The north and south forests were largely empty now, the intruders slain. I watched Tristan break off from the Entropus family and head east.

Walking inside our blue magic Command Central, I followed him. I heard all the links and knew where he was going - to kill his father. It was the only way to save the hostages and free the rogues.

My heart was heavy. It wasn’t that we held any great love for his father. It was likely that if Tristan had stayed and been forced to mark Avery, he would have killed him in the near future anyway.

What saddened me was that an Alpha of a very large pack, and a father, was such a spiteful, hateful, and awful individual that he had to force his son to kill him or watch hundreds of ill-treated wolves be murdered for his own selfish ends.

We didn’t even know how many of these wolves were actually from Martin’s pack. There were five Alphas here and they probably had brought warriors from each of the packs, but not all of them. If they had each deployed all of their warriors there would be quite a lot more than one thousand.

I could see that most of the rogues were out of the forest now and the forces were more evenly matched on each side. Both sides, sans rogues, were now clashed in a vicious battle. Wolves were dropping all across the forest.

My heart ached as I watched them fall. A heavy ball formed in the pit of my stomach as my eyes followed my mate through the trees, weaving through and leaping over the smaller wolves engaged in battle. He wasn’t wasting any time. He was following his nose to the end goal.

The sooner Alpha Martin fell, the sooner he could call off that pack’s warriors. It would turn the tide of the entire battle and possibly end it once and for all.

Behind me on the west side of Command Central, Amelia spoke aloud her link to Clovis.

“Alpha, Trent is moving towards the north to join up with two of the other alphas. Tristan is on his way to the east to deal with Alpha Martin. Alpha MacKenzie is no longer on the field. I’m unable to locate him.”

I couldn’t hear the link back from Clovis, but I looked over my shoulder and saw Clovis’s large-wolfed family split into two groups. They were going to circle the three alphas that were meeting up to the north.

I turned back to Tristan who was still heading straight for a particular point.

I looked ahead of him on the feed, and I could see one bigger wolf among the others. That was Alpha Martin. His wolf wasn’t as big as Tristan’s, but it was still larger than a regular wolf.

I knew better than to underestimate that strength that was gained from a hateful heart. Watching Alpha Martin kick the stool out from under Tristan’s feet that day at the gallows had taught me this painful truth.

I mind-linked my mate, “Tristan...”

“Don’t worry, my love,” came his answer.

“But he’s family. Are you ok?”

“No, Jane. You are family. Amy and Selly are family. Gabriel is family. The pack is family. Alpha Martin is nothing more than a threat to that family. After today, he never will be one again. To anyone,” his voice sounded calm and focused.

“I love you, Tristan.”

“I love you, Jane. Since we were fourteen years old, I’ve loved you. Do you know the day I knew it?”

Fourteen years old, that was when we started high school. What had changed?

I suddenly realized, “On the first day of high school. When you started to thank me for serving you breakfast.”

“Did you know?”

“No, I didn’t. I was afraid to even look at you then. If I had, I probably would have known.”

“And now?”

“I can’t wait to put eyes on you. Hurry and come back to me so I can,” I smiled.

“Yes, my Luna,” he answered.

Tristan was closing in on Alpha Martin and he fell silent. He would reach him in a few minutes. I closed the link and let him focus on the task ahead.

A loud crack behind me startled me. I turned to see a beautiful middle-aged bronze-skinned woman standing next to Amelia. I sensed her goodwill and relaxed.

Amelia turned to her and bowed her head, “High Priestess. What brings you here?”

The woman waved her hand at the blue globe surrounding us and dozens of glowing green points appeared and started to draw out across the map.

“That nuisance of a witch Abigail,” the woman said.

“She’s tipped the balance by interfering in unnatural things,” she continued.

The green lines finished drawing and completed our view of the surrounding area. There were hundreds of new people on the map. I started jogging around the patio looking everywhere. They were everywhere.

“What is that?! Why couldn’t we see them before?” I was terrified.

“Luna Jane, this is Her Majesty Esperanza Consuela Maria Rodriguez, wolf witch High Priestess of the Western Hemisphere, Queen of the Fae,” Amelia introduced.

My brain and body froze for a split second and then I bowed my head, “Your Majesty.”

“Let’s just keep that Queen of the Fae and Her Majesty business on the down low shall we, Jane? Call me Esperanza,” she replied.

