The Call of The Crescent

Chapter 3

The fire had destroyed Crescents packhouse, it was nothing but burned walls and ash.

Jesse’s men were nowhere in sight by the time I got there, I had searched everywhere and honestly lost interest in going back to the beach, the sight of the house depressing me and leaving a heavy pit in my stomach.

How could I have been so stupid? I should never have come back here, I lead Jesse and his men to the island, he would have left the others alone had I not been here.

Sinking to my knees before the ruins, I felt defeated and lost.

I was leaving far too much death and destruction in my path, and this was the one thing I had been trying to avoid by staying away.

“I am so sorry, Riven, I have failed so badly. I just wanted to protect the wolves.”

“Minx!”

I turned my head as Jake approached.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Carl, most of us have gotten off the island safely, and King was seen with Lowe, so I’m assuming that she’s safe too.”

I shook my head, “I lead them here, this is exactly why I didn’t want to come back. I have put everyone on this island in danger.”

“Harley, you can’t blame yourself for the choices someone else makes, and you know that. Right now we need to regroup and-”

“No. Right now we are going to find Jesse. He is going to put a stop to this madness and I am going to put a stop to him.”

Jake extended his hand out to me, “Then let’s get going, we have a lot of work to do.”

I took his hand and allowed him to help me to my feet, “Can you get us a boat? I’ll call King, our safe house isn’t on the island.”

He nodded, “On it, meet me at the pier in about twenty to thirty minutes.”

I nodded in agreement and he jogged off, leaving me once again alone with my thoughts.

Turning back to the ruins all I felt was a mix of anger and grief.

I would make Jesse pay for everything he had done, and I looked forward to it, I looked forward to finally getting my hands on him.

I had been asleep for most of the boat ride, waking up when we were nearing our destination.

Jake seemed to have been awake the entire time and I went over to sit next to him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, nudging me slightly.

“Honestly? Numb. The only thing I feel right now is anger.”

“You can’t let it consume you.”

“I won’t. The anger will leave once I kill him.”

“How sure are you? What if-”

“Jake, don’t try and be a shrink, this isn’t a therapy session, I don’t need a lecture on how bad anger is. I don’t care about any of that. Once I’ve dealt with Jesse I will work through the emotions, but not before that. I need to do this, Jake.”

“Okay, I’m just trying to look out for you, I don’t want to see you lose yourself to this.”

“Jake, I lost myself the day my mate died. He was my everything, and once he was gone, so was I. I still don’t know how I’m meant to continue without him, I don’t know how to breathe knowing that I will never see him again. It’s not even a piece of me that’s gone, it’s my entire being, my heart and soul. When he died, everything within me died along with him.”

“I wish I had the words to make it better, Minx, but I don’t and the only thing I can do is help you with Jesse, and hope that you will begin to be okay again. But you lost the love of your life, and no one expects you to magically be okay or find it easy to carry on. You are allowed to feel the way you do.”

I sighed and leaned back, ‘Thank you for putting up with me.”

He chuckled, “You say that as if I have a choice in the matter.”

I was about to respond when I saw it in the distance, “There it is.”

Jake squinted in the direction I was looking, “That’s not on land.”

I grinned, “Nope. We made it right in the middle of the ocean.”

“Is that safe?”

I shrugged, “It has been so far.”

I was rather proud of our little house we had made atop the ocean, although when storms came it was a bit choppy, we had been safe there for a long time.

It had been Riven’s idea, right before Jesse had attacked us we had spoken of his plan to make us a beautiful bungalow type atop the water, and when he was gone, it had felt like the perfect thing to do to honour him in a way.

As the boat approached, I saw King standing in wait at the little docking area.

I waved and he smiled, helping me out of the boat and onto the porch-like area.

“Lowe is inside with the cubs.”

For as long as I had been a wolf, I still couldn’t get used to the term “cubs”, I guess some parts of being human just wouldn’t die.

But that wasn’t important right now.

”You brought my children here?”

King nodded, “Yes, your father too. They were too exposed in New York, Jesse would go after them once he realized that his men didn’t get you today. It is safer for them here, when we leave, I will have some guards in place, but I doubt he will find this place.”

Jake pushed past me, “Masha! River! Uncle Jake is here!”

I wrinkled my nose, “Never refer to yourself as uncleJake again, it sounds creepy!” I called out behind him.

King chuckled, “The two of you rekindling things?”

I scoffed, “Absolutely not. My only goal right now is getting to Jesse.”

“You know, he doesn’t seem half bad.”

“My mate is dead, I’m not interested in anyone else. Let me get inside to my kids.”

“Cubs.” He corrected as I walked around him.

“Mama!” Two little voices called out as my son and daughter came running up to me, wrapping their little arms around me as I crouched down to hold them.

“Hi! How are my two favourite people?”

River had just turned eight and his resemblance to Riven was unmissable, Masha was only six, and although she looked like me, she had her father's attitude.

“Masha was scared of the house, she said sharks were gonna eat us!” River chuckled.

“River, don’t tease your sister.”

Masha kissed me before running over to Jake, a big story to tell him I guessed as she rambled on to him, he sat nodding, looking highly interested in what she had to say.

River turned to watch them, “I’m happy that Jake is here, mom.”

“He’s been missing you both, so I think he’s happy to be here too, baby.” I kissed him on the head before he went over to Jake.

I got to my feet as King approached.

“I have a reported sighting of Jesse at the compound he uses as Shadow’s Pack House.”

