The True Union

Chapter 7 Jared

Jared was not happy; he had just gotten news that an Alpha’s daughter had been kidnapped. The Elder Council had reached out after being unable to reach Derrick. This is the last thing his Alpha needed. They were all being summoned to the council’s meeting house in just six days. He knew everyone would blame the Dark Moon pack. He told the Elder to contact him directly with any updates or photos of the missing girl. “Thank you, sir, Dark Moon is here to help in any way.” Ending the call, he considered his options. He really should tell Derrick, but he had so much on his plate today. He was in meetings all day, which is why the Elders couldn’t reach him. Jared decided to leave it for now. He would tell him tomorrow that still gave them plenty of time to prepare for their departure. Jared moved his thoughts on, he needed to get his patrols out. There had been a number of rogue sightings and attacks on the western border, and off he went.

The next day Jared was busy as ever. Starting like every morning he joined the morning patrol assignments, he needed to know where his teams were going to be throughout the day and the problem areas. For the most part he stayed quiet for this part, as he had excellent patrol leaders. Aj was his head, and he always made sure that he was informed in real time of issues, so this was really just a formality anyway. After the patrol meeting, he had the morning briefing with Derrick and the pack council. Then he had to lead the training of the pack warriors and patrols. After that he had been asked to review the training of the teens. Pack members started training as soon as they shifted in order to be better prepared to defend themselves and those who can’t shift. Teens also had the option to join a voluntary second training that was more intensive and would prepare them should they want to join the warriors after high school. Today’s review was because they had three promising students in the latter course. The day had flown by and soon another patrol was beginning. To Jared’s surprise, Derrick joined him. This was going to be awesome. It had been forever since they got to patrol together. Derrick was always so busy with his duties. Derrick took off immediately after shifting Jared on his heels. Normally, patrols stopped at the border, but with only a brief stop, Derrick kept going. Jared didn’t know what had gotten into Derrick, but before long, Derrick stopped. Jared saw a lone wolf being surrounded and attacked by multiple rogues.

Jared led his men to the fight and began killing the rogues. It wasn’t anything new for Jared, and it certainly wasn’t hard. As Beta he was trained with the best warriors. His primary job was pack safety. He was getting concerned though, Derrick wasn’t moving to attack. This wasn’t like him, unless he didn’t want them attacking. That wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for Derrick, but would he really have brought them here to sit back and watch? Before he could put too much thought into it, he saw Derrick move to attack. That’s better, he thought. Sooner than he would have liked, the fight was over, and the only wolf left was the white one who was being attacked. Jared quickly turned his sights on her and jumped back when his best friend and Alpha growled at him, preparing to attack. What in the world?

Something was clearly going on. Jared relented and after watching her collapse, he dutifully followed his alpha as he carried her back to the pack house. He was surprised when they didn’t go to the physician’s office though. Even more surprising, though, was when Derrick carried her up to the fifth floor, the Alphas floor. Only the Alpha and his family stayed up here. The house was divided by floors. The Alphas floor was at the top, the third and fourth floor housed high ranking pack members like the top warriors and Aj as the patrol leader, the second was empty most of the time so visiting packs had somewhere to stay, and the first floor was a lot of different things like the dining hall entertainment zones and public offices. The house was open to any pack members at all times. However, the fourth and fifth floors were invited guests only.

Jared opened the door for Derrick at his silent direction and just watched. Derrick was acting strangely; he had never reacted to a female like this. Lately, he had been ambivalent more than anything towards female, saying he had too much work to do to entertain. The only thing Derrick said though was for him to fetch Alfred. It looked like he would have to wait for answers. Like the good Beta he was though, he did as ordered without question, heading out to the pack hospital. Jared always found it a little funny to call it a hospital though it only had around six patient rooms and two offices. It was barely used for more than the most serious of injuries and laboring mothers. Their wolves healed most everything else.

Finding him quickly, he told him of the Alpha’s orders, and they headed back. It wasn’t far from the hospital to the pack house, and he was walking back into the room within ten minutes. Derrick still seemed out of sorts, and he saw him caressing this unknown wolf. When Alfred asked how she was injured and Derrick didn’t speak, Jared was left to fill him in. Jared wanted to question his friend’s sanity, but he knew now wasn’t the time, especially not in front of a pack member. It wouldn’t look good for such defiance to occur publicly. When the doctor was finished with her examination, Derrick ordered them both out.

Jared let Alfred exit before him, so he could argue him staying with them, but Derrick refused. Taking one final glance back at his friend, he left. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear his friend was in love. Deciding to stay close, he went to work out of Derrick's private office. He needed to give Derrick time to figure this out, so he set to work overseeing things. It wasn’t uncommon when Derrick left without Jared. Jared would oversee the pack. If they both left like they would be in four days, Derrick’s uncle oversaw things.

That reminded him, he needed to prepare their trip and touch base with Eric about what he would need to be made aware of. It was never a lot though. Eric was constantly ensuring he was kept in the loop of everything. Calling Eric into the office, he set to work. Eric was pissed that Jared hadn’t immediately told him about the missing girl, but Jared didn’t really care. He wasn’t Alpha or Beta. He was only privy to what they decided he should be, even if he sometimes forgot that. After dismissing Eric and refraining from telling him about the girl they had found, Jared began creating an order for their private plane to be ready and booking hotel rooms for them. He was luckily able to get the presidential suite at one of the big name hotels in the next city over from the council grounds. He liked booking big suites like these because they typically had two separate bedrooms and a living area. This one was exactly like that. It would only be him, Derrick and two guards going, so he didn’t need anything more than one room. He was also able to book them a rental car. Feeling slightly bad, he still hadn’t told Derrick about the girl he settled in to get more done.