The Lost Wolf

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Everyone seemed to have found something to be busy about, she noticed, watching as Luke kicked leaves into a pile, then kicked the pile to continue piling them up. She rolled her eyes.

She shook her head when her friends made a move to walk up to her, halting them as she looked at her side, where Daphne sat, and said pointedly, "I think we need to have a talk."

The blonde nodded, a sorrowful look in her eyes as she rose and nodded for her to follow. Zack was at her heels, head hung low as they wound through the forest. Once confident they were far enough to have some privacy, Daphne stopped. Her wolf paced, watching with growing interest, if a bit impatient.

"Ask your questions," Daphne said.

Val thought for a moment. She had so many, but after all this time of waiting, she didn't know where to start. So she began with what she saw in that dream.

"Marcus killed them, didn't he?" Val asked, leaning back against a tree. She needed all the support she could get. She knew the answer, of course, but she needed this. To hear it clearly.

Daphne nodded, jaw clenching. "We think so, yes."

"We didn't know," Zack said before she had a chance to ask. "We would never have taken you there if we did, and he'd long be dead." The last words came out in a low, promising growl. Claws ripped out of his fingers, retracting with great effort. He looked at her, and she could almost see his wolf snarling through his blazing eyes.

"But you must have suspected," she stated, thinking back to that clearing.

"She did," —Zack nodded to Daphne— "but we had no proof. We didn't know..." He choked on the words, gritting his teeth. "It's against our nature to betray our packs, and as an Alpha—"

"He's no Alpha!" Val snarled, feeling the hair grow on the back of her head. She reigned in her anger, aware of who she was truly mad at.

Zack flinched; his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.

"We couldn't be sure before, and that was the best place I could think to take you at the time," Daphne cut in, brows drawn. "Everywhere else was already compromised."

"Is that why we kept moving?" A nod. "How did it start? Who were they?"

Her mother's name was Evelyn Bennet, daughter of the Alphas in charge of the pack Marcus currently ruled over. When she was very young, the pack warriors had been sent out to help a smaller pack when they were attacked by rogues. They had all been massacred. The rogues had been too great in number and their pack was so small...

Everyone had died; but they managed to rescue a little boy, still running from a sickly wolf.

Marcus.

He was the sole survivor, and since no one was left to take care of him, her parents took him in. They grew up together, learned to spar together, shifted together; and after a while, Evelyn got permission to leave the pack grounds. There was something pulling at her, she'd said, and followed where her instincts pointed.

Marcus had wanted to follow but she didn't let him, thirsty for the kind of freedom only solitude could quench. So she left, and she traveled, and she ended up in a big city called New Orleans, wandering through its busy streets.

Daphne had first met her there when she entered their small shop and asked for wolfsbane to 'have some fun'. Moira had chided the girl, blabbering about how dangerous it was, especially when there was no one there to keep an eye on her. Val wanted to smile, but she'd heard of a story similar to that, and the people in it had only had fun for a short while.

Moira and Allen gave her a place to stay on the condition that she helped around the shop; It didn't take much time for Daphne and Eve to grow close. They had been inseparable.