Natalia’s P. O. V

I stopped myself from releasing a sigh of relief.

Soon all the shifted wolves had returned and were clamouring about, some stopping to throw clothes on while the truly inconsolable parents went straight to check on their pups, furry and all.

I could hear the delighted glee from the children. Most were clueless to the perceived danger, giggling and squealing as their parents nuzzled them.

“What’s wrong, daddy?” One little girl asked. I recognised her voice as the one who had noticed and commented on our construction but hadn’t tattled.

The father didn’t answer for a while, his panic making him ask her a flurry of rapid fire questions to make sure she was safe. There was no denying the protectiveness he felt over her and his sigh was pumped full of relief once she’d answered all his questions.

She repeated her own, “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing now, baby.” He breathed, “You’re okay and that’s all that matters.”

“Why is everyone scared? Is it because of our magic houses?”

“Yes, we don’t know- wait… magic houses?”

As she said her next words, I could imagine the wide, beaming grin she probably gave him, “Yeah! I saw the houses getting fixed when I looked outside earlier. I think the houses were fixed by my magic wishes but Olivia says that she asked the moon goddess for her house back as a Christmas gift. I think I’m right, cause it’s summer and Christmas presents only come in the winter.”

“You saw them earlier? Why didn’t you tell Keith or Jane? Or Robert?”

“Because, daddy,” she stated, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “everyone knows that magic doesn’t work when adults are around. And Keith and Jane and Robert are teenagers so they would make the magic slow down.”

I heard scampering as her little feet moved to the window, “See? When Miss Julia and Uncle Duncan came back, the magic stopped. The magic was fixing the exercise place before they came back but the school and the old hall aren’t getting fixed now. At least our house is back so one of my wishes still came true.”

The father said nothing, dumbfounded.

In my head, Candy cooed, fawning over the little girl’s words, ‘I wonder what her other wishes were…’

I returned my attention to Robert and the blonde lady who I now presumed was Julia.

“Alpha says to call a meeting once the parents have checked on their pups.” She ordered.

“Yes, ma’am.” Robert complied. He started moving around and steering reassured parents out of the room.

When he got to the father and the little girl, the father bid her goodbye.

“Alright, baby. The adults are going to talk about the magic now. Thank you for telling me. Go back to playing with Olivia, okay.”

“Okay, daddy!”

Soon enough, all the adults and teenagers had congregated in another room on the second floor, leaving Jane and Keith with the children.

The room they occupied opened out to a balcony with shattered glass doors. Quietly, I moved to the balcony, avoiding any possible creaking surfaces.

From my view, the room was wide, large enough to hold the roughly fifty werewolves in attendance. The makeshift stand comprised of old crates that the Alpha and Beta stood on told me the room had initially served a different purpose.

“Silence!” The Beta ordered the murmuring crowd.

Soon a hush fell over them.

“You’ve all noticed that most of our structures seem to have been rebuilt overnight. Your pups all appear to be safe, which is comforting, but this can only be the work of outsiders.” Their Alpha stated, “Julia, an update.”

Julia, who stood next to their crates, stepped forward, “Duncan and I returned after our patrol shift was over and Harold and Peter took our place. Upon reaching the compound, we noticed the rebuilt structures and first went to check on the pups before notifying of the breach. Keith, Jane and Robert reported to not having noticed the houses till we returned, likely due to the distraction of caring for the pups. We were also not alerted to any intrusions during our patrol and it appears that nobody felt anyone enter our territory since the visitors left two days ago.”

The father of the little girl spoke up, “Karla told me that she and Olivia noticed the training hall repairing itself some time ago but didn’t say anything. She believes that the school and event hall would have been fixed too if the patrols hadn’t returned.”

“And why the hell didn’t they tell someone?!” One furious mother demanded, eyes narrowed and lips pulled back in a snarl, “The children could have all been in danger. They should have said something!”

“She said that they didn’t want the repairs to stop by alerting teenagers or adults. They thought it was magic and that it wouldn’t work if anyone other than children noticed it.” The father defended.

“Of course they thought that! This is because you still let your daughter believe in silly fairy tails instead of preparing her for reality!”

Some of the others around them murmured their agreement.

“She’s only seven! She has the right to a childhood. Not all of us want our children to live in fear.” The father's retort was accompanied with a fierce glare

“After what happened, we should be preparing them to survive so the pack isn’t eradicated if it happens again.”

