Chapter 104 - Options
**Callums pov**
“Noooo..wait, just a little while longer..." I want her close, preferably I don't want to let her go all day. Yesterday I missed her but I understood that she and Maya wanted some time alone so we planned to meet them at Fusion later that night. I stood in the shower and imagined Hope on the dance floor, scantily clad, sweaty and blushing as her curves moved to the music and my body responded to my fantasies immediately. I had barely dressed when her link reached me and fear paralyzed me for a few seconds. I wouldn't survive losing her again, the uncertainty of ever seeing her alive. No, not again. Beacon roared in my head and snapped me out of it. I linked Reece and Alex and explained as I left the pack house, three minutes later we were a force to be reckoned with and we were moving as fast as we could towards Fusion.
“Callum…I’d love to stay here all day but we have a lot to do. Besides that I want to see Zandra and stop by the clinic, we have a prison that’s currently overflowing with hunters!”
“True, but they will still be there tomorrow...please stay.” I pulled her back down onto the bed and lay my self over her to prevent her escape. I started to kiss her neck and felt her relax under me, yes! I’m winning! A moan left her lips just to be followed by a knock on the door. Fuck!
“WHAT?” I growled
“Callum! Behave!” Hope got out from under me and put on her robe as she moved towards the door.
Cecilia and Zara were waiting on the other side of the door, an odd duo I thought but I left the bed and went into the bathroom after excusing Beacon’s bad morning mood. When I came back out, Greta had already been up with coffee and the usual breakfast tray, Beacon snorted at the women in the room for disturbing our breakfast ritual, something that did not escape Hope and a giggle left her lips. Goddess, I could live off her giggles. Zara told us that she worked most of the night looking at and replacing the memories of most of the soldiers. As Hope had suspected, they were just hired guns and didn’t have much knowledge of the organization in general. They had been sedated, driven away and dumped, when they woke up they would only remember a wet evening in the pub. Dirk as Hope had named him was still there. Hope had asked Zara to let him be. She wanted to talk to him herself first. I accepted it but I didn’t like it. He had come there to take her, my mate, my Luna...I wanted to do other things than talk to that man, I wanted to make him unable to ever speak again.
“Ladies, it was nice to see you, I’ll leave you to plan your day” I pulled Hope a little to the side and took her in my arms.
“If it’s okay with you I’ll be on my way, I’d like to sit with Zandra alone for a while” Hope looked into my eyes and smiled before kissing me.
“Of course it’s okay...Callum...I know you think it’s hard to be there...seeing her like that, but I still think she feels us and she’ll be glad you’re there.” She was right, I hadn’t been to Zandra’s as much as I probably should have and the times I was there I didn’t stay long.
“Okay, I see you at the prison later and please stay out of trouble” I stole another kiss before leaving the room.
Someone, probably Greta had already been inside Zandra’s in the morning. The curtains were open and the window was ajar to let the night air out of the room and new flowers had replaced the older ones in the placed vases. Zandra was resting as peacefully as the previous times I had visited her. She didn’t look sick or injured, just relaxed. I sat on the bed and took her hand in mine. Hope had been careful to maintain her nails so to someone who didn’t know, you’d think she’d been to a salon last night and had a manicure. Her blonde silver hair lay in perfect waves on the pillow around her face, testifying that she hadn’t moved an inch.
“Hi Zandra…it’s me, Callum…but you already knew that, you probably knew I was coming here before I decided to.” I looked at my thumb drawing circles on the back of her hand and felt a huge loss. I missed her... so much, even her reprimands and the sting of her cane. I lifted her hand and placed it on my cheek, precisely as she used to do before saying the words of support you needed most at that moment. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feeling of having her here, keeping her here and I was overwhelmed by the fear and the clarity that she might not come back.
“I hate this Zandra...I hate that you don’t wake up...I want to be able to demand that you wake up, as your Alpha I want to order you to wake up...but we both know I was never your Alpha, I have never been able to order you to do anything, you always did as you wanted but I know you always had the pack’s interests and well-being at heart. So, instead, I’m asking you...no, I’m begging you to come back to me...to us, we still need you.” I tried to clear the lump in my throat before continuing.
