Night of the Lone Wolf

Aidan

“Night, Kitten.”

I carefully placed my sleeping mate on the bed and tucked her in before turning around and going back downstairs again.

I was beyond exhausted, but sleep was not what I needed at that point.

I walked through the back door, the shift coming naturally, and I was soon speeding through the woods on four paws.

I felt the anger and frustration I had tried to keep down bubble up in me again, and I sped up as I started running around the perimeter.

I let out a deep growl as my paws hit the soft ground beneath me, and I continued speeding up until I was running as fast as my legs would take me.

How the fuck did all of this happen all of a sudden? Why hadn’t she fucking told me? She had once again kept a part of herself from me, and I was livid.

A part of me understood her reasoning, but another part of me was hurt that my mate didn’t feel comfortable enough with me to share what she had learned.

How the hell was I supposed to keep trusting her when she constantly gave me new reasons to doubt her?

I let out another angry growl as I turned away from the pack land’s perimeter and ran back into the woods again. I needed to let out all of this anger and fury before I talked to her again.

We had already said enough stuff today that had hurt both of us, and I needed to fix this situation.

I had tried to talk to her about her shift and the reasons behind it so many times since her shift back at Ares’s compound, and she had just avoided the conversation completely instead of letting me in.

I ended up shifting out in the middle of nowhere and another growl built up in my chest as I let my fist connect halfheartedly with the trunk of the biggest tree I could find.

She could have just fucking told me then and there. Another punch. I wasn’t allowed to ask any fucking questions, or she would start becoming uncomfortable.

The tree started to crack as I kept punching it. She hadn’t even tried to shift once since then, and whenever I brought it up she would avoid it again.

I felt another wave of anger as I let my fist fly once again, this time putting all of my strength and the pent-up anger behind the punch.

The trunk immediately cracked all the way around, and the tree fell with an enormous crash.

She chose not to tell me again, and look where we were now. Those fucking Apex lunatics. We had their crazy asses to deal with now, and things would only get more fucking complicated.

~Fucking hell, Kiarra.~

I went on to the next biggest tree I could find and let my fists fly again as another wave of anger built up. I loved my mate, but why the hell couldn’t things have been simpler?

~“Alpha, we have gathered some of the information you needed.”~

The sound of Isaac’s voice broke through the mind-link. I was breathing pretty heavily as I looked around the tree massacre I had created in the past thirty minutes.

Sweat had slowly started to form on my skin, and my knuckles had been bleeding heavily for some time.

~“Meet me at the office in ten,”~ I answered shortly as I quickly shifted back into my wolf and began the run back to the pack house.

~“Jackson, you too. Angie, go to my house and wait for Kiarra to wake up and let me know when she does.”~ I grumbled out the orders in an annoyed tone and got quick replies from all three.

The tree-killing had done little to help with my frustrations over everything that was happening, but for the moment my anger had settled a little bit.

~“And Jackson, get someone to go trace my trail on the east side. Lots of timber for the furnaces.”~

~“On it.”~ Jack didn’t even question the order, but he probably knew what had happened.

They were all there when we met the Kendricks last night, and I had talked to Isaac and Jack through the mind-link before Kiarra and I had left.

There was no time to go back home and rest. We had a lot of things to figure out in a hurry.

It would have been easier if we didn’t have the added time pressure that the fucking Alpha couple suddenly put on us.

I could be bitter about that if I chose to, but it didn’t help a fucking thing. Right now there wasn’t time for any of that.

“Update me.” I took a seat in my chair in my office and looked at Isaac and Jackson. Jackson sat down across from me, and Isaac leaned himself up against the wall with his arms crossed.

“Alpha and Luna Kendrick. James Kendrick, forty-three years old, and Rose Kendrick, forty-two. Alpha couple of the Apex Pack.

“We all know the idealistic views of the Apex Pack.” Isaac looked at me, and I nodded.

Those crazy bastards were under the assumption that werewolves were the superior beings on this earth and didn’t want to “mix” with outsiders. That would only lead to weaker wolves and loss of power.

“What we could find out in this short amount of time was that they did in fact have a daughter twenty-four years ago, but they told everyone she had died of natural causes at the age of two.

I frowned slightly but nodded as I listened. So far it matched with what Kiarra had told me.

“Four years later they had another pup. We don’t know anything about that kid yet.

“They might just have turned eighteen or haven’t turned eighteen yet, so it makes sense that we don’t know much about that child.”

“So, they are not here looking for a pack merge.”

I would be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind to merge the two packs. We were already one of the biggest and strongest packs out there, but you couldn’t ignore the strength of the Apex Pack.

They did have some powerful werewolves, and it would have been an enormous addition to my pack if we were to merge.

“It doesn’t seem like it. We honestly don’t know much else about them right now. They are a private pack, and the only real gossip about them is always about their views of mating and power control.

“But nothing new has happened in the past couple of years.” Jack finished off and sank deeper into his chair.

“My best guess would be that they want the power of our pack’s backing,” Isaac stated in his most Isaac way, no emotions behind his voice.

I shot him a glance as his eyes glazed over for a moment, and I knew he was mind-linking someone.