He was tense now, his own body angled to her, “She. Is. Seven.”

“Enough.” The Alpha ordered.

The two still shot daggers at each other but said nothing.

“We must not resort to blaming children or parenting styles. We have all been scarred from what happened and have all adjusted differently. Agreed?”

The crowd mumbled sounds of agreement, sombre at the shared memory.

“With this information, we know that, with the number of buildings fixed, the repairs must have been going on since last night. Nobody saw or felt anyone enter the territory, so the question remains: who did this and how did they get past the defences?”

“Maybe it was the visitors.” A younger looking guy offered, “It can’t be a coincidence that this happens right after we receive the first visitors we’ve had since the incident.”

Robert shook his head, “My wolf caught their scents in the forest last night before I came back to help Jane and Keith this morning.”

“All of them?” The Beta asked.

He hesitated for a moment before answering, “Yes, sir. I-I mean Beta. Yes, Beta.”

I knew I was in the forest yesterday so my scent may have been lingering around and Timothy and Hailey were in the forest last night. But he definitely wouldn’t have smelled Kaesha’s scent since she changed it back as soon as we left their territory two days ago.

Why was he lying?

“I-Is this such a bad thing though…?” He asked in a small voice, “Anyone that would want to harm us wouldn’t help us with something like this. Maybe… maybe we should just be happy…?”

Nobody in the room was fond of this idea. I could see him trying to shrink himself, wishing he could take back the words he’d just said, as practically everyone turned their incredulous, disapproving gazes on him.

‘Yikes… poor kid.’ Candy sympathised, ‘With this sort of reaction, how are we going to convince them that we mean no harm?’

I looked at the Alpha’s face, then back at Robert, ‘We start with him.’

For the next few minutes, the Alpha gave instructions for there to be a second, tighter layer of patrols around the buildings and that everyone else should remain on high alert and return to the territory as soon as the moon faded enough for them to shift back this night.

Having heard enough, I got off the balcony and made my way to the house we’d been meeting at. Instead of entering through the front door, I climbed in through a window and made my way upstairs.

After looking around a bit, I found my makeshift bracelet and put it on. Hopefully, it would keep my scent hidden even when I took the necklace off.

Avoiding getting noticed, I left and snuck into Robert’s house. By a stroke of luck, his window was open so I climbed inside and waited.

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The meeting had finally ended and I heard him coming. Thankfully, no one was with him and he entered the house, closing the door behind him. Muttering, he got into his chair before his computer and rested his head in his hands.

“Robert.” I whispered, taking off the necklace.

He whipped around, getting to his feet in a defensive position and emitting a low growl.

I pocketed the necklace and raised my hands, “Hey, it’s okay.”

His eyes went almost as wide as his glasses, “It’s… it’s you.” He gawked.

I smiled softly, “I just came to talk.”

He blinked, “You- you’re in my house… How did you get in here? How did you get into the territory? They can’t be right, I know you’re not a Rogue spy… you can’t be…”

“No, no... we aren’t spies or Rogues or anything like that. My friends and I wanted to help but we knew your pack wouldn’t take lightly to strangers.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know what happened to your pack, but we do know the pack that was responsible and we share the same grudge. We started out just wanting to get you to be our allies but when we saw the state of things here during our visit, we knew we needed to help regardless.”

His expression darkened at the mention of whatever incident occurred and he sighed, looking away.

“I know you don’t believe we’re bad people, Robert. I need you to help convince the rest of the pack that we want to help the best we can.”

I heard someone moving towards the us and put my necklace back on, taking some steps back before he could respond.

The Beta walked in without knocking.

Robert turned to him, trying to compose himself.

“What were you going on about back there, kid?”

“No-nothing, sir- Beta! I just don’t think that the repairs are necessarily… a bad thing…”

The Beta scowled, “You’re supposed to take my place, dammit! You should be able to identify a potential threat to the pack.”

“I know si- Beta. I, um, I just don’t think this is one of them.”

“You remember what happened the last time we took a potential threat for granted, don’t you?”

Robert’s head lowered. He glanced briefly at where I had been just some moments ago, “But who would target us now? We’ve got nothing to lose anymore.”

The Beta went quiet, his irritation dialling down a few notches.

