Gamma No More - Book 3

It’s taken her a few days of travelling to reach this pack, yesterday she’d been watching the pack, but she hadn’t yet found the person she was looking for. Thanks to her contacts, she had a recent picture of him, but she didn’t need it, she could never forget the face of betrayal and even if all she had was his name, she would recognise him.

The Shadow pack is large, so she will have to take her time, even if she has to come back. She intends to get this right. Effort doesn’t matter, only the result.

If she didn’t find what she was looking for today, she’d keep coming back until she did, but she’d promised Karl no more than eight days away from the pack, three to travel in each direction and two to observe and find her quarry.

And it wasn’t just her, but her escort too, so she had to limit the time she was away from the pack for all their sakes. They all had families to think of, after all.

They argued over that for a good few days, but Karl didn’t accept the argument that this trip was personal, not pack business. Karl had laid on thick her responsibilities to the pack and how it was unbecoming and just too risky for an Alpha not to have a guard, especially now that the packs were restless and tensions were running high.

While she’d wanted to be childish and blow a raspberry at him telling him that this was not an ordinary pack, she was no ordinary Alpha, nor was this an ordinary mission, it was only Tyra intervening telling her it meant she was safer for her pups that she finally caved.

She had, however, banned them from coming with her when she trespassed onto another’s pack land. They would be a liability, but more than that, she wouldn’t let them risk their lives like that.

Today, Toni has chosen the east side of the pack to infiltrate, mainly because of a wind change. Even if she’s drenched in a scent mask, she still takes precautions. There’s no point in being reckless.

But she’s scanning faces as the evening patrol is coming back, the four am patrol heading out, muffled greetings as they pass, the camaraderie between them clear, and she’s back, albeit uncomfortably, in a tree, wolves still haven’t learnt to look up, which is good for her, bending her frame into trees is no longer as easy as it was when she was a pup.

It takes two more hours before the pack gets busier, she almost misses him as he comes out of his house to her left, at the same time as most of the pack heading towards the training fields, a heavily pregnant woman kissing him goodbye, two children coming out with her.

“Dad, let me come training. I’m almost twelve,

And the Alpha’s youngest son, Dave, is my age and has been training for almost two years. It’s not fair!”

The lad calls out, his hair a mousey brown, almost halfway between his parent’s hair colours of blonde and black. He wore it slightly longer than his dad’s, but apart from that, it’s an identical cut.

Her target, Killian Parker, smiles and ruffles his hair, but a younger girl comes out before he can answer.

“If Callum can go, I can too,” her childish voice demanded attention.

Killian reaches down and sweeps her giggling into the air.

“My little princess, you’ll learn self-defence when you are old enough and as fierce as you are at seven, your body is way too delicate to learn to fight.

Like Callum, you need to wait until you are at least twelve, maybe fourteen for you, my darling Wren.”

She pouts at not getting her own way, but Killian shouts

“Kiss attack.”

He started planting kisses all over her until she giggled again, and then he turned, smiled at his son

“The Alpha and Beta children train from ten, but that’s because they inherit the genes for leadership. They shift and grow earlier and therefore need to be ready to fight sooner than others.

You will get your time to train, don’t worry little ones and I’m sure at that point, I’ll be dragging you out as you’ll want to sleep more than take part in the training, like every other teenager in this pack.

Something I’ll look forward to reminding you of when the time comes!”

He chuckles before placing another kiss on Wren’s forehead and an arm around his son’s shoulders in a group hug before placing his daughter gently back on the ground.

Toni’s eyes go to the girl. She favours her mum more, a blonde-haired beauty, but she’ll give them both trouble as she gets older. If Toni allows it to happen, that is.

Killian and his wife need to pay a price, and she firmly believed that no debt should remain unsettled, especially not his. There’s something inside her that relishes in that knowledge. The fact they have two pups and one on the way shouldn’t change her view, but it is softening her heart.

“Tonight, we’ll go to the lake for a picnic, if you are both good for your mum and in school, okay?”

Bile rises in Toni’s throat, wishing with every fibre of her body she hadn’t heard or watched that loving family interaction, sometimes, dehumanising people makes tasks easier to complete or process, but seeing the warm family interactions causes her pain, and her heart breaks a little as she’s reminded of what she never had growing up with or without her parents, and it was these people that caused that pain in her eyes.

Unconsciously, Toni straightens her head and shoulders, not able to move much else of her body in the tree she is hiding in. She may not have had the kind of family life she witnessed here growing up, but she’s dammed sure she will ensure her pups will.

Bringing herself back to reality. She’d got the information she needed. Killian Parker was living in this pack, as was his family, and she knew where they were going to be that evening. Her job, for now, was complete.

As she exited the pack, she could see that he was on the training field, from the looks of it, he was still a pack warrior, not standing among those in charge, but for his age, in his late forties, it showed a clear ability to still be in training, part of the main pack warriors.

Not that Wolves didn’t live long and productive lives, but usually in the mid-forties they handed over to the younger generation, in fact as she looked around, the number of people in warrior training was higher than she expected, as if the older generation hadn’t stepped down or had been called back. She knew there was unrest and rumours of pack wars, but this seemed to be a pack well into the preparation for an upcoming war, almost too well.

She thinks about this, shaking her head.

If he’d never stepped outside this pack

If his name hadn’t come up linked to the pack unrest,

If he hadn’t been paying off Colin…she wouldn’t be here.

If… how can such a small word have such a big impact on people’s lives?

