Chapter 21

Our first day of police work made me become a nerve wreck, I woke up about an hour earlier than I was supposed to, got out of the bed doing everything I could to not wake up Aldahir, I decided to make us some breakfast, which ended up being toasts with butter and coffee, the only food we had at the moment and I started getting ready while wondering what we would have to do during the day.

When I was coming out of the shower I heard our alarm going off and a few seconds later I heard Aldahir calling me.

-Really? – He asked walking up to me – the point of living together is to wake up together Dhalia

-We woke up together, I just woke up before you – I said chuckling

Aldahir rolled his eyes at me, so I smiled at him, grabbed him by the arm to pull him closer and kissed him, he grabbed my waist and kissed me back, when we pulled away he smiled and walked into the bathroom to shower. I went back to our bedroom to get ready, I simply put on my uniform, tied up half my hair in a ponytail and applied some hydrating cream to my lips.

After Aldahir got ready we had breakfast together, then cleaned up the kitchen and headed to the Pickering police station where we would be given instructions on our work for the day, get assigned a mission or whatever they needed us to do.

Once we got to the station we were each given a gun, a bulletproof vest and a baton; immediately after we Aldahir and I were called by one of the officers who was holding a bunch of papers and told us to get into one of the offices.

-We will be assigning you a semi-consistent mission, we have many access points to the forest and we have had far too many reports of illegal hunting – explained the officer putting the papers in the desk and telling us to look at them

We looked through them finding around forty reports related to illegal hunting one way or another, some said about dear hunting, other mentioned coyotes and, something that concerned us, wolves, there were a few reports talking about wolves getting killed for their fur, one of the reports even said someone found the body of the wolf hidden in the forest with all its fur removed.

After reading most of the reports, and growing more upset by the second, we were assigned to patrol around one of the best well-known entrances to the forest with the goal of stopping hunter from getting in, or stopping them when they – sadly – came out with their hunt.

Aldahir and I were driven there and we decided to head into the forest first to check out the area and make sure there weren’t another possible exit or entrance with which the hunters could walk by unnoticed by us, of course we were also checking out the forest for ourselves trying to fin out if we could use it for the full moons from then on.

-We need to go shopping – said Aldahir suddenly making me look at me him confused

-Shopping? – I asked him looking around a tree where I had heard an animal walk by

Said animal turned out to be a coyote, which decided to growl at us an attack me, I simply moved out of its way and then yelled at it while hitting the tree next to me with a baton, this scared the coyote and it ran away.

-Going back to our conversation – said Aldahir – yes, shopping, we just got an apartment, we need things for it

-And we also need money to buy said things, we literally just started working, we will get our first pay check in a month – I reminded him

-Yes… But that doesn’t mean we can’t go to some stores and look around for things we like so we can buy them later

-You want to go and spend hours going from store to store, knowing we can’t get anything and also knowing we could be spending those hours doing something else? – I asked to Aldahir

-Don’t judge me, I’m excited about our place, that’s all – he answered shrugging his shoulders

-Hey I’m not judging – I said getting in front of him – I’m just trying to understand why you want to do this

-I’m allowing myself to get excited over what we have, I hadn’t allowed it to happened until now because I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop

-Shoe?

-It’s just a saying, I mean I hadn’t allowed myself to be truly happy and excited about us being here, training in the academy and in general being away from your family and the rest of the pack because I kept thinking they would show up again and actually find us this time – explained Aldahir

-I didn’t know you were still worried about that, why didn’t you tell me?

-Because it wouldn’t have made a difference, all it would have done was stress you out with something you couldn’t control or change, I didn’t want to put that on your mind

-Even though it is kind of cute that you didn’t tell no save me some stress, I would have loved if you did because it would have saved you some stress, sharing what’s concerning you makes it less concerning

-I know, but I don’t want to burden you with my things

-It isn’t a burden, nothing related to you will ever be a burden, we might be married now but I’m not saying it just because of it, even before we got married it was like that… Just think about the amount of times you allowed me to talk with you about every little detail in my life that was driving me crazy, even though you couldn’t do anything about it

-I did it because you needed someone to listen to you, that was it, you needed to vent

-Exactly, and it’s not fair that I can do it with you but you seem to think you can’t do it with me

-Moral of the story? – He asked stopping me

-You can talk to me about anything, I will always be there to listen and allow you to vent

Aldahir smiled at me and pulled in for a kiss, I kissed him back and after observing a very colorful bird we went back to work. The day itself was uneventful, we didn’t find any evidence of recent hunting or saw anyone trying to get in or out, which made us happy realizing the animals around there were – at least for now – safe, but Aldahir admitted we would have liked for something to happen and make our first day as police officers more entertaining.

We kept patrolling the same entrance to the forest for two weeks and apparently our simple presence around there had made the hunters think twice about using that section of forest to hunt, we found some people getting ready to get in, camouflaging their weapons as gear for camping or using their favorite excuse “I carry these weapons as a self defense tool”. Those people were, of course, taken down to the station, where we filled the report for each case, went through their criminal records – if they had one – and if it was necessary, we enjoyed watching them be taking down for some prison time.

We quickly realized there were a few very well-organized groups of hunters that would sneak into the forest to either kill dear for their meet, or coyotes and wolves for their fur, why would they kill coyotes for their fur when it wasn’t even nice to the touch? I have no idea. But these groups of hunters became our biggest issue because the knew every inch of the forest as the back of their hand, which complicated our job of catching them.

After a few days when we found evidence of illegal hunting when we went back into the forest in the morning Aldahir and I decided to take advantage of our wolf senses in our attempt to catch them; we hadn’t been using our senses because we couldn’t exactly take a person down to the station and answer the question “How do you know this person was hunting?” with “Because I smelled the blood of the animal they had just killed on their clothes” we needed concrete proof, but we decided to risk it a little, rely on our senses and look for the proof we needed after.