"Hey, Zara..." Solomon reached over, covering the back of my hand with his palm. "We're going to be okay now. You know that, right?"
"I do." I sighed, rolled my palm up, curled my fingers around his. Squeezed his hand drew my shoulders down from where I clamped them up to my ears. "I still can't believe you were out there, all that time. I missed you. I wished so many times that -"
"Same." He squeezed my hand back. "I was trapped too. But all that matters is we found each other, that monster will never harm our family again. And I'm taking you home."
"Home?" A small shudder quaked through my shoulders. It was not because of the cold wind that whipped into my face, numbing my lips, and drying out my eyes, but at what that one word meant.
Over three and a half months, I visited four distinct territories. I observed four different packs, each with their own sense of family dynamics. I watched all my friends find their mates, even one with as gruff an exterior as Raina. Like Elena and Cole, Rose and Idris started their beautiful family. While their happiness brought a wide smile to my face, nothing masked the sadness averting my eyes. The same sadness, mixed with envy, weighed my heart like it was pumped full of cement.
In the three months that followed the death of the man who pretended he was my father, life slowed down and settled into place. Solomon and I didn't plan to stay that long but the fallout from the collapsed and dissolved White Moon pack demanded our attention. Forging our new agreements with the remaining four packs also took longer than we'd first expected.
Caleb didn't disappear after Cassius died as I initially thought. Even limping from broken ribs, I caught up with his own limped pace as he left the Central compound.
Closing my eyes against the tears that rose in them, I still saw every scratch, every thread of pain etched in his eyes when they met mine.
My hand found his, sticky with coagulated blood and etched with scratches, and tugged him still. "Where are you going?"
"Home," he muttered, shrugging off my grip.
"We will," I assured him, cupping my elbows with my palms and frowning at his distance. "Together."
"Zara..." Stepping closer, he cupped his hand around my cheek, spreading warmth over my skin. Closing my eyes, I nestled closer, my shoulders curling toward his chest at the contact. "Open your eyes."
Not realizing I closed them, I looked up to the weighted guilt that hung in his. With a swipe of his thumb over his eyes, each of his irises turned from brown to a bright, crystal cerulean-blue.
They looked like the sky on the clearest day imaginable... and kinda freaky, after seeing him with brown eyes for so long.
Stroking his thumb over my lip, he mumbled, "I wanted you to see something real before I left."
"Don't be silly," I pressed my hand over his, my heart cracking at the idea of him leaving. "We'll go together -"
"No," he interrupted. "The next time I see you, I want you to see me for who I really am. And until I figure out who the fuck that is, it's best you stay with Solomon."
"Are you..." My throat choked up on itself, tears spilling hot trails over my cheeks. "Leaving me? Rejecting me?"
"No, Sweetheart." He leaned over, pressing his lips into my forehead and drawing a deep breath. "I'm making myself worthy of you."
Well... Shit.
Caleb said goodbye to the only family he had ever known in the Southern Territory, traveling to the Istas pack a week later. At Solomon's insistence, he and I traveled all over the country for more than two months after Cassius' empire destabilized.
We shared a desire to help rebuild the country we lived in, exerting an indirect influence over. Solomon also wanted to ensure separate agreements with every pack before we left for good.
Safe to say, by the time the Central Territory dust settled, four new territories lines were drawn, and alliances between them and the Istas pack were forged, things worked out for the better.
If I thought libraries were boring, pack meetings squabbling for territory land sure was a next-level snooze-fest.
Lucus and Aspen retained control of the Northern Territory, where we forged a new agreement that neither pack attacked the other. Lucus was true to his word. Despite the Northern pack being in a desperate rebuilding mode, he offered reparations to their pack's history against Istas. Any Istas pack member was granted continuous safe passage within the Northern territory and Lucus provided Caleb, Solomon, and I his personal ships to go home.
By the time I visited the Eastern territory that tended more to itself, Future Alpha Torak tried to rekindle our 'more than friendship' relationship. His betrayal couldn't have made him less attractive to me. The pull to the unknown North was too great for me, but they welcomed Rose and Idris into their pack.
