Chasing After Ashes

Chapter 11: The Network

I couldn’t let the Werwulf Council wait any longer so I have to face them soon before they take any drastic actions. If what I heard from the others was true, then Tate, the Alcatrozz pack, and probably Illia, would take the brunt of the consequences. Although Illia was the Alarick, most alphas were impatient people who wanted immediate results. If not that, they wanted people to follow their command without question.

Something I wouldn’t do if what they were asking for was too much. Like kill the rest of my pack because I would not do it. Not even if they forced me.

However, I needed all the information about my pack before I faced them. I had been out of touch with reality for months and last thing I knew was discovering they were my pack. And who else would be able to tell me all he could about our family, their plans, and was accessible? Unfortunately, it was none other than Gabe. I still didn’t want to talk to him but I didn’t have a choice, did I?

As I held my phone in my hand, going to Ilia’s number in my contacts to tell him I needed to talk to my brother, I stopped before I pressed call. My palms were starting to sweat at the thought of facing him when I had run away from the truth for months.

But I couldn’t really put it off any longer, could I? Frustrated at how pathetic I was acting, I thought to hell with it and pressed call. A few rings later and Illia’s familiar voice answered the phone. “Evangeline? Is this you?”

I gulped before answering. “Hi Illia. How have you been?” Sufficed it to say, my voice came out shakier than I expected to.

“I am as good as I have ever been,” he said, chuckling before he sobered up and asked, “How are you feeling these days?”

Slowly my shot nerves and the nervousness I was feeling dissipated at Illia’s familiar warmth. It had been a while since I had last seen him but I could still remember the feeling of his power and his scent which wrapped around you, like an age-old bark that had soaked up all the sun it could have. With the gentleness of him which he was somehow able to convey through the phone, my lips unconsciously lifted into a smile.

“I have been better, thank you for asking…” I paused, breathing in heavily before continuing, “I need to talk to Gabe.”

“I could arrange that but may I ask what led you into this decision?”

“The Werwulf Council. I need to get all the facts straight before I meet them. And the only place I could get all that I need is from him.” Unfortunately.

“He has been asking for you and the Council has been wanting to meet you for a while now. However, you do not need to meet them if you are not ready for it at all.” The obvious concern in his voice made me smile.

“I’m as ready as I will ever be, but thank you so much for worrying. We’ll be heading there to Bromsdale in a few days.”

“I understand. Please extend my sincerest apologies to Tate and Elizabeth.”

“I will. We’ll just tie a few loose ends over here and head directly there. We’ll be bringing someone as well.”

The woman with flaming hair was coming with us. She hadn’t opened up at all about who she was working for, herself, or anything. Seriously, she was wedged close like an ancient treasure box and the only way to open it was to find the key. A key which I had a feeling had been missing for a long time and to force it open was intricate work. Something Lowell and the others weren’t able to do.

It was why we were bringing her with us to Bromsdale where the Alarick and his pack lived. He had years of making people talk in various ways under his belt so we were going to let him handle her.

“Oh child, you do not have to tell me. I know he is coming with you,” he said, chuckling.

I was about to ask who he was referring to when I realized he was talking about Tate. As a recently reinstated alpha, he had a lot of responsibilities to fulfill. It was harder since the old one, who met unfortunate circumstances, would not be able to help him through the first few days as the alpha.

“Yes, Tate will be coming with me as well as Lowell.” He was going to be the enforcer of the pack soon once he had fought everyone, besides the beta, and won. He first needed to prove he was stronger than everyone and his skills should be more than enough to protect the Alpha and the Louve.

Although he didn’t need to worry about protecting the Louve yet because there wasn’t one. Additionally, he couldn’t fight everyone yet because there were too many things to take care of. “But we will be bringing the woman we caught as well.”

“Ah, yes if you would do so. Take care and I will see the rest of you when you get here.” We ended the call after that quickly.

Pocketing the phone, I headed out of my room and toward the office downstairs. It was where Tate, Quentin, Lowell, and Mark had taken residence since what happened yesterday. They had been busy calling different packs discreetly to ask them if they knew who the woman was, but nobody knew anything about her. However, they were still trying to see if their network will come up with anything.

As I passed one of the lounges before I got to the office, I saw a few people talking quietly in there. It was Frank, Rayne, Samuel, and a few others who had donned something black for the funeral that were going to be held later in the afternoon in memory of Hans. These guys came back quickly from their vacation, businesses, and other things they were busy with.

I stopped outside the lounge when I saw Elizabeth was there, in the middle of the crowd. She was staring off into space, like she had been doing ever since she witnessed the death of her husband. And no amount of talking to her could have lured her out of it until she was ready to accept what happened to her husband.