“Good, we will go there tonight, hopefully before he has a chance to leave.”

“How many of us?”

“The three of us.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? There are a lot of them.”

“It will be fine, all we need are good weapons and strategy.”

“I’ll arrange the weapons, we will need to leave in about two hours, I’ll have the guards here before we go.”

“Thank you, King. I’m going to spend some time with my kids, cubs before we leave.”

With Masha tucked in bed and River busy with homework, we had left to go to Jesse.

We had been sitting outside the compound for about twenty minutes, taking extra note of the guards Jesse had in place.

“It looks as though the two at the front gate don’t move, they are the same guards who have been standing there the whole day according to my people who were watching earlier. The four at the back seem to take shifts at four-hour intervals. We have two guards per wall patrolling non-stop. At the front door, we have two guards, at the back, one. We have no idea what’s going on inside the compound.”

I frowned, “Why would he have two guards at the front gate, but four at the back? Yet have two guards at the front door and only one at the back? There has to be something in that back yard that they are guarding.”

King nodded, “I agree, there is a spot at the back which we cannot see, it’s covered by trees.”

“Okay, so, do we go in from the front or the back?” Asked Jake.

“Two of us need to get in that house and get to Jesse, one of us should make our way into the back and find out what they are guarding,” I said, “I’ll go in, I need to be the one to get to Jesse.”

“King, can you handle the yard?” Asked Jake, to which King nodded, “Great, I’ll go in with Harley.”

“We do this as quietly as possible, no guns if we can help it, we don’t want to alert them of our presence until it’s too late for them,” I lifted the black hood over my head, my now black hair hidden under it, “We ready, boys?”

Jake and King both nodded as we made our way towards the compound, King breaking off to head around back.

Jake climbed up on one of the walls, I did the same with the wall on the other side of the gate.

Glancing down I saw the two guards, they overlapped one another, patrolling the wall in opposite directions.

Waiting until the one got to a darker area, I jumped down landing effortlessly in front of him, the shock caused me a moment to behead him easily with my axe, dragging him by the shoulders I left his feet sticking out so that the second guard would come to inspect and give me a chance at catching him by surprise too.

Crouching down, I held my knife in hand, the second guard frowning down at the feet, I threw my knife, it landed perfectly in his neck, causing him to make a terrible gurgling sound as he went down.

I retrieved my knife before running across to the front porch.

Jesse enjoyed flaunting his money, the archway was huge and surrounded by large plants, giving me enough coverage to hide in the shadows. I caught a glimpse of Jake on the opposite side and narrowed my eyes at him when I saw the gun in his hand.

He shrugged and grinned as he ran up to the front door, not even bothering to hide from the guards, putting a bullet in each of them silently.

I rolled my eyes and jogged up the white marble steps.

“Show off.”

Jake chuckled, “Come on, help me move these guys out of the way.

We each dragged one into the bushes before returning to the front door.

Jake raised a brow, “Should we knock?”

“We probably should have checked the guards for keys before we threw them in the bushes.”

Jake shrugged and tried the handle, the door swinging open with ease.

He took an exaggerated bow as we walked in, and I immediately knew something was wrong, and not just with his horrid style in the passage or large winding staircase.

There was no one there, and the scent I was getting suggested that there was no one here at all.

“You smell that?” I asked.

“Yeah, no one home.”

Spinning, I smashed the mirror to my side in anger, “He knew we were coming.”

“Harley, you’re going to want to see what they were hiding,” King shouted, as he ran in from the back.

Jake and I exchanged a glance before following him out to the back, and down to a secluded shed.

Stepping in, the first thing I noticed was that the place had been scrubbed with an extremely strong chemical, blocking us from picking up a scent of who had been in here.

It was bare aside from a pair of hanging shackles, and a white envelope on the dirty floor, with my name written on it.

Picking it up, I took out the piece of white paper which reeked of Jesse, reading it out loud, “Hello, Harley, did you think that I did not know you would come here? Did you think that it would be so easy to catch me? Give me a little credit at least, I’m not stupid. I must start by telling you how sorry I am for what happened to Beth, she was not meant to get hurt. Raya had to die, Jake took my mother so I took something from him, I’m sure you can both understand this. I know how angry you must be with me, but I promise you that when the time comes, you will not kill me. But I will leave you to find out why at a later stage when the time is right. For now, we will continue this cat and mouse game until I am ready for you to find me. Until then, take care and be careful, my men can be a bit wild,” I crumpled the paper in my hand, “This arrogant son of a bitch.”

“We will get him, Harley,” King placed his hand on my shoulder, “I promise you, we will get him.”

My jaw clenched in anger. He had one-upped me, and it angered me so much that I couldn’t even explain it, I wanted nothing more than to get my hands around his neck and choke the life out of him.

AN; Hey everyone! I hope you are enjoying the book so far.

I would just like to address a few things about this story to avoid some confusion.

This is my first ever werewolf story, and I wanted to do something different from the norm of werewolf stories.

You will notice some terms I use are different, and the way certain things work are different.

Harley was born human so I like to keep human factors involved as she still feels very in touch with her human self.

You will get to see some werewolf action soon though as this is still a werewolf story and I don’t want to take away from that more than I already have.

Also, Harley is getting a lot of hate, please keep in mind that Riven has been gone for two years now, it’s not as if Harley is cheating on Riven, or disrespecting his memory.

That being said, I truly am sorry if you are unhappy with the way the story is going,

I am working night and day on finishing this and making it as enjoyable as the first book.