Alpha Maleco had been on the run from the council for over a dozen years and after so many he was finally starting to run out of places to hide.
It might have been easier to disappear and stay hidden if his pack didn't keep growing.
Of the original 193 Pack Tenebris members, less than one hundred were still alive. Only 97 had survived the nearly fourteen years of being hunted by the council or the continued skirmishes between their minions, since the fall of the Royals. And yet even after everything they had been through his pack's numbers kept increasing. At the last count they were an unprecedented four hundred and eighteen strong. The largest they had ever been in their history.
Looking over the latest figures his Beta had left for him on his makeshift desk, he let out a sigh as his hands ran through his hair. His eyes ran down the list of names. Eighteen. Eighteen more mouths to feed. He sighed again. Just like always though they would just have to find a way.
George Maleco was not a dumb man. Even among the smartest in their world he had always stood out. Stood apart. It had been both a gift and a curse.
He read over the list again. Sighing as he took in the overwhelmingly female names. It was always the same. Close to seventy five percent of his pack was now female. Most young. All scarred in some way.
And he knew just like the last three times a group of refugees had managed to find his camp he wouldn't turn a single one of them away. Even if he should.
He knew just as well as they did, that they had nowhere else to go. No one else to turn to. He was their last hope. Sighing again he looked over the latest reports for their rations. They would need to be cut. Again.
In the face of the odds, with the increasing shortages, and mounting threats of exposure, lesser men would have given up years ago. Lucky for those counting on him, Maleco had never been a lesser man; standing when others bowed, speaking when others stayed silent, fighting when others submitted. Not only was he honorable, fair, strong and just, he was stubborn as all hell. Everything was telling him that they were beat, that it was over, but he simply refused to admit it. Refused to admit that there was nothing left he could do to protect the meager few in their world that he could. But even he was beginning to understand they were running out of options.
Options and time.
.
.
Meeting the newest arrivals only solidified his earlier admission that he would grant all of them sanctuary. Their stories weren't new but they were still heartbreaking. Cruel and malicious abuse at the hands of those meant to protect and guide them. Forced mating's. Rape. Enforced conceptions and ugly miscarriages. It was the same as the dozens and hundreds before, but George Maleco listened to each and every one. Watched every tear, heard every pain, and shame filled confession. Taking each and every one on as his own.
Some had tried to argue him into turning them away. Attempted to convince him that he owed these strangers nothing, not while his own people were still suffering, still struggling.
They argued that they were not his duty. Not his concern. But if not his, then whose? These innocents who had been so failed by so many, whose concern were they then?
They were here because of them, because of the actions of the strongest and supposed best of them all. It was their greed. Their hunger for power. Their need to increase their own selfish desires and wants, without any regard for those who would suffer from the consequences, who had brought them here. It was all of them. They were the ones who had failed them.
It may be true that, personally he had not hurt them. That in fact, he had tried to stop those who had. That his hands were clean of those sins, but did intention and in-action mean he was free of the guilt? Did it absolve duty? Just because he had tried to save them once, did that truly mean his hands were free? That turning his back now was excusable? Justifiable? Defensible?
Some would say that these strangers, had no claim to him, to his resources, his skills, his protection, that because they were separate they were not entitled. That they were different. Outsiders and therefore did not deserve to share and benefit from the wealth and resources that they themselves did.
Maleco could see their point. In a purely selfish economic way it made sense, albeit greedily. They had had the great luck to be born within his pack and without effort they were profiting from its advantages. Sharing those wealth's; whether material or psychological, potentially depleted the stores for themselves. Arguably opening themselves up to greater risk and exposure.
The first few months he had been swayed by their words, by their fear. He had sent the few desperate souls that had come begging for help away, too scared to endanger his own to bother with anyone else's. He saw them as other's responsibility. Of course he felt for them, pitied them, sympathized, but ultimately he cast them away. Refusing their pleas on the simple charge that they had no ties to his pack, to him.
That was until they stumbled upon the bodies. The mutilation. The pain that they must have endured at the hands of those that had found them was unimaginable. While 'his' pack, 'his' people, were safe and protected; women and children had been slaughtered. All because they were not 'his'. Perhaps alive they hadn't belonged to him, but in death? In death they were his.
Looking at their bodies he had realized the truth: he could not blame and condemn innocent people to such awful fates based purely on an accident of birth. He refused to allow those he could save to die because of random chance, and a lottery that was inherently beyond their control. He had sworn to protect the weaker, to stand for justice, law and equality, and none of those things were exclusive to his pack. They were universal truths, and to refuse them to people based on arbitrary constructs, was the most deplorable act imaginable.
They had been forgotten. These victims. Tossed aside and perceived as unworthy; as acceptable and unavoidable collateral damage. They are viewed as weaker and therefore inferior. Their lives, their pains, their hopes, valued as less important. Less cherished and respected then those of the elite. They had all allowed, and fostered a system where power and wealth now trumped equality and humanity. Where lives, where people, were seen as disposable. Where suffering is not only allowable but forgivable so long as it benefited those in control, those with power.
