Romeo Alpha Blood Lines Romance Series - Books 1 to 5

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Fenris gathered his pack together the night before the full moon, in the largest room he had. He hadn’t returned to the caves yet, so space was limited. “As many of you know, our wonderful magician, Dankar, was ruthlessly murdered by the Delta pack this July. If for nothing else, we owe them retribution for his death. Tomorrow night is the full moon and I want as many of you as possible to make the change. Every male in our pack, of course, will do this, but the females as well. If you’re not expecting, then you too will change. I want to infiltrate their borders and slay as many of them as possible. If we can’t get to their men, we’ll take their women and children. No one survives. A decent strike to their heart ought to get this war started and there’s no better way to accomplish that, than to hurt their hearts.”

The members of Fenris’ pack spent the day planning their individual attack plans. Each one responsible, either as an individual or as a couple, to take down one or two of the outlying homes on the Delta pack’s radar. “These are the outer most layers of Romeo’s pack,” Fenris said, circling about twenty homes on the outskirts of town. “If we can plunder all of them tomorrow night while their men are off enjoying the change, we’ll deal a serious blow to both their numbers and their morale. Their men won’t want to leave their wives and children after tomorrow night and the ones who lose their mates won’t have the will to fight.”

“What if the women make the change to guard their children?” one woman asked.

“Are we so weak that we can’t get past a changing female?” Fenris chuckled derisively. “We will force their hand in this,” he added. “Or we’ll damn well die trying.”

On the morning of the full moon, Fenris walked the entire line, making sure his wolves were in position far enough out that Romeo’s pack wouldn’t notice them. They each had food and water rations to sustain them through the day and were ordered to keep a sharp eye come nightfall. “If you have anything that needs to be done beforehand, get it done. I want you all sharp and ready when the moon rises.”

The moon started its ascent over the horizon as Fenris waited. He’d given strict orders that his pack was not to howl at the full moon, no matter how strong the urge. It was a crime he made sure they knew was punishable by death, without so much as a question being asked. Walking his first strike line, he tapped the first couple to move and laughed heartily when the sounds of screaming reached his ears. His wolves returned, their muzzles coated in blood. “Good,” he said. He moved on, tapping each consecutive individual or couple and the results were astounding. Romeo’s pack was going to be devastated come dawn. He had a couple of courageous females turn to protect their children and the battles had been intensely gratifying. Despite the scratched and bruised bodies, Fenris’ wolves had done well, dispatching the mothers and their children with relative ease. As dawn crept closer, Fenris and his pack retreated into the woods, close enough to hear reports of their deeds, but far enough away that they wouldn’t be detected. After they got their reports, they’d make their way back to their new home and wait.

>>

Sarina paced all over her parent’s sitting room, her nerves stretched thin. She’d gone out early with Brody Jr. and Jedidiah, letting her mate sleep. On her normal walk she often visited the outlying pack members to ensure they were well taken care of. She’d come upon the Schultz home to see Alexander sitting on the steps, rocking back and forth, incoherent. When she got close he growled at her, low and feral, a look of terrible despair on his face.

“Alex?” she said, not reaching out to touch him.

“I shouldn’t have left them,” he mumbled. “They’d still be here if I hadn’t left them.”

“Did something happen to Christy and the girls?”

“They’re dead,” he said, as if quoting a news headline. “Slaughtered by wolves, by the looks of it. And not ordinary wolves either. This was a hit from another pack.”

“What?” Sarina asked, marching past him and barely making it a step past the doorway. The stench of blood and death soaked the walls of the entrance. Pieces of hair and skin were strewn everywhere and Sarina closed her eyes, not wanting to see anymore. Before she could stop herself, she shoved the stroller away and retched in the grass. Wiping her mouth she gently touched Alexander’s arm. “Will you come with me? Come and speak with my father. If this was another pack’s doing, we need to prepare for whatever comes next.”

