The Last Bears Daughter

Ch 9

Leigh

The Cloudy Haven was only small, and she had not only elected to train the warriors that were there, but also pulled the women in for afternoon training and the children in for basic training with the Escrima sticks. Not only did she make it fun for them, they got to play with big wooden sticks, a win-win for the kids.

Micheal had not been happy about her wanting to train the children, but she simply reminded him that even in the human world, children were taking martial art classes from the age of 4 or 5, even younger if they were learning it from a parent in their own home. That she wouldn’t be over taxing them and those under 10, would just be letting them learn the feel of the sticks and how to swing them around.

Those between ten and 13 would be learning properly and anyone over 13 would be learning like an adult would, and those over 13 she also wanted to teach them the Bo Staff as well. It had been a long moment of silence, before he’d stated, 'I’ll discuss it with the pack.'

Farley had told her it wasn’t at all necessary to have the women and children learning to fight, and had stated, “They’re not like August’s pack, not a full warrior pack, Leigh. Micheal is peaceful and doesn’t want a warrior pack.” Before he’d turned and walked away from her.

She’d stared after that man, and shaken her head. He and his warriors were training separately, away from her. At least that was a blessing to her. Though the way he spoke to her was still annoying, and he’d already found a she-wolf to f**k in front of her this week. Likely had a few here.

August had told her he knew Alpha Micheal and the pack, so it was likely he also had a girl or two here. He was such a d**k sometimes, but at least in the past week he’d not once attempted to touch her, in any way inappropriate, so that was something. Perhaps being de-ranked and sent off to war in the kingdom had pulled him into line.

Or maybe it was just that his father had washed his hands of him, he’d pretty much just stayed with his men and did what was asked of him. Maybe it was all about getting her to leave that pack. If she wasn’t stronger than he was, she wouldn’t be able to handle him, and maybe she would have left the pack to find another.

She didn’t know, but for the past week, had gotten peace and quiet and that was all that mattered to her. She was bunked down in a room with Elijah, Lucas, Chrissy and Adriana. They were all bunking down 5 to a room, which meant Farley couldn’t come waltzing into her room without it being seen by any from her unit.

They all also tended to walk about together when not out there training, and they were training in groups of 5 all the time and had 4 dedicated training groups running between them all. Each group trained only 25 of Cloudy Havens warriors or women and children at a time. This gave them more time to help each individual wolf in their training sessions.

They ran two-hour training sessions in the mornings at first light, that first week, and two-hour training sessions in the afternoon. They were all divided up between weapons training and wolfen training, weapons in the morning and wolfen in the afternoon. Even her own were a little on the tired side, but this was just the beginning of it all. Only the warriors of the pack.

Then, that second week, she added an extra hour to the warrior's training. She was aiming to train them as hard as she could, as quickly as she possibly could. That was what August had told her to do, and she intended to do her job. Micheal’s warriors were tired as well, not used to this kind of training. Two training sessions a day was not how they were used to training.

The third week arrived, and she upped the training to three-hour sessions. The morning training now consisted of one hour for hand to hand, one hour for Bo Staff training and one hour for Escrima training. The afternoon training, that was now for wolfen training and agility, along with endurance training.

Six hours a day just dedicated to the warriors, and now she also had to fit in the women and children’s training. She and her elite were training all day every day from 5am to 6pm with only meal and drink breaks in-between training sessions, even they crashed out on the hotter days.

Micheal had no indoor training ground to get his wolves out of the heat, not even a ballroom for mating balls. They were apparently held outside as well.

Though she heard Micheal state that mostly his wolves attend balls in other packs, he didn’t have the room to house more than two packs here, and she had to agree with him. Her elite were taking up four rooms in the packhouse, five to a room. Micheal had a floor just for Alpha’s and their units, but his packhouse was only two storey's high.

As for visiting packs, he could only really house two packs. He had only 10 rooms available for visiting packs inside the packhouse. And two of those were dedicated to the Wolfen Council. He had another Alpha with a full unit coming in a few days as well and would be using the other half of those rooms for them.

He had what he called a bunk house that could house a hundred and sixty wolves in the building next door, a 16-room building that had ten beds in each room. She’d seen in those rooms now there were five double bunks in each room all lined up neatly in rows. Those rooms were for nothing other than sleeping, just beds, no furniture in there at all. There was a long built-in wardrobe in each room for them to house their gear; it stretched from one side of the room to the other. Had shelving and drawers, a small hanging space and ten divisions, kind of like an inbuilt locker, she thought. Each floor had a communal bathroom in the middle of each hallway. It contained 15 shower stalls and 15 toilets. Simple, neat and clean.