Somewhere along the way it had been forgotten that power and responsibility went hand in hand. That the elite naturally owed not only an allegiance but also an obligation to those outside of themselves. To those that had entrusted in them not just their lives but their futures. It had been forgotten that power should not be imposed but earned, and loyalty not bought but bestowed.
And so he listened. He listened and hurt. Bled for each and every failure. Every lost and broken soul that they had allowed to slip between their fingers. He listened and he remembered. Because no one deserves to be forgotten. No one deserves to be shoved aside, dismissed and obliterated. Lost to the world as if they had never existed, just because they were inconvenient. They don't deserve to be written off and extinguished because they were powerless.
.
.
Alpha Maleco rubbed his temples trying to ease the pressure that had been building all day. He closed his eyes as the sensation suddenly got more uncomfortable. Hissing as the pain went from a mildly annoying pressure, to red-hot spikes being driven into his eye sockets. Ignoring his Beta's concerned glances he waved away the offer to fetch the pack doctor. He knew there were people who needed the overworked doc's attention far more than he did for a simple headache. Even if it was true that he had never experienced one like this before in his life, and sincerely hoped he never would have to again.
Unexpectedly the feeling began to ease until only the residual reverberations were left bouncing around in his skull. Breathing deeply he tried to shake off the lingering traces of pain, that was when he noticed the distinct feeling of being watched. The hairs on his neck stood up as he tried to shrug off the heavy weight of eyes on his back. Looking over his shoulders surreptitiously Alpha Maleco searched for the source of the feeling but found his tent empty expect for Beta Liesel who was now eyeing her Alpha skeptically. Trying to brush off the feeling as his increased over cautiousness at the arrival of the new refugees, he mental muzzled his wolf in his head. Gagging the separate and yet intertwined part of himself who was currently doing what could only be described as pacing and howling in the back of his head, into silence.
Then without explanation he got the weirdest urge to start packing. Shaking his head from the weird notion he tried to focus on figuring out where he was going to house all the new pack members. But even as he tried to ignore it, the urge, the need just grew. It ate at him, nagging until he was barking and snapping at his lieutenants in irritation.
No matter how he tried to ignore it, the urge persisted. Until he was issuing orders for setting up the camp while everything in him was screaming for him to start demanding they dismantle and decamp immediately. He had to physically bite his tongue a number of times to keep the orders from leaving his mouth.
It didn't make any sense. They had only arrived at their latest location two night previous. It had taken weeks to scout and secure the clearing and the plan was to spend, hopefully, at least the first few months of the coming winter there. There was no reason why he should be feeling the need to move, to run. And yet he did. And it was growing.
By the next morning he could barely keep the words from his lips. Every time he wasn't paying close enough attention his feet would begin to take him out of camp and move him towards the North.
That too, was unsettling him. They never went north. EVER.
This latest location was as far North as they had been since The Fall.
It was a necessity but that didn't mean any of them were comfortable with it. Yet now he willing wanted to go further. He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but he was becoming uneasy. Unsure. Anxious.
By that afternoon Maleco was convinced he was going crazy. He was watching his pack wordlessly, his brain desperately trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was subtle. Barely perceivable but once he had noticed it he couldn't ignore it. Every member of his pack, even the newest eighteen would unconsciously direct, face and move north. It was as if they were magnets being pulled. In the last few hours his pack had moved from being spread around the clearing to being clumped at the northernmost edge. Their eyes constantly darting to stare into the forest pointing in the same direction his feet begged him to travel.
It was as if they were bewitched.
He had tried to ask Liesel about it after first noticing her minute shifts but she had either lied or else consciously didn't even realize she was doing it. And after their time together he had the utmost faith in his Beta, plus there was no reason to lie about something so insignificant.
That is, if it truly was insignificant. Yet as hard as he might he couldn't understand why it wouldn't be. What could possibly want them to go north? What besides death lied their anymore?
Maleco's attention was pulled pack to the present as a fight broke out between two of his best enforcers. Racing forward he pulled the men apart before demanding an explanation for their uncharacteristic behavior.
"He tried to leave." Greg said wiping at the trickle of blood trailing from the corner of his mouth.
"Why were you trying to leave?" Alpha Maleco questioned wearily not having the energy to deal with such nonsense. Not when he was trying to figure out what the hell was happening to his pack.
"I don't know." James replied almost unsure, his eyes not quite focusing on his Alpha.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I don't ... remember. I just know-" The wolf continued his eyes pulling to where he had just been stopped.
"You know what?" Maleco prodded his sense of dread increasing as he watched the wolf's increasingly bizarre behavior. It wasn't helping that his own inner sense of wolf was becoming even more and more agitated. The distress only adding to Maleco's own feelings of frustration and anxiety. He was supposed to be doing something. He felt like he was forgetting something, something important, and yet no matter how he racked his brain he couldn't figure out what it was.
"I know I have to go." With James words there was a sudden outcry from the wolves gathered around them who had moved to witness the unfolding drama. Maleco's head whipped around in shock as he took in the faces of his pack members as they began silently and not so silently to share their agreement with his enforcer's admission.
"Where do you need to go?" Maleco wasn't sure if he was addressing James or the rest of the pack anymore. Either way he wasn't surprised with the answer he was given by both, the pit of dread in his stomach growing as a single word resounded around him.
'North'