Moon Desire

CHAPTER SEVEN ?

Marco

The smell of mold and dirt invaded his nose. He could hardly wait until they got to the safe confines of the 2011 Dodge Ram, if only to get away from the moldy smell. The dirt he didn't mind, but the potency of the mold practically burned all of his nose hairs off.

The brothers stayed silent, settling with their own thoughts.

They were on the expressway when Marco finally spoke up. Mom has been worried about you." He chuckled deep in his chest. "I swear I must've had at least ten thousand pancakes since you left."

Dawn laughed. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. You know how Mom gets."

And did he ever. Dawn and Marco had been eating non stop since their Dad and Alpha had died five years ago in a rogue attack. To this day, Marco still got flashbacks of wolves sweeping through the territory. As a seventeen year-old, he'd been too young to fight for the pack, but that didn't mean he wasn't affected. He still saw the wives holding onto their crying children as they all sat in the pack house basement. And the tired, hollow eyes of the men who returned, bloodied and broken. Though they'd tragically lost a few, their fighters had been stronger than the rogues.

To this day, some of those men continued to recount the bravery of their father, who gave his life to battle for the pack. Dawn and Marco spent their time searching for the person responsible. Rogue wolves didn't just gather and attack.

Their mom, in a way of coping, had cooked and cooked for the pack. It would have worried Marco, if he didn't know that the cooking was actually keeping his mom sane. She'd had nothing to do since his dad died; all the Alpha responsibilities had shifted over to Dawn because he was the older of the two of them.

If they weren't werewolves, who needed a crazy amount of calories each day, they would definitely have become a chunky bunch.

"Ashley's been looking forward to your return," he stated. When he saw Dawn's answering look of horror, he gave out a loud bark of a laugh. "Goddess only knows how long she's been trailing you."

Dawn ran a hand through his hair. "She was annoying as a fourteen-year-old, can only imagine how she must be as a...is she eighteen now?"

Marco nodded. "Just had her giant birthday bash last month. It's crazy the amount of money Adam spent on that party. Makes me wonder if we can really trust him with our pack's finances."

“Should I be worried?" Dawn joked, though a serious undertone was present.

Marco chuckled and flicked on his left turn signal at the exit. “ I think you should be more worried about all these newly shifted females we have."

Dawn stayed quiet, thinking over what Marco had said. He groaned. "Just what I need, a bunch of newly shifted females looking for their mates," he said sarcastically.

"It'll always be like that, Dawn. After all, what girl doesn't want to mate with their all-powerful Alpha?"

Marco could pretty much feel Dawn rolling his eyes. "At this point, I'd much rather be single the rest of my life. Less commitment."

"Aw, come on, man. Don't be like that. I'm sure whoever ends up being your mate will be one hell of a chick."

A hush fell over the truck. The only sounds were the gentle hum of the engine, the talk show on the radio playing softly from the speakers, and their own breathing.

Marco knew his brother. He knew Dawn was slowly starting to lose hope of finding his mate. He was twenty-three, going to be twenty-four soon. He'd traveled to many packs for business and even around the world, tracking the rogue that had killed their father. And right now, Dawn was of perfect marrying age. And he knew that Dawn's biological mother had an orphan and child named Charlie. Sometimes he visited them while Dawn was not here.

But he wouldn't be for long.

"You'll find her," Marco stated with confidence. He met silence.

They drove for a while. Dawn probably basked in having that familiarity back while Marco enjoyed finally having his brother around after all these years.

He was also excited for his brother to take over the brunt of the Alpha duties. Running the pack while he'd been away was a tricky business, and even though Dawn always kept in contact and updated him biweekly, it was Marco that basically had to follow through with everything. Yeah, he was Beta, but there were a lot more responsibilities for the Alpha than the Beta and Marco wasn't sure how much longer he could deal with it.

It was good to have Dawn home again. But Marco couldn't help asking himself: if it wasn't the rogue, what brought him back?

"Okay, I need a brief update. Have you been working on the pack security like I told you to?"

"Yep. I've had security cameras set up all around the town and its borders. Hidden, of course. Patrols are running daily and we have a strict watch on most, if not all pack members."

"How are those new Omegas you told me about? They just moved in recently, right?"

Marco calculated in his head. "About three years, maybe."

"Any problems with them?"

"Not so far. They're pretty quiet. They keep to themselves. I don't have anyone watching them because I don't have enough men for everyone, but it hasn't been an issue yet. They seem fine. Although, a year ago Cole came to me to discuss their financial problems."

"Financial problems?" Dawn sounded surprised. “Adam's supposed to be on that. He's in charge of all the pack's money for a reason."

"I told him to fix the situation, but I haven't had the time yet to look into it with all these new security enhancements."

Dawn nodded in understanding. He was probably thinking about when he was going to surprise Omegas with a visit.

The pack hadn't always been worried about their borders. In fact, most of the packs used to live in harmony. Well, maybe not harmony, but with a tolerance of each other. The United States was full of werewolf packs and sometimes it was too hard not to step on some toes. But other than territory disputes, everything else used to be okay. Some packs were even known to have been friends.

Then the Royals were killed. An entire family of wolves. Dead. Just like that.

It put most, if not all, Alphas on the edge. Since

then, the Alphas and their packs had been watchful. They'd all waited, searching for who or what was beginning to be torn apart little by little as Alphas, pack members, and Omegas everywhere were being taken out without warning.

Marco carefully pulled into the wrap-around driveway, putting the truck into park once the wheels completely stopped.

"Home sweet home," Marco announced to Dawn.

“Thank Goddess."