I stayed with her last night in a guest room on the third floor, far away from the room she and Hans had before. It wasn’t merely for precaution in case the woman had other associates but it was also for Elizabeth, because I knew she needed someone to be with her. Not even to talk, but just someone to be there so she wouldn’t have to go through with it alone. However, I left to sleep in my own room in the middle of the night when Tate came up to be with his mom after he settled a few things.

Deciding to leave Elizabeth for now at the hands of the other Alcatrozz wolves since I knew she would be taken care of, I continued heading to the office. As I quietly opened the door, I saw Tate was on the phone with someone. He sat behind the maple wooden desk, one hand on the phone while another was slowly massaging his forehead.

He glanced up when he heard the door open. When he saw it was me, he raised a finger to tell me to wait. I nodded my head and glanced around the room, noticing Mark and Quentin weren’t around. Lowell sat on the opposite side of the desk, holding a bunch of papers in his hand and reading through them.

Sometimes I really don’t get what Lowell’s job description really is supposed to be, I thought. He wasn’t really just an enforcer that was more on muscles rather than brains because he had both. In fact, I was pretty sure he was much smarter than he was a better fighter.

As I sat in front of him, I was able to notice the word Rosewood which was bolded in the page he was reading. Curious to know what it was, I waved a hand in front of him to catch his attention. He looked up his brows scrunched together in wonder on why I wanted to talk to him. Pretty normal behavior since we weren’t the best of friends. We haven’t really talked much except on the occasions where I hanged out with the four of them. Although I talked to him more than I had talked to the other two because he was more sensible.

Additionally, he was insightful and didn’t bother teasing me about Tate or anything at all. The times I talked to him, he just talked about the idiosyncrasies and lifestyle of the fae and vampires. It was pretty interesting, much more compared to Mark and Quentin who were always energetic about the current game or sports they were into. They had a more active lifestyle which was good for them, but I just don’t think they were the kind of people I would get along with.

“What are you reading?” I mouthed to him, nodding my head at the paper he was holding in his hands.

“Reports, nothing much,” he mouthed back as he shrugged. He lifted the paper higher so it hid his face from mine and I wouldn’t be able to see what it was he was reading.

I scrunched my brows together, suspicious at how he was acting. Even if it was a report, what kind of report was it that he felt the need to actually hide it from me? It wasn’t like I was going to reveal any sensitive information to anyone else. Because all the people who were still talking to me was in this pack alone. I wouldn’t talk to anyone in the Reons pack since they loathed me and ever since they had gone back home, I haven’t been able to talk to Lilian.

Suddenly the previous conversation I had with Tate before things had gone down with the woman, played clearly in my mind. It slipped my mind completely since a lot of things had happened since then but Tate had said they sent out groups to kill off my pack. Not in those exact words maybe, but it was the essence of what he said.

Other werewolf packs had joined in the hunt for my pack and a few wolves who were suspected to be my family had already been captured. Which means…I thought, eyeing the paper in Lowell’s hands and the bunch of them stacked on top of each other on Tate’s desk. It was probably collective information about my pack across the other packs.

Without hesitating, I quickly snatched the paper Lowell held and scanned through it. “What’s this?” I asked, unable to process the words written on the paper. There wasn’t much on there except two tables. The upper table on the page under the title Rosewood Pack, had two columns and a few rows where a pack’s name and their alpha was written on the left hand side, and on the right were stories.

The stories were merely an account of the information they had gathered on my pack, the supposed members they may have sighted and were currently investigating. The lower table wasn’t harder to understand because the columns, rows, and headers made it easier to read through it. On one column were names, in the middle was the title Confirmed, and on the last one with the title Finished, was simply filled with x’s and checkmarks.

There were ten names written on there and only two had the check mark under the confirmed box. But all of the names in the last column under finished, had check marks beside them. “What’s the meaning of this?” I asked Lowell, my voice shaking at the effort it took for me not to scream at him.

I realized the reality of what they were doing. The true nature of this group they made to capture the rest of my pack. My family were murderers, I couldn’t deny it because it was the truth. There was no love lost between me and them because I never had the opportunity to know them. Yet I still didn’t want for them to simply be killed off like this. They didn’t deserve to die like this even if they were horrible people.

Or maybe I was simply just biased because no matter how I tried to deny it, refused the truth, they were still my family. They were of blood and bones, and I didn’t want them being hunted down without being given the chance to answer to their questions.

My blood started to boil as I thought about them being hunted and left for dead, attacked when they were told they were going to be captured to be interrogated. How many of them had believed the Thyranos pack and the others when they said they weren’t going to kill them off like that?

The silence which filled the room as Tate and Lowell watched me, seemed to be thick enough to choke on. It wrapped around your throats, pressed against your ears until all you could hear were the sound of your own heart beating.

My body was shaking at the thought of it all and my voice sounded like a gunshot in the silence of the room as I asked, “Who are you guys to be the judge, jury, and executioner?”

