14

8

Brandon

In the aftermath of what had just happened, I sat devastated in the teepee, watching the smoke from the pipe trail to the hole in the top. The benevolent faces of the elders watched me with sanguine expressions, all of them thinking the same thing, none of them saying it out loud.

“Brandon,” Father Thomas spoke finally.

I had no heart to hear what he had to say. I had no heart left. Getting rejected twice by Alice had made sure that my heart was a pile of shattered shards. It was up to some other organ to pick up the slack and pump the blood in my veins. People say that feelings don’t hurt. People lie. My pain was physical, permeating into every single cell, every organ.

“Brandon,” Father Ernest chimed in.

“Listen,” I began, but they both brought their hands up.

“As much as your anguish is real, as much as your grief is palpable, there is a lesson in this,” Father Sigmund said. He was the oldest of the elders and spoke the littlest, but whenever he spoke, people paid special heed to him. The rumor around the reservation was that Father Sigmund had made a deal with the spirits, granting him eternal life. Since we were such a closed community, these rumors didn’t take long to start and spread. The man looked like he was a hundred years old. If that was what immortality looked like, I didn’t want it. More importantly, I didn’t want any sort of life if it was not with Alice.

“Lesson, Father?”

“Yes. You rushed things. You plunged this girl into the waters of the unknown, not knowing how she would react. You did not give her a chance to ease into things. Maybe if you had been patient, this wouldn’t have come to pass. That, my dear child, is the lesson,” Father Sigmund said.

At that moment, I wanted to punch a hole in his face.

“The rage you feel is real. It is powerful, a weapon of the young, a force that makes them feel invincible. I suggest you direct it to the right cause,” Father Thomas said. “If fate has written it, then you and Alice will end up together. If fate has weaved a different design, then try as you might, you won’t be able to make it happen.”

“What do you wish of me?” I asked. There was no strength left in me to fight with anyone, whether it was a verbal altercation or one involving an exchange of claws.

“What Alice shared with us has given us an edge over our enemy. The Department of Preternatural Control has been out to get us for quite some time now. At least now we have a timeline of when they’re going to attack. A rough timeline, but a timeline, nevertheless. I want you to take your responsibility as an alpha seriously. Go scout the area and see if they have closed their ranks around us or not. Protect us, as you swore to protect us,” Father Ernest said.

I bowed to the elders and took my leave. As I was feeling pretty pathetic with my human self, it was a good idea that they’d suggested I go scout, since I could do it better in my other form.

At the precipice of the reservation, I shifted and became a wolf. The sensation of becoming at one with the beast within you was always calming, like lemon balm tea. My emotions became primitive whenever I transformed, helping me keep to myself and focus on my tasks instead of wasting away my time thinking about things that were out of my control.

Such as Alice. She had made it clear that she wanted no part in my life. It was out of my hands. Well, paws. When wolves hurt, they don’t cry as humans do. They whimper. It did not befit me to whimper, seeing as how I was supposed to be the alpha, but who the hell cared? I was in the woods. There wasn’t anyone around. I could do with a few whimpers.

I let out my sorrow morosely by lifting my face to the moon, howling.

I wasn’t exactly done when my ears picked up on a series of sounds that did not seem like they were exactly natural to the forest. Mechanical sounds. Clicking sounds that indicated something unnatural was afoot. Was it the DOPC? Were they this near to us already?

I stealthily climbed atop the hill and scoured the area with my eyes. My vision improved whenever I shifted. I could see in more than just colors. I could sense sounds with my whole body. I could feel the heartbeats of all the living things around me. My senses became keen, allowing me to become attuned with the forest, using it as an extension of myself to gaze around.

I crept along the forest, using the trees as cover, the darkness as my path, to get nearer to where the unnatural sounds were emitting from. I expected to find DOPC trucks, a tank, and a couple dozen soldiers. Alice was so selfish, thinking it was all about her. What about the trauma she had inflicted on me? Ever since she had told me that she had seen me die, I kept thinking about DOPC soldiers around every corner.

As I turned the bend, I saw to my surprise that they weren’t DOPC henchmen, but simple campers throwing empty beer cans into the bonfire. The cans exploded and crackled in the flames. Hell, they were just kids. Didn’t they know better than not to camp in the middle of nowhere in a deep forest where all manners of feral creatures dwelled?

I decided that I’d give them a scare. For their own good.

I growled from behind the shadows, making sure they got a good look at me. As I crouched nearer, I could see their expressions turn frantic. They screamed and ran for the road.

It was an asshole-ish thing to do but doing so made me feel a little bit better.

I scouted along the rest of the perimeter of Rapid Falls, slowing down my speed when I neared Alice’s home. I didn’t know why I did that. All I knew was, regardless of whether she had rejected me or not, I had to make sure she was safe.

There was no sign of the DOPC in the area. This didn’t mean that we were safe from them. If there was one thing I knew about the enemy, they worked in stealth and deception. They might already have some agents among us, masquerading as people we know.