Goddess of the Forest

Chapter IV

    I jumped up and smiled. “Alex!”

    I ran to his side and threw myself into his arms. “Hey there princess, get into any trouble while I was gone?”

    He winked at me before looking over to the trackers, it was only then that I noticed how scruffy he had gotten. His curly brown hair had gotten shaggy, he let his stubble grow out into a small beard, and his clothes were dirty and wrinkled. As the Gamma of the pack, dad would send him out on missions as an ambassador for the pack, he must have been roughing it somewhere.

    “I heard that last bit, the rogues that are moving in on us are all from the same collective. I don’t know what they’re after but I’ve dealt with them before.” He walked around to the map and looked at the dots that the trackers left. “How many days apart did you find these?”

    Zyler shrugged. “We were split up half the time, I followed to border and Marcus went into the territory. I’d say I found a new one every two or three days.”

Marus nodded. “Same with me.”

    Jack rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. “How many rogues did you smell? We need to calculate what kind of threat were up against and estimate how long until they get here.”

“We think theres at least twenty to thirty, give or take.”

    Waylon shook his head. “At the rate they found new camps they aren’t moving very fast, we should take two teams down there. Zyler will be with one and Marcus will be in the other, we follow the same path that they took until we find them and take care of the problem.”

    Zyler nodded his head enthusiastically. “That’s what I was thinking! We need the best warriors, in case they’re going to attack!”

    I had been sitting back, just absorbing all of the information. “Zyler is a little eager to get some men down to the rogues.”

    “I agree, I sense something about him. We need to keep an eye on him.” Leto agreed with me, and when that happens, it’s serious. This wolf was about as stubborn as a bull.

Jack nodded. “I agree with that too, we can bring it up to James and try to go soon.”

    “We could be ready to go by tonight! Why put it off longer, ya know?” Zyler volunteered. Marcus looked annoyed, they had just been out for a little more than a month.

He looked like he wanted to argue but then my dad popped his head out of his office.

    “Jack, Alex, office. The rest of you go to your afternoon duties please.” With that the meeting was over. We all shuffled out of the conference room, feeling like nothing was solved.

    “Well, youngins, this old wolf is off to bed. Haven’t had a good nights sleep in a month. Looks like I only have the next few hours to get any thanks to a hotheaded jackass.” Marcus glared at Zyler then wandered down the hall of the packhouse until he reached his door.

    “Bennet and I are going to stick around to see if were going to get pulled into the hunt. We can do the chores around the packhouse.” Waylon threw an arm around an annoyed Bennet.

    “Ok, I’m going to head back to our cabin and see if Jackie needs help with todays orders, dad said I was free today.” Jackie owns a bake shop on pack land, she does a little bit of everything. I might be big and bad, but baking was my secret passion.

    The boys and I part ways, as I head for the back door which you can see the Alphas cabin from, movement catches my eye. I look back down the hall and I just see Zyler, leaned up against the wall. Staring at me.