Between Lumi's destruction of the pharmaceutical lab and post-war demolished silver mines and weapons manufacturing factory, the Western territory needed the most infrastructure rebuilding and redirection for its future. Alpha Fenris was stripped from his position and the lab rebuilding was charged to Tobias, Meredith, and Simon's direction. In my biggest moment of trust, they offered reassurance that only beneficial medications would be developed under ethical practices.
After Sandolf was injured in the attack against Cassius, Theo assumed his role as the South's alpha, everyone knowing that Raina called all the shots. Cole and Elena moved back there after the Central territory's pack members returned to their original territories. With Caleb's absence, Cole assumed his role as Beta. Elena got her pack ceremony, which I attended crying like a baby.
In a bittersweet moment, I stayed inside Caleb's room while we were in the South. Stripped of most of his belongings, the notable exception was the picture collage of me still hanging in its wall space. His scent lingered inside his pillows if I buried my nose deep enough.
How he left hurt me more than I admitted to anyone. Most nights I cried myself to sleep, not for the reasons why he left but... I missed the stupid jerk.
The Central territory, my father's stronghold, no longer existed. The land was carved up and absorbed into the neighboring territories, his wealth and assets distributed accordingly. Solomon and I wanted nothing to do with those affairs. His single request was that we secured a small number of transportation equipment, like boats and helicopters, for our pack.
The tiring journey had also felt to some extent like a farewell tour. I'd met amazing werewolves, friends I intended to stay in contact with, and grown more than I could've hoped. I had found my brother, permanently. And now he took me home, to form the family that Cassius' cruelty denied us.
Despite being full of equal parts hope and uncertainty, my heart still felt like it had holes punched through it. Like a sieve, the warmth of foreign concepts like home and family slipped through those holes, leaving me with an empty feeling.
Why isn't it enough?
'No mate.' Lumi reminded me. I felt her sadness in each word and the silence that followed after.
I know Lumi, I'm lonely too. It'll be fine, we tried our best.
You'll have to behave if I start collecting cats like a spinster.
'Eat cats.'
Lumi, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me.
"There!" Solomon dropped my hand and pointed off the bow of the ship.
We'd stood at the bow for the past few hours. Solomon spewed off Elena-like information about the Istas pack and its members, including his mate. The warmth that pooled in his eyes, excitement he wrapped around each word enraptured my attention.
At this point, Sol could recite the dictionary and I'd listen.
After so much time in confinement, both of us enjoyed how the wind felt against our faces. I cupped my fingers to my forehead and squinted across the gray, choppy sea waves.
He's pointing at...
"A glacier?" I drew my eyebrows together, squinting at a tiny, white mountainous shape that sat like a miniature triangle off on the horizon.
"No." A few light blonde strands shifted across his forehead when he shook his head. "It's an island. Frozen over with permafrost though."
As the ship chugged closer and closer, uncertainty dried my mouth. My heartbeat crept up, throbbing in my neck.
What will our pack be like?
Will they accept me?
What will Lumi think of them?
"Solomon..." I turned to him after a few moments of silence. "What else can you tell me about the Istas pack?
"Anything, dear sister." His eyes sparkled and he grinned down at me. "Shoot me with a more specific question."
My eyes dropped down to my clasped hands. "Will they accept us?"
"They have no choice on me." His head tipped his head back and a hearty laugh escaped. I watched his Adam's apple bounce a few times before swatting him on the shoulder.
"You're not that impressive." I arched an eyebrow at his ego.
"I am their future alpha, dear Zara," he reminded me. "So, I think we're good."
"Future... alpha?" I blinked at him since, all this time, I thought he was the Alpha. One head nod from him and my mouth gaped. "Our parents!? Are they -"
"Our father is the alpha." Solomon's clear blue eyes reflected my relief and sadness. "Cassius killed our mother after we were born. And until I escaped nine months ago, our father and the rest of his pack believed we were dead as well. That's why no one came after us, Cassius made sure that Luna Rashida's death certificates made it up here."