“There is no next for me,” he said. But he followed her anyway. He wasn’t the only one to follow her that morning. Before she’d gone halfway along her usual route, Sarina knew that there would be tens, maybe hundreds more. She collected Tom Anders, Ben Jackson, Sheldon Pickett, and Grady Thompson, somehow seeing them through their grief, to her parent’s home.

“Sarina?” Amanda said, a look of worry on her face when she took in her daughter and the men that followed her.

“Oh, Mama,” she cried. “It’s terrible!” Sarina recounted, as best she could, the scenes she came upon. All nearly uniform with the ruthless killing of werewolves.

“My God,” Romeo breathed, not wanting his anger to show. After they’d seen the men upstairs to rest, with a little help from Amanda’s sleep medication, Romeo finally spoke. “This is Fenris’ doing. He’s wanted a war for a long time, hitting us under the belt so to speak with his imposter. We snatched you back with the twins and now he wants the big show.”

“You’re not going to engage him, are you?” asked Sarina.

“No,” Romeo said. “Not as he expects anyway. He wanted to hurt our family and he has aimed with deadly precision. However, we won’t give him the war he wants. I will go to him and I will speak with him. I am sure he wants my submission and to take over the Delta. I will die before I see that happen. However, I will find out what it is he’s after besides power. He’s aging rapidly now and there’s no telling how far his plans will go.”

“He’ll kill you if you go alone,” said Amanda.

“I’m not going alone,” Romeo said. “But I have to be wise in my choices. If I take all the men with me, who stays to protect the women and children? Fenris’ pack has gone to great lengths to show us that they do not value the lives of females and their offspring. It is my intent to take him and his entire pack down without a war. I won’t, however, see my family in jeopardy to make that happen. We need to think and to plan very, very carefully.”

Romeo had Amanda and Penelope attend to the men who’d lost their families while he and his brothers, his sons, Jason, Wade and Joshua, worked on a strategy. “We can’t fight them and win if all we’re after is revenge,” Elijah said.

“The hell we can’t,” Bryce said, always the one to argue the point. “They decimated some of our most prominent families, in the middle of the night, on a full moon. If that doesn’t require one on one, I don’t know what does.”

“We need more to go on than just run in, hack-hack, die,” Sebastian said, his dark eyes just as angry as everyone else’s.

“What do you suggest?” Joshua asked. “We were expecting something from them and they still out-maneuvered us.”

“Then perhaps we shouldn’t attack, at least not yet,” said Sebastian.

“You expect the men who lost their families to accept that?” Bryce growled.

“I don’t expect anything from anyone. I’m just trying to offer alternative solutions,” Sebastian countered.

“Everyone calm down,” their father said. Romeo stepped into their midst, still casting an impressive figure at eighty-five human years. “Everyone will have their chance to say their piece about it. Meanwhile we all need to take a step back. There are men, men we’ve known in our pack for generations, who’ve just lost everything that was dear to them. They easily cut our numbers and our hearts, so we need to take some time to grieve. Then, we need to execute a plan of attack that will wipe this blight from the face of the earth and I have an idea on how to do it.”

>>

“You can’t be serious,” Sarina said, pacing again, which she did whenever she was aggravated or irritated about something. “This is lunacy.”

“Do you have any other suggestions?” Brody asked, earning him a not so pleasant look from his mate. “I understand how uncomfortable this is for you.”

“You don’t,” she said angrily. “None of you know how painful this would be for me, or you wouldn’t have asked in the first place.”

“Sarina,” Romeo said, stopping when he saw the pain and hurt in her eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. We know it’s unfair to ask this of you, but without this important link, we may never best Fenris and his attacks on our people will continue.”

“So sending me to the s*******r is the best and only alternative?” she countered. “Not only was I unknowingly seduced by that man, I bore the shame of carrying babies that could just have easily been his. And now my family wants me to seek him out so he can help us defeat his own pack? Do you even know how insane that sounds?”

