The Call of The Crescent

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

I refused to go home I couldn’t imagine setting foot in the place I had lived with Riven while here on the island.

The memories would eat away at me.

You would think that after two years without him, I would be okay, but I wasn’t, I would be okay once I got my revenge.

I missed Riven, even though I had a brief fling with King recently, not that it went any further much to his disdain, but he had known the deal, I needed a distraction and he had been happy to provide one, he knew that I would never be able to love after Riven.

Sitting alone in what had been Rivens office, I now regretted this fling, I felt like I had cheated, which was ridiculous, but I still felt awful about it.

The alcohol I had consumed didn’t help my feelings of guilt, and I took another sip from the bottle, allowing my tears to fall, wondering if losing someone ever got better.

Riven and I had been together for so long that I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to feel okay without him.

As usual, Jake to the rescue, he opened the door, frowning as he walked in.

“You, uh, you okay?”

I sniffled, “No, I miss him, Jake. So much.”

Sighing, he came over, sitting on the desk he pulled me into a tight hug, “I’m sorry, babe, but it gets better. No, wait, it doesn’t get better, you just learn to make room for it and live with it.”

“I slept with King and I feel like a complete cheating bitch.”

“Oh, um, well, I would have preferred not to know that, but okay. You don’t need to feel bad, you loved Riven but he’s gone, you are allowed to live your life without feeling guilty about it. He loved you and he would want you happy, even if that is with someone like King.”

I chuckled, “No, God, no, he and I aren’t together, it’s just... My life is a mess. I’m a mess.”

He kissed the top of my head and my heart ached, reminding me of Riven.

“Minx, you will be okay, maybe not today, and that’s okay, but you will be one day.”

I sniffled again, “I’m getting snot on your shirt.”

“I don’t care. You need to go home and get some sleep, you need to rest.”

“I can’t, Jake, I can’t be in that house.”

“Okay, come on, you can come back to Crescent.”

“I’m bringing my drink.”

Jake chuckled but I could see the worry in his eyes. And those damn eyes looked right into my soul. I hated the fact that it was the same feeling, the same magical feeling that I had when I first saw Riven.

I hated that it made me feel safe again, that was Rivens job, no one else.

How could I stand here and allow myself these feelings as if Riven were replaceable?

Sitting on the bed in Jake's room, I watched him reading a book while on his sofa on the opposite side of the room.

Without looking up he spoke, startling me, “Do you feel it too?”

“What? Feel what?”

He looked up, our eyes meeting and I knew what he was talking about.

I looked down at my hands in my lap, “I don’t know what you mean.”

He stood, coming over to sit next to me, “Minx, it’s okay to tell me if you feel it too, I won’t expect you to act on it, I would never expect that of you. I just want to know if you feel it.”

Looking straight into his eyes, I forced a smile, “I’m sorry, Jake, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I couldn’t do that to Riven, not with Jake.

“Okay, get some sleep, I’ll be over on the sofa.”

Laying down, my eyes stayed on him as he returned to the sofa, “What are you reading?”

“Fiction. A book about werewolves, I love reading how wrong they portray us in some of these things.”

I smiled, “Masha and River love reading about the big bad wolves in fairy tales.”

“Well they should, their godfather is one of those big bad’s.” he wiggled his brows.

Despite how I was feeling, I couldn’t help but smile, “ Thank you, Jake, for once again being an amazing friend and just being you.”

“I told you, Minx, I’m not going anywhere, I will always be right here for you, for as long as you want me around,” he put the book down beside him, “Are you going to see the kids this weekend?”

“Yes, do you want to go with me?”

“I would like that, we could take Lowe with me, I’m sure she would like to see the kids again.”

“I need to talk to her tomorrow, she must hate me right now.”

“She doesn’t hate you, she’s just hurt that’s all.”

I nodded, I knew that he was right, and I needed to set things right with her.

Getting ready to meet King back at my office, I saw Lowe getting ready for a jog so I went over to her.

“Hey.”

“What do you want, Harley?”

“I’m sorry, Lowe. You know that I love you, right? I don’t want to hunt wolves, but the thing is I have to put a stop to these wolves who think they can take over, they are killing people and giving us all a really bad name.”

