Page 152 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha

NIGHT

Ipaced around the elders’ backyard. My stress was at an all-time high.

I couldn’t even imagine what Bryn was seeing or what she was going through.

For all I knew, she could be living through torture.

It had only been an hour since her eyes started glowing white, but that time had passed so slowly.

I willed myself to be patient, but how could I when my soulmate was enduring this by herself?

Mom watched me calmly. She and the other elders were grouped near the back door of the cabin. Elder Queene had brought water and snacks while we waited for Bryn to come back, but I had no appetite. Pacing was the only thing I could think of to pass the time.

“Night, she’s going to be fine,” Mom said. “We just need to wait a little longer.”

My wolf whined, and I bit down on the inside of my lip. “I don’t like this, Mom.”

“I know, Night.”

“I just can’t calm down. I feel like it was a mistake to let her do this.”

“It must be terrifying to know she’s gone somewhere you can’t follow, but sweetheart, this is what Bryn wanted. You know that this was Bryn’s choice to make, not yours. She needed to do this to understand who she is.”

“I know that,” I snapped. “Bryn told me herself so many damn times.” My tone was much sharper than I’d meant it to be.

I stopped pacing and pinched the bridge of my nose.

I was antsy and irritable, but letting my emotions get the better of me wouldn’t help Bryn.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t snap at you like that. I’m just on edge.”

“It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” She smiled sympathetically. “Why don’t you try thinking about something else? Maybe some paperwork you can go through? Or more training you can do?”

I shook my head. It was a good suggestion, but neither of those options worked for me because they involved me leaving Bryn.

I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight for a second.

I ran my hands through my hair and tried to think of something else I could do to stop obsessing so much over Bryn’s well-being.

And then a thought occurred to me. I hadn’t talked to the Kings’ elders about the children who’d disappeared.

Now was the perfect opportunity to ask them what they remembered.

It wasn’t the happiest of topics to bring up, but the questions I had about the disappearances were relevant enough to hold my interest.

I took a few calming breaths, then walked over to them. They were talking to Elder Woods about something. Whatever it was had their full attention, but when they noticed me nearing them, they stopped talking. I might have found that suspicious under different circumstances, but I didn’t care.

“I have a few questions for you three,” I said.

“Yes?” Elder Queene asked.

“Do you remember the string of disappearances that happened a decade ago? The children who vanished without a trace?”

The three elders stared at me for so long, I wondered if they’d somehow forgotten about the children.

Elder Forsythe sighed. “My goodness,” he said slowly. “I haven’t thought about that dark time in ages.” The other two elders nodded solemnly.

I gave them a few seconds to cast their minds back to that time before asking, “Were there any suspects you know of? Any leads?”

“We all suspected a wolf was taking them and killing them,” Elder Forsythe replied.

“When I looked over the reports, I figured it had to be someone the kids knew and trusted,” I said. “I can’t see any other reason for so many pups to wander off the compound on their own.”

“Your logic is sound,” Elder Forsythe said.

“At that time, everyone had their theories, but there was no evidence linked to a perpetrator. Whenever someone was suspected, there was a brief trial with circumstantial evidence. In the most benign cases, the accused was released without charges, and in the worst, they were put to death. But the kidnappings continued.” His dark eyes became even darker.

“All of us were so paranoid and desperate to find answers, but there weren’t any.

Lives were lost, relationships were ruined, families fell apart. ”

“If you don’t mind the question,” Elder Sage began, “why the sudden interest, Night Shepherd?”

“We found reports about the missing kids in the office of the alpha cabin,” I said. “We were working through the paperwork for other reasons, but this mystery interests me.”

“I believe there is one boy who survived the kidnapping. Samuel.”

I nodded. “I tracked him down, but he was too traumatized to tell me anything I could use. It’s just so bizarre to me that the kids were taken, and their remains were never found.”

“If their remains were missing, how do you know they were killed?” Mom asked the elders. “They could be alive, couldn’t they?”

“It’s unlikely they would have survived,” Elder Queene said gravely.

“It’s possible one or two might still be alive, but whoever took them would have had to keep them somewhere and discreetly provided for them for the past ten years.

Maybe they could get away with a few pups, but a dozen would be hard to wrangle. ”

“How awful,” Mom whispered, her hand on her chest. “My heart breaks for the parents who lost their children.”

I patted her shoulder. “Is it possible that the pups were taken to another pack?”

“Possible, yes, but unlikely,” Elder Queene replied.

“Again, maybe they could get away with sneaking in one or two boys, but there would be too many new pups entering the pack. Not to mention, the children would smell like they were taken from our territory. People would notice. They would ask questions.”

“Was it just the Kings pack who suffered such losses?” I asked. “Or did other packs lose pups?”

“Children have gone missing over the years in various packs, of course,” Elder Queene said. “But those disappearances usually had clues and remains and viable suspects. Our disappearances had none of those things.”

“You brought up Samuel before,” Elder Forsythe said.

“And it jogged a memory. One thing that always stood out to me was that the poor boy swore he saw a shadowy monster with long talons. Of course, that is probably just a child’s mind scrambling to make sense of whatever horrors he witnessed that day, but there are ancient fairytales that use the same imagery.

Those stories talk about shadow monsters with jagged teeth that were said to suck the mind out of a person, leaving them incapable of living.

The fairytales were created to keep children from wandering too far into the woods by themselves. ”

“I know legends like that can be rooted in some truth,” I said. “Did creatures like that ever exist?”

“Again, your logic is sound, but we don’t believe creatures like that have ever existed outside of legend.”