She was as tired as her elite were, crashed out each night by 9:30pm to get a solid 7 hours sleep each night. She usually slept like the dead and had no issues sharing a room with her top elite. That was actually normal for her. Elija, Lucas and Chrissy were all her friends from school. Adriana was the next she was expecting to rank up to be like her and her friends. When she herself got that title of War General, Adriana was her cousin and would be stepped up, so she had four dedicated ranked beneath her in battle.

They were a solid group, all her elite were reliable and got along, they spent quite a bit of time together and had grown a good bond with them all. Only Farley had an issue with her and her hybrid or, as he called it, half-breed status. No one else at all seemed to care about it.

She’d seen him today watching her train the group she was with, hadn’t actually been watching her, had been assessing how the training was going, she thought. Not that he had said anything to her about it and when she had caught his eye, all he’d done was nod at her and then return to watching.

Was, she thought, actually being an Alpha, though he had rules to follow and for once he did look to be abiding by them. He liked this pack and its members, got along with most she’d noted. Leigh thought that had a lot to do with it. Farley actually did want to protect this pack. August was likely right in sending him.

Though the sudden bursting open of their suite’s door and Farley yelling at them to get up, there was a fire, all hands were needed, startled all of them awake. She was up and dressed in less than a minute, as were her unit, and they were all headed outside, to help with it.

The medical building and weapons storage shed were on fire, two buildings both next to each other, and she could see and hear not just Alpha Micheal rapping out orders, but Farley as well. Everyone was awake and alert out here helping to contain it. There was no putting it out, it was already too late for that.

All they were doing was trying to contain it and stop it from spreading, the only blessing they had was that neither of those buildings were on the tree line and so had not yet started a forest fire. Hoses were out from the closest homes to saturate the ground around the buildings and the other homes that were close to it, to make it harder to set fire to something if it was completely wet and saturated.

They managed to save the other homes, but not the small hospital or the weapons storeroom. Fortunately, she did not store her weapons in there, they were always packed up and bagged up and taken back to her elite’s room within the packhouse. But it did destroy everything Micheal had just purchased and stored in there. They’d only just arrived two days ago, enough Bo Staffs for his entire pack.

She was standing there staring at the buildings. Jara was up, and she was trying to scent anything at all. There were way too many footprints in the area now, even before she’d gotten down here for them to try and track that way. Most had returned to their homes, and it was just her and Alpha Micheal, her unit and Farley.

Farley had stated, 'Leigh and her team are trackers, let them see what they can find.' She’d looked right at him. That was the first normal thing he’d said about her in all her life. Actually, offered her skills up for assistance. She’d looked at him suspiciously, and he’d shot down the mind-link, ‘I’m the Alpha here, I also do know what you can do.’ His words were hard and stern, as though he was trying to admonish her, but that was all he’d said on the subject.

She and her unit walked about and then spread out further into the forest looking for anything that might be considered fleeing tracks, but there wasn’t any, or none that they could find. It was nearly dawn when they found a border patroller unconscious and laying on the ground, darted with, from what Jara could pick up, a dose of anesthetic.

She looked from where that wolf lay and the dart that was in him, it had come from the outside of the pack, was also one of hers, not Cloudy Havens. She sighed as she looked at it. Wolfsbane and silver would cut them from Farley. She knew he was in contact with his wolves at all times, it was his job to know where they all were. Though this would not have caused Farley to feel anything different about this warrior, the man would simply have fallen asleep. Still had his wolf, she imagined.

“High dose Leigh, if he’s still out.”

“Would need to be.” She nodded, “to knock him out before he understood what was happening and sedate him before he could contact his Alpha.”

She stood up and then searched the area. She wasn’t getting anything at all of any scent from another wolf, or rogue, nothing at all. But Elijah called out to her, “Here.” Half an hour later, “I got a single print.”

They were all shifted and on the hunt, the moment she sent word to Farley they thought they had something. All he stated was, ‘Bring it back alive for questioning.’ Like she didn’t know how to do her job. But shook it off and let Jara put her snout right to that footprint, breath it in and picked up just the tiniest trace of leather from the shoe that person was wearing.

A shoe denoted not rogues. Those creatures didn’t often wear shoes, but the fact that there was no other scent to be tracked out here, she knew it to be wolfen. Humans didn’t hide their scents at all. Didn’t even know how to, as far as she was aware. It was an otherworldly thing.