She frowned, “You disappeared for two years. We thought you were dead! Losing mom, and then grandpa, and then we thought we had lost you, do you know how that felt? We thought something had happened to you and the kids too. I thought that I had lost all of my family, and Jake? He went crazy, Harley. He lost Raya and when he thought he had lost you, he lost it. Do you know what it was like to see him like that? After mom died, you and Riven were all I had, but you weren’t living here and he took me in under his wing, he is one of the strongest people I have ever known, and when he thought that you were dead he crumbled, he didn’t even care about the Pack. He was a shell of himself. And I get that you were hurting but you were selfish for what you did.”

“Lowe, Riven was my mate, when I lost him I wasn’t thinking about Jake, I was thinking about myself and my kids, and maybe that was selfish, but I didn’t know how else to deal with it. And I am so sorry for hurting you.”

She scoffed, “What about Jake? Even Grandpa knew that he loved you. Did you even bother reading his letter to you?”

I frowned, “What letter?”

“Riven left you a letter in case something happened to him, it’s in his desk drawer.”

“I didn’t know that.” Riven had left me a letter? Had he suspected that something like this was going to happen? “Look, Lowe, I made a lot of mistakes and I’m sorry for that. Jake and I are going to see the kids this weekend, and I would like it if you could join us.”

She shrugged, “I’ll see.”

I wanted to speak to Lowe and fix things, but right now I needed to find that letter.

I had been sitting at the desk for at least half an hour, my eyes on the envelope I had found on the desk.

My name on the front in Riven’s handwriting.

King had taken the Rogue and his daughter over to Jake, they had better places for keeping prisoners.

“You know that it won’t read itself out just because you’re staring at it.”

I glared as Jake walked in, “Don’t you knock?”

“No, I’m rude, remember? What is it?”

“Lowe told me about it, it’s a letter Riven left me in case he...”

Jake sighed, sitting down, “Are you going to read it?”

I nodded, “Yeah, but I don’t know when.”

“That makes sense, I’ll give you some privacy.”

I sighed and waited a few moments longer before opening the letter.

My dearest love,

If you are reading this I would assume it means I’ve died...

I won’t write you page upon page, you already know how much I love you

But what I do need you to know is that I want you to be happy and if I am no longer there, I want you to know that you and Jake have my blessing, he already knows this, we have spoken about it before.

I love you so much and I want you to be with someone who would love you as much as I do and we both know that Jake is the only other one who would die to protect you.

Now stop crying and missing me, and go and live your life, you are still young and deserve to be happy.

I love you always,

Riv

The tears streaming down my face I placed the letter back on the desk, trusting Riven to know exactly what was going on in my head even when he was no longer with me. But the one thing he hadn’t realized was the love I had for him; I could pretend to be happy with any other guy, human or wolf, but that wouldn’t make it real, nothing would ever be real again. I could never love on the same scale on which I had loved him.

Letting out a deep breath I got to my feet and walked out, I needed to get to King, and have a chat with the two he had brought in.

I would think about everything else later, but right now, I needed to take care of business.

Jake was already waiting for me when I arrived, he sat in his office, the ‘cells’ were off the office for higher safety.

“Where’s King?”

“In there with them, he’s been in there the whole time. Did you read the letter?”

“I did, why did you never tell me what you and Riven spoke about?”

“It wasn’t my place, Minx.”

“Right, let’s get in there.”

I walked in to find King calmly sitting on the floor, a man with long black hair tied to a chair, while a woman with brown hair was tied to another.

“Hello, I’m Harley, better known as the Minx,” I watched the two visibly pale, “I would prefer not hurting either one of you, but your daughter here was seen meeting with Jesse, and Jesse is something that has my interest.”

Alegra frowned, “Jesse? I don’t know who that it.”

Sighing I crouched down, “Look, Alegra, we saw you, you were having coffee with him.”

“Wait, do you mean Javier?”

“Of course he gave you a fake name.”

Alegra’s father tilted his head, “What do you want with Javier?”

“Who are you again? And his name is Jesse, not Javier. Trust me, I’ve known that little snake for years, he killed my best friend, my husband and Jake's mate.”

“f**k sakes! He is my fiancée!”

I turned to see Jake's response to this, he looked as shocked as I felt.

King shrugged, “Alegra swears not to know anything of any takeover, Billy here is the same.”

Billy nodded, “I saw you on the news channels, telling everyone about what’s going on, I had no idea that he was involved. I’m a Rogue, I left my Pack because I wanted no part in this Lycan life, I just want to live a life as normal as possible. I would never have allowed my daughter near him if I had known what he was or what he was doing.”

