Throughout my birthday, and the three weeks that followed, the pack and I worked to clean up our home. It was our tradition to cremate the bodies of our kin when they died to give them an easy passage to the afterlife, and so we spent that day gathering up their bodies and bathing them, so they could be wrapped respectfully in cloth.
I had helped to pick up the bodies of every other family, but I just couldn't do it for mine. I couldn't look at my father, or what was left of him, and even worse, I couldn't deal with the idea that my mother, who had hugged me, and held me, and loved me so powerfully to her last breath was dead.
Liam was my strong tower in all of it. He helped me carry out my duties, picking up broken up floorboards, picking off wood from the floors on the homes we visited, and having my back, throughout.
When I fell ill from the sheer stress and exhaustion, he didn't force me to be strong, or tell me any of the motivational bullshit that everyone was used to feeding other people. He cried with me when I needed to, he let me be my own person. He had also lost his parents in the attack, and I asked if he needed support, but he assured me that their deaths was all the same to him, seeing as they had disowned him while they were alive.
I understood, and tried my best to bear my cross quietly, after some time. We carried the dead together and burnt them with sage and other herbs, so their passages through the afterlife would be swift and easy.
Then came the hard part; rebuilding.
The entire pack had been built on a solid foundation, but the bodies of these homes had been gutted by the wolves, leaving behind only shrapnel and wood. Mercifully, since the night of the attack, it had not rained, and we had all been sleeping at the mercy of the elements, under the sky. Some homes looked like they were intact, but there was so much death and destruction within them that living in them seemed impossible.
So all of us in the pack, all the survivors had to build a new home, one that suited the new needs that had arisen.
We had children who had no parents anymore, no guardians aside from the ones assigned to their wellbeing, and we realized we would need to build at least three huge homes to serve as hostels for the children alone.
The only building which had only suffered superficial damage was the pack store, something we were grateful for.
After we had a long day of being strong and having our heads together, Liam and I would lay down on the same blanket, with another one draped over our figures, and I would talk to him, try to get hints of what our futures were about to look like, without any of the elders to guide us.
“Liam. What are we going to do? How are we going to navigate this? Will we be okay?”Like clockwork, each time this anxiety crept into my brain, he would give me a tender kiss at the crown of my head. “Yes baby,” he would say.“We will be okay. It's okay. We will sort it out… we will make a new way of life for ourselves. We're all we've got now. It will be okay.”
“Promise me nothing will happen to you. That you'll stick with me. Please.”
“I promise,” he says, and honestly? I think that he meant it at that moment.Over the next year, we did create a new normal, and Liam and I lived together in our own home, taking care of the pack together. He would go out in the morning and do his best, and I would care for our neighbors, who were mostly little kids so had lost their parents. I would teach them the things I thought were essential for them to know.
I served as a teacher while Liam served as anything else they needed, and soon we were permanently Olivia and Liam. The older generation of wolves had taught us how to take care of ourselves, and we made sure that we did, and did it well too.
We knew that we would need a new leader soon, someone who we could give the responsibility of our wellbeing to. I would vote Liam in a heartbeat. From the way that he took care of me alone, I already knew that he would be a great leader, but then that was the exact same way that he was with the little children of the pack, making sure that they were always well fed and comfortable.
So many of the pack members had come to me privately to convince him to run for the post, and I had passed along the message with due diligence, telling him that the people of the pack would want him to be their Alpha.
At first, he would deflect and instead ask me how I would feel about it. He would begin like, “Babe, how would you feel about it? You know you would have to share me, right? If I became the Alpha, I will no longer be just for you. I will be for every woman, every man, every single person that is in this pack.”
I would happily respond, “yeah, I know. I'm okay with that. The people need a leader, and you are the exact person they need. So selfless, so responsible, able to keep his head straight on his neck in a crisis. You would be perfect.”
He would brush off my response, and then it became a thing that we did every other day. “Why don't you accept, Liam? They need you. We need you, I need you.”
“I think I'm too young,” he finally admitted. “I shouldn't be allowed to get in power when I'm just 20.” I nodded, finally understanding. My 19th birthday had come and gone, but he didn't turn 21, the acceptable age for a few months, and he had always told me that one of his biggest fears was not achieving his dreams fast enough.“I get that. I think everyone would get that. We forget so easily because well- you're so good at managing us. But I trust your discretion. If you think that you are too young for it now, then you are. We have survived this long without leadership, we will be okay.”
