Epilogue, Friday January 10th, 2020; 2pm
(Julius’s POV)
I smile as the tall frame of my son in law stops and knocks on my open door.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes sir. Please come in.”
He steps inside the room but only manages to close the door halfway before the demons of his past creep back upon him.
“I would prefer this to be a private conversation but if closing the door makes it feel like you’re going to be punished then I encourage you to keep it open.”
I speak my true feelings as he slowly turns around. The look of disbelief on his face. While it takes him several deep breaths he does manage to shut the door by the time I’ve stood from my desk.
“Where would you like to sit?” Once again he’s in disbelief.
“I need you as relaxed and level headed as possible. Where would you be the most comfortable?” I try again.
“The recliner?” He manages to speak after a hard swallow.
I nod and allow him to lead. He chooses the rocking recliner allowing him to rock subtlety as Hayden stirs gently. I smile as he consoles him.
“I’m sorry sir. He just doesn’t want me to let him go. Dr. Stewart said that allowing him to stay with me gives him the feeling of safety he hasn’t had.”
“I agree, Andre. After his level of trauma I would expect him to be clingy. I would also anticipate that he may return to needing diapers or training pants again.”
I make my knowledge of the situation known gently as it’s important for the newly full time father to feel the support and understanding of his alpha.
“We had to put Hayden in pull-ups full time last week. Harper just needs them at night.”
I nod supportively as I turn his chair ninety degrees.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been as supportive as I’ve been in the past with you. I felt that the pups being abused by Charles would lead them to see me the same way and it was important to allow things to settle down. My understanding is that Josh has started introducing my scent to them.”
“Yes sir. He gave both of them a family of stuffed wolves. Each wolf has my scent, Kiara’s scent, your scent and the luna’s scent. Why haven’t I ever met her?”
I smile easily as I return to the desk, picking two files up from on top of it. I return to Andre, sitting in the recliner I’ve rotated to face him, placing the files on the table between us.
“Elizabeth hails from a pack six hours away. Last year, her sister, Ella, fell ill with cancer three months after her mate passed away unexpectedly. They thought for certain that she only had three months to live but somehow she managed a full year. In that time frame Elizabeth and my son Zachary have been helping to prepare Sheldon and his mate for taking over the pack. Ella passed away three months ago in October. Sheldon has adapted to losing his parents and taking on the alpha role nicely so she anticipates being home by the end of the month.”
Finally I see him nod. “Now, there are two reasons we need to talk.”
“Yes sir.” He tries to hide his nervousness.
I pick the first file up. It’s the thickest file that I’ve ever had on an individual and this is only part of the story. I feel bad that I’ve waited six weeks to tell him that it's been stored in the top drawer of my desk since the beginning of December.
“In this file is information that I had to convince the high council that you had changed to receive.”
He cocks his head to one side, curious about the change in conversation.
“High Councilwoman Martina Sanchez reached out to me during the month of November. Her conversations, while long, clearly had a note of hesitation. It was as if she was trying to judge if she could trust me and ultimately my judgment of you. It took several conversations but after I told her about what you did; how you made plans using border patrolmen that were loyal to you over Charles to help your brother get to my territory and how he had made it to me. I explained thoroughly how he was lost to your brother when he did get into my territory and how you reacted to the devastating loss. You upped your game and convinced Charles that you were doing what he wanted while simultaneously coordinating his rescue. The final thing that I believed she was looking for was hearing how devastated you were to find that Cole had run from the hospital after he insisted that it was okay for you to leave him. You have yet to let go of the idea that it wasn’t your fault.”
He nods his head during my description of events.
“She put together a report detailing a small portion of Cole’s plight. Her hesitation was in disclosing no just that Cole is indeed alive but he’s where he belongs.”
“They found him?” Andre whispers in shock.
“Yes sir. About a week after he ran from the hospital he started following an empath. A doctor by the name of Deven Leroux. While he didn’t understand his attraction to Deven and his family, Deven knew exactly what was going on and made arrangements for his wife and child to return to their pack while he engaged with Cole. He bought him a nice dinner and convinced him to go with him to the Shadowlands pack in northern New York.
While Shadowlands is not an active sanctuary pack it is one of the few packs with the ability to care for the wolves with the highest mental health needs. Once there, Dr. Leroux and Alpha Cassius Marcellus teamed up and got him the medical attention that he needed at Shadowlands University. He stayed with them, safe and well cared for, for three months before he left. It was the day that he left that Alpha Cassius received notice that the council was able to match his DNA profile and had sent a GPS tracking device to be put on him so his movements could be tracked.
A few weeks later he ends up in northern Virginia, about four hours by car from the Crimson Dawn pack. He protected a young, covert witch when a gang of werewolves tried to kidnap her. While he was injured in the scuffle, he played an important part in getting the Gremlin gang off the street as they were kidnapping and trafficking young werewolf women. She brought him to her home just outside the boundary of Purple Mountain. Her twin, Maverick, is a very young doctor who helped care for the injuries he sustained protecting Melissa. Unfortunately he got into trouble when he tried to stop a young girl from being raped. The council was alerted to his illegal punishment and his rescue made immediate changes to the pack.
The council asked for the assistance of an alpha who has been training to become a sanctuary pack when retrieving Cole from Purple Mountain. Unfortunately he couldn’t handle the complexity of Cole’s case and he was given a choice; return to Shadowlands with Cassius or allow Cassius to take him the final two hours to Alpha Black. He chose Shadowlands.”
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