2

Adrian’s POV

“Dammit Alec you stupid son of a bitch!”

I bang my fist hard on the surface of my desk, causing a huge crack to form there.

“Adrian, calm down! You won’t do your brother any good if you keep punching stuff. We need to figure out a way to locate him” said Derek, my beta, grimly.

I gave him a hard look and said sternly “There is no fucking way we haven’t tried Derek! They must have cast a spell on him to prevent us from locating him. Goddess only knows if he’s even alive right now!”

“I’m sure he is. Why would they kill his whole army and kidnap him if he’s already dead? If they wanted him dead, they would have left his body with the rest of them for us to find” said Derek firmly.

“Well, why would they kidnap him in the first place? That’s what I don’t get. The only thing I can think of is…” I couldn’t even say it out loud, but I’ve been thinking about it. And I can tell Derek was thinking the same thing.

They’re torturing him. Maybe for information about the location of our pack or just to have fun.

All I know is, my younger by two years brother Alec has been missing for two days now and if I don’t find him soon, I’m going to raise hell on earth.

I told him it was a bad idea to go after the Victor pack. But the idiot did not listen to me and went after them anyway.

He has made it his life’s mission to go after them and hunt every last member of them. And for good reason. The assholes killed our father nine years ago.

I should probably start at the beginning.

My name is Adrian Wilson. I am twenty nine years old. I have been the alpha of my pack for nine years now, I took over the position after my father died.

Our pack is called the La Crosse pack. We are located in La Crosse, Kansas. We have a population of over five hundred werewolves here.

Nine years ago, we were living in peace. Our pack was, but we knew there was a lot of danger lurking out there, and we trained very hard to fight it if it ever comes to our territory.

Rogue packs have been a threat to all of our werewolf community for a very long time.

They are a huge threat to the stability of our society.

And they have been targeting vulnerable packs who couldn’t defend themselves, killing everyone in it; even the children and the women. They are vicious and soulless.

Nine years ago, they attacked a nearby pack of ours; seventeen minutes away, the Otis pack.

The poor pack didn’t stand a chance against them because they didn’t have a lot of numbers.

My father couldn’t stand by and do nothing as he heard the howling sounds of distress traveling over to our territory. He decided to fight them. We gathered a huge number of our best fighters and headed over to help save whoever was left in that pack.

We killed many of them. They were very strong and skilled, but so were we. However, my father was extremely injured during the fight, his wolf was unable to repair the damage. Our wolves have the power to heal us quickly but with old age; I’m talking about old being like a hundred years old or so, the wolf starts getting weaker. He didn’t make it.

When the rogues realized they were going to lose, they ran away, leaving behind a mess for us to clean up after them. They left their injured members as well and we took advantage of that by learning the name of that pack. It was called the Victor pack named after its alpha. And it made sense really. Our packs are called by the name of the place we live in like La Crosse and Otis, but when you don’t really belong anywhere, you can only name it after yourself.

The Otis pack was saved but its alpha and beta were killed along with a considerable number of their ranked fighters. They didn’t have a figure of authority to pick up the task of protecting them if the rogues ever decided to retaliate.

I had two options; with me automatically inheriting the alpha position after my father passed away, I could either have them join our pack and submit to me, making them leave their homes and their land, or I could appoint an alpha for them to help them prosper again and stand on their feet. I decided to appoint my brother Alec as their alpha. He was eighteen at the time.

It's not really heard of that two brothers get to be alphas of their own packs. Usually, the younger brother becomes the beta for his older brother, to help him and protect him like a brother would, and to take over if the older brother dies. But, one of the last lessons that my father taught me before he died, was equality. And I knew he would have wanted for Alec to be an alpha as well. And so he did. We still combine our resources and share everything between our two packs. We were divided by land but united by blood.

That was the moment where me and my brother stood on completely opposite places with what happened next after that battle.

We were brothers who despite not being twins, looked exactly the same in physical appearance that people sometimes confused us for each other. But that’s about the only thing we have in common. We have completely different personalities and mentalities.

Alec and I were more devastated than we’ve ever been after dad’s loss. But each of us handled our grief in different ways.

It was logical. Alec was more like my father while I was more like my mother who passed away shortly after dad did. He and dad were both always driven into action, they don’t like sitting around and doing nothing, they always like to be on the move, to right the wrongs of this world, to hunt down the evil; be it a werewolf pack thirsty for more power, or a warlock causing mayhem in another pack. They were always willing to stick their necks out to save the innocents.

While I was more of the cautious, peaceful type, the logical type who resorts to violence only when it’s my last possible option.

It’s not fear, self doubt, or weakness. It’s survival, reason, and wisdom.

I don’t go charging into a fight if I can’t guarantee a perfect win. I don’t jeopardize the safety of the people I’m supposed to be responsible for if I don’t know what I’m going to face exactly.

For me, the pack; my pack, comes first above everything else, even above other packs having their own werewolf or warlock problem.

I keep danger away, by minding my own business instead of meddling in other’s, and keep my pack safe in the process.