"I know our mother's dead," I admitted while one of my fingers traced my necklace charm. "I was hoping it was another one of his lies."
"Unfortunately, not in that case." Solomon's eyes glossed with tears. Before I responded, his hand encircled around my necklace and wrenched it off my neck. My lips parted with a gasp at the sting in the back of my neck, which shifted into a low cry as he chucked it right into the ocean.
"Sol!" I squealed, watching the shiny metal dull and sink into obscurity. A similar weight sank in my stomach. "Why -"
"Cassius put a tracker in it," he muttered. "That's why he didn't need to come search for you, ever."
"Oh," I whispered.
"The bastard sent our mother's remains up here with our death certificates. When the North attacked, they left Istas broken and damaged, most left for dead. For safety reasons, they moved the packhouse location."
"At least I have you..." My voice faded into my thoughts and I placed one hand on the side of his cheek. My breath froze in my lungs when I pressed, "Wait... our father?"
"Is Alpha Boreas." Warmth flowed in his icy blue-green eyes. "That's where we're going. To his pack. Our pack. Home. Istas, the snow pack."
"How do you know all this?" I stared at him, half in awe and the other half jealous.
He leaned over, resting his elbows on the chipped white paint of the boat's railing. Standing for a few moments, he gazed at nothing in particular out in the sea with a far-off, almost somber look in his eyes. Vast expanses of white peaks reflected what little light hung in the gray skies over the even darker gray waves.
Finally, his thin, pale lips parted. "With Tobias's help, I escaped from the pharmaceutical lab about a year ago. Cassius hunted me down for weeks, Caleb sheltered me for a bit in the South, before I fled into the Northern territory. Alpha Faelon offered me a ship. I had no idea where Istas was and it took weeks to find it but I did. We're quite small, around a hundred wolves but it's ours."
"That's why each and every Istas member is precious but in particular the alpha's children." His eyes glossed over as they studied mine. "You'll know once we get there. I'm so excited for you to feel what I felt, after so many desperate years of being alone. All those broken pieces will be healed, Zara."
"Our pack..." I smiled when echoing those words. "And... to our father?"
"Yes." He nodded. "He sent me back to retrieve you and Caleb. And to answer your earlier question, after eighteen years, ecstatic does not describe how you will be received."
"Back up." I frowned. "Why would Alpha Faelon help you? Not that he wasn't kind, but he must have known that was suicide going against Cassius."
Or why didn't he offer me the same help when I was first there?
For once, I knew that answer myself.
Because it would have erupted a civil war, which Cassius would have won and found us anyway.
And it was too risky for the smaller Northern territory pack to go alone. They needed the South.
"Because eighteen years ago, he helped Cassius head north and capture our mother." Solomon's eyes darkened and his mouth tightened into a firm line. "Faelen had a huge debt to repay to our family. No one sees a white wolf in the rest of the country, let alone have any idea where we live. Cassius kept you and I hidden, Luna Sierra hid Caleb, and Rashida rewrote the history books until we became nothing more than a glamorized myth."
"The Northern fable..." I mumbled, remembering the fable almost word for word. "All of the Silverback wolves were originally black. A pack of pure white wolves lived on the other side of the sea, in an even further Northern territory."
"One summer, a giant iceberg broke off, stranding two pups, separating them. The pups, one male, one female, managed to survive, floating around the sea for days, until arriving here. They were taken in by our pack, grew up like they were born here, even mated with our wolves. Since then, all the resulting wolves have been gray."
"A fairy tale." I smiled and exhaled. "That manages to exclude Caleb."
"There's some truth to it." Solomon smiled, straightening up tall and slipping an arm over my shoulders. We fell into silence, gazing at the tiny glacier. It looked larger, but at our pace against the rough sea waves, I knew we still needed a few hours before we reached land.
My forehead tensed as I leaned my head against Solomon's shoulder, "So... Why didn't you get me sooner?"
"I tried, Zara." He turned away from the sea view and enveloped his arms around me in a warm embrace. "Caleb and I tried so many times."
