2, Going back

Rayvin was sitting in her car and was staring at the phone in her hand. The conversation she had had with alpha Brutus just moments ago still shocked her. She had expected him to understand why she had asked to hand over the case to someone else. 

She had done most of the heavy lifting, and the man was a human. He wasn’t exactly hard to track. But her alpha had said no.

“Auga, we don’t give up halfway to our goal. How would it look if I let you off the hook on this one? We always follow through on our missions. And this is for luna Bella, nothing but the best will do,” he had told her. 

“Fuck,” she angrily shouted and banged her fist against the steering wheel.

She had a valid reason not to do this mission and alpha Brutus knew it. All the talk about sticking to the mission was bullshit. This was one of his ‘face your demons and grow as a warrior’ life lessons. That was the only reason she could think of for him to be sending her back to the one place she didn’t want to go.

The Whiteriver pack. Rayvin hadn’t thought she would ever think of going back there. In fact, she had spent years making sure that there were no traces that could tie her to that pack. 

Rayvin took a deep breath and started her car, a silver-coloured Prius. It wasn’t the fanciest car. Which was the whole point of it. No one looked twice at it, it blended into most surroundings and was quiet to drive. Everything she needed. 

She drove to a drive-through and ordered their largest black coffee and an array of doughnuts. If she was going to do this, she needed her two favourite drugs, caffeine and sugar. 

She could fly up north and rent a car. But then she would have to use a fake name and even then, it would leave a paper trace. If she drove, she would have a couple of days to figure out how to handle this.

As Rayvin prepared for the long drive and fed the coordinates into her GPS she thought back nine years. The moment she had been dropped off by the bus stop, she had pulled out her phone and dialled the number entered as Emergency B.

“Brutus Windwalker,” a man had answered. 

At first, Rayvin hadn’t known what to say. She had remained silent until the alpha had asked if there was anyone there. 

Rayvin had told him who she was and what had happened in a shaky voice. It had taken her almost half an hour to tell him everything. 

“Where does the bus go?” alpha Brutus had asked her.

Rayvin did not know, but after consulting the sign at the bus stop, she told him the end destination was Detroit. 

“Do you have enough money to buy a ticket?” he asked.

“Yes, and to stay in a motel for a couple of nights if necessary,” Rayvin told him.

“When you get on the bus, text me the time when you will arrive in Detroit. My men will be waiting for you. They will ask if your name is Auga. You can trust them,” alpha Brutus told her.

“Okay. What happens then?” she had asked.

“Then they will take you home,” he said.

“Home?”

“Yes, your new home is in my pack. Your father was a good friend of mine, more like a brother. His daughter will always have a home in my pack. My men will bring you home and you will rest for a while. Then we will talk about your future,” alpha Brutus had told her. 

Rayvin had seventeen hours to think on that bus. She had done a lot of thinking, mostly about her father, this unknown man that she only remembered from her mother’s stories about him. And about Mikael. 

Even after all this time, Rayvin still got a pang of longing in her stomach when she thought about Mikael. The friendship they had shared had meant the world to her growing up. 

He had been her hero, the brave and strong protector that, together with Ben, had been the cornerstone in her childhood escapades. As they got older, her feelings for Mikael changed. Rayvin smiled at the thought of her crush on the alpha’s son. 

It had been innocent, and she had never expected anything to come from it. Mikael would take over the pack and he was good-looking. The single females in the pack had all had their eyes on him. 

But Rayvin knew he was waiting for his true mate. His parents had been chosen mates, and he had lived with the consequences of their choice. He always told Rayvin that he would never do that. 

In the first months after going to live with the Mistvalley pack, Rayvin had fantasised about going back. To wait until Mikael became alpha and then ask if she could return. 

Then alpha Brutus put her in contact with her family on her father’s side. After the first meeting, Rayvin knew she would never go back to the Whiteriver pack. She would never contact Mikael again. 

Instead, she had turned to the training. If her experiences until then had taught her anything, it had been that she needed to be able to protect herself. Alpha Brutus had her using her special abilities, training them to the point where they became just as natural for her to use as shifting. 

Her abilities easily made her one of the top agents within the pack. In the Mistvalley pack results, strength and usefulness were what mattered. A useless warrior was treated as lower in rank than a useful omega. 

As she was driving toward North Dakota, Rayvin knew that this was the final test from her alpha. If she passed this test to his satisfaction, he would name her beta of the Mistvalley pack. 

If she could prove that she truly had left her old life behind her, she would cease to be Rayvin and fully become Auga, the alias that had stuck from that first day. 

Rayvin thought it was what she wanted. But she also doubted if it was possible for her to do. When she had heard that Mikael had been at the battle with the rogues, every fibre of her had wanted to go and just catch a glimpse of him. 

But she hadn’t. She knew a glimpse wouldn’t be enough. She had focused on her part of the mission instead, and tried to block out the fact that he had been there. 