“They could also just be curious about their daughter. Maybe she was kidnapped or lost when she was young? And they just found out about her, so they wanted to see her?”

I knew Jack was trying to stay positive, and I had a feeling that was mostly Angela talking. They had probably discussed it after last night, and Jack was trying to stay as positive as his mate.

“Doubtful. If that had been the case, they would have asked the Council for help to find their daughter back then. There were no such claims.” Isaac shook his head and straightened up.

“Sean needs help at the training grounds with some of the new shifters. I’ll keep digging for more information, but that’s all we know for now.”

I nodded as Isaac left the office in quick strides.

Jack looked behind him as Isaac disappeared through the door and turned back to me.

“Sometimes he seriously needs to get that stick out of his ass. He is ~so~ uptight.”

“Jack.” I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair.

“What? He’s always so serious. I don’t think I’ve seen him smile in years!” My Beta threw his hands up in the air in an overdramatic way, and I shook my head.

“Isaac turns twenty-nine this year and he still hasn’t found his mate. It gets tough and hardens you up.” I pinched the bridge of my nose slightly, remembering my own situation just a few months ago.

I had been in the same position before I found Kiarra. It was rough, especially considering everyone typically found their mate within the first few years of turning eighteen.

Jack’s face fell a little and he sighed.

“Yeah, I guess. Sorry.”

“That aside, where did you put the Kendricks last night?”

“At one of the empty houses close to the western perimeter line. I told them to stay there and wait until you had a chance to invite them back to the pack house.

“I also posted some of our warriors around the house to keep an eye on them.” Jack straightened up a little bit again.

“Good. Have one of the kitchen maids go there with some food, but have a soldier escort her. We don’t know what they want yet, and I don’t want to risk anything.”

Jack nodded before he looked at me in silence for a moment.

I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to speak up, but it seemed like he was almost uncomfortable with what he wanted to say.

“What is it, Jack?”

“Well, it’s just that some things don’t add up.” He leaned back in his chair again and scratched the back of his neck while looking at me sheepishly.

“How did the Kendricks know Kiarra was here? And that she was their daughter at that? And did Kiarra really not know anything about all of this? It just seems a little, well, fishy.”

I sighed and leaned my head back, looking up at the ceiling for a moment.

My Beta was a clever man, and despite his earlier positive attitude when Isaac was present, I knew he had had some suspicions and concerns. He wouldn’t be a very good Beta if he hadn’t.

“Kiarra has known for a few weeks. Since Ares’s warehouse, to be exact.”

“What? And you didn’t tell me?”

I looked back at Jack and my earlier annoyance slightly surfaced again at his hurt expression. It wasn’t aimed at him, but the situation in general.

I hadn’t kept anything from him but was left in the dark myself by my fucking mate.

“I didn’t know until last night.” My voice had a slight rumble to it as I felt myself getting angry once again.

How the fuck did we end up in this situation? Why the hell did she not trust me enough to fucking open up to me?

Jack’s expression was the picture of surprise as he took in my words.

“You didn’t know? She didn’t tell you?” His surprised voice and his expression of disbelief did nothing to settle the frustrating feelings inside of me and I let out a little growl.

“No, she didn’t. She told me that Ares had shared the information with her, but she didn’t want to believe it, so she tried to forget it.”

“What the hell? Does she not realize how much shit we could be in? Our position in this mess would have been so much better if we had had the chance to go to the Council first.

“Your position there could be at risk. Why the hell didn’t she think about that first?” Jack ranted for a moment, and even though I was equally annoyed at the situation, I still couldn’t let it pass.

“Watch your mouth, Jackson, that’s your Luna you are talking about,” I growled out in a stern voice.

Yes, it was a tough position to be in, but she was still my mate and his Luna. I could be as annoyed with my mate as I wanted, but if anybody else tried to disrespect her, I wouldn’t let it go.

Jack straightened up in his seat again and looked down.

“Sorry, Alpha.”

I sighed and rubbed my temple with closed eyes for a moment, feeling the exhaustion from the past day’s events turning into a headache.

“She didn’t know about any of that either. I hadn’t told her about our laws or the Council yet, so she didn’t know that withholding that information could be damaging.”

“Wait, you haven’t told her yet? Seriously, Aidan, how the hell have you been teaching her about our world?”

I opened my eyes again and looked at my best friend staring at me with complete disbelief in his eyes.

“Well, how the fuck would you go about it, Jack? Every time she learned something new, she was either running away or getting drunk with Angela at Sam’s,” I responded in a louder voice than intended.

I was getting angry again at this whole fucking situation.

“I was taking it one step at a time because I didn’t think I had to take anything else into consideration!

“She was a fucking human that had no ties to our world other than the bond she had with me. I thought I had time to teach her everything a little bit at a time.”

“Seriously, Aidan, you and your mate need to learn how to fucking communicate with each other.” Jack sounded almost as exhausted as I was.

I couldn’t really disagree with him. Kiarra and I had to learn how to communicate and trust each other.

~Pot calling the fucking kettle black.~

I heard Kiarra’s words from last night in my head and sighed once again. We had to leave the past behind us and stop holding grudges against each other.

“How long can we hold the Kendricks back before we have to meet with them again?”