Maybe theyâre all distracted with vampire attacks and end-of-world foreboding for now, but my gut says itâs temporary.
I can feel the hatred lingering in the air from Juanâs fierce frown, and it unsettles me in every kind of way.
âYou all know why we are here,â Juan begins.
Itâs the final push needed to bring a total hush to the room as all are completely still. Thereâs not even the shuffle of moving bodies, and all fall deathly silent.
It tugs my attention back to him, and I peek around the side of the male in front of me to catch sight of him again.
âA long-forgotten enemy attacked us, and quite frankly, we didnât see it coming and were not prepared.
âDespite the rumbling of recent months, we didnât honestly expect them to rise and attack in this way, and we failed our people.
âWe lost fifty-three of our kind on the dark side of the mountain tonight. Forty-seven lost in the battle, and six bonded who perished when their mateâs heart took its last beat.â
My heart aches as he says it, visualizing so many of the faces I know went down in that attack.
Unlike anyone else in this room, Iâm probably the only one who not only knew their names but what every single one of them looked like and who they were as people.
I knew their ages, not only when they died but when they were first dumped in that hellhole without their loved onesâI have memories with all of them, even if they were not close to me.
To these wolves, theyâre just numbers to measure their failures against.
I close my eyes as the tears begin to fall silently down my cheeks, warm unwelcome rivulets of remembrance.
I shudder as I push them away, inhaling heavily as my shoulders start to tremble with the effort of not falling apart.
The pain returns once more, and I canât stop myself, my heart filling up and straining to contain it as images I donât want to relive swamp my mind.
The horrors of how I last saw them all try so hard to invade my brain and cut me down again.
I nestle back into Colton, and his arm comes up around my body and across my neck as he cuddles me, comforting me because he can feel my pain.
My body trembles as I cry, squeezing my eyes shut to gain control.
His touch is what I need more than anything, and I stay here in the darkness of my own doing, listening and silently weeping while held tight in his comforting embrace.
âWe think it was a test for this device we found in the orphanage,â Juan carries on, and my eyes rip open at his words.
I shove my despair aside as I squirm, wriggling out of Coltonâs arms to see what everyone is craning their necks to look at, catching a gap as the ones in front move sideways to look where I am.
He holds up a small, perfectly square black box that looks harmless, an antenna sticking up at the top but a lack of buttons or dials of any sort.
Itâs small and compact, no larger than a tissue box, with another wire sticking out from the rear about a foot long that doesnât seem to attach to anything to power it.
It doesnât look real, more like something a child could make with card, glue and some black paint, and I blink at it, stupefied, glaring furiously, and hating that something so insignificant destroyed my life.
âThey chose our weakest and most secluded and walked right in, depositing this in the center of the first-floor kitchen.
âWe think they wanted to test its effectiveness and still have a fighting chance should it fail. It didnât. Weâve only one survivor left from the home, and only because of the fast actions of our pack.
âWe took down many of their kind, but a few escaped and will report on their success for sure.â
Thereâs a murmur and uneasiness as people glance around at one another, questioning, and I catch the whisper of my name on the hushed wave of sound.
A mixture of relief that my survival ensured their own Santo alpha and the bitter ones, calling me a reject and querying how I was the only one who survived.
I catch the low, body-vibrating, internal growl from Colton as his protective instinct kicks in at hearing my name.
A couple of nearby Santos glance this way, eyes widening in surprise, and they instantly stare down at their feet, turning meekly submissive in a flash.
Faces darken with fear and shame at being caught by him, of all people, realizing heâs right here, among them, and not down there with his immediate family.
I turn away to block them out and stare toward the front instead, mentally blanking them all because this has always been my life, and Iâm not bothered by their remarks.
I catch sight of his grandmother in the shadows when they settle down, a woman who barely shows face but is lingering nearby.
Unsurprisingly, thereâs no sign of Luna Santo, Coltonâs mother. Sheâs been absent from view since the wars, and, rumor has it, she locks herself up in her room on the main floor upstairs and never leaves.
No one has seen her in years, and if it werenât for Coltonâs memories of her in my head, I wouldnât even remember what she looked like.
