The button.

Ollen sprung to his feet.

"Where did you find them?" He asked.

"In front of our board near the Sea and Moons pack." Sam replied.

Ollen didn't ask anymore questions. Instead, he marched himself out of his office, out the main pack house, and towards the border, while I silently followed after him.

The scent slapped me across the face. It was the scent of death. The closer we got, the worse the smell got.

I caught sight of Sam standing with a few men surrounding an area, looking down at what I assumed were the bodies of the deceased man and woman.

They stepped aside when they saw us approach. I gasped at the sight. The two soldiers were bristally murdered.

The man's neck was broken, blood spilling from the slash across his abdomen. It covered the ground under him, evident that he must have died a while back, maybe during the fire.

The woman, on the other hand, had a huge bite mark on the side of her neck. Whoever bit her had taken a chuckle of her flesh with them, leaving her to bleed out. She also had a stab wound on her back, her one arm broken.

"Were there any different scents?" Ollen asked.

"Not any we could catch. The scent of their blood was too overpowering to catch anything else." Sam replied.

Ollen ran his fingers through his hair.

I knew everyone believed who killed the two wolves. The fact that they were at the border near the Sea and Moons pack made it obvious.

"Take them to pack hospital and have them prepared. We'll hold their send-off ceremony tonight." Ollen ordered, his voice tense.

I felt a lump in my throat as I catched the men carefully carrying Hemeg and Ruth to the hospital, my heart breaking at the loss of the two.

Tears filled my eyes, and I couldn't control the defeat and devastation I was feeling. I felt like I'd just lost two family members, people I grew up with, and people I wanted to protect. I don't even remember having any personal conversation with the two, but it felt like a part of me was gone.

"Are you okay? Ollen asked.

"I don't know." I whispered, covering my face with my hands as I cried into my palm.

I felt his hand on my arm first before he pulled me into a hug. He patted my back even though I should be the one comforting him. He knew them years longer than I did. He ate with them around the same dining table, yet he was comforting me.

"Luna's have it harder when it comes to a loss in the pack." Ollen commented as if he heard my thoughts. "You feeling this way means that you are deeply connected with the pack."

I nodded my head.

That was a good thing, I guess. But it still hurt more than anything I have ever experienced.

Ollen held me for a while longer, rubbing his hand up and down my back, until I felt calm enough to leave.

We made our way to the pack hospital, the link between our minds still open.

Heaven was cleaning the woman soldier while another man, a doctor, cleared the man.

I stepped closer to Heaven to help her out, needing to be a part of the process so I could at least do this one thing for them.

"You don't have to be here." Ollen commented through the mind link, standing by the door.

"I want to be here." I replied. "I want to help."

I helped Heaven slowly take off the clothes of the soldier while listening to Ollen's thoughts. He was thinking about how he was going to avenge the fallen soldiers without putting the rest of his people in harms way. He was one hundred percent certain that the killer were from the Sea and Moons pack, and he was starting to believe that the warehouse was burned by those people as well.

It was too odd to be a coincidence. It didn't make sense that the warehouse that stood for hundreds of years suddenly burdered down right after Ollen refused to accept the mission from the Sea and Moons pack.

His thoughts were loud, and I agreed with each and every one of them.

"What is this?" Heavwn whispered, pulling my attention to her.

I looked down at what she was looking at. The soldiers' fingers were tightly wrapped around something. Heaven carefully opened the fingers one by one until she reavels a button.

"What is it?" Ollen asked.

"It's a button." Heaven replied.

I looked down at the clothes we had taken off of the woman. She didn't have any buttons on her clothes.

"Does Hemeg have buttons on the clothes he was wearing?" I asked the male doctor who was silently working on the other side of the room.

He looked down at the clothes to check before he shook his head.

"No, he doesn't." He asked.

Then the button clenched in Ruth's hand meant one thing only. She must have ripped it off of her attacker.

I heard Ollen call Laura to the pack hospital through the link, and while he waited for Laura to arrive, Heaven and I cleaned Ruth and dresses her in a white dress Heaven brought

Heaven was in the middle of coming Ruth's hair when Laura walked in.

"I'm sorry I'm late." He commented in a solom tone, her eyes jumping from Ruth to Hemeg.

"What can I do for you, Alpha?" She asked after she tore her eyes away from the two soldiers, batting her eyes to stop the tears from falling down her cheeks.

"A button was found in Ruth's hand. It doesn't belong to either one of them. I need you to find out who it belongs to." Ollen replied.

Laura, taking a deep breath, forced herself to look at Ruth again before she stepped closer.

"May I?" She asked, stretched her hand out.

Heaven placed the small, red button at the center of Laura's palm before she sent it back to work.

Laura looked down at it for a few seconds in silence before she glanced at Ollen.

"I need to take this to my room. It might take a while since I have nothing else to work with." She commented.