Lowell blinked a few times at me as if he couldn’t believe what I was asking. I only stared back at him until he sighed. “Hadn’t your entire pack acted exactly like this? I don’t think you really have any moral high ground to stand on here.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, wishing if I choked the life out of him that it would consequently do the same to all the wolves who did this. “That’s not the point. You guys promised that nobody would be killed because you needed most of them to find the rest who were hiding. But you lied and slaughtered them when they weren’t looking!”

“It wasn’t us,” Tate suddenly said as he pressed the button on his phone to disconnect his call.

“What do you mean by that?” I snapped at him.

“Originally it was what the packs had decided. Everyone agreed to find and secure the Rosewood wolves but after a few mishaps where here were more than enough casualties, it was decided to just kill them once they had talked. If they hadn’t and it looked like they wouldn’t be planning to do so no matter what you did to them, then you could take that option.”

“And I repeat,” I said again, emphasizing my words clearly in case he couldn’t understand me. My words were clipped, like I had bitten off the words before I could have said them fully because I was trying hard to suppress the anger so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by it. “Who are you to be judge, jury, and executioner?”

Tate sighed, raising his right arm to comb his blond curls which had fallen over his eyes. “This pack and a few of us have decided to not kill Rosewood wolves if and when we catch them. We will be staying true to the original objective because we don’t think what the others were doing is right.”

My eyes narrowed in suspicion as he continued speaking. “But we really can’t change their minds no matter how much we have talked to them because as they are in command of their own pack, they are only doing what they think is best for their pack. Even if you disagree with them.”

What he was saying got through to me and made the terrifying fury stop from taking over me. I could understand what he meant. Anybody with powers stronger than average, who were dominant, couldn’t be swayed from their decisions once they have made up their mind. Especially when it came to things they cared about, like their packs for example.

However, even as I understood where they were coming from, I still wasn’t okay with their decision to kill off my pack without giving them a chance to explain themselves. Or even to change for the better.

It was a hopeful, idiotic kind of wish but I couldn’t help it. No matter how evil they were, I couldn’t help the bit of compassion I felt for them because they were my relatives. In the whole world, they were the only people I could truly say were related to me by blood. A weak excuse but an excuse I was standing by with.

Admittedly I also knew it was a pathetic thing to be thinking they may be able to change just because I wished them to, but it wouldn’t be impossible, right? However, if push comes to shove and they continued to hurt other people for no reason other than continuing their dominion plans, then I was going to be the one they will be facing. I will take it upon myself to be the one who will end their delusional dreams because they had already hurt enough people; and who else would be able to stop them if not one of their own?

My mind made up I quickly changed the subject hoping Tate wouldn’t back me into a corner to ask why I changed the topic. “So, who were you on the phone with?”

His brows twitched at the abruptness of the topic since we were just talking about my pack. It wasn’t like me, he knew, since in any other day I would have pestered him continuously until he told me what I needed to hear. I didn’t need to today because I understood him, so I just looked at him expectantly waiting for him to answer my question.

“I was talking to Caden. We were finalizing a few things for our trip there in a few days.”

I nodded my head. “Okay, then anything else I could help with?” I asked, glancing at the files on his desk before looking back up at him.

* * *

“Bye,” I murmured to the picture which sat by my bedside. It was of a man with hair as dark as night and eyes which were as brilliant as the sun. King was a human friend of Daniel’s, someone he hadn’t seen or talked to for a long time.

I didn’t know him personally and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to because he had gone missing for years before I even met Daniel and the others. Yet it was like his presence drew me in, captured my interest completely for unknown reasons. Probably because of the warmth and strength his eyes conveyed clearly, even for a picture which had already passed the ages of time.

Until now I hadn’t been able to ask Daniel for more information about King, so I would be able to satisfy my curiosity at this stranger, because the circumstances had not allowed it. When we had left Osoria, we left in separate groups so there was no time then. Even when we arrived back at the Alcatrozz pack, he was always off with Hans just talking about strategy and other information then. Afterwards though, he and the rest of his pack members weren’t talking to me because of who I was related to. So there really was no right time.

I’ll ask him as soon as they start talking to me again, I thought before waving good bye at the picture of King. I strapped on my backpack and headed downstairs, ready to head to Bromsdale. Although I hoped I wouldn’t meet with Gabe first off.

Tate, Lowell, and the woman were probably already outside waiting for me so I quickly opened the front door. As soon as I did, I stopped just outside the door when I saw a familiar ash brown haired and blue-eyed boy standing in front of a dark car near Tate and the others.

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To reiterate for those who don't know:

Book 1 of the Rosewood Trilogy - Alpha, Do I Know You

https://www.dreame.com/novel/1964802.html

Book 2 of the Rosewood Trilogy - Chasing After Ashes

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