She has met one of the few things in the world that can leave unhealable damage on a wolf, and her mental state has crumbled with the trauma.
Some say she was scarred horribly by the battles, both mentally and physically, and is too ashamed to come out and face her people.
Only I now know from being inside his head thereâs some truth to the stories, and thereâs only a vague, blurry visual of Colton being told sheâs cared for, away from the mountain, because the war broke her.
Those around us turn silent as Juan breaks through the thick atmosphere once again, drawing me away from my train of thought and disrupting my search of the past for answers to her lack of appearance.
âTesting weapons can only mean weâre heading for a war with an enemy we thought we long ago defeated. Theyâre working on a strategy, and this is just the beginning.
âThere have been rumors of stories, but nothing concrete for many months, although this is our proof. Civilization as we know it is about to change drastically.
âWe must protect the packs, join with those from other lands, and prepare for what is coming.
âWe ~must~ unite and finally have one leader to rule. One voice, to work as one, under my guidance as alpha, if we are to survive a second war like the last.â
I shiver as his words hit home, my brain scrambling to fathom something as massive an undertaking as that.
Weâre a dozen packs in one state, but worldwide there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, and most still do not live in peace with the others of their kind.
Rivalries exist, and some are still at war, even now, with the history of the conflicts behind us. A common enemy may change that, but thereâs much to do before that can happen.
Packs are destined to want to rule over one another, fight for dominance, forge the hierarchy, and our mountain is not typical when it comes to living proximity.
It was a necessity as we recovered from the war of before. Our people, shattered by loss, were more pliable in accepting another pack as our leader.
Most of our alphas never returned to dispute the claim to rule us.
Santoâs idea that he will become the only leader and unite us all seems ridiculous, given the vast number of us he will need to unite in this world.
Iâm sure there are other pack leaders out there who believe themselves far superior to himâother dominants with way more ability and gifts, and itâs not in an alphaâs nature to yield without a fight.
I shiver, my body trembling with all that is dawning on meâhow terrifying our future now looks.
Colton tightens his hold on me, reassuring me as best he can, trying to keep me calm and be that rock I never knew I needed before finding his touch.
I exhale heavily, submerging myself in his body heat, and try to bring myself peace.
âWe need to put measures in place to protect our mountain from another attackâeffective immediately.
âAllocations of groups, with leaders, will be assigned to those who havenât already been. We are the reigning pack in Radstone, and theyâll all be looking to us now to lead and protect them.
âTraining will begin at first light for all old enough to fight, so all of you eat. Sleep. Weâve already sent small details to walk the perimeters, and each village has been ordered to do the same.
âWeâll have guards outside at every hour, keeping watch, and weâll revise a system to improve on all of this, set up drills with how to react should an alarm be raised.
âIn the next few weeks, weâll be moving all surrounding packs to the south side of the mountain, here among our people, for their own safety. We have much to do.
âThere will be upheaval and chaos, but we must keep our heads. This was the first offensive, and we do not know when they intend to return.â
The silence becomes unbearable when his last words fall in the air, and the gravity of our situation sits heavy on us all.
Some of these men and women are survivors of the first war against the vampires and have already paid their dues, but most of us were just children or young enough to stay behind.
We lost so many, and although our numbers have recouped over the years, weâre not living in readiness for a fight.
Weâve had relative peace for years, and I have no idea how the hell weâre going to get through this.
Bringing us all to one place to live in each otherâs pockets, here in the Santo land, is going to be madness. Weâre spread far around the outskirts of the mountains, and our numbers are high.
There are not enough homes to accommodate bringing us all together to this one shaded side, under their command and watchful eye.
Not to mention the children, their schools, and their animals on the outer farms. This is insanity.
I feel sick to my stomach, knowing that everything I knew before, my idea of empty living, was, in fact, the best years of my sad existence.
Now weâre dawning on a new age, and I wish with all my heart that I could return to being that unworthy reject in a house full of unwanted on the shady side of our peaceful mountain.
If I could go back, I would. I would never complain again and never crave a different life because what is coming couldnât be worse.