3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Rome stood at the window looking over the backyard that was plowed and ready for him to romp in it with his wolf or throw a backyard party. Beyond that was the forest where his pack ran. They let out their wolves and howled at the moon. He bought this land long before there was a city or ordinances, and he’d been grandfathered into allowing wild animals to roam free on his property as long as they were never caught attacking any humans.

As if. He owned all the land around for miles. He sighed when he caught the scent of his second approaching. Saul reached out to him mentally and Rome invited him in. He wasn’t getting any work done. His office was large, with an enormous desk next to the other window and two chairs in front of it. He also had a sitting area where he could talk to his council and a couch if he needed a nap away from the council or the pack. He’d brought a designer in recently who’d done his office in typical gray and black. A man’s office, according to her.

“Knock, knock.” Saul knocked on the door as he said the words.

“Come in.” Rome turned his back to the window and looked at his second, who was one of his best friends. “What’s happening?”

“You tell me. The pack is restless, as if they were gearing up for something.”

“Which pack, the outer or the inner?” The inner pack were the hunters that were with him the day the stag was killed, and they were cursed with immortal life. The outer pack was those they picked up along the way. Rome and his wolves swore to keep them safe. The new pack members swore fealty and to keep their secrets. The pack, as a whole, thrived with new members and children being born all the time.

“Both. There’s a restlessness in the air. Tell me you don’t feel it.” He felt it. The fact that he hadn’t realized it was bothering the others showed how much it was bothering him. He was waiting, his world was waiting, but neither he nor his wolf knew what they were waiting for.

He looked at the time on his phone. It wasn’t even ten a.m. “Let’s declare today a holiday and have a pack picnic and then a pack run tonight.”

“I think that will help. It will mitigate some of the restlessness the pack is feeling.” Saul picked up his phone, called the kitchen, and told them what the alpha wanted. Then he called the enforcers to tell them to inform the pack it was a holiday, and they were celebrating. No one would care what they were celebrating, and it wouldn’t be the first time their alpha called for an impromptu holiday.

“You have no idea what is happening?” Saul asked as he sat down in one of Rome’s plush chairs.

“No, but I dreamed of the white stag last night under the moon. The goddess is speaking, but what is she saying?”

“Do you think the white stag is out there?” Saul stood and went to the window Rome had been standing at.

“Maybe.” Over the years, the white stag had followed them from land to land until they finally landed, where they were now, roughly three hundred years ago. He stayed around long enough to realize they weren’t planning on leaving, and then he was gone. Rome initially thought he took the goddess’s blessing with him, but he hadn’t. The land was blessed, and the wolves of the pack were blessed. To see the stag again, after so many years, not only had him yearning for the stag and the goddess, but it also had him treading lightly. The stag was a message from the goddess. Change was coming, and he’d lived long enough to be weary of change.

“Have you seen any activity from the goddess of the Dark Night?” Saul said casually, as if it were just an afterthought.

Hearing the name goddess of the Dark Night put Rome on alert. Saul didn’t casually ask questions. To ask about her specifically made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Saul?” He threw his hands up and gave Rome an innocent look.

“I don’t know anything and haven’t heard anything, but…”

Rome understood. For the last one hundred years, things had been quiet. Too quiet, considering the tricks she pulled over their lifetimes. She didn’t care if they lived. She was the one that cursed them to a never-ending life. As long as they were alone, preferably miserable and mateless. The goddess of the Dark Night was happy. She popped in periodically to make sure their lives were still lonely, or she sent one of her creatures. They would have to hunt it down and cage it until she came to retrieve it.

They saw no reason to piss off a goddess unless the creature killed another stag. Then it was dead. No apologies given.

“I’ve seen no sign of her.” That didn’t mean his wolf wasn’t on edge. When they first became wolves, their lives were hard. Their village was scared of them, and they hadn’t known how to go from one form to another. Over the years, Rome made friends with his wolf. It helped to keep the stark loneliness at bay. There was always someone to talk to, even in the middle of the night. Now his wolf was prowling in his mind. He was on alert, waiting for some elusive thing to happen.

“My wolf thinks you’re right to bring up the goddess of the Black Night. He’s been growling and howling for days at nothing, but a vague suspicion that life’s about to change.”

Saul nodded, agreeing with his wolf.