“Forget we asked,” Romeo said, meaning it. “You’re right. We’ll have to find another way to get this done.”

When her relatives had left, Sarina started to head upstairs when she heard Brody say, “You could have been more help back there.”

“What?”

“All I’m saying is that you could have been more help. You could have offered another alternative if you weren’t up for finding Brandt.”

“Seriously?” she asked, her heart already bruised, was now breaking. “You of all people should know what it was like for me and yet you’ll stand there and tell me I haven’t done enough?”

“I just think you had more to say,” Brody said, walking past her. Sarina stalked to their room and let the tears fall as she went. What the hell was happening to her life? How had things gone from blissfully happy to this? Checking on the boys to make sure they were sleeping, Sarina drew herself a bath and sank into the heat, hoping it’d give her a little perspective on the entire ordeal.

She could understand the plight of the men who’d lost their families. She knew she wouldn’t be able to cope much either if it’d had been Brody and the boys who’d been murdered. Still, she thought what her father had suggested went too far. How could anyone expect her to face the man who’d taken advantage of her in such a terrible way?

After a long soak, Sarina stepped out and heard Brody Jr. and Jedidiah start to fuss. Their cries picked up in intensity as she dressed and by the time she was able to get to them, they were screaming. “Hey,” she cooed. “Mama’s here. I’ve got you.” She nursed and rocked them back to sleep, placing them together on her bed, before she went to find Brody. Her concern peaked when he wasn’t anywhere in the house to be found.

Lately, his episodes had been happening more and more as she found herself slowly being pushed away. She hadn’t talked to her mother about it, for fear of stirring up a hornet’s nest that wasn’t really there. Now though, she knew something was seriously wrong. Bundling up the boys, she drove to her mother’s home to discuss bad news for the second time in as many days.

“Hi, Honey,” Amanda said in greeting.

“Hey,” she said, sticking her head in the backseat to undo the twins. Picking up a carrier, she was relieved when her mother took the other one.

“Everything okay? You look perplexed.”

“I’m worried about Brody,” Sarina said.

“What’s the matter with my munchkin?” Amanda asked, looking at the baby in the carrier she held.

“Not little Brody Jr., big Brody. I took a bath after the boys fell asleep and when I got out, the boys were crying and he wasn’t anywhere to be found.”

“He didn’t leave a note?”

“No note, no goodbye, no anything. We argued after everyone left this afternoon. I was irritated and didn’t want to talk about it, so I drew myself a bath. When I got out that was when I noticed he wasn’t there.”

“How’d the poultice I gave him work out?”

“I’m not sure it did, to be honest,” Sarina said with a sigh of defeat. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, but something has changed him. He’s not the man I’ve known from the beginning, Mama.”

“Well, people do change over time, but not drastically usually, at least not so drastically over such a short time. He said he didn’t come into contact with anything that might have caused this issue, but I’m not so sure anymore. Somehow, whoever or whatever is affecting him had to have touched him somehow,” said Amanda.

“He killed Fenris’ magician, Mama. I would think that someone studying the black magic would have some dark things in their soul.”

“That’s true,” Amanda replied. “You’re sure Brody killed him?”

“He was in his wolf, but yes I’m sure.”

“Good,” Amanda said. “That at least gives me something to go on.”

“Can you watch the boys for me? I’m going to do as Daddy suggested. If my reaching out to Brandt can bring a resolution to this whole thing, than I owe it to our pack to try.”

“I admire you,” Amanda said, giving Sarina’s hand a squeeze. “Not every woman could do what you’re doing.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Sarina said, giving her mom a half-hearted smile. “I’ll be back as soon as possible, but I’m not sure when that’ll be.”

“Jason’s going with you,” Amanda said in such a motherly tone that Sarina didn’t argue. “He’ll also help you find Brody. If what you’re saying is what I think it is, he’ll need us.”