"Go ahead." Ollen replied.

Laura left shorty after, promising she would work as fast as possible.

A lot happened in a single day.

First, the previous Lunas telling me I needed to kill Ollen, then the warehouse burning, and then two of our people found dead...

I felt physically and mentally exhausted, and I knew everyone else did too. I didn't dare complain to a single soul. We had a send-off ceremony to focus on, and that was exactly what we did.

After both Hemeg and Ruth were cleaned and dressed, six warriors each carried them on wooden stretchers and left the main pack hospital.

"Where are you?" I asked through the mind link when I realized that Ollen had left while I was busy helping Heaven with Ruth.

"I'm in the main pack house. I just need a few minutes." He replied.

I understood he needed to be alone, so I cut the link for the first time since we opened it during lunch. But a second later, I felt it opening again.

Oelln didn't say anything, which made her realize that he liked my presence just as much as I liked his. The link remained open until he returned to the pack hospital.

While everyone had left to the graveyard, I waited for him to return. Once we arrived, I silently followed him to the grave yard.

We walked further and further away from the hospital and the houses.

When I caught sight of the gathered people, I realized that the graveyard was outside of the pack land.

"Why is it outside of the pack land?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"The people who die, they at least deserve to rest in a land that's not cursed. We own the graveyard. It was just not a part of the main pack land when the pack was cursed." Ollen replied.

The people parted for him, and he walked straight between them. I followed him a few more steps before I stopped.

"You're close enough." I heard Sam's voice in my head and realized he was telling Ollen where to stop.

Following his betas words, Ollem stopped.

There were two holes dug deep in the earth, the two bodies already placed in.

Ollen kept his silence for a few minutes. The air tasted like grief. People were silently crying. I had tears running down my cheeks, regretting squeezing at my heart.

The sorrow I felt was not something that was easy to describe. I could barely see how much tears were filling my eyes.

At last, Ollen spoke.

"Tonight, we stand here to bare witness the departure of two of our people. Hemeg Wring and Ruth Smith were two of our best warriors who protected the pack with all they had, even with their lives. They were both born in this pack and lived their lives dedicated to making our lands safer. Today, we send them off to the next journey, a better life. May their souls rest in peace."

"May their souls rest in peace." Everyone else echoed.

Silence fell for the next hour as a few men covered the holes. Once they were done, they planted a victuals flat wood on top of each of their graves.

The writing on the woods were the shirt lives lived by the two warriors, along with their names, years of birth, and how much their people loved them.

I looked around the grave yard as people started quickly returning to the pack land, not risking sickness upon them for leaving pack land for too long.

There were so many graves, so many flat wooden gravestones that it was suffocating to watch.

Once everyone returned, Ollen turned and walked back to me.

"We should leave." He commented before he offered me his hand.

At that point, the mind link wasn't enough. I needed his physical touch to calm me down. The mate bond crested by the ritual was no joke.

I gave him my hand, and together, we returned to the pack land, leaving behind the two who were murdered just hours ago.

Upon returning, I thought that would be the end of the day. But it seemed I was wrong. Because Larua called for Ollen through the mind link.

"You need to come to the basement right now." She said, urgency evident in her voice.

"Did you hear that?" Ollen asked.

"I did." I replied.

"I would like it if you'd come along. But if you're tired..."

"I'm coming with you." I cut him off.

Even though he had a neutral expression while he nodded his head, I could feel how glad he was that I wanted to go to the basement with him.

We walked down the stairs, the same one Sam walked me down on my mating ceremony so Laura would prepare me.

I knocked on the door once we reached the bottom steps, and Laura invited us in.

The first thing I saw was Vice sitting on the bed onto the covers, sucking blood out of a bloodbath with a thin straw. He looked upset, dare I say, pouting.

"Vice..." Ollen called out. "I didn't expect you would be here."

Vice, instead of giving Ollen a reply, mumbled something neither of us could understand.

"Let him be. He's pouting because I wouldn't let him leave tonight." Laura commented.

"I'm UPSET because you are treating me like a damn child." He shot back.

"And you're proving me wrong by acting like one?" She asked, throwing a glare towards his direction.

"I won't die if I go around the pack for a few hours." He commented.

"Two people were literally killed in the pack. If the pack land isn't safe, what makes you think the outside would be any better?" Laura asked.

Ollen and I stood in between them, listening to their soft spoke fight.

Vice looked away, returning the straw to his lips, ending the conversation at once.

"You have something for us, Laura?" Ollen asked, clearly uncomfortable to be caught in their quarrel.

"Yes. I do." She replied. "I couldn't find out who exactly the button belongs to, but I know where it comes from."

"Then where did it come from."

I stared at Laura as I waited for her to answer, and somehow, even though I knew it was coming, it managed to surpirse me.