The Woodland Packs
Dexter’s pack, too.
Having our women had brought us all together.
“I’m good, we’re all good. Hey, Celeste. How are you doing?” He waved from the front door and Celeste waved back.
“I’m okay, Grayson. Looking forward to getting this baby out.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, Claire is too.”
Grayson dropped his voice. “Can you come outside? I need to fill you in on something.”
Sounded serious.
“Yeah, of course.” I went outside and shut the door. “What’s up?”
“The bears are on the hunt. We’ve had sightings and their scent is everywhere.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. They were looking for Celeste.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve gone out myself to check. They’ve surrounded the pack. The smell of them is everywhere.”
I suppressed my shudder. My mate. My baby.
“Do you think this is because of Celeste? Do you think they’ve seen her? Tracked her here?”
Grayson shrugged. “Don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. They’ve been coming for us since the moment Claire was found.” Grayson’s jaw clenched and tightened, “And they hid Nevaeh from us for years.”
I nodded. “I told the elders what Celeste had told me when she first came to the pack. That the bears believe we’re meant to die off. And that Fate wants us to be the last of the wolf shifters.”
Which was totally fucked, but what could we do about it?
Grayson crossed his arms over his chest.
“Yeah, we’ve been talking about that. So, would the bears attack again to grab our women? Even though they knew the humans were our Fated Mates? Would they try to grab them now they’re pregnant? Or would they attack the whole town?”
Tension tightened in my shoulders and I rolled my neck.
“If that happened, a lot of people would die. They’ve got an extra generation of female shifters, not to mention more numbers in total. We have our mothers, who would want to fi
ght, of course.”
I grimaced.
Grayson continued, “There would be chaos. Our fathers would be split between protecting their mates and fighting for the pack. It would be a complete and utter cluster fuck.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “We can’t let that happen, Gray.”
“I know… I know… but what do we do?”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
I had an idea, but how the hell did we mediate it?
“If we could put together a meeting, Alpha to Alpha, between the bears and us, maybe we could establish some rules, a fair fight, something…?”
Grayson nodded. “Yeah, that’s an option. Otherwise we’re going to have to go on the offensive and take a hunting party to their den. We can’t just sit here and wait for them to attack. We’re too vulnerable. The way we have the town set up, it’s beautiful, but a whole pack or two could go down, and the rest of the pack at large wouldn’t even know.”