“And that,” she motioned at the green people now on our radar, “is necromancy.”

Amelia tapped her finger on her chin then her brow furrowed as she studied the display before her. Her jaw clenched as understanding dawned, “Abigail didn’t run from Gabriel because she knew she couldn’t get away. She didn’t run because she needed him to drink her blood and use him to power her undead army.”

“What?” was all I could say.

“To achieve necromancy on this scale, Abigail had to give up all of her life’s blood. But she also needed magical energy, and a lot of it, to power it after she was gone. Now all of that blood is inside an ancient vampire of great power,” Amelia explained.

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“There are so many!” my voice cracked.

“Breathe, my dear, breathe,” soothed the high priestess.

Esperanza waved her hand and the twelve witches who transported Amelia and the army to us appeared on the patio beside us.

They appeared startled for a moment and then noticed Esperanza and bowed their heads, “High Priestess,” they said in unison.

“Go and get the vampire Gabriel and tell him Luna Jane needs him. Transport him directly here,” Esperanza ordered.

“Yes, High Priestess,” they replied, and they vanished with a loud crack.

Esperanza turned to me, “Go down to your kitchen’s walk-in fridge and bring up every bag of blood you have in there. And prepare to be fed on. Bring Emma back with you. The children will be safe with Diane.”

I started to run through the apartment to head downstairs when Esperanza called out, “Every single bag, Jane!”

“Got it!” I called back as I ran.

A voice sounded in my head, “Are you ok Jane? Is something wrong?”

It was Gabriel.

“Come with them, Gabriel. You are needed at the house,” I linked back.

“I’ll be there in less than five. Just give me a minute,” he answered.

I ran straight to the study and called to Emma through the bookcase door to meet me in the walk-in and sprinted to the kitchen.

I looked around the dry pantry for a moment and then found the reusable shopping bags folded neatly in a bin on the floor under the shelves.

Emma came in when I was pulling them out.

“Blood. We need all of the blood carried to the rooftop patio,” I explained.

Emma took some of the bags, without question or hesitation, and opened the walk-in. We both entered and started filling our sacks with blood bags.

It only took us a minute to load up all the bags. Emma and I raced back up to the apartment and dropped the bags on the patio just as a loud crack sounded and the twelve witches appeared with Gabriel.

I looked around us at the green outlined bodies on the map moving towards the east and the west. They were moving slowly but there were so very many.

I stepped to the patio railing and looked down. Looking through the magic bubble and down to the lawn of the house, I could physically see some of them walking across the grass and past the house. The stench was overwhelming.

Most of them looked like burnt skeletons with torn rotting clothing and flesh hanging from their bones. Some of them were fresher and looked more like people with stiff and awkward joints.

“Ah, Esperanza,” Gabriel was saying, “it’s been a long time. Nice to see you.”

“Remember that in a few hours when you’re cursing my name,” Esperanza smiled back.

“Why would I ever do such a thing?” he replied.

Then Gabriel looked up at the globe of visibility into the pack lands. He was startled and flashed to my side to peer over the railing.

He sighed in acceptance of the situation, “Well this explains why that witch didn’t run.”

Amelia had dragged two reclining patio loungers over to Esperanza and said to Gabriel, “Lie down.”

Gabriel nodded at the witch, but first walked over to Emma and said, “I love you, Em.”

Then he kissed her hard on the lips. She was shocked and confused for a moment, but soon leaned into him. When he pulled away, she said, “Gabriel?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Gabriel, you’re going to be fine,” Esperanza rolled her eyes.

Gabriel ignored her and was looking down into Emma’s eyes, “I’ve loved you for over a century. When I wake up, I want to marry you. Will you have me?”

“Wake up?!” Emma gasped, “Gabriel what’s happening?”

Esperanza answered her, “I have to completely drain him of blood. He will lose all of his power. We will replace the blood with the bags you’ve brought, and he will be able to feed on Jane even in his coma. But it will be some time before he wakes up again.”

“How long?” I asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that. Whatever time it takes for his body to convert the blood from the bags into his own blood. He will need your blood, Jane, in order to accomplish this since you’re a direct descendant through your mother,” Esperanza answered.

My head was spinning.

Tears were running down Emma’s face, “I will marry you, Gabriel. I love you, too.”