“We believed the children had grown curious about the story and wanted to see the creature for themselves,” Elder Sage said.

“They went out into the woods while no one was watching and were taken by whoever told them about the myths. We believed young Samuel was somehow able to survive, but his trauma manifested as the shadowy creature because that was why he ventured into the woods in the first place.”

That made some sense. We’d need to track down the root of where the children had heard the story.

But was that even possible at this point?

Whether the children were lured into the forest by someone they trusted or tempted into it because of a story, both the elders’ theory and mine pointed to an adult wolf who would have had time to gain their trust or get them interested in those old stories.

“The air was heavy with sadness ten years ago,” Elder Woods murmured.

“The other elders and I…we suspected something had happened with the King pack, but we weren’t sure what.

” She looked at the Kings’ elders with tears shimmering in her eyes.

“Such a great loss as that…I cannot even fathom the toll it must have taken on these wolves.”

“We appreciate that you can empathize with our tragedy, Elder Woods,” Elder Queene said. “Likewise, I hope you can understand that we had little to do with Gregor and Troy’s distaste for you and your people.”

“Of course.”

Elder Forsythe inclined his head in thanks. In response, Elder Woods patted his shoulder.

I hadn’t planned for there to be any interaction between the Warg and King elders, but it warmed me to see them get along—not just from an emotional standpoint but from a political one as well. This connection could help bond the two packs.

“Night,” Elder Sage’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

“It is honorable for you to look into this, but odds are, you will never get answers. After so many years, the young victims are likely dead, and the guilty parties have either died, escaped, or are so well-hidden it would be impossible to drag them out into the open without their confession.” He shook his head sadly.

“I’m not certain if solving this will help you win over the council or the pack. ”

“I’m not doing this to win any points with anyone,” I said. “When it comes to those missing pups, I only want to give closure to their parents. They deserve it. As for the rest of the pack and the council…well, they’ll have to deal with me once I win the alpha challenge, anyway.”

The elders all smiled. “Ah, you’re very confident,” Elder Forsythe said. “Be careful, Night Shepherd. If you’re too confident, you might miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.”

Their warnings didn’t faze me. “I won’t miss anything,” I vowed. I looked at my mate for the first time since I started asking them about the missing pups. “Because there’s too much at stake.”

Another thirty minutes passed, and Bryn was still in her trance. Talking about some of the elders’ theories had kept me busy for a little while, but now the worry crept back in. I started pacing again.

“How long is this supposed to go on for?” I asked. Having Bryn this physically close to me but mentally far away was wrong. It only elevated the pricking anxiety in my chest.

“It depends on what Bryn wishes to see,” Elder Woods said.

“Remember, Alpha Night, Bryn will be experiencing the memories of a pack mother. Those memories span hundreds of years, if not thousands. She will likely be able to focus those memories on when her mother was with child, but it will take her some time to do that. Seeing through the eyes of someone else is a very complicated process.”

I groaned. The elders weren’t making this any easier on me.

“Night, what do you remember of Blossom?” Mom asked.

“Blossom? I remember…that she was pregnant,” I said slowly. “And I remember she went missing.”

I paused and frowned as I thought more deeply about her. “I’m starting to remember more now that she’s on my mind. She was a huge fixture in my life, almost as huge as Dom’s father.” I hesitated. “I think she mentioned once that her daughter and I would grow up to be close.”

Soon after Blossom went missing, she was presumed dead. Her death, and her baby’s death, had depressed me and the rest of the pack for weeks and weeks. It was such a dark time for me that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about her for such a long time.

“Are you sure that’s all you remember?” Mom asked. “Think a bit more.”

I closed my eyes and ransacked my memories of Blossom.

More of that fog disappeared, and I realized with a slight jolt that I’d misremembered what she’d said about her baby.

She hadn’t told me we would be close; she’d said we would be fated mates.

When I was a pup, I thought she was being silly.

I was still at the age where I believed girls were a waste of valuable playtime, but I’d adored Blossom.

And as if a fog was lifting from my brain, I remembered the beautiful woman who was kind and graceful.

She was always very sweet to me, sharing her treats with me and inviting me over to chat…

though our chats usually entailed me talking without pause for hours on end.

I’d forgotten how much of an attention hog I was.

And when I learned that she and the baby had died, I had this crushing sense that I’d lost something precious.

Even when I started to become interested in women, none of the females in my pack ever felt like the right fit.

I couldn’t commit myself to them. Eventually, I thought I’d have to give up on the idea of claiming anyone.

That deep sense of loss followed me until the moment I met Bryn.

“Mom, why are you asking me about Blossom?” I asked. But as soon as the question left my mouth, I started to put together the puzzle pieces. “Was Blossom the pack mother we were hiding?”

Mom just smiled instead of giving a verbal answer.

Shock rocked me, and I sat on the nearest seat—a tree stump. If Blossom was the pack mother, Bryn was the baby girl she was carrying. All this time, Blossom’s baby had been my fated mate, and I’d had no idea. All this time, our paths had already crossed, and neither of us had known it.

At first, I couldn’t process this huge piece of information.

But the longer I thought about it, the more it made sense.

I hadn’t remembered who Blossom was until my mother asked me about her, and I knew that had to be for a reason—the Fates or destiny or whatever had kept me from knowing Bryn’s identity until this very moment.

As Bryn was learning more about her mother through her visions, I was making a few discoveries about my past, too.

A groan from Bryn yanked me out of my thoughts. The white light was fading from her eyes, and the circle was dimming, too. Soon, her eyes returned to normal, and she fell back, her body convulsing.