Beyond the Curtain

14 | rule 83

RULE 83: DO NOT KEEP COMMUNICATION WITH FRIENDS BACK HOME, UNLESS IN AN ACT TO RECRUIT THEM TO THE CIRCUS. 

✷  C  H  A  P  T  E  R     F  O  U  R  T  E  E  N  ✷

Unfortunately for me, my sheer determination and willpower were not enough to break Rowan's resolve. He did not, much to my dismay, tell me what his intended surprise was, but I think I had a pretty good inclination.

Over the past couple of days—or maybe even weeks (I had lost count)—Rowan drove us to several different packs, all of which were allies of Moontera. Every new pack we reached, I would strain my neck and try to see if we had reached the three-hundred-mile mark, but the odometer had yet to signal we had traveled that far.

Whenever I would ask Rowan if this was the surprise, he'd raise his bushy eyebrows and change the subject. I never pressed him for more information, because I was constantly and continually tired of the events of each day, even when it was just a travel day in the car.

We had gone to a high-tech pack, Fangtechnics, filled with werewolves who were more in tune with the fastest computational algorithm than with how to hunt down a predator; after all, they had the technology to help them with that. Not that they would let you believe they were in any way disconnected from their wolves.

Apparently, being disconnected from your wolf was not just a worry Rowan harbored. As I came to learn, it was not normal, even for rogue wolves, to not be innately attuned to their wolf.

Since the members of Fangtechnics were aligned with their wolves, they were able to utilize their supernatural abilities for other means: like being about to test the limits of their physical abilities.

When Rowan saw me soaking in this pack's near-constant time in their human forms, Rowan was eager to usher me to the next pack on his apparent neverending list of packs to visit.

Before I knew it, we had traveled to a nomadic pack, Lunfelle. This pack never stayed in one place longer than a few weeks, always on the move. They traveled with large tents harnessed to their backs, but they often ditched the tents for the safety of nearby trees. Even in their fur pelts, they climbed up the base of a tree to rest their heads for the night.

Lunfelle was the closest in similarity to the rogue lifestyle. The Alpha of Lunfelle had a small plot of land where they occasionally set up shop for longer spurts of time. However, most months of the year, they were scouring any territories that had yet to be claimed. They liked to travel by the direction of the wind, letting the wind pick their newest home.

In Lunfelle, my heart swelled as the nomadic lifestyle was similar to my way of life in the circus. There was never a dull moment in the pack, but they also lacked a lot of advancements that I had grown accustomed to, like running water and air conditioning. The high-tech pack we had visited last would have scoffed at Lunfelle's way of life.

I had yet to determine what kind of werewolf, maybe even person, I would want to be. I could see the benefits of both the pack's ways of life, but none of them felt like home.

For each pack we visited, a small part of me wondered if I would be stepping into the same territory my parents, whoever they were and wherever they were, had stepped foot. Had my parents belonged to any of these packs? Did they know people from these packs? Would someone recognize me either from a vague familiarity in my face or maybe in memory of my circus performance?

Even though I enjoyed working in the circus, for some reason, I was embarrassed when Rowan came close to telling his allies my backstory. Often, when I felt on edge as Rowan grew close to saying I had been exiled from the circus, I would give him a hardy shove in the stomach—nothing an Alpha couldn't handle.