Chapter 2 - Jackson

                   Six months later

         We had steadily rebuilt our pack, as strongly as we could. The attacks once more had shifted from our pack to neighbouring ones. The Night Shade Pack and it’s Alpha were becoming more irrational and brutal with their needless attacks. They had overturned smaller packs, slaughtering many or leaving them homeless and forcing them rogue in order to gain control of their land and pack. Where this Alpha had managed to build his forces from we were uncertain, this region had always been a peaceful one, until recent years. Until the Rhodes family came into power of the Night Shade Pack. And now we all suffered. 

      “Hey Jackson” Cayden, my pack Beta greeted me as he walked into the office. “We have arranged some interviews for the accountancy and business support role you were wanting.”

       Cayden and I had struggled over the past six months with the losses of our mates, feeling as Alpha and Beta we should have been better prepared in protecting them, but sadly, we were not the only ones having lost mates and we were ones of many pack members grieving, so we felt we had to put on a brave face around pack to show our solitude, show our support. We were getting there slowly. We still felt pain, and  greatly felt the loss.

    Those girls were made for us. The moon goddess had chosen them especially for us. I had been with Ava for merely a year, and Cayden with Lily for a little over eighteen months. That was nothing. Nothing in comparison to the life you imagine you will have together when you meet your fated mate. The one that is made to be your other half. Your soul mate.

      It still destroys me, the thought of growing old without her. Not having children. Not seeing her smiling, or laughing again. Not waking up beside her… My father keeps talking of a chosen mate, suggesting I consider this option to secure an heir for our pack, our family name, but I cannot even consider another mate. Not now. Ava was mine. I do not want that to change. The pain from her loss is still there and I know that Cayden feels the same about the loss of Lily because he is the only one I can truly talk to about how I feel. 

       “Earth to Jackson” Cayden disturbs my wandering mind.

       “Hmm?” I realise I had let my mind run away with itself once again, it seems to be doing a lot of that of late. I need to focus. I quickly look to him, he has a smirk on his face. 

      “The accountancy and business support role you wanted someone for?” Cayden reminds me. “Well we arranged some interviews. My Mum is friends with the former Beta’s wife at River Ash Pack, she recommended their daughter, recently qualified, looking for work, currently helping out at their pack, but said she would be willing to help here too. Qualifications are good. All the others are not from packs if you catch my drift.”

      I knew instantly what he meant. The role we wanted filling was not one many of the people in pack studied for. So we had been struggling to find someone to fill it, looking around for someone for quite sometime now. Knowing that bringing someone into pack would be awkward if they were not a werewolf, so it would mean hiring an office off pack in human territory to avoid an awkward questions. So, if this daughter of the former Beta had a decent reference then she could well be ideal.

      I nod. “Thanks Cay.”  

     “Ariella was asking after you again” he smiles as he leaves the room, knowing he will irritate me by saying this.

     I throw the nearest thing to to me at the closing door, it being a book, making a thud at the door as it hits with some force.

     ‘Aww, did I hit a nerve?’ Cayden mindlinks with a chuckle, clearly having heard me throw the book at the door as he left.

     He knows how much Ariella freaks me out. She has been following me around since the day we lost Ava and Lily. Desperate to talk to me. To discuss her vision and the prophecy she had handed me. And the ever additional visions she says she has. I just think she is lonely and finds excuses to talk to people.

    She has always been around in our pack, she had grown up here, I swear she had been here longer than the actual pack had, and likely would be here longer than the rest if us ever would be. There was something that creepy about her. We used to joke around about her when we were growing up that maybe she was a ghost?! The more I think of that now, I am beginning to question if that could be possible. She sure seems to just appear without you even noticing! And seems to know alot of the things going on around pack... 

      I don’t know, but she terrified me, always had since being a child. But my father would regularly meet with her, for these visions she apparently had. These foresights,  images, hallucinations… yeah, maybe that was what they were. She took things that made her hallucinate? That made more sense to me than the things she came out with. Why else would she be able to see these things that she believed were going to happen?

   But, for whatever the reason, my father believed the words she came out with, listened intently, used her words to guide him, help him keep our pack safe. Well, that had worked, I guess, to a point. Until the nutjobs that were the Rhodes family suddenly descended on our region. Brought hostitlity and conflict to our lands, an unease and foreboding restlessness we could not shake.

    Hmm, whatever, it was, Ariella was intent on stalking me of late, adamant she had messages for me. Well, as far as I was concerned she could keep her messages, I had no clue who or where they were from, knowing her she was likely communicating with the devil, well he can keep his messages, thank you very much!

    The scroll, or prophecy as she had since referred to it as, that she had given me on the day Ava had passed away had been read, so many times, confused me, so many times and still made no sense. It was written in riddles, or a spell, who knows? It was written much like Ariella spoke, never making much sense.   

     Written on what looked like old parchment, making me question if she was in fact a witch or some weird shit like that. That would not surprise me with her, she certainly had an aura about her that put me on edge. After about a week of keeping it on my office desk, looking at it frequently, reading it, and reading again, asking Cayden for his opinion, which resulted in him asking if I was joining Hogwarts, I gave up.   Deciding I was gaining nothing from the thing, if anything it was slowly sending me insane, and considering the situation I was already in having lost my mate, I felt I was already close to that point as it already was, I needed no further help in tipping me over the edge…

       So the scroll was rolled back up, tied up, and thrown in the bottom drawer of my desk with no intention of looking at it again, with no better understanding of what it meant, or what Ariella was babbling on about when she mentioned this better future. Though did she even know what she meant? Did she even knew what she meant half the time? Was that why she spoke in riddles, so she confused people because she didn’t really know what she was talking of? Maybe this better future was one with her gone? That would sure ease my mind! Her just leaving me alone would ease my mind.

      Though our pack, our region could most certainly do with a better future. This perpetual, seemingly never-ending, battle raging against The Night Shade Pack was becoming tiresome, not just to our pack but to all those in the surrounding areas. We needed a break, we needed something to stop them, but there seemed no way, he was simply too strong, too powerful even if we worked all together…