Days on the ranch of the First Montana Pack territory turned extremely busy over the next few months.

Jane, now aware of her relation to Gabriel, began to train her newfound abilities under his guidance. The power to see into others’ minds was getting stronger within her.

She couldn’t read minds as clearly or as effortlessly as Gabriel, but she could see enough to distinguish lies from truth and understand the motives of others.

The sense of completion and oneness that the revelations of the past several months had brought to her and Tristan as wolves and as mates was astounding and satisfying in the extreme.

In other news, everything was suspiciously quiet on the Alphas Martin and MacKenzie front.

The pack broke ground on the town square and had hired hundreds of construction workers from seven states to come and lay out the square, build the roads, and pour the foundations of the planned community.

In the end, with the help of Gabriel and the pack engineers, as well as their plumbers and electricians, Tristan decided to go ahead with plans for their own power and water treatment plants.

In six months, they had fully operational power grids, sewers, and treated water supply.

The town square was also completed at that time. The Pack House, security facilities, fire station, schools, and even the apartment building were constructed around the square on three sides.

The fourth side was a strip of more than thirty shop fronts that were yet to be occupied. Pack members weighed in on the shops and restaurants they were hoping to see take up residence there.

Tristan received several applications for rentals of the shops with proposed business plans for their purpose. He and Jane would need to think carefully about which they would accept since they had more application than shops to lease. It looked like they might need to plan another phase of businesses to build in the near future.

All of the unmated adults and many of the young families relocated to the apartments and settled into a close-knit community lifestyle as they sent kids to school and took up jobs in the pack.

Fifty-three individual homes were also completed for the larger families that had too many children to fit comfortably into an apartment. Each home had its own five-acre plot of land on those streets and blocks that radiated out around the town square.

They were close enough to be part of the community but spread out enough to offer some privacy while living among other sensitive hearers.

The builders had been careful to build the homes without cutting down too many trees, so the five-acre home sites, cut into the forest, still retained much of the forest around them to further cement each resident’s privacy. This setup was also important to supporting the health of the pack members’ wolves, who needed frequent runs.

Another two dozen homes were in various stages of construction and would all be completed within the next couple of months.

Gabriel used his connections in Montana state government to help Tristan annex their one-million-acre ranch into its own county. This way, many taxes collected would go to the maintenance of their own town.

Diane and David had chosen to permanently move into one of the ranch’s staff cabins.

Avery and Angelica chose to live in the apartment building with their now-adopted son, five-year-old Bryant. It was close enough to the school for him to walk to and fro each day since he was a remarkably independent pup, and the school was only across the square from the apartment complex.

Bryant was a brilliant kid with a mop of crazy wild brown hair and silver eyes that shone with above-average intelligence. He latched onto Beta Avery early on his arrival to the pack and followed her everywhere he was allowed to go. It particularly irked him that he was now forced to attend school Monday through Friday with the “children.”

Bryant would go to school each day, then rush home, finish his homework and wait for Angelica to take him to the main house to visit his next favorite person in the world, six-year-old Amy.

Amy and Selly both accepted Tristan and Jane’s offer to adopt them. They were settling in well to the third-floor apartment bedrooms at the top of the main house that were recently vacated by Diane, David, Avery, and Angelica.

The girls were complete opposites of one another. Amy was also above average intelligence, tall, and had a great sense of humor once she became comfortable in her new home. She was tough, hard-working, and honest and adored her new little sister. She was also attached at the hip to Bryant whenever they weren’t separated by family life or school.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Selly was only four years old and tiny for her age possibly due to malnutrition from their former pack. She had curly golden-brown hair, crystal blue eyes, and a preference for princesses and fancy dresses.

She loved dolls and tea parties and all things pink and rainbow. She liked to spend her free time in the kitchen with Grandma Diane after pre-school. She would often shoot Diane the puppy dog eyes to get her to read her articles in homemaker and interior design magazines that Diane kept subscriptions to.

Selly thought that Emma was the most beautiful creature in the whole world and had convinced herself that she could turn her own eyes from blue to the sparkling green of Emma’s once she grew up.

Both girls loved Tristan and Jane and had long since begun calling them Mom and Dad. They also called Gabriel granddad, which pleased him to no end.

