For another hour or two, they talked with rogue. At the end, all the werewolves walked out of the building with a dazed expression as though their world had been turned upside down, which was probably accurate. Mack, the rogue, had pretty much told them that everything they knew was a lie. Maddy hadn't even known about werewolves until a few months ago so she wasn't too shocked, but to the other werewolves it was life-changing. The things that Mack told made Maddy look at the rogues with a completely new and open-minded perspective.
It was a known fact that the rogues were the bad guys. Even in the story books the rogues were always portrayed as the bad guys who tried to cause trouble or were power hungry, but when you heard the story from Mack, it sounded as though the werewolves who lived in packs were the villains.
Mack already told them about how the rogues weren't mad. In fact, there was nothing wrong with them. They just didn't have a pack. It was all a myth that had been spread by someone a long time ago. It was passed down from generation to generation and soon, it became a fact. Of course, no one actually stopped to ask rogues if they were crazy so there was a huge misunderstanding. Whenever the rogues tried to go to the headquarters to ask for help, they would be killed on sight as it was a law that the rogues could live in pack land as long as they didn't approach the headquarters in which case they will be killed on sight. When they did manage to reach out to an Alpha outside the pack headquarters, they would be asked to either join the pack or leave.
Mack then explained, or more like glared daggers at them while talking, about how some werewolves were just born to be rogues, just like how a person was born to be an Alpha. It wasn't something they could control. When they did join a pack, it felt as though they were being suffocated. When they tried to reach out to their Alphas, they were scorned at and made of fun of. The rogues weren't allowed to stay without a pack but they couldn't stay in a pack no matter how hard they tried. Mack described it as the feeling you get when you stay underwater for too long and start running out of air, which wasn't exactly a nice feeling to live with for your whole life. No wonder why the rogues preferred to remain alone and poor than stay in a pack.
Once the werewolves did leave the pack, they were left to live on the streets. They didn't have enough water or food to sustain themselves. Apparently, the werewolf council comprised of werewolves who were billionaires. Every month, all the Alphas received a large amount of money to use for themselves and their packs. The rogues received no such money and were left to survive on their own. They had normal jobs but werewolves required more food to eat than an average human, more clothes as they had a tendency to rip them off, and also a house near a forest or something similar to run in their wolf form. Those things cost money and many weren't able to afford all that.
While speaking, Mack's voice was coated with so much anger that it was clear that he was speaking from personal experience. Maddy didn't know which pack Mack tried to join but it sounded awful. When the same story was just told from a different perspective, everything changed. The rogues hadn't done anything wrong. They were being hunted for being themselves. Then again, it wasn't the werewolves belong to a pack's fault either. They were brought up with a lie.
Maddy warned Mack that the boss was just using the rogues like literally every other villain in the storybooks. The boss would use them, and when he finally gets what he wants, he would kill them too or make them slaves.
"The boss is trying to help us. When a werewolf who belongs to a pack reaches out to us rogues, helps us by providing us with money, and promises us that we would be getting our due share of rights, why won't we join him?" Mack insisted
When Maddy asked him why the boss was helping, Mack told that some rogue who was close to the boss had been killed and ever since then, the boss wanted to help all the other rogues.
Maddy left the meeting with a sour taste in her mouth. Now that she knew the boss wasn't just a power-hungry person, it was harder to imagine him as a villain. Of course, killing all the werewolves in the world to make sure that the rogues weren't mistreated wasn't the right path to tread on but let's face it, if someone close to you was hurt for absolutely no reason, you would be bitter too.
"Do you think the rogue spoke the truth?" Leia asked. "It could all be a lie to confuse us."
Jeremy shook his head. "Didn't you hear the contempt in his voice? That couldn't have been faked."
"Damn," Xander said. "Who would have thought that things would get so serious?"
"Yeah," Alexa chimed in. "One-minute Xander is giving flowers to Maddy and the next, we are talking about how we have been meanies to the rogues."
"Meanie," Jeremy repeated as he rolled his eyes. "That is the word you decided to use?"
"Meanie is a very accurate description of how we've been to the rogues if what Mack said was true," Alexa said stubbornly. "Just because you don't have a big dictionary doesn't mean that others can't use big words."
Maddy smiled at the familiar banter. It was needed to lighten the mood. Jeremy had become rather silent since Leia had been taken but he was slowly going back to his normal self.
"You could have used the words cold-blooded, heartless, merciless, or obdurate but you decided to use meanie."
Alexa wrinkled her nose. "I am pretty sure the last word wasn't even in English."
"Just because you don't have that word in your dictionary doesn't mean it isn't English."