CHAPTER 81

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
“Um, so yeah. She is my mate,” I shrugged, finishing my explanation. I was still reeling from the intensity of Nadia’s memory, my nerves on edge.

For a few minutes, Danny remained silent, pacing to and fro before he stopped, his expression nothing short of shock. Who could blame him though? There was just something about my supposed mate bond with Nadia that didn’t seem normal of a werewolf. She could let me see her memories; something unheard of in the werewolf world and how the hell did she even establish a mind link when not only was she not a werewolf but we hadn’t been bonded yet? Just what exactly was she?

“Your mate? H-How the hell is she your mate? I mean, I know I made the speculation at first but it’s impossible to have another mate when you are still connected to the first one,”

“You think I don’t know that? You are not the only one losing their mind over this but right now, I need to save Nadia from Xander,” I rose up from my seat.

“Are you crazy? We have a funeral of twelve of our sentinels about to commence and you are talking about saving the one person that is supposed to be the weapon that could end us all? I’m sorry but I’m not letting you walk out of here,” he stood his ground.

“Nadia is the only one with the answers as to what the hell is going on here. You’d probably not understand but I just had some sort of revelation of probably the most painful part of her life,” I paused, trying to refute the image but still it went in a loop in mind,” I saw how her family died. She just stood there; a little girl shaken to the core by things she didn’t even understand. All she could see was her family being killed right of her by the wolves,”

“That makes her eve more dangerous,” he countered.

“Then what am I supposed to do? Let history become a loop? Lets say she makes a hit on us and wins this time. Then be sure the wolves would retaliate and it will just be a back-and-forth battle. There will never be peace in this town unless the hatchet is buried for good,”

“What? And you think playing the hero would somehow erase all the pain she went through and make us all buddies again? Because it won’t. Open your eyes Collins. The war is already here whether we want it or not,” he snapped.

“Not if I can stop it,” I pointed out.

“Your people are out there, mourning the loss of their loved ones. I have no idea what Nadia did to you but you are not the same man who used to put his pack before anything else,” He shrugged, almost in pity, then walked out of my house.

“Fuck!” I cursed, slapping my coat down as I gripped my hair.

I hated being at crossroads. For a few minutes today, I’d felt like I got my control back but now it was slowly slipping out of my hands. I balled my hands in a fist, ramming it into the wall repeatedly, aware of the pain coursing through my body.

“And here I thought you had everything under control,” My father’s snide remark had me halting as I turned to look at him.

“Trust me, I thought I did too but it turns out when your father murders an entire family, karma bites you right on the ass. It makes sure you feel the pain from all angles and somehow the perpetrator ends up scot-free,” I shook my head,” Gloat all your want Dad but the blood of every dead wolf is actually on you,”

I walked into my room, stripping down everything and hoping into the shower. The warm water cascading down my body should have helped me feel a tiny bit better but it didn’t. Instead, my mind remained plunged in the depths of my indecisions. On one hand was my pack that had been my family for as long as I could remember. They respect me and groomed into who I was today despite the mistakes I made in the way. On the other hand, was the woman I cared for and yet a woman I seemingly knew nothing about. I wanted to take a risk on her because even my wolf seemed to want nothing more than to protect her but what exactly was, she? She was not a witch nor was she werewolf. Could she be some sort of special hunter now that she inherited it from both from parents? But no, that wouldn’t exclaimed how she could infiltrate my mind, make a mind-link and all that scary magic she did that day out the coffee shop.

When I stepped out of the house, a huge bone fire had already been lit, the crowds talking in low tones. The air was thickened with grief and even though I couldn’t show it fully, I was devastated on the inside. Losing people whose faces you’d wake up to almost everyday was not something mere to deal with. In the eyes of my pack members, I felt like a failure, If I couldn’t help save Nadia, then there only thing I could was let someone else more capable do it. I branched, walking into board room where Sasha was still tied up.

“What now?” she questioned.

Quietly, I untied her before responding,” She has been captured by Xander’s pack though I have no idea what he needs her from. That’s all I can offer,”

“Wait, and you except me to find some person named Xander?” She questioned.

“I know you have a witch helping you. Maybe that witch can do her witch stuff and you’d find Xander’s pack. I can’t help beyond that,” I said, turning around to walk away.

“Why are you helping me though? She wants nothing to do with you,” she questioned.

“Maybe I’m nothing like my father,” I said, walking out without waiting to hear another word from her.

I joined the pack members, all solemn as they stared at the bodies of the dead members lying on the pile of logs, arranged neatly. For a while, we all sat, nothing being said as we let the grief sway us into its direction. Eventually, I let out a growl of sadness which was reciprocated by every shiftable wolf, the united growls echoing into the night. I stood up, my eyes surveying the crowd.

“I don’t feel like I’m worthy standing before you like this,” I briefly sweep the crowd,” Last time I promised you I would catch the killer behind these mindless killings and I feel as though I didn’t put enough effort into it. Now once again, we’ve lost our members and if you were to blame me, I would accept it if you-“

“Actually, I think what our Alpha is trying to say is that we have found the killer even though it was after we had already twelve of our members,” Danny cut me off as he rose up.

“We have?” I asked him, taken aback but my mind shot back to when he was trying to tell me about it but Nadia’s memory interrupted the moment,” Yes, we have. Daniel will be giving the full report on it. Go ahead, Danny,” I ushered.

“Well, this may come as a surprised to most of you because of its unbelievable nature but our assassin all this while had been none other than Adrian Dela Fuente,”

Adrian? Like Nadia’s twin brother? Was he not dead though? For a while, it remained quiet before gasps of surprise filled the area.

“Adrian Dela Fuente? You expect us to believe that? He has been dead for sixteen years,” Ethan pointed out what everyone had to be thinking including me. I wasn’t as shocked as I thought I would be but I knew it was because so much had been happening out of the ordinary since Nadia came into town.

“That is what we were made to believe. I’m afraid to say this but our Alpha was right in telling us to step down from trying to Nadia. At first while we were trying to crack this almost impossible case, we weren’t focusing on the critical points. One, if Nadia who was supposedly dead had turned up in town out of nowhere, was there a possibility her twin brother was also alive? The second point is that, this person was doing this to avenge the death of his loved ones. Now, of all the hunters that survived and fled the town, only the Dela Fuentes were strongest because they had the hunter blood from two out of three original hunters in their veins. The third was the note he’d left behind that first time. It was only someone who was feeling that vengeful against the werewolves and the Dela Fuente kids are pretty mad over the death of their parents. The most important two factors that support this claim was one, there no death record of the Dela Fuente Kids and second, he struck again, probably after realizing his sister was in trouble. So, your Alpha isn’t a failure like he thinks he is. If it weren’t for his association with Nadia, we wouldn’t have cracked who the killer is,” he offered me a small smile, accompanying it with a nod.