Secret Girl

Oliver

I walked down a footpath leading away from the back of the packhouse. I had my head down, looking at my feet. This path wasn’t anywhere near as worn as it should have been. I wasn’t making my way out this direction enough. I felt guilty at that thought. I couldn’t really claim it was because of how busy things were with the pack; we had had peace for so long, and the hierarchy operated like a well oiled machine. I could take a couple hours to pay this particular Elder a visit more often.

She lived alone now, her mate dying five years previously from the slow decline of heartbreak, after their son had passed. I often wondered how the death of their only child and the death of her mate didn’t take her, too. Her mental fortitude was one of the things that garnered her a place as an elder.

I came up to her cottage. It sat about a mile away from the packhouse, a few hundred yards inside the forest that surrounded the town, but still well within our territory borders. She defi