My poor stuttered at the mention of Caleb, who hadn't sent a word of contact in three months, and I squeezed my arms around Solomon's narrow waist.
His voice vibrated warmth into my scalp, even as bitterness soaked his words, "Cassius had you locked down too tightly, buried too deep. He moved you between pack houses as a child. When you were transported to the North, we organized the rogue attack. We tried again when you went East, with Caleb closer, but Cassius intercepted you first."
His arms choked around me, squeezing the breath out of my lungs. "I almost turned myself in when he whipped you. We couldn't trust anyone outside our pack, so your friends thought they were protecting you. Once you went West -"
"I screwed it up with the change of plans." I sighed into his chest. "I'm sorry."
"You couldn't have known. We needed you to stay in the dark so Cassius wouldn't find out. As long as you were his bait to draw me out, he wouldn't kill you." Pulling back, he cupped my jaw in his palms, then leaned closer and placed his forehead against mine. "You played his game beautifully, sister."
"And you've been there, this island?" I released him and waved my hand out at the expansive sea. We'd been surrounded by nothing but blue gray water for the past thirty-six hours.
"Took me almost six weeks to find it since there's a lot of glacier-looking islands up here. And no maps to go off, only instinct." He paused, throwing me a crooked grin. "Which admittedly, after being trapped and suppressed by Cassius, mine weren't very good."
"Yeah, me neither." I broke off, my palm rubbing the back of my neck.
Lumi and I had taken a rough road. I wasn't grateful for every experience and wished certain circumstances played out differently, but I could acknowledge that it had formed our bond into what it was today.
"Solomon..." My voice dropped to a murmur, my eyes gazing back at the island. "Your mate..."
He said solemnly, a warm smile playing on his lips. "Her name is Eira. I hope she's the second pack member that you meet here."
"Who's the first?" I asked, but he smiled.
Assuming he meant our father, I didn't push the issue further. My heart pounded at the uncertainty because even though I thought about Caleb every day since we parted, I wasn't sure I was ready to see him.
Instead, my gaze fixated on the island, the direction ahead of us. As its size grew larger, my anxiety and excitement at the unknown future increased.
A few hours later, Solomon and I were rooted in the same standing position on the ship's bow. We were close enough to see that the island was crescent moon-shaped. Towering glacier-like structures loomed over us like a winter forest brush passed on both sides of the ship as we neared the center.
The faint, eerie call of a wolf pierced through the arctic winds numbing my cheeks. My breath hitched and my heart thumped since it felt like our arrival was being announced. Restless, Lumi paced back and forth in my mind, the hairs on her neck prickling up at attention.
A beautiful, strong scent hit me when our ship was a few minutes away from docking. I couldn't place it further than the wind itself, a clear, crisp, almost smokey, wind and so cold, like frost tingling the inside of my nostrils. The same wind bit at my face and whipped my hair around my shoulders while I stood on the ship's bow.
None of this bothered me and actually felt... cool, refreshing, and comforting.
Small movements stirred an intense, pulling sensation in my chest. A tiny, white, snowy shape moved deftly along the edge of the stoic, ice-white cliffs. A wolf paralleled our movements, a large, solid, white wolf. My heart flipped and nerves of excitement thrummed through my body like an electric current.
A white wolf.
Another call sounded out and a second wolf appeared on the opposite side. Another and another wolf joined in, before the calls turned into a chorus. A beautiful, siren-like sound filled the wind around us, a line of white, furry bodies greeting us on either side of the boat.
I about fell off the boat when Solomon stripped down, then shifted into Nor's wolf form and returned the call. His loud howl echoed off the metal boat, his large paws resting on the railing and his beautiful white fur rippling in the wind.
He really does look like a giant snowball.
At that moment, I realized what Solomon meant. Reality crashed through the lies I'd been fed almost my entire life.
The truth was far more beautiful in its simplicity than I could've ever imagined.
We weren't rare, we weren't special, we weren't mythical.
And, like Solomon promised, we were simply... home.