My idiot of a brother doesn’t see it that way, he never did. And I got tired of being a broken record, so I let him do whatever he wants, on the condition that who ever joins him from our pack to fight is going out of his or her own free will.

We had the perfect system set up for both of us in the past nine years since we became alphas.

I deal with the day to day packs business needed to keep them thriving and everything it involves; which he considered as the boring part of being an alpha, while he takes over security, training, and keeping our packs safe from outer threats. While on the side, he goes hunting for trouble; or what he likes to call it: bringing justice and order to our world.

And let’s not forget the part where he spends his remaining free time looking for the Victor pack to avenge my father’s death. It’s this part that got his ass kidnapped in the first place and got a huge number of our pack members killed.

Over the following years after they attacked the Otis pack, the Victor pack kept attacking the weaker packs, one by one. They weren’t stopping, and why would they? They were winning. And they were building a hell of a reputation along the way.

No matter how much Alec dug behind them, he was never able to get to their base camp in time. He would always arrive late, after they already cleared out and moved on.

Until two days ago, he tracked them down where they massacred a small pack down in Connecticut. He found a man on the verge of dying, they must have left him by mistake thinking he was dead. He was one of the rogues. My brother persuaded him to say where they were going to next through painful means until he got his answer.

Alec acted right away by taking his best fighters along with his warlock to help portal them, and charged right into that forest where they were staying for the night.

The bloody rogue turned out to be right. They were definitely hiding there.

Alec and his army even killed more than a hundred of them, but it wasn’t good enough. The rogues must have outnumbered them. They killed everyone, even the poor warlock.

We found their bodies scattered around when my warlock portaled us there right after I lost my mind link with Alec.

I cannot begin to describe the amount of fear I felt go through me when I couldn’t link with him anymore. I thought I lost him too. But when I found everyone’s body but him, my fear lessened a bit, but didn’t entirely vanish. I need to find him. I need to find him and kill him with my bare hands for making me go through this hell of a fright that he’s causing me to feel right now.

Let’s not forget the amount of fighters we just lost. Some were the very best we ever had. Gone. Our packs were struck with so much grief at the loss of these men and women who lost their lives there.

That’s exactly why I was against this fight in the first place. It wasn’t worth it, especially when they won and survived. The rogues have been gaining the upper hand by increasing their numbers and training harder for a while and now we just poked them, antagonized them. And lost valuable members of our pack for it. There was no silver lining here. Goddess only knows what is being done to him at this moment.

Before I could punch another hole into my office wall, my cell phone; that I use for conducting business with the humans, pinged indicating that I just received a message.

I ignored it and stood in front of my floor to ceiling glass wall overlooking a view of the whole pack. My heart was catching on fire, frantic with worry over Alec. My wolf Lennox was also agitated. He wanted some action to release our pent up frustration.

“What the hell!” my beta exclaims in surprise.

I turned around and saw him staring at my phone in confusion.

“What?” I asked in irritation, I didn’t have time to deal with a human problem right now. Whatever it was.

“I think it’s your brother” he said slowly while still staring at the screen.

My eyebrows furrowed as I raced across my desk towards where he was standing in front of it and snatched the phone to see for myself.

There was a shared location.

But it wasn’t the address that stopped me short, it was the signed name at the end of it.

-Hot Dog

It’s the nickname I call Alec with most of the time. It’s a symbol of his recklessness. While he always calls me Yoda, teasing me about inheriting all the wisdom gene first without leaving some for him when I was in my mom’s womb.

“Gather everyone to prepare for a battle. We’re going all in on this one” I said tightly.

“Somehow, I doubt they let him borrow a phone out of the goodness of their hearts. Or steal one long enough to send you his location” said Derek carefully.

“If it’s not Alec, how did they find my number?” I asked him tightly, still staring at the nickname.

“They either tortured it out of him in order to lure us into a trap, or he had the phone on him when they caught him and used it to send you a message through it, either way… it’s a trap” he said firmly.

“So what? You want me to leave my brother to die?” I ask in a hard tone.

He rolls his eyes “Of course not! I’m just saying we can’t go marching in there head on. We need a plan to ambush them when they least expect it, and it’s going to be a little hard if they know we are coming”

I smiled darkly “They don’t know we’re coming trust me. Just do as you’re told, Derek”

He looks at me with furrowed eyebrows, not really convinced, but I was confident that it wasn’t a trap.

It’s the signature. Alec knew what he was doing when he asked whoever wrote and sent this message to me to write down that nickname.

We only call each other Yoda and Hot Dog when we are completely alone. It’s our inside joke, no one knows about it but us.

And he wouldn’t have had whoever that person was sign that name unless he was trying to tell me that this isn’t a trap, otherwise it would have just said Alec.

But the question still remains.

A rogue is betraying the pack and helping my brother out. One of them is helping him, a werewolf who attacked them and killed some of them.

If it wasn’t for that signature, I would have never trusted this message and the help behind it to be true.

But still….why in the world would one of them help us?