Page 52 of Meeting Her Mate

“It was the bloody wolves, all right? The two of you run around thinking that you’ve been wronged by the vampires. You don’t even know that there are wolves within your precious pack who have been working with the vampires for ages!” Campbell yelled, partly in agitation, partly in pain.

I grabbed him again and held his face up, asking, “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

“The order to have her parents killed came from the werewolves. Between us, we figured out the wolves wanted to plant someone new as the alpha, someone who’d be up for a little symbiotic relationship between the two races. We don’t know who gave the order,” Campbell said. “All we know is, after her dad bit the dust, your new alpha Maurice has been working with us from the first day. He gets a share out of every single shipment we sell.”

“Who ordered the hit?” I asked again.

“We don’t know!” Elliot yelled out. “We don’t know. But the same person who ordered the hit on her parents ordered your kidnapping too!”

If I wasn’t shocked already, this revelation was enough to suck the life out of me.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“We’ve been around for a long time. You don’t think we don’t remember Wilhelm Grimm? You haven’t changed a day since you disappeared,” Elliot said. “Someone’s been working against you for a long time from within your pack. Yep. We had a hand in making you disappear all that time ago. Do you think some eccentric occultist can get the drop on a werewolf just like that? No, sir. We helped him. We were there in the forest that night as a contingency. Someone has had it in for you from day one. And they’ve done a good job of maintaining their anonymity.”

Whatever drug-fueled story these two idiots were concocting was simply not possible. Who had been conspiring against me back then? Everyone from my pack was like family to me. But if there was even a sliver of truth to what these two were saying, then who was this mysterious person within my pack working against me? Why? What had I done to them?

“Enough chatter,” Alexis said. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to barter for your life with these half-assed stories.”

“We can prove everything we just said. From your parents’ murder to his kidnapping,” Campbell said. “Please, just let us go.”

“One last thing,” I said, trying to regain my mental footing. “The other night when I was fighting with your leader, Ralph, were there really rifles aimed at me?”

Elliot started howling with laughter. Campbell joined him. “Rifles? You think we’re Blackwater or something? We ain’t got no rifles, mister. It was a scare tactic, and it worked. We were just pointing fucking lasers at you,” Elliot said.

I didn’t get a chance to confront them any further. Alexis had shifted into her wolf self again, and before I could stop her, she was tearing away at the two vampires. It was too gratuitous, making me look away.

All I could hear were the sounds of limbs coming off and the vampires screaming in pure agony in their final moments.

I didn’t dare turn around. I had been through this before. It was not a pretty sight when I escaped and murdered Edward and his men in the manor. I had no heart to see what carnage Alexis had wrought. Revenge was a messy business.

“I think I’m ready to go home,” Alexis said from behind me.

“Did it help?” I asked, not turning around.

“Avenging my parents? Yes. It helped,” Alexis said slowly.

“Then I think you should come home now,” I said. “Your real home.”

“I would like that very much,” she said.

I held her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed mine back.

“Thank you for this, Will,” Alexis said. “For all of it.”

***

Late at night, troubled by all the information the vampires had shared with me, I went to Fred’s little cottage. I was surprised to find him still awake at that hour, watching some war documentaries on an old TV set, smoking a pipe, and drinking his tea.

He poured me some tea, and we got to talking. I shared everything that I had learned that day. I wanted to know if he knew of any such conspiracies. After all, apart from me, he was the only member of the original pack that had survived so far.

“Pay no heed to all that talk,” Fred said at long last when I had finished speaking. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“You think so?”

“All I know is, I knew nothing of all this conspiracy before you mentioned it tonight. I think that a vampire, when cornered, will say just about anything to try and get out alive. You said so yourself; they deceived you with that whole sniper and laser bit. Who is to say they weren’t trying to deceive you again?” Fred said between taking puffs of his pipe. “We loved you, all of us. When you brought us to Fiddler’s Green, we came here without so much as a question. All of us were loyal to you. Don’t tell me you’d take the word of those bloodsuckers over that of your literal blood.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said, though still not satisfied. “Maybe I’m being paranoid.”