Chapter 6

I saw the welcome sign to the quiet town of Willowbrooke. There were no stoplights and we were the only car on the road.

Two minutes later, as I observed the vast empty land masses, I felt a jolt of electricity rush down my spine, startling me upright.

“woah!” I exclaimed.

“Did you all feel that?”

“What?” One of the pack members in the back asked.

“Like an electric shock.”

They shook their heads.

“I think the Hollow Moon pack put something around these boarders to keep out other packs.”

They remained silent but I could see the doubtful glances they exchanged with each other.

Rightfully so.

If they tampered with the boarders of Willowbrooke, then why was I the only one that felt it?

And why was it pleasurable?

Electric shocks induced pain, yet it left a quiet pleasurable hum vibrating in my body. A low dose of adrenaline dancing underneath my skin.

I suddenly felt alert.

“Are you cool boss? Do you sense anything unusual?” Drake the werewolf driving asked, observing me.

I tilted my head to the side suspicious, then sniffed. “I don’t know. I’m catching up on something and it’s not werewolf. It’s not even dangerous.”

I sniffed deeper. “Just old.”

I sniffed again. “And warm.”

I inhaled deeply. “And comfortable.”

“Can we pet it?” One of the younger werewolves asked jokingly, making the other four laugh.

“No.” I answered defensively curt, making them all flinch. The car ride turned to silence.

I don’t know where that came from. Why did I feel protective of a sensation all of a sudden.

I rolled down the window to let in air so I could let this awkwardness in the car out.

The further we headed into Willowbrooke, the stronger whatever this was got.

I felt like I was tuned into a frequency only I could understand. It was calling to me, making me feel alive, like I’d just snorted a line of cocaine.

When we reached the junction, Drake took the road away from the town.

No, I screamed internally. Follow the frequency. It’s calling, can’t you hear it.

But instead I restlessly shifted in my sit. I could see from my peripheral vision, the telltale frown of concern on Drake’s face.

He was worried about me. I deliberately ignored him.

By the time we reached the Hollow Moon pack’s meeting point to begin negotiations, it was still there.

Faint and now directionless. Like a compass needle that had found magnetic north but had not yet decided to commit to pointing at it.

———

The Hollow Moon pack had called the outskirts of Willowbrooke home for years, but a rogue vampire that held a grudge against their lineage had finally found them, according to a magic spell they kept to track him.

In the 1910s, it was one of the biggest and most powerful packs that existed in the region.

One day, the then alpha—Zephyr, sniffed a vampire in the area and in his quest for power, decided to hunt it down.

Vampires were immortal beings that lived for centuries to centenaries at a time. They also possessed supernatural abilities that increased the longer they lived. They only hunted human beings because they were their primary food source. They tended to themselves, avoiding other supernatural beings and usually traveled solo, until they found a mate and then they become inseparable.

Hunting a vampire was not only a prestigious honor and task in the werewolf world, but it was rumored that if you killed a vampire, whatever powers they had were passed on to you, except the immortality bit. You’d however age at a slower rate, 10 times lesser than the average werewolf.

The only way to kill a vampire was by a wooden stake of old that was formed by the first coven of witches to ever exist. But that coven had also been annihilated in the 1400s during the witch burnings. The only existing stake had belonged to the alpha Zephyr. No one knew how he acquired it but it was rumored to be a family heirloom secretly passed down from generation to generation.

The reason that vampire was in town was to collect the dagger from Zephyr.

Vampires tended to collect every single object that could harm them, and this one was one of them.

The vampire named James, came to the Hollow moon keep in peace and during a dinner organized by alpha Zephyr, he informed that he needed the weapon and if they didn’t hand it over peacefully, then he would have to take it forcefully.

As alpha Zephyr entertained the vampire, one of his little sons, who was about ten years of age, came behind the vampire and stabbed him right in the chest. The vampire was still alive, trying to grasp at the dagger when alpha Zephyr came and drove it deeper and as the life force left the vampire, it transferred to the werewolf. That had been the plan all along. To catch the vampire unawares. And what better way than to use an innocent.

They’d celebrated and burned the body. And after much wining and dining, they’d fallen asleep.

One thing alpha Zephyr didn’t know about James the Vampire is that he was mated. His mate Jefferson had stayed behind to scout the premises and learn all the keep’s corners. So when they killed his mate, they hadn’t been aware of his existence yet.

When a mated vampire lost their mate, they tended to follow them by killing themselves, but not before eliminating the threat that led to the demise of their beloved, even if it took centuries.

In the morning, everyone in the keep had been found dead. From alpha Zephyr to the little boy. The dagger had been destroyed, reduced to ashes.

There has been no warning note. No explanation. Just death.

By the end of the week, the Hollow Moon pack had reduced from three thousand werewolves to one thousand seven hundred.

It was at that moment they realized that the vampire they had killed had been mated. And he was seeking revenge.

The pack had started running, splitting in smaller groups so that they wouldn’t be found easily. But over the years he’d found them, and the remaining twelve survivors had relocated to the lands they owned in Willowbrooke. But they were too small to defend their borders, too depleted to sustain a functioning pack life.

Their origins were in the mountains. Old, ancestral land. They had decided to return to it. To go back to where their bloodline started and live there, away from the obligations of territory and pack politics.

But the land they were leaving behind had value. And rather than abandon it, they decided to sell it to the Darkhowl pack, the most powerful pack in the region and the only one with the resources and reach to absorb that territory cleanly.

I traveled to Willowbrooke personally because pack law required that the receiving Alpha stood on the soil during the transfer. No proxy could complete it. It had to be me.

The negotiation took longer than I expected. They were supposed to only last three days.

Part of pack law was that when you went to negotiate or trade anything with another pack, you were to be their guest for three days, so you’d familiarize with each other.

Except after the third day, elder Alfred delayed.

“One more day. Just one more day is all I ask for.“

I could see the sadness and grief he carried in his shoulders and eyes. I granted him that day out of respect.

“Just one more day. The full moon begins tomorrow and the men want to be with their mates. You know what that’s like.”

“I don’t. We can’t recall the last time any of us felt safe enough to feel.” He said somberly.

Kieran nodded.

Aurelia wasn’t going to like this one bit.