The Silver Siren
Chapter 8

Reece

Today has sucked. Virtually no sleep, back-to-back meetings all morning, and training all afternoon. Not helped by Mikayla appearing around every corner, turning up at every meal, and at the training ground. She was irritating the fuck out of me. Maddox had been unsettled all day too, constantly pacing and whimpering. He won’t tell me what’s wrong. The whole day has been a bust.

After dinner I snuck off to my room to have a shower. I was in no mood to go for a run, and neither was Maddox. I threw on some sweatpants and a clean t-shirt and slumped down onto my bed. I really needed to sleep. The exhaustion was getting ridiculous. I closed my eyes and started taking deep breaths. After a few minutes I felt more relaxed.

A soft knock on the door echoed through the room. I ignored it. I knew who was there and I was not opening that door. I could smell her. Mikayla. The smell of desperation hung in the air and seeped under the door, invading my space. She knocked again but said nothing. I heard the door handle jingle. Thank fuck I locked the door earlier. I heard her huff and stomp away, like a petulant child. Wow, she just wouldn’t give up! I wasn’t in the mood to deal with her right now and was thankful that she had left. I got comfortable again and closed my eyes, when I got a mind link from Cole, one of the pack warriors.

“Rogues!” he said frantically, almost yelling.

“Where?” I heard Brad ask, who was in on the mink link too. Cole had included my dad and his Beta too.

“On the north border, near where the creek breaks the boundary.” Cole said.

“How many?” I asked firmly. I was already up and throwing on a shirt, heading for the door of the pack house at the same time.

“Too fucking many,” he snarled.

“Cole!” I yelled at him in my alpha tone.

“At least 30, maybe more. They have breached the boundary and are travelling down the creek. They are all still together and haven’t broken off into groups as far as I know. It was just me and Ben at this guard point. He’s hurt pretty bad but he’s still alive. I managed to kill 3 but there were just too many. They were more interested in getting onto the territory than killing me,” he said.

“Be there soon”, I said, leaving the mind link as Dad started giving instructions to all the warriors. As I got through the main doors to the pack house, Brad was just ahead of me. We both rushed to take off our clothes and shift. Brad took off first, and as I took my clothes in my mouth, I soon caught up to him and we reached top speed. I heard the other warriors join us from different areas of the forest. The north border was about 2 and a half miles away, so we had some ground to cover. One of the warriors let out a howl into the night and others followed suit.

I knew that this would happen. I just knew it. Man, I hoped Ben was ok and we weren’t too late. I’ve known these guys since pre-school. We grew up together and learned to fight together.

It seemed to be taking forever to get there, but now virtually all the warriors has assembled and were now running with us. My Dad had stayed at the pack house with members of his private security team for protection. He made me head of security a while back, so I was on my own on this one. The team of warriors was a strong one though, so it shouldn’t be a problem to deal with rogues in these numbers. But it was strange that so many are together in one place, seemingly travelling together. Rogues are usually lone wolves. The pack hadn’t suffered a rogue attack since before my dad was named as Alpha, and back then it was a lone wolf who came onto our land in search of food and retaliated to advances by our warriors.

We ran for what seemed like hours, but in reality, was only a few minutes. The stench of rotting flesh and sewage swilled through the air. The unmistakable scent of rogues. It was strong but we were still over a mile away. The rest of the warriors smelled them, and their collective snarls and growls echoed through the trees. The passing air whooshed past my ears and the forest was passing by in just a blur. The fresh scent of coconuts filtered through the rogue stench, but only just, reminding me of my recurring dream. I took a deep sniff, but it was gone. Great! Now my mind was playing tricks on me! Great timing!

We were almost there now. But there it was again. Coconuts and sunshine. I knew I wasn’t imagining it this time. Adrenaline shot through me and Maddox let out a howl. I breathed in deeply again. The beautiful scent surrounded me like a cosy blanket. It was intoxicating. For a moment I forgot what we were doing. Mate? Here? Now? That had to be the worst timing ever! Thanks Moon Goddess! You don’t make it easy, do you?

“Mate! Mate!” echoed Maddox, “Mate is here!”

