William looked at the pup sitting in front of him. This would be the second pup he had trained and sent off to be placed in a pack. The young male was almost completely silver grey, with white fur slashes up his fore legs. He had been found up in the high forests on the eastern border of Oregon. He hadn’t gone out to get him, but he was placed in charge of training him.

The pup stood and William barked once in a guttural tone and the young pup shifted into werewolf form. The kid was good and had learned quickly over the past few months. William had helped train a few wolf pups over the last year; he had trained better, but not many.

He looked at the young pup and smiled. “I have nothing more to teach you, Notus. I will leave you with the same words that a teacher once left me. You have to care for yourself and your pack now. Maybe someday I will get to see the Enforcer that you will make of yourself.”

The young werewolf smiled up at his teacher. “Thank you, William. I won’t let you down, and even more I won’t let my pack down. I swear it.” With that the young Shape shifter dropped down onto all fours and ran through the forest were they both stood.

William watched the young pup run off through the brush of the underground forest and disappear. It was a little alien to him still. Even being with wolves as long as he had, wolves, in the wild, when they broke off to make their own packs they never looked back. He would see the young pup again, they all lived in and around the city, but to see them just run off without any real show of emotion was something that was always a little unsettling in its cold efficiency.

Notus didn’t have to understand the sadness that he felt right then. He looked up at the bright gems in the ceiling that still simulated daylight. He would not be able to look upon this ceiling again for a while. Soon, he would have to leave the Mountain for good.

He had chosen his profession and he was to start his real-world job as an electrician He wasn’t sure how he should be feeling but now there was just a hollow pit in his gut. The rest of his pack had made their choices as well, and they too would be going off to make money and increase the Mountain’s influence. That made him smile.

The Mountain had begun to start winning again. The place was getting fuller as the months rolled by. Instead of months before a new pup would enter the Mountain it was now a few a month. He had trained three pups and unlike himself, they had learned quickly. Wolves were amazingly adaptable to anything, even the idea of walking on two legs and speaking in a tongue that, before they were reborn, hadn’t even dreamed of. He walked back to the city.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Katherine was the first to find him. She ran up to him at a full sprint. Before he could ask what had happened she interrupted, “They need us to go out again.” She grabbed his arm and ran off with him following quickly behind her.

Huan Li met them and the rest of his pack. They were only five and as a pack, they still weren’t whole. But the five of them had learned how to augment and support each other’s strengths and weaknesses in a harmony that the Mountain Elders had deemed to not disrupt by adding a sixth member.

They had all grown. Charles looked wiser and more stately, he permeated outward calm that had an effect on all of them. His body had grown in strength, and his stature was one of power and confidence. He wore a familiar easy smile that put most people at ease right away. His stance was comfortable and easy in ways that he hadn’t when he first met the man.

Katherine had grown into her frame. Her long curly brown hair framed her face and shoulders nicely. She stood in a way that did not shy away from anybody. She was confident in her stance and in her demeanor. Her toned muscles rippled just under her skin as she moved liquidly to stand amidst her pack.

Nicolas’ features had softened somewhat. He hadn’t lost his arrogance, however and the chip on his shoulder was as big as ever. His Brooklyn accent which he took so much pride in had also softened into a somewhat refined tongue, one that most people had a hard time placing.

Aceso hadn’t aged at all. While she maintained all her youthful energy, she had matured in every way. William could see in her stature that she had taken the lessons of the last year, the victories and the tragedies, and had placed them deep within her. She had evaluated everything that had happened, and she had applied all that she had learned. He was proud to call her his Alpha.

The Elder standing in front of them had weathered the last year well, as had all the remaining Elders of the Mountain. There was a hole in this place though. The loss of Ansuya and their continued inability to find her, regardless of the gains that they had made, weighed heavily on the remaining Elders and the rest of the City. Its as if with the loss of Ansuya, they had all lost a small part of themselves.

For William it was even worse. He had left her on that rooftop, surrounded by enemies. And ever since that day he had felt like he had lost something precious and no number of victories, or amount of ground recovered, was enough to assuage that guilt, or that feeling of loss.

The Elder looked over the five of them. “The vampires are becoming careless in their activities. Judge Cortez, an appellate circuit judge, has been receiving word of more and more permit requests and other such correspondence dealing with an enlarged undeveloped area around the outer city limits of Monterey. We want you five to investigate what might be going on there.”