She is pretty sure that she would have let the information from Colin fade away, she can admit to herself that she’d never felt so vulnerable as she had after speaking to him that once, the pain it had wrought inside her, the betrayal and opening up old wounds hadn’t helped her move forward.

But once his name came up linked to attacks on other packs along with the payments to Colin from the hackers, she couldn’t let it fade away.

If she had never looked at the red drive

Carefully, she moved away, leaving no trace that she’d been there, making her way into the forest where she’d left her escort

“Any luck Alpha?”

“Yes,” she sighed, “Unfortunately.

I’ll be going back this evening. When I return, we’re heading home.

I suggest we eat well now and sleep as much as possible to be ready to leave tonight. It may be late when we go.”

Everyone nods their agreement, setting up a watch rota between them all.

She can see the three warriors and Delta relax, while they aren’t technically rogues, nor are they yet legal wolves. Their pack exists in neither the approved nor prospect list the Royals hold, so if found, it would be an awkward conversation, to say the least. Not that Toni plans on that happening. She knows how to move around no-man’s-land without being seen.

For now, she lay down, closing her eyes, praying to the Goddess that this is the last painful aspect of her past she would need to address.

How much pain did she want to open herself up to, except it wasn’t her nor Tyra that was pushing for this, it was, as she’s come to think of it, her inner beast that was demanding she get justice something she increasingly saw as her Lycan side.

She’s decided that the ‘Bloodlust’ that Lycan’s suffered from in the werewolf histories, not that the book Leif had given her was that clear on the matter either, was, actually, the overwhelming sense of justice that seemed to rule her more and more now.

The slightest injustice sent her into action, although she was getting better at controlling it. Mostly, now, if it happened, it was a threatening growl.

Here she was, almost twenty-two, living a life she couldn’t have ever contemplated when granted her release from the wardship. Trying to navigate her way through being a Lycan, until she transformed, she wasn’t sure she could believe it. A single parent to twins and an Alpha of a ‘rogue’ pack, all without guidance from family, no scrap that, without guidance from blood relatives, she had her family it was her pack.

Parenthood, well she had to admit that while she didn’t have the best direct reference for being a good parent, she had been using the parent group at the pack that met every fortnight as her guide and being a Lycan… well, that was a case of winging it, sometimes, she wondered how she was still sane.

For now, she’ll take her advice and sleep, taking the last watch of the cycle, so that she is awake and ready for the task to come.

I know you are wondering what I’m doing here, right?

Well, you aren’t the only one. My plan changed the instant I saw he had a family.

I almost thought about confronting him and had it been just him and his wife, then I think I would have done it immediately.

But he has kids, which wasn’t something I was expecting, not that having a family changes everything, he still has to pay for his betrayal, maybe his wife as well, but the children don’t deserve to be punished and so I need to go away and think about this.

But also, think about my training:

Rule Three: Knowing your enemy means it’s easier to predict their moves and I know Killian. I may not understand him or like him, but I know his type and that will help me plan.

Rule Five: Less is more. In this instance, that means I need to think about how he pays for his betrayal that has the least impact on the kids. There will be a way to punish him without hurting his children too much.

Acting in haste doesn’t ever work out well and now it’s time for me to sleep, and I hope that in my sleep, a plan will come.

Toni stands in the shadows, hood pulled up, obscuring her face in the early evening light

All her training had once again kicked in, making sure she was downwind of her targets.

She looks at the faces in front of her; they are so free and happy, it wouldn’t cross their mind that a predator is watching them, deciding their fate.

Idly, her finger runs along the fletching, straightening the filaments as she does.

She had hunted for a while to find these feathers, cutting them carefully into shape, each of her arrows, lovingly made by her, no one else had been allowed to touch them, she had whittled, pared and sanded the ebony wood herself, until the shafts felt like velvet, not even trusting others to make the specially crafted silver tips.

She pulls each of the three arrows from the quiver and balances them in her hand. Selecting the heaviest, she breaks the other two, leaving them broken on the ground where she stands, a message of how close she was.

Raising her bow, she aims carefully, letting all the tension and negative thoughts leave her body and mind. She becomes one with the bow once more.

Her fingers release the tension and the arrow flies. The loud thump as it hits its target is always a satisfying sound.

A scream and panicked voices echo as she slips away, her message delivered.

These arrows won’t kill, not this time. They are purely here to deliver a message, to call out Killian as a traitor.

Each part of the arrow carried the message, from the wood and feather used to the fact, she’d broken two arrows and the third shattered on impact, the message would be clear to Killian and she was almost positive he’d know who left those messages.

The feathers, from Ravens, known in mythology to be the tricksters and the messengers of the gods, and the shaft, made from Ebony is a tree known for its hard, black heart, the pure silver tip representing the payment of a traitor’s fee, all in their own right are symbols, but the silver tip was designed to drive a spike into the hardwood shaft on impact, shattering it, the final symbol of unity broken.

Others may not recognise it, but he will. She’s calling Killian Parker out and she’s doing it on his home pack’s land, letting him know he isn’t safe, not here, not anywhere.

When she’s ready to talk to him, she knows where to find him. For now, knowing she is out there and has found him and his family, that’s enough to make him sweat.

And more than that, she’s confident he won’t run, but even if he does, well, what wolf doesn’t like a hunt and part of her is secretly hoping he does, justice would be sweeter if she had to hunt him down.

Turning, she walks back to her escort.

“Time to go home, at least for now guys” she smiled a weight lifted off her shoulders.