holds his brother by the neck, gripping his throat with both of his massive hands as his claws extend outward.
Romulus is shifting, but he’s controlling his shift as he balances on the precipice between man and wolf. He holds Remus with his feet off the ground as he looks ahead over the side of his brother’s shoulder at us.
“Goodbye brother,” Romulus says sadly, so quietly that only those closest to him can overhear. Or maybe he doesn’t say it at all. Maybe I feel it, sense it, through the bond of my new pack.
I watch as Romulus’ hands strengthen into the powerful claws of a wolf-shifter, crushing Remus’ throat and puncturing his neck with his long, sharp claws. It takes only a few seconds before Remus’ head slumps forward and his thrashing arms and legs stop moving.
Romulus retracts his claws and drops his brother’s bloodied and motionless body to the ground. Then he calms himself back out of his shift before turning around to face Remus’ pack.
I stand here up against Kaleb’s chest and I can feel his heart pounding as fast as mine. Romulus has just killed his brother in front of all of the packs, Remus’ pack included.
And they didn’t move a muscle.
They didn’t react.
Not yet, anyway.
The pack members of the alliance whisper behind us as everyone waits in the uneasy stillness. Romulus addresses Remus’ pack, who are moving uneasily and growling amongst themselves.
“The ongoing feud between packs is over. There’s no more need for this bloodshed. All of the packs are part of the alliance now and as such, you will all submit to me now in the absence of my brother,” Romulus says. His tone is commanding, but not cruel. There’s a sadness to it that lends a certain … regality.
He did what must be done.
And that seems plain to all here, even Remus’ pack.
After all, they were not bound by blood and love. They were bound by hatred. By tradition. By cruelty and violence.
Those bonds are not as strong.
“I do not expect you to follow me blindly,” Romulus says, taking another step forward. “But I do promise you, any who dares step forward now will face the same fate as my dear brother.”
The members of Remus’ old pack are nervous and anxious. They fidget like kenneled dogs that don’t know what to do now that the cage door has been left open. There’s still pent-up anger and a thirst for recompense that is stirring among them, and for a few minutes I worry if they will still try to fight.
But then, after a momentary tension, some of Remus’ pack take a knee and lower their heads to Romulus. More and more follow suit until they are eventually all in accordance with Romulus command. Those that don’t slink silently into the trees, but their numbers are far less than I expected.
Those that remain, they will follow Romulus now.
Or, at the very least, won’t fight him.
There was bloodshed here tonight, but the blood spilled was not our own … and it was far less than we expected.
The battle between the packs is over.
We’ve won.
32
Sabrina
All that’s left to do now is to intercept Lydia before she’s gotten too far.
I don’t care if I’m supposed to shift at any moment now.
I don’t have any sense of time. Tonight, the moon will have to stand still until I’m ready for it.
All I know is that I need them. And I need them now.
Romulus expresses his deepest gratitude and thanks to all of the pack leaders and their pack members. Without them, the outcome of this would have turned out much differently and much worse.
And our need for them hasn’t ended on the hill here tonight. We’re not so naïve to think this is the very end of the unrest.
But it is the beginning of the end.
The other packs split in two—some setting up camp around the house to keep guard, the others following Remus’ old pack into the forest. There will be many dues to be repaid in the coming months. But for now, even Romulus feels the tug to find Lydia now … before another moment has passed.
“Do you think Vivian will be able to keep that pack under control until you get back?” Rory asks his father, glancing once behind him as she disappears to follow Remus’ pack back into Free Territory.
“I certainly hope so,” Romulus replies. “Vivian is pretty tough, as we all well know. And Remus’ pack has been given strict command by me that they are to follow whatever Vivian instructs them to do in my absence. Now that Remus is gone, any of the packs that had aligned with him will flee soon … if they haven’t already. If any of his pack members dissent, there will be no place for them to go.”
It sounds a little optimistic to me, but I have to believe him. After all, I’m the new one to this world. I’ve yet to fully grasp the true importance of pack hierarchy.
“What will you do with them when we get back?” Marlowe asks.
“Well, I suppose it will be bittersweet,” Romulus answers as we walk quickly toward the meeting spot. My skin has begun to itch from the inside out, but I don’t want to stop. We are all anxious to reach Lydia and the pups. None more so than me. “My brother’s pack cannot be ungoverned now. I will have to help them cope with the death of their alpha. Whether or not they liked Remus makes no difference, the loss of an alpha is difficult for pack members to deal with. They will be emotional and unstable for a little while, and easily provoked. They will need a strong and steady hand to guide them into a new formation, a new kind of pack than what they have been used to. I’ve done that very thing many times before with many other packs. I can do the same now.”
“Are you saying that you’re going to leave?” I ask with a very audible tone of worry in my voice.
“Not right away,” Romulus says, “and only for a little while. As soon as I can get the pack stable, then I will return.”
“What about Lydia?” I ask. I don’t want them to leave, either of them. Not now, not so soon after we’re supposed to be safe.
It doesn’t matter how many shifters surround us on the hill. I don’t think I’ll ever feel completely safe unless we’re all together under the same roof.
“She can make up her own mind about it. She can come with me to help get the pack settled, or she can stay behind with all of you. Knowing Lydia, she’ll choose to do a little of both.”
“What about our pack?” Kaleb asks. “What will our pack do while you are away?”
Romulus smiles and looks over at Rory.
“I think you know the answer to that,” he says, without skipping a beat. “Rory will lead the pack until I get back. As
he was always destined to do.”
“Wait, what?” Rory says as he looks at his dad with wide eyes. He stops in his tracks, all of us slowing for the first time since we’ve set out to retrieve the last members of our fleeing family. “You’re putting me in charge of the pack?”
“Temporarily, yes,” Romulus says as he puts his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “You’ll do a great job, Rory. Of that I have no doubt.”
“What if I have doubt?” Kaleb jokes.
Marlowe smacks him against the side of his arm and I laugh.
At the sound of my laughter, there’s sudden motion in the trees ahead.
Almost immediately, before any of us has the chance to stop and sense out who it might be, Lydia steps out from behind a massive oak.
She hadn’t even made it to the first mountain ridge.
Her surprise to see us is almost immediately overwhelmed with the relief on her face as she reads our emotions.
She runs toward us with the pups in their carriers and in her arms. She reaches Romulus first since he’s standing slightly ahead of us, and as much as I am dying to see my babies, I give them the minute that they both deserve. Lydia cries and buries her face against Romulus’ shoulder.
I really don’t think that she expected to see him alive again.
He holds her and rubs the back of her head, and when she lifts her face to his, he kisses her. I can see one of the baby’s faces peering out from above her arm between them.
My own heart aches to embrace them the same way.
Now, at last, there’s no reason for us to ever be apart again.
But Lydia gave up what might have been her last moments with her husband in order to keep my babies safe. And Romulus killed his brother in order to do the same.
The very least that they have earned is this moment of embrace. After they have held each other for a minute or so, and are convinced that they are both okay, Lydia walks toward the boys and me. She looks at each of her sons and hugs each one and plants a kiss on each of their cheeks. When she gets to me, she uses her free hand to reach for mine as she holds my daughter in the other arm.
