“Speak to me about what?” I asked. “Colin has nothing to say that I want to hear.”
Diana growled while removing a hand from her jacket pocket to point at me. “I’m not enjoying this little reunion either, and I’m not a fan of Colin, you know that, so I’m not here on his behalf alone. My pack’s in danger.”
“What danger?” I asked without hesitation, which was strange.
I’d gone years not knowing what had happened to her, and now, hearing her pack was in danger and, in extension, her, I couldn’t help feeling concerned.
“Anti-supers,” she replied, and I leaned back. That was a threat I knew all about, as did everyone. “We’ve lost three members to them over the years, and now they’re in the new town we’re living in. We don’t have a territory, we haven’t found one since we left years ago.”
She’d been moving from place to place all this time? I gritted my teeth at that and forced myself not to imagine the life she’d been living on the run, no wonder she looked so small and fragile. Werewolves, even the women, tended to be more robust than other species.
But she’d decided to side with Colin, and I made mine to protect my pack and this town.
“I see,” I grumbled, and her nose crinkled with annoyance.
“Anti-supers are the enemy to us all. Children are in danger, Kaleem, and we want to return to Wolfcreek. I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t important. Colin challenged you and lost, and for over a decade, we’ve all been punished for his actions.”
“His actions?” I shot back. “The way I remember it, your entire pack attacked mine, not just Colin.”
“And most of those wolves are dead now,” she rebutted. “The ones who took part in the attack and survived are either dead or left our pack and became rogues because no pack will accept Bluemoon members. No one is interested in repeating the past.”
She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I don’t want to argue. I didn’t come here for that. We only want to return home. Colin learned his lesson, and we’re a pack of nineteen. We’re not a threat to anyone, but weareprey. There are young pups among us that are scared, that don’t have a forest to run in freely or even proper food.”
She looked away, her emotions getting the best of her.
I didn’t say anything, and neither did she. I didn’t want to argue either, and I wasn’t heartless enough to not understand what she was saying. A pack without a territory was the perfect prey for the anti-super menace.
“Colin wants to meet with you,” she said after a while. “He said the decision will be yours for us to return or not, so he wants to meet so you can lay out your terms.”
She walked by me, our conversation apparently over, and it took everything in me to not stop her, to not beg her to stay and give me a chance to apologize for what happened between us.
“Was it you?” I asked instead. “Was it you that called three days ago?”
When I turned around, her back was facing me. She remained silent, and when I stepped forward to approach her, she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes glowing, eyes that had once made me feel indescribable things.
“I’ll find you tomorrow to get your answer,” she growled, then continued walking.
I watched her leave, just as I had before, and the cold air began to seep into my skin, chilling me to my bones.
Diana’s back.
***
The Bluemoon Pack separated from mine many decades ago. A new bloodline hadn’t been created in centuries and one sprang up out of nowhere, Colin’s bloodline, and that was where everything went downhill. As that bloodline grew within my pack, a shift started to happen, and soon after an inevitable divide happened, forcing Colin’s family to leave and create the Bluemoon Pack that became the enemy.
At first, there was peace until they began to state a claim to our territory, being unsatisfied with the one they had outside of Wolfcreek. The conflict had stretched on for years until Colin took it upon himself to attack my pack.
“You’re not considering meeting with him, are you?” Odulf, an elderly wolf, inquired pulling me back to the present.
I was at the packhouse, and after calling the pack’s elders together, I told them about my meeting with Diana and that Colin was interested in returning. Odulf, Nazanin, Killian, and Conner were present, and so far, Odulf and Conner were against meeting with Colin.
I couldn’t blame them. Like me, they could easily remember the night our pack was attacked without warning.
When I glanced at Killian, he was staring at me, his brow arched, which was a look I understood all too well because he knew what Diana was to me. He knew what she had meant to me, so he knew what seeing her after all this time was doing to me.
I couldn’t stop seeing her face.
I was reminded of her intoxicating scent, and every inhale I took was like she was standing beside me. He looked worried but had no reason to be. I was this pack’s alpha above all else, as much as that forced me to make decisions that left me broken.