This was one of those times Rome wished he could talk to the goddess Luna, but she came when she wanted, and this didn’t seem to be one of those times.

Saul moved, taking a seat in one of the deep chairs that Rome kept in the sitting area while Rome went to the bar and made them both drinks. It was early, but they were immortal wolves. Alcohol had no effect other than a pleasant buzzing.

There was a knock at the door. “Come in, Theron.” Rome made another drink and handed it to his friend before taking one to Saul and then sitting heavily on the couch. Theron sat in the other chair facing him.

“A party?” Theron lifted his drink in a silent salute before taking a sip. “You have the smoothest whiskey. I need to know where you get this from.” Rome smiled at his friend. He’d been asking for the last fifty-plus years. There were some things he kept to himself.

“An unofficial official holiday.” Most of his pack worked, not that they had to. He could support the pack for the rest of his life and still have an abundance of money. That was saying something since he was immortal. He never told them that. They were proud. Supporting themselves and their Alpha gave them a sense of pride.

“Too much tension in the air. The outer pack is feeling it.” Theron looked out the window like he was waiting for something to run past. Maybe the white stag. “I was just with Jeff.” Jeff was the official mechanic for the pack. He owned the shop in the town part of their rural city.

“He changed the rims on my ‘64 Mustang. He kept twitching as if something was walking across his nerve endings. The news of a party brought a smile and an end to the twitch.”

They watched as pack members brought grills and food, along with chairs and tables, to the wide space between Rome’s office and the forest. His window was one way with blacked out glass on the outside. That allowed him to work without being watched.

“What if it’s her or them?” Saul’s voice was soft, almost like a light wind. It was a whisper and a prayer to Luna.

Her or them. Rome wanted to snort but refrained. In the early days of navigating this changing world, he had waited, believing that his mysterious omega would pop up much like that mouse in the children’s game. The longer he lived, the more juvenile he realized his early thoughts were. He had waited for centuries and there hadn’t been a hint of an omega born. Why would that change now?

His glass was halfway to his lips. All movement stopped at the thought of a mate. “Why would we receive a mate now? There hasn’t been a hint of one in the centuries we’ve been alive.” In the beginning, they sought out omega children, thinking if they could get to them first. It never worked. If an omega was born, the pack she was born into killed her before they reached her.

It was a sorry fact that if his mate had been born, her pack slaughtered her before she could take her first breath. He took another sip of his whiskey.

“I know you think they’re still out there waiting for us to find them. What did you find when you took your journey?” Every five to ten years, Theron journeyed to packs they knew, and some they didn’t. Searching for news of any female children considered different from the rest of the pack.

He reasoned their mates could be children. What would waiting twenty-five years to grow up mean to them? He was right. It was a drop in the bucket of their life span.

“I found nothing.” He was drawn to the window to look out, like there was a force pulling on him. He wasn’t watching the pack. His eyes were glued to the forest.

“We’ll run later,” Rome told him.

He nodded and sat down. “I saw Lisette as I was leaving.” She was Jeff’s daughter. His mate came from France some time ago and married into the pack.

“How is she?” Rome loved the children and spent hours playing with them, teaching the girls to be as fierce as the boys.

“She was talking fast, the way children do. She mentioned to her dad that before she fell asleep, the white deer came to her. He let her pet him and hug his neck.”

For the second time that morning, Rome stopped moving in the middle of a drink. “The white stag came to her room?”

“Jeff laughed it off, but it sounds like the white stag.”

“We could have a young seer in our pack. I want security around her. I’ll talk to Jeff at the party.” Seers were rare and important to them. One way they identified young seers was by the visit of the white stag. The goddess of the Dark Night would want to abduct the child or kill her. She was not fond of seers in their pack. They had encouraged the families of seers in the past to move to another pack to keep their children safe. Unfortunately, those other packs couldn’t offer the same perks as the Hunter pack did.

“Let’s take a run before we are needed at the party.” Rome left his office and went to the underground passage that only the inner pack knew about. It took them past the yard where everyone was setting up, deep into the forest. When they came up, the rest of the inner pack was already waiting as wolves.

Rome swiftly changed and led his pack deeper into the forest, where they let out howls. They flew over the land, paws barely touching the ground. When the stag came to run with them, Rome knew that everything was changing. They cried out in a howl of loneliness and need. It covered the land. Something was coming.