Robert took a deep breath then looked him in the eyes, “Beta, sir, if you could punish them, put them through hell, would you?”

The Beta searched his face, finding only dead seriousness in the boy’s furrowed brows and hard gaze from behind his glasses, “In this reality, definitely. But if, in some other life I was given the choice between revenge and gaining back all we’ve lost, I would restore us in a heartbeat.”

They remained silent for a while before the Beta spoke again, “We’ve still got each other to lose. We must protect ourselves, Robbie.”

Then he left, all the fumes of his anger fizzling out.

Once he was far enough away, I took the necklace off again, “Your pack isn’t alone in their carnage. They cannot keep doing this to good packs and good people. We won’t let them.”

He turned back to me but didn’t say anything for a while.

Eventually, he spoke, a finger on the frame of his glasses, “These aren’t mine… but I guess it’s obvious though. They’re far too large and fall off my face if I don’t remember to readjust them every two seconds.”

He scoffed lightly, taking the large frames off, the green of his hazel eyes darkening, “I don’t even need them. I’m a werewolf, we generally have pretty great eyesight.”

He didn’t say anything for a bit and I maintained the silence, not wanting to break the memory in his gaze, as he lightly stroked the glasses frame. With the glasses off and the pain in his eyes, he no longer looked like an awkward boy around my age, but a grieving soul several years older.

“They were my dad’s. He was human, just a guy visiting Pine Ridge with his ailing grandmother, when my mom followed his scent and met him. She was smart and knew that he probably wouldn’t take her werewolf nature in stride, so she befriended him first. She told him when he said the words ‘I love you’ but he’d already figured it out some weeks before. And the rest is history. They lived happily and had me and my little sister and were expecting another boy. They were gonna name him Jake.”

He chuckled dryly, a cynical, bitter sound, “They were so excited when they heard we were getting a visit from the Lightwood Pack. We’re such a remote community that most rumours just fly right by us. We didn’t hear the stories till it was too late. And they did far worse to us than their reputation suggests. Nobody likes to remember it, but we were taken for fools and burned badly for it - literally. They eventually got a large Rogue Pack to attack us and refused to help with the defences. Most of our houses burned down, other than the main building, my home and the small shack we kept tools in.”

His gaze was empty but his eyes were nearly spilling over with tears. As he spoke through the lump that was no doubt lodged in his throat, his voice wavered and cracked, “We… we lost so many…”

I found myself shaking with fury and felt my eyes glow. Was there no depth they wouldn’t stoop to? He wouldn’t stoop to?

“We- we tried to hide the pups in the lower basement of the shack but not all of them could make it. My sister, Madeline… she was caught by one of those bastards and my dad, human as he was, ran to save her. Of course, that didn’t go well, and my mom didn’t listen to anyone and tried to save them both, but she couldn’t shift cause she was pregnant…”

He shook his head, wiping his eyes and slapping his cheeks, “And, pathetically, I couldn’t do anything!” Eyes red and glazed, he looked at me, “If you’re giving me a chance to do something now, I’m taking it. I’ll talk to the Alpha alone and convince him. What do you want me to tell him?”

“Tell him that some others that the Lightwoods scorned are radicalising their victims. If he wants to get involved and talk, he can meet us.” I got my phone out and saved Robert’s number from memory, then texted him, “Now, you have my number. Tell him that he can choose the meeting place. And, if he doesn’t want to get involved, we’re still willing to help repair the last two buildings, if he’ll let us.”

He raised a brow, “Even if he doesn’t want to help?”

I nodded, “I need to get going and return to my friends now. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

I smiled and waved him goodbye, putting my necklace back on.

It took double the effort, but I managed to get past their extra patrols and security and ran back to the house. Upon exiting the forest and taking the necklace off, I was practically ploughed over by a chattering blur that turned out to be Hailey.

As we struggled to get up, she was talking a mile a minute and I had to hold her shoulders to stabilise her, “Hailey, slow down.”

She took a breath then hugged me again, “You were gone for so long, Ari! What happened?! We were worried!”

I chuckled, returning the hug, “Don’t worry, Hailey. I was just doing some more recon.”

“Welcome back, oh great one.” Timothy drawled from his place leaning on the porch wall, “Took you long enough. That one was about ready to charge back into the field.”

Hailey finally let go and shot him a loaded glare, her eyes flashing briefly.