“He can’t die, right?” my voice trembled as I asked.

“Oh no no no,” Esperanza assured.

“You may go,” Esperanza said to the dozen witches, and they cracked the air as they vanished.

Esperanza turned to me and Emma, “He can’t die. He’s immortal. But you will have to keep his body safe in that dark apartment of yours. If anyone knows about this, it would be a lot easier to remove his head from his body and then he would die.”

Gabriel kissed Emma again and then stepped over to me and hugged me tight, kissing me on the top of my head.

Then he stepped over to the lounge chair and laid down.

“You too, Jane,” Esperanza said.

I laid down next to Gabriel in the other lounger.

“What am I to do?” I asked.

Esperanza crouched down to look me in the eyes and said, “Listen, Jane. We don’t have time to beat around the bush, so I’ll give it to you straight. It is both fortunate and opportune that you are currently pregnant.”

I bolted up in the lounger, “I’m pregnant!”

“You are. And when a she-wolf is pregnant her body changes to accommodate and tolerate more than one blood type within her body. This is fortunate for Gabriel because all of these blood bags can be used to restore blood to his body, but it must flow through your body first.”

“Like a filter?” I asked.

“Something like that. The blood will flow through you and touch your own blood, then when Gabriel drinks from you all of the blood will have some of yours in it. As a descendant of Gabriel your blood will keep his veins from rejecting the foreign blood. Normally a vampire’s own blood consumes foreign blood and turns it into nourishment. But he won’t have any of his own blood for a while. A drained vampire is vulnerable.”

“But the baby?” I asked worriedly.

Esperanza reassured me, “The baby will be fine, I promise you. He has a great destiny before him which will not be altered by this.

“This is going to take some time though. He can only drink two pints from you at a time, then we have to put two pints of the bagged blood into your system and wait an hour or two before he feeds again. You have to keep eating and drinking during this time, so you have the strength to process the foreign blood, ok?”

I nodded.

“He’s going to be unconscious while he feeds so he will not be able to stop himself. Amelia will have to be here to stop him after two pints each time until all of the bagged blood is gone.”

Esperanza turned to Emma, “Red meat, spinach, kale, lots of fruit and starches. She needs iron and sugars to process the blood faster.”

Emma, who was holding Gabriel’s hand, nodded at Esperanza in understanding.

Gabriel reached out and squeezed my hand, “You don’t have to do this, Jane.”

I scoffed, “Of course I do, you idiot. Our family can’t be without you for long, so you better recover quickly. Don’t miss your great-great-great-great-great and so on grandson’s birth or I’ll never forgive you.”

Gabriel laughed, “Ok, my dear.”

Gabriel and I looked up at Esperanza and nodded that we were ready.

Amelia waved her hand in the air and a medium sized black caldron appeared beside Gabriel’s chair on the ground.

I laughed out loud.

Amelia side-eyed me, “Some old things still have their uses.”

Esperanza waived into existence a refrigerator, IV bag rack and a tray of medical supplies.

“Emma, do you remember any of your medical training?” Amelia asked.

“Enough to tap a vein I should think,” she replied with a grin.

Emma got to work cleaning my arm in the middle at the inside bend of my elbow. Before I knew it, she’d inserted the tube into my vein and taped it down. She attached a saline bag to one line and hung a blood bag from another hook but didn’t attach it yet to the second line.

She then got to work putting all of the remaining blood bags in the refrigerator nearby.

Lying there, I had time to seriously ponder the oddness of my life since becoming eighteen and wondered how I managed to have so many strange and extraordinary circumstances thrust upon me in less than a year.

Gabriel chuckled beside me but said nothing.

“I’ll begin then,” Esperanza announced.

She took hold of Gabriel’s forearm and held his hand and wrist over the cauldron. Then with her finger pointed straight, she slid it down his forearm, from inside elbow to wrist and the blood soon began to flow out of him and into the iron pot.

The liquid falling into the cauldron hissed and popped as if it were burning, and indeed that’s what was occurring. Amelia had heated the metal to destroy the blood as soon as it hit the surface of the inside of the cauldron.

As blood began to burn, a few of the lit-up green undead on our radar began to blip and disappear. As more blood drained and burned, more and more of the undead fell.

“That’s going to be one hell of a clean-up job,” I sighed.