Now she was driving straight into his pack. There would be no escaping meeting him, talking to him, and then leaving him again. 

Rayvin pulled up to a cheap motel. She could afford better accommodations, but places like this took cash and didn’t ask too many questions. When she was spread out on top of the bed in her room, she tried to empty her mind to get some sleep.

It didn’t really work. She kept making up scenarios of what would happen the following day. Rayvin knew he had been looking for her and she felt guilty for making sure he wouldn’t succeed. She could have reached out and explained things. She should have done that, but she always had the feeling that she wouldn’t be able to walk away a second time. 

Walking away from him the first time had nearly broken her. She didn’t want to think about how it would feel if she did it a second time. Now she didn’t have a choice. 

That wasn’t technically true. She could disobey her alpha, say screw this to everything. But what then? Go live with her father’s family? Become a lone wolf? No, neither of those things was appealing. 

She sighed and turned on her side. She was just going to be a big girl and suck it up. Rayvin would go to her old pack, and she would talk and be nice to her old friend and get the job done. Then she would leave and start training for her new position in the pack.

It was well past lunch the following day when Rayvin started getting close to the pack borders. The landscape looked like a Christmas card and she allowed herself to admit that she missed the snow. They got snow at home as well, but not like this, she thought as she looked at the jagged rocks and evergreen trees that were covered in a thick blanket of snow.

She started to recognise the surroundings and her wolf and the other creature inside of her both told her she was home. Irritated, Rayvin tried to tell them that this was not home. But the stupid animals wouldn’t listen to her. 

She stopped a little bit away from the turnoff road that would lead her to the pack land. She erased the location from her GPS and, out of habit, scrubbed its memory. No need to get sloppy just because she knew where she was going. 

As she drove down the gravel road, she was stopped by the gates by an unfamiliar wolf in a guard uniform. Rayvin assessed him as he walked over to her window. He looked like he knew what he was doing, she reluctantly thought. 

“Goodday ma’am. Do you have a purpose visiting our pack land?” the guard asked. 

Rayvin enjoyed the fleeting confusion she saw on his face as he scented her and could feel that she was a werewolf and something that he couldn’t place. 

“Hello, yes, I’m here as a visitor. I’m the agent from Mistvalley,” she told him and made the effort to smile.

“You are expected, ma’am, your name?” he asked with a nod. 

Rayvin would usually give one of her aliases, or at least give the nickname she used. But that wouldn’t do any good here.

“Rayvin Gullnauga,” she therefore said and watched as the guard mind linked someone. 

“Sorry, ma’am, I need to see an ID,” he then told her. This time she smiled genuinely. Someone on the other end of that mind link knew who she was. She wondered who it was as she pulled out her real driver’s license from its hiding place in her glove compartment. 

“Here you go,” she smiled at the guard and handed him her license. 

He carefully examined the ID and then looked at her to confirm it was her. He then mind linked with someone again.

“Please follow the road until you see the pack house, a large timber-frame house. You really can’t miss it. The beta will be waiting for you there,” the guard smiled at her and handed back her driver’s licence. 

“Thank you,” she smiled at him and waited for him to open the gate. 

She drove the last part through the forest and smiled again as she drove across the bridge that took her over the river that had given the pack its name. As the forest opened up into the open area where the village and the pack house were, her animals once again told her they were home. 

Rayvin wished that there was a way to shut them up as she drove through the village. She saw the gigantic pack house that stood at the foot of the rock formation at the other end of the village and the memories flooded back. 

She focused on her breathing and did some exercises she used to slow her pulse in the field as she drove out of the village and started the final stretch up to the pack house. 

She parked the car and got out.

“Well, call me stupid and drag my ass over a cheese grader, it really is you,” someone laughed. 

Rayvin turned towards the voice and saw Ben walking towards her from the pack house.

“Hello beta,” she smiled.

“Where on earth have you been, Vinnie?” he asked as he drew her into a hug. Rayvin was caught off guard, but she gave him a quick hug and let go.

“All around,” she replied. 

“No fuck. Look at you all grown up and an agent of the Mistvalley pack,” he grinned.

“Look who’s speaking Mr Beta with a mate,” she told him.

“I would ask how you knew that, but the whole agent from Mistvalley explains it,” he laughed. 

“Oh man, Mike is going to blow a gasket,” he then said. 

“Yeah, probably,” Rayvin agreed. 

“He asked me to send you up to his office. He wants to go through some things for your stay,” Ben said. 

“Does he know I’m here?” she asked.

“That the agent is here? Yes. That it’s you? No. I needed to make sure it really was you. Do you think he would be calmly sitting in his office working if he knew you were here?” he smiled.

“It’s been a long time,” she shrugged. 

“That it has, my friend. Go on up, I think you know the way,” Ben told her. 

Rayvin nodded and walked towards the big pack house.