“Well if you’re sticking to that story the two of you are just going to have to stay in here until I verify this,” I stood and walked out, “I can’t believe this, you know what? I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going straight to Jesse, I’ll force him to stop all of this madness.”

King shrugged, “That sounds like a better idea, you can speak to all the wolves that are involved in this and stop them, it would probably be less time-consuming.”

And of course, right when I thought that I had found a foolproof plan, I was shown otherwise.

Without warning an explosion went off, sending us all to the floor from the force.

Jake and I glanced at each other before running out together.

The explosion had come from the forest, as we reached the steps we were met with flames and smoke, the trees on fire.

Jake turned to one of the other wolves, “Get Lowe to safety.”

Throwing off my coat I walked down the steps with more confidence than I should have had.

“Jesse!”

Only Jake and I were still in our human forms, but that was only because I preferred not to shift when hunting, it gave me more of a thrill to be smaller than these large creatures.

A whirring sound made me look up in time to see something on fire being catapulted over us, crashing down into the Crescent Packhouse.

“Jake, get everyone safe, this is my fight.”

“No, I’m going with you.”

King placed a hand on my shoulder, “I’ll get Lowe, we will meet at our safe place, go kick some ass, Harley.”

Pulling my axe from its holster, I ran into to forest, dodging flames that were coming too close to be safe.

“I can’t believe that he’s done this!” Shouted Jake, running alongside me.

“I took his little girlfriend, I should have seen this coming, and now I’ve endangered everyone.”

“It’s not your fault that he’s insane.”

I didn’t have the chance to reply as I dived onto the ground, narrowly missing a flaming arrow.

You would think they would use better weapons in this century.

I was up instantly and moving again, not stopping to check if Jake was okay, he was still close behind me so I took that as a good sign.

Coming through the clearing, I froze for a few seconds at the sight.

The whole town was on fire.

But I couldn’t see any wolf in sight, so where were they attacking from.

The two of us ran down the streets, hearing nothing but explosions and fighting in the distance, but spotting no one.

“Minx! The beach! It has to be coming from the beach.”

The one place I had been trying to avoid, but Jake was right.

Detouring down a small alleyway, I came face to face with a wolf, it wasn’t one of ours so I carried on running, slicing its head clean off as I did.

And as I approached the beach my heart broke.

The beach was filled with them, but that wasn’t the problem, I had been outnumbered before.

The problem was that my home was burning to the ground.

Jake grabbed a hold of me, pushing me against a wall, “Minx, what the hell are you doing? You can’t just run into all of that.”

“And I can’t just let them slaughter us! These are Jesse’s people, he doesn’t want me dead, he wants me to suffer. They wouldn’t dare kill me.”

Jake sighed, glancing around the wall to view the beach, “How are we going to do this? There are two of us and at least fifteen of them down there. We will need to catch them by hey, Minx!”

I had started walking, leaving him to ponder his plans alone.

Climbing up on the only part of a roof that wasn’t on fire, I scanned the little army that Jesse had sent, not seeing any sign of Jesse himself of course.

They were spaced out, so I jumped down in front of two of them who were responsible for what appeared to be some sort of rocket launcher.

Jake followed suit, his feet hitting the ground beside me seconds after I decapitated the one, he himself wrestling with the other.

But I had gotten what I wanted, the launcher.

Lifting it to my shoulder, I aimed at the largest group on the beech and fired.

The force sent me flying back against the wall, sending a shock wave of pain along my shoulder, That’s going to leave a bruise, I thought to myself, not that it mattered because Jake had managed to get the launcher from the other and following my lead, began shooting at whatever groups there were left.

“I’m going to get back to Crescent, go past Forest, get everyone to safety and meet me back here.”

Jake nodded and Iran, launcher in hand and a bag of ammo over my shoulder.

I was extremely grateful for the fact that I had gotten used to carrying heavy weapons in the last two years, this would have slowed me down a lot more before that.

I knew that King would have gotten Lowe to safety, but I wanted one of Jesse’s men alive to send him a message.

I had planned to kill him, but now he had brought so much worse upon himself.

He had taken away my family, my friends and my mate, and now he tried to take Lowe.

As my eyes landed on the mess that was once the Crescent Pack House, I vowed that I would make Jesse wish that he were dead.

A/N: Please keep in mind that both Jake and Riven were mated to Harley, she chose to go against the mate bond and stick with a monogamous relationship with Riven.

I know that this is not the norm, but I didn’t want to have her with two mates, and again, I wanted to keep some of her human attributes.