I laughed and hugged him a little harder. He engulfed me in his arms, not letting go. We’d always had a strong bond, but once I’d become a wolf, it had intensified. Swapping blood during an oath had made it even stronger. I was aware of him on a different level, and being this close made our internal connection burst. His love for me zipped along my veins, like a mini hurricane of emotion, making me feel content and happy. A wolf needed to be close to their Alpha at regular intervals.
I finally pulled back, feeling a little sheepish I’d held on for so long. My brother cleared his throat behind me while I kissed my father on the cheek.
“Some of us are waiting here,” Tyler said.
“Sorry about the gray hair,” I told my father, “but I survived Hell, so there’s that. We have a lot to discuss.”
“Yes, we do. We’ll talk immediately after everyone gets situated.” He turned to embrace my brother in a wolfish hug, which meant a quick pull followed by a few back slaps on the back. No deep emotional words were spoken, but I felt their affection for each other and it made me happy once again.
Rourke came up behind me and placed one hand on my waist and reached around with the other to shake my father’s hand. My dad took it and gave him a warm smile. “You went after her to the Underworld and kept her safe. I owe you my life.” My father inclined his head down.
“You owe me nothing. She was the one who kept us safe. Your daughter is a natural leader, and a very powerful one at that. She did your Pack proud in the Underworld.”
My father’s head angled toward me, and I could tell he was trying to process my new signature. “Lots of changes, I see,” he said, a single eyebrow raised. “Let’s head over to our less-than-adequate headquarters and discuss it then, shall we?”
We followed him on the skinny wooden planks that ran through the trees. “How did you do this?” I asked, noticing the pathways branching off in a few directions.
He shook his head. “It’s been as tough as hell to live here, let me tell you. We had to take multiple trips to get the supplies we needed, and once they were here, we had to build a sustainable place to live, which as you can see, isn’t easy in a swamp. When we were done building, we had to employ two witches to spell the area from humans. This is a national park, so we’re breaking many human laws, but it was necessary. We have three small areas like this staked out around the priestess’s perimeter. The Made wolves are a danger to every human they meet, and they also pose a threat to exposing our secret. Supernaturals are cloaked from humans for a reason, and allowing this priestess to break that law is unacceptable. So we’ve done what we saw fit to contain this dreadful situation.”
“What about the fracture pack?” Tyler said, glancing around us. “I can’t believe those deserters live like this in the swamp.” Tyler was referring to the wolves who joined together to move against me. I took out their leader, but they were still operational, which is why my father had come here in the first place.
“No, they set up shop in a nearby populated town. We took out almost all of those wolves when we arrived three weeks ago. They’d already been largely leaderless, so it wasn’t hard to do. Once they were gone, we figured we’d erased the threat. But then we found two Made wolves lurking on the periphery and chased them, and they ultimately led us here.” He spread his arms. “We tracked them all the way in, through this godforsaken swamp, but they disappeared before we could get to them. But we waited them out, and it became clear that was their home base. Since we’ve set up shop, surrounding her, she has struck against us four times, kidnapping our wolves in the middle of the night. I have a total of eight men gone. We have no idea how she’s taking them, but in the process of going up against her, we’ve figured out how to efficiently kill the Made wolves without getting cursed.”
We stopped at a ten-by-ten-foot wooden platform set up with a crude table and chairs and a rain tarp strung up between the trees. “How are you killing them without getting cursed?” I asked, thinking back to the big battle we’d fought with the vamps and witches against the demons, when we first discovered my dad had been cursed. Tally had managed to explode one and Ray had sucked the life out of the others.
“Basically we have to give them a lobotomy. Once their brain function is dead, they crumple like marionettes,” he answered as he pulled out a chair and sat down. He gestured for us to sit. Rourke, Tyler, Danny, and I complied, while Naomi and Ray stood behind. For the first time, I noticed Marcy wasn’t with us. I glanced around the small space. She must have made a beeline to find her man. I smiled, thinking of how sweet their reunion would be.
“How is that done, then?” Danny asked. “Do you have to tear their heads off?”
My father shook his head. “No, we’ve all been carrying these around.” He unsheathed a sharp blade, about three inches long, from its holder on his waist. “We stick it right behind their eye socket. It happened by chance the first time. We’d been breaking their necks, their bones, everything, and those suckers wouldn’t die. We started taking up arms, guns, knives, anything to combat them. Then one attacked and Nicolas managed to get a knife securely into the brain and the thing dropped like a bag of garbage.”
“Oh my goodness, Nick! Where is he?” I asked, restraining myself from jumping out of the chair to go search for him. “I can’t wait to see him.”
“He’s at the far camp, two over from here,” my father answered. “I put him in charge and he’s doing a fine job. He’s grown into a great leader with a keen mind.” There was pride in his voice, and it was nice to hear it. Life growing up on the Compound had never been easy for Nick. And if a fox was in charge of wolves, then his standing in the Pack had definitely gone up since I’d left. “Don’t worry. You’ll see him soon. He’ll be over here tomorrow morning for a prearranged check-in.”