It was late afternoon on one particularly windy, early autumn day. Angelica was driving Bryant to the main house to drop him off so he could spend the evening there and have dinner with Amy. Avery would bring him back after she had dinner with those still temporarily in residence at the main house. She wanted to update them on the progress of their home builds.

Angelica couldn’t stay since she had promised to take the elementary school teachers into the nearby town for a nice dinner to celebrate the new school year and the opening of their official elementary school.

Angelica was the principal of the elementary school since no one else wanted the responsibility. She had worked all through high school in the administrative offices of her previous pack’s school board and had a good understanding of how schools operated. Most of the elementary teachers were experienced teachers and appreciated Angelica’s efforts, and they were able to work together well.

Angelica was rushing to get Bryant to the main house so she could head into town and secure the large table for their reservation as soon as possible.

Bryant rode in the back seat, his nose pressed to the car window, when he noticed a group of birds scatter wildly in all directions up from the woods and over the trees. He immediately knew that something was wrong and called up to Angelica.

“Mommy, when will we be there?”

“We are pulling uuuuuuuup..........now,” she said.

“Thank-you-mommy-I-love-you-bye,” he called as he jumped out of the car and ran into the house.

Instead of seeking out Amy as was his habit, he immediately raced down the hall to the ground floor study and walked in without ceremony.

Tristan was seated on the sofa reading through lease applications for the shop fronts from a file and looked up to see Bryant walk past him and drag a chair over to the bookcase door behind his desk.

The boy climbed up on the chair and searched the titles until he found the Farmer’s Almanac doorbell button and began to press it once every five seconds.

Tristan raised an eyebrow at this odd behavior and called out, “Bry? Is everything ok?”

“No, Alpha! I need Gabriel to tell you!” he replied urgently.

Soon after, the bookcase recessed and slid open to reveal Gabriel standing there. He registered the sight of Bryant on a chair next to the door.

“What can I do for you, little man?” he asked jovially as he picked him up and carried him to the sofa where Tristan sat.

Bryant pointed to his head over and over and said, “Look at what I saw, Elder Gabriel!”

Bryant closed his eyes and focused on the memory of the birds fleeing from the forest.

Gabriel immediately turned serious and mind-linked the images to Tristan.

Tristan put his hands on Bryant’s shoulders gently and said, “Good job, Bryant! I’m proud of you!”

Tristan picked him up and carried him to the kitchen to leave him with Diane and the girls before rushing out to the garage to hop in one of the trucks. Gabriel climbed in next to him.

Tristan next mind-linked Jane to stay with the children until she heard from him.

Tristan drove the mile down the road to where Bryant had seen the disturbance mink-linking Avery and their security center to send some warriors over for backup. He and Gabriel were going in to check it out.

Tristan parked the truck on the edge of the forest, and the two of them got out and stepped into the edge of the woods. They stood still, listening and taking deep breaths to try and catch any unfamiliar scents.

Their conversations turned to mind-link to hide their thoughts from possible intruders.

“I smell nothing. That’s not normal,” he linked to Gabriel.

“The absence of any scent means magical interference or protection,” the vampire replied.

“Alpha MacKenzie has a powerful witch by his side,” Tristan said.

“Yes, he does,” Gabriel answered and then waited for Tristan’s decision.

“Logically speaking, you are the most capable of piercing such a barrier to scout out the situation,” Tristan finally said through the link.

Gabriel nodded and disappeared in a blink.

A few minutes later, Gabriel blinked back by Tristan’s side.

Still speaking telepathically, Gabriel said, “We’ve got company. I count about fifty wolf warriors spread throughout this part of the woods, tracking towards the main house. They’re MacKenzie’s men. The witch is with them.”

Tristan sighed. Things just got real and fast.

Tristan mind-linked the security team and instructed them to check in with the south border patrol and get responses from every single wolf ASAP.

It was only a few minutes before the reply came, “No response, Alpha. Border Patrol presumed MIA.”

Tristan mind-linked the pack, “All security personnel to your designated forest’s edge station. Wait for my orders. All other pack members shelter in place. Don’t let anyone unknown to you inside.”

Yes, Alpha, came the chorus of responses.

“How do you wish to proceed, Alpha?” Gabriel asked.

“With a vengeance,”

Tristan answered.