“Don’t mind those two.” Kaesha, on the rocking chair, rolled her eyes, “We’re all just glad you’re safe. What did you find?”

“Like we predicted, they went on high alert as soon as they noticed the buildings. It was obvious even from our first visit two days ago, but they’ve been seriously traumatised. On top of their usual antics, the Lightwoods got a Rogue Pack to attack them. Many of them seem to have lost family members and probably mates.”

As I spoke, I made my way inside and to the living room, the others following in suit. Soon we were all seated and I continued, “Understandably, they see the repairs as a possible threat. One of them suggested that we may be responsible but Robert provided an alibi.”

Hailey’s brow rose, “Robert? Why would he cover like that?”

“I’m not sure. But, to be fair, the only person whose scent isn’t relatively fresh in the forest is Kaesha’s. He seemed to be convinced that we don’t have ill intentions, so I found a way to speak to him alone. I assured him that we want to help and he told me about what happened to Pine River. He’s going to talk to their Alpha about possibly getting involved with our plan then he’ll text me their response.”

Timothy’s eyes narrowed, “Just covering for one person’s missing scent isn’t enough reason to trust him. What if he leads us into a trap?”

Kaesha nodded, “True. And is he even in any position to be convincing their Alpha of such an important issue?”

“He’s apparently supposed to be next in line to take their Betas place.”

Hailey thought for a second before she spoke, “They did kinda have a tough love dynamic going on, but they don’t smell related. At least, not that I remember.”

I shrugged, “They lost a lot of people in the attack. It makes sense if the Beta’s kid was one of them. As for having reason to trust him, well, his drive aligns with ours. For the time being, that should be enough to at least keep him from setting us up.”

‘At least, I hope it is…’

“I think it’s a good thing.” Hailey piped up, “On top of helping them, we now have a chance to get them on our side.”

I nodded.

Feeling the conversation had ended, Timothy got up to leave, “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but your boy needs a nap.”

“One more thing.” I called.

He paused and the others returned their attention to me.

“Now, and with future packs, I want you to pose as our Alpha.”

He got over his surprise quickly, “You want a figure head.” He stated in a flat tone, arms crossed.

I shook my head, “We need an ambassador, a focal representative.”

“Different words, same meaning. You want my face on your campaign with you pulling the strings.”

“A lot of the packs we meet won’t take the words of a small, teenage girl seriously. It makes more sense to have you be our spokesperson. You hate the Lightwoods about as much as I do and have so much to gain from their demise.”

He scoffed, “Even if you’re right, how long do you intend to keep yourself out of the spotlight?”

“Just long enough to gain some traction and reputation in the Werewolf society. We need whispers to circulate and make them anxious, before we go in to crush them.”

He tensed up, finger twitching and brow entrenched, “And when they mention the fact that a black, lone Werewolf is spearheading the movement in those whispers? You don’t think they’ll come for my fucking head? They didn’t just send big ass wolves nipping at my heels. They sent silent killers too, killers that got onto some of my construction sites to off me and make it look like an accident. Some that tried to burn down whatever dump I was living in at the time, with me conveniently trapped inside. I agreed to help, but appearing as the poster child for this bout of madness is just asking for an even bigger target on my already fucked back.”

“Which do you want more? To just get them off your back, or to see them in ruins after they stole everything from you?”

He looked away, replying in a less heated tone, “You know the answer to that.”

I stood up, invading his space and forcing him to lower his head in order to look me in the eyes, “So why do I hear fear instead of fury?”

We all remained silent for a while, no one daring to break the tension in the challenge. Eventually, I turned away and returned to my seat.

“You’ll be safe. There’s a reason they target smaller, upcoming packs instead of already established ones. Too much noise if anything happens to them. Since we’ll be talking to packs that also have it in for them, the rumours shouldn’t reach them till we’ve already cemented our place. By that time, we’ll either be too prominent for them to attack you, or you’ll have enough protection to not worry much about it anyway. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

He remained silent of a while, then nodded, "Fine. I'll hold you to that promise, oh great one."

I smiled, "Of course. Thank you, Timothy."

He scoffed, waving off the gratitude.

Moments later, my phone lit up with a text from Robert stating a location and that their Alpha wanted to meet us there in an hour.

“Looks like we’re finally about to get the ball rolling.”