My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

Chapter 171 - Now What

"Now what?" Andreas growled, pacing relentlessly behind his desk.

Graeme was back. They had been so close to bringing in his witchy mate for something that they could easily vilify her for—an attempt at suffocating pack members with some mysterious ability that would surely strike fear into anyone who remembered exactly why they were to fear alyko in the first place.

She had even run afterwards, making her guilt that much more evident. Had Lucas and his men succeeded in bringing her to the council for questioning afterward, they could have secured her in a cell while deciding how best to proceed. They could have had time to build the pack's fear revolving around her presence. Auden had even guided the mates involved in the incident with how best to tell their story to gain the most significant effect.

But now…

Now Graeme was back. And he was really back.

Pack members had been both excited and terrified when they unexpectedly witnessed the massive Alpha wolf go bounding at top-speed through the market that day. Their Alpha was back! It was a singular power in the pack—the power of an Alpha—and to witness it, to be even in its most fleeting presence, was to feel the alignment of the wolf within you to the wolf within him.

All were innately called to align with the Alpha's lead. It was undeniable.

The pull to be aligned with the pack's Alpha was in a way similar to the mate pull in that it was instinctual and overpowering. To deny it meant great personal cost to your own power as an individual lycan as well as to the contribution you could offer the pack.

Until now, no one in their pack had felt the full gravity of that pull toward their Alpha—at least not since the former Alpha and Luna had passed on—because the Alpha had been absent. And when he did return, he had always done so in a weakened form.

Graeme had never called upon or awakened the awareness within of that power he naturally held. And he never shifted into his intimidatingly massive wolf on pack land to avoid the confusion that would result from it. He had not wanted to be Alpha. He had walked away from that responsibility.

For these reasons, the elders believed themselves to be in the clear from the pack's instinctual drive to be aligned with him. He had left early enough, before arriving at that realization of his full power, to have truly felt what he was capable of or to feel that mutual connection with the pack that came from his status.

But then something unexpected had happened. Graeme had found his mate and returned to them. He had marked his mate. He had even engaged in a full moon ritual with his mate. And now he had shifted into what appeared to be the fullest manifestation of his Alpha power that existed.

Even those who did not witness Graeme's presence in the market that day had still felt it. Andreas had even felt it, for fuck's sake, and he was all the way in his office awaiting the delicious moment when he would be told that the human was in the dungeon.

But when Graeme had shifted and become the Alpha that he was truly meant to be to their people, Andreas felt it just like the rest. The sickly familiar feeling of having your core pull away from you and seek another—like a sunflower bending from its stem to follow the path of the sun. The pack members were the stems, Graeme was the sun, and the damned wolves inside of them all were the blooms that could not be reigned in to do their own stems' biddings.

He would rather rip his own bloom off than be forced to follow the damned sun again. If he couldn't find a way to snuff out the sun that had unexpectedly risen in their sky that day, he would do just that.

"The only possibility I can see at this point is arranging for their final removal," Pearce opened his fingers that were tented together in front of his face.

"And what until then?" Andreas snarled. "It's not like He can just arrive with a solution within a day's time."

"And she is still with her powers," Auden hissed. "We must find a way to get her the serum."

"Now that it has already been mistakenly given to Greta by my own personal walking nightmare Zosime?" Andreas scoffed. "Like they won't be anticipating that? We will never get near her again."

"Where is Zosime now?" Pearce asked with a slight curl to his lip. He was known for being collected and measured, but it was difficult to hide the extreme distaste he had for that girl.

"I left her in the dungeon cell where they found it convenient to throw her," Andreas replied.

"Do you suppose they tried to kill her?" Pearce raised an eyebrow.

"If they had, I am sure we would have heard of it by now. Or they would have taken her. No, somehow she was offered mercy," Andreas muttered.

Pearce sighed. "A small reason to hope. Perhaps she will have some ideas about how to proceed."

Andreas let out a shrill, hysterical laugh. "Trust her ideas again? I don't think so. Every allied pack saw that last map event. The feed was not disabled. She should have known better. I have been holding our friends off so far without a satisfactory answer as to how it occurred and why—gibberish about technical glitches and system updates—but they will be visiting soon enough to investigate personally once their curiosity gets the best of them. This must all be taken care of before that can happen. There must be no trace of Graeme or his mate."

"Can you imagine what they would think of us? A witch Luna?" Auden's face paled.

"It is much more severe than that, Auden," Andreas sneered. "Did you not see the way our entire pack land lit up on that map? We will all be burned at the stake."

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Let's grow G and A's story in Power Stone votes! If we can average 100 PS votes a day for one week, I will do 4 chappies mass release at the end of January.. The goal is to finally get LMSF to rank within the top 200 books on WN in PS votes by February! Every vote helps, my little wolves. <3