What?! Are you kidding me? She was here? But so were dozens of rogues. Rogues that had already breached our defences and injured a warrior. If they came across my mate, they wouldn’t think twice about killing her. Encountering a lone rogue was bad enough but running into these intruders would be catastrophic. My stomach dropped. She was in danger. Maddox knew what to do. He sprinted us away from the group with speed I never knew we had.

“Hey, wait for us!” Brad mind linked me.

“My mate. She is here. She’s in danger. I have to find her,” I said.

“Shit,” he said stunned. “Reece, please wait for us. We will get to her in time. It’s too dangerous to go in without us. Think, man.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Charging in and potentially getting killed would be a fucking stupid thing to do. Only Brad could have that insight into my thinking. I know he will be a great Beta because he already acts like one. And he always has my back. I ended the mind link and pulled back to the pack, joining them once again. Brad quickly told the rest of the warriors that our future Luna was nearby and potentially in danger via mind link.

“What’s the plan?” he mind linked me.

“Get there faster,” I said.

The wind whipped through my fur and the moonlight lit a path for us through the trees. The first rogue came into view. Of all the ways I had imagined I would meet my mate; this didn’t even crack the top 100. Cole was right. There were dozens of them. At least 35, maybe even more. As more came into view as we got closer, we came to a stop about 200 yards from them. None of them were moving, they were all standing still. This was weird. They must have heard us approach, yet they did not register our presence here or defend their position. It was almost as if they were in a trance. I surveyed the scene, trying to figure out what was going on. It was truly bizarre. I looked left and right briefly. It looked like they were in a circle, just standing there with their backs to us. But where was my mate?

The rest of the warriors gathered around, waiting for their next instruction. The rogues were still, seemingly still unaware that we had arrived. Not able to see past them, I honed into my senses to find her. I could still smell her, it was strong. But I also heard fighting. Wolves whimpering and snarling and growling coming from inside the circle. These rogues were spectating a battle. My mate could be one of these rogues, but more worrying was the possibility that she could be inside the circle being attacked right now! I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer to find out, so I signalled the pack to approach and start to take out the rogues.

The warriors started to move forward, flanking around the circle, when an enormous beam of blinding light poured out from inside the circle towards the moon, filling the forest. The next thing we knew, every single wolf was thrown back by a surge of energy, knocking us all down. I bundled into Brad as we hit a tree. Hard. I checked that Brad was uninjured. He just had the wind knocked out of him but was otherwise ok.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked Brad, looking around to check if the other warriors were ok. Thankfully nobody was hurt and were all getting up on their paws again, a little dazed.

“Whoa,” he said, scrambling to get up. The light was so bright we had to look away. Then the light disappeared, as quickly as it had arrived, leaving only a small beam of light shooting straight up towards the stars. Feeling it was safe to approach, I signalled the pack to follow. What greeted us was a scene of utter devastation. A sea of rogues lying in amongst the forest floor, strewn about in small piles of bodies, draped over logs, even one hanging from the branch of a tree. Most of them were still alive, I could hear them breathing, but were unconscious and a few of them were dead.

Warriors started checking them and securing the ones that were alive. We would need to take them to the dungeons and interrogate them later. I was drawn to the shaft of light. And that’s where I found her.

“Mate” I told Maddox. He howled. The most beautifully coloured silver wolf hovered in mid-air at the base of the beam of light. Most wolves were brown unless they were ranked. I had never seen this colour wolf before in the flesh, it was rare. She had her back to me, and it almost looked like the beam of light was holding her up. Her paws were barely touching the ground and as the light started to recede, she collapsed on the ground. We got to her in seconds. Maddox nudged her and nuzzled into her bright silver fur to try to rouse her. Powerful sparks shook through Maddox making us feel complete. He whined when she didn’t wake up. The light had completely gone now and she started to shift back to human.

When her shift was complete, we quickly checked her body for wounds and spotted some gun shot wounds. Shit. I bent down to sniff one of the entry wounds. Silver bullets. Rogues were famous for them. She looked so small in a little pile in front of my wolf. I shifted to human form and took my t-shirt to cover her up. I carefully pulled it over her head and got her limp arms through the arm holes. It swamped her. I checked her breathing. It sounded rhythmic and steady, almost as if she were sleeping. Her hair was long, snaking around the curves of her upper body. It was brown. Same as in my dream. And she was small, she can’t be more than 5 feet tall. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I was too worried about her to analyse it now though.

It was time to move.

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