“Till I turn 21.”“Till you turn 21,” I echoed.It was the morning of his 21st birthday when my entire world fell apart. I had stayed up all night to wish Liam a happy birthday. I had baked a cake at a neighbor's house to surprise him, and I had also called a few of our friends in the pack together to wish him a happy birthday. At 7 in the morning, I had gotten everyone over for the big surprise, and they had all came out. They came in with handmade birthday cards, the little kids all gave him hugs and gifts, things that warmed my heart. Everything was going well, and everyone dispersed for the day, and I said thank you by the door, thanking everyone for their time and their love.He had some business in our newly constructed town hall, so I waved him off for the day, remembering that the second surprise would be happening there, and I would be heading the crew to crown him as our Alpha. I worked along with everyone else and after dressing the little kids up, I went ahead to take a shower and prepare myself for his party, so I lo
The next day, a meeting was called at the pack hall, made mandatory for all the pack members to attend, and even though I had just lost my partner, I knew that Alpha Liam deserved the title, and the respect. I made the deliberate effort to arrive there early, avoiding the glances of everyone by wearing a black dress and a black hoodie. A few people saw me, but they understood that I needed time to myself, and they let me be, going ahead to get seats in front. I sat at the back and kept my head down, feeling it in my heart the moment that Liam walked up the aisle with Anne trailing behind him. I bit my tongue to avoid a sob choking out of my throat, and I slid down even lower in the seat when they arrived at the front. This was his first official address as the Alpha, so I got up and applauded with everyone else when he arrived at his place on the podium. I sat down as quickly as I could, and he walked forward to address all of us. I looked at his face, the man that had become my wh
I looked at him with a cocked brow, marveling at how lovely his name was. “Nice to me-”“And my name, ” interrupted the other brother with a cocked brow, “Is Asher, and we are the Alphas of the Blue Blood pack.”“Nice to meet you,” I smiled, beaming at them. “You guys have really cool names!”“Well, thank you,” continued Dante, getting up to move closer to me. “So, about those directions you were going to give us… ”“We are heading back to the Blue Blood pack after a long trip down south. Our compass broke, and now neither of us knows the way to get back home.”“Oh.. I've never heard of the Blue Blood pack,” I explained, “but if you remember any landmarks, I should be able to direct you to them.”“Give us a minute to think,” they said, so I turned away from them and piled rocks to form a circle, picking up some lint so I could start a fire. It couldn't be safe to keep moving the dark, especially since I had no true destination and was simply heading north, in the direction of the sun.
It had been thirty minutes more on the road, and I was already tired. The trails were bushy because they had not been walked through in quite some time, and to make matters worse, it had been rainy a few weeks prior, and coupled with the current sunlight, they were growing quite well. Dante had fallen back, tending to the horse, but Asher stuck to me like glue, getting so close that I could feel his breath down my neck. I shut my eyes to it and refused to feel the sensation, but at a point, I got exasperated and turned to face him, smirking in satisfaction as my braided hair whipped around with me and slapped his face. “Look, what is it? You already said we're going the same way. We agreed that I would lead the way. We're already in so much agreement, so why the hell are you breathing down my neck?”“No, I-”“Listen to me,” I continued, holding up my hand, “there is such a thing as personal space, and you are going to have to respect mine. I want to be able to turn around with my br
Chapter 7They continued the journey on their feet, worried about the horses and how they would deal with the stress of a gallop after the wild one they had just been on. Dante immediately agreed, his affection for his horse trumping anything else. Asher on the other hand did not want to walk, and he told me as much. “Look, our pack is still at least two hours away, and it's an even longer journey when we are walking. I really don't want to do this.”He had stopped in the middle of the path, and instead of dignifying his outburst with an answer, I walked past him, noting that Dante and the two horses had done the exact same thing. Sighing, he turned around to walk with us, pausing at the trunk of a very wide tree. It had some mangoes on it, ripe and heavy, and I stopped abruptly too. As though my stomach recognized the fruit, it growled, and I blushed. “So you're hungry too? I thought we were just going to keep walking for hours on end and then hope for the best?”“In what world do
More of the guards trooped out, six of them in number, advancing towards me. Afraid, I went to stand behind the horses, moving away from the tips of the spears. Instead of moving away like I had hoped, the guards came after me, pushing Dante and Asher away from me.“Alpha Dante. Alpha Asher, please move away from the intruder. We will keep you safe.”Dante turned around to try to explain, and instead fell on his injured foot, which had now swollen up to almost twice its size. Asher looked between me and Dante who was on the floor and decided to help Dante, taking so much time that the guards have the time to grab me and push me into an uncomfortable position. It hurts, but I bite my tongue to keep myself from yelling.It is not the right time to play hero, not the right time to fight, so I do as I am told, folding my knees up under me and spreading my arms wide out. One guard walks over to me, a woman, and she begins to pat me down, pulling my knapsack off my back.A few minutes that
As he shut the door behind him, I set my bag onto the bed, a queen sized one with tall bedposts. The room also had a few chairs and furniture, with green notes. Two lamps sat on either one of my bedside tables, and excited, I ran over to the wall to turn on the lights, enthralled to see that there was a chandelier in the room. I quickly turned it off and walked over to the verandah, which was covered by a wall sized window, which was perfect for looking out. I wondered if there was a curtain I could draw up to shield me from the sub jr it eventually shone through.On further exploration, I found that there was a hidden closet, painted to look just like the green walls of the room. I opened it to find clothes hangers, and I decided that when I was truly settled in and had a job to help me to pay for them, I would be getting myself enough clothes to fill them up. I came out and noticed the little nook to the corner, perfect, even down to the selection of books. I was worried about Dan
P.S; Dear readers please do not forget to rate and vote for this book in the app, and your comment are sincerely needed. Thank you.*****Exhausted from the day's activities, it took a while for me to fall asleep, but having relaxed my muscles, getting my mind to comply did not take too long. Mere moments after pulling up the covers around my shoulder, I fell into a nice, long sleep. “Miss Olivia? Miss Olivia!” I swatted away the voice that was speaking to me, ignoring it. I figured that if I ignored it long enough, it would leave. I was having a good dream, and I didn't want it to end. Yet there they were, an incessant knocking. For a second, the voices seemed to have swelled, and my eyes snapped open. I had forgotten about dinner, I realized, and I hopped off the bed, Landon on the floor with a yell. “I'm coming! Please hold on!”I pushed the covers off my body and tossed them on to the bed, pulling open the door. It didn't open, and I froze for a second before remembering that I