“But if you decide to stay where you are, or even leave us altogether…then I want to thank you...I want to thank you for always being there, for me, for Cathy...for all of us. You have kept us safe, raised us to think and feel before we act. You have nourished not only us but also our wolves, all baptized by you...” Beacon howls in sadness in my head but I continue.
“I want to thank you for Hope and Luna, without you I wouldn’t have found her, I had not believed in her existence and she herself had woken up bound, confused and afraid. There’s no one who can ever replace you but somehow we’ll make it, I promise you, I’ll keep us on the right course, the one you’ve laid out for us for generations...so if you want to let go, I will hate your decision, but I will still give you my blessing.” I closed my eyes and could almost hear her voice, “Let go? I’m not going anywhere! Don’t you have anything more important to you than to sit here and rant a bunch of sentimental fluff? Up and away, At least I’ve got more important things to do to do!” I smile and kiss the inside of her hand before I put it back by her side again, my cheek feeling cold without it. I look around the room to find her cane. I feel an irritation when I finally find it set in the closet. How is she supposed to find it there? Everyone knows that Zandra always has her cane by her side right? I place it at the head of her bed. “There, now you reach it when you need it.” I gave her forehead a long kiss and breathed in her scent of herbs and tamed wild flowers before I left the room.
Hope was waiting for me in the common room when I entered the prison building. Good, I was hoping she wouldn’t start anything without me, I don’t want her alone around any of those guys. In addition to the humans, we had brought in three rogues. Hope explained that they were the ones who helped get her out to the waiting hunters, however, they hadn’t expected Luna to hold them to the ground and had planned to escape, without a thought of what happened to Hope or any of the Other. In my eyes, they were worth as much as Tina, so I placed them in the lower cells. Mr hot shot however, or Dirk as Hope chose to call him was booked into an upper cell, at Hope’s request. She thought it would be easier to break him with comforts instead of threats and misery. “He’s just that kind of guy,” she had said, grinning.
She came up to me and buried her nose in the crook of my neck and I felt her take a few deep breaths. I held her tight for a while.
“Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be” She answered and got out of my arms. Together we unlocked the door to Dirk’s cell and stepped inside.
The man was lying comfortably on his bed, legs crossed and arms under his head. He gave us a fake smile and sat up as we entered “Good morning Dirk, you look like you slept well, look rested.” Hope said, returning the smile as she pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Believe me, when you’ve been in the field as much as I have and slept in the most horrible places, this little hut is very comfortable.”
“Good...that’s good. We won’t be long, I have some other things to attend to that I prioritize a little higher so you will soon be able to return to your thoughts, I will also make sure that you can get a newspaper or two to browse through. I just want explain what will happen here in the next few days.”
Hope crossed her legs and looked the man hard in the eyes. Whether he was trying to charm her, play tough or just plain stupid I don’t know but he smiled at her, a loveless but charming cocky smile.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, I know exactly what’s going to happen. You’re going to ask questions, I’m going to refuse to answer and then you send your bulldog at me.” He glanced at me before his gaze returned to Hope.
“Of course I won’t tell you anything anyway and round and round we go until you either kill me or the rest of the Sons come and get me, personally I believe in the latter.”
"A very human way of looking at things... No, I was thinking more of a few other options...Option one, I’ll bring in my witch friend, she’ll rummage through your head for the information I need before we drop you off as a drooling mess outside the nearest mental hospital...Option two, I’ll turn you , give you a wolf that will not only hate you for what you did to other wolves in the past but as a child of mine he be lojal to me and he will also have free access to your entire brain, memories, plans..everything.” Hope’s cold voice even makes me shiver and I see how the smile has left Dirk and the color in his face has faded.
“Option number three is a bit more violent and not really something I’m advocating…but either way I’ll give it to you. I’ll let my friend pick you up. His name is Tony and he is a true born vampire. He then takes you home to his father..after draining you of probably most of your blood he turns you, making you a child of the night. You will live for the desire to serve Him and willingly share with you everything He wants to know.” Hope stood up and returned the chair, before we left she turned back to the now very pale Dirk.
“If you cooperate, however, I can make sure you have a good life far from here after this. I’ll leave you to think until the next time we meet.”