Chapter 20 - Cyrus

“Thank you, everyone,” Alpha Dorian nods, his eyes solemn and he can barely look at us. The ghastly scar marring his cheek hasn’t healed fully, even though it’s been a week.

His recovery has slowed down significantly, all because his blood had been siphoned during his capture, as he explains to the Alpha Council now when we’re grouped in his pack den in Fort Smith.

“... He began injecting himself with my blood. As the days went by, he was slowly morphing into the beast he is now,” Dorian explains, his voice gravelly as if his throat is still parched from the horrors he’d faced.

The condition we found him in was dreadful. He’d been bound to a dilapidated hospital bed with silver chains that masked his shifting abilities, hooked up to pipes that drained his blood. He’d barely been fed, and his body was deteriorated by the time we found him.

It was a miracle that he was still alive. He was only breathing so his Alpha blood could be drained.

“Does he shift into human form?” Theodore asks.

Dorian nods weakly. “His name is Jackson. His father was a forensic pathologist for the local police. Somehow, he discovered the remains of a rogue and realized it was a werewolf. When he died, Jackson found his research and suspected his father died at the hands of a rogue.”

“So he became obsessed with the idea of our existence…” Simon laments, steepling his fingers in front of him.

“Yes,” Dorian concedes. “... He became so obsessed that he wanted to become like us.”

“He’s become a monster,” I say, recalling the horrors of that night when we faced off with the hybrid human-wolf. Unlike anything we’d seen before, his heightened speed and treacherous claws made him much stronger than the rest of us.

We’d developed a better strategy to capture him.

Wolfsbane is the only herb strong enough to immobilize him.

Flynn points at the weapons spread out on the table. “These silver bullets will cripple him,” he reveals with a smug half-smile. “They’re laced with enough wolfsbane to kill him if we get the shot right.”

We’ve planned to move in tonight, having traced the hybrid, Jackson, back to the town of Fayetteville. With most of the rogues either dead or in our custody, Jackson is unprotected. Our warriors can handle the handful of rogues that escaped that night, leaving the Alphas to take down the hybrid.

We’re not going in as wolves. This time, we’re using other forms of combat.

“You can’t kill him!” Dorian suddenly exclaims, much to the shock of every other Alpha in attendance. When he notices our confusion, he clears his throat and sinks into his chair. “I mean that you shouldn’t kill him.”

“Why not, Dorian?” Damian, his brother, furrows his brows with fury. “He held you captive for weeks! Harnessed your Alpha blood, and you—”

Dorian suddenly slams a palm on the desk. “We can’t kill him!” he repeats.

“Dorian!” I say in a voice of reason. “He’s a danger to all of us.”

The battered and bruised Alpha turns to me, his eyes despondent. “I know,” he sighs, visibly calmer now. “But he’s the first of his kind. He should be studied.”

Simon speaks up then. “Dorian has a point,” he agrees. “This Jackson fellow might be dangerous, but perhaps he can be cured. I’ve been looking into it, and the research is promising.”

“Are you suggesting we keep him alive and use him as a test subject?” Theodore frowns.

“Why not?” Simon directs his shrug to Theodore. “We’ve been studying the rogues we’d captured, figuring out how their speed has been enhanced,” he reminds us, glancing around the room. “We might as well look at the one behind it all.”

“You do have the facilities for this,” Flynn relents with a slow nod. “I guess it only makes sense.”

I check the time on my wrist, just in time for Jarrod to send me a mind link informing me that the soldiers have taken their position outside Jackson’s home. That’s where they’d been hiding out, unaware that we’d been tracking him when Jarrod was able to plant a tracking chip into an open wound.

“We need to go,” I announce, rising to my feet. “Our wolves are in position. The hybrid won’t get away this time.”

***

“Something doesn’t feel right,” Theodore whispers beside me.

We’re hiding in the shadows in the backyard of Jackson’s Fayetteville home, but our surroundings are too quiet.

The chaos that erupted before during the war is missing right now. We expected to find rogue wolves posted outside in every corner, but we’ve yet to encounter even one.

The only indication that the house isn’t empty is the light of a candle flickering inside.

“This feels like a setup,” I whisper back in agreement, a strange sense of nothingness making it almost impossible to trust my gut instinct right now.

Even my inner wolf is silent right now, not warning me of unsuspecting danger or filling my gut with knots to warn me that we’re making a wrong move.

Clutching my rifle loaded with lethal ammunition, I glance at the other Alphas who stand ready to move into the house. I close my eyes, sending a prayer to the Moon Goddess to keep us safe tonight as we embark on the unknown in this mission.

As if in reply to my prayer, I see Cassandra’s angelic face behind my eyelids. Her piercing, dragon-shaped eyes are full of love as she smiles; the way her lips spread foreshadows the determination that spreads in my being.

“Now…” Alpha Flynn instructs, making a gesture with two fingers that point at the door. Simon spins and kicks the door down, and we file in with barrels aimed into the enclave of darkness.

“You found me…” A seething dark and menacing voice rings out and echoes off the empty walls.

The group is catapulted into action as we point our weapons and stand in the formation we’d rehearsed earlier tonight. Flynn and I are back to back, guns ready at the side, with Theodore and Simon at the frontline and Damian watching our backs.

“Show yourself!” I demand, focusing my vision on the eerie darkness that hangs all around. The room is cold and sinister as it sends a chill down my spine, and I’m reminded of the night I’d been hurt in battle.

The reminder sends an acidic taste rising in my throat, the residual dread of the past trauma surfacing now to have me on high alert and ready to take this beast down.

A screeching whir bleats through the air from somewhere behind, and I spin around to aim my rifle at the source of the sound. A mighty, ominous howl rings out before the floor quakes when the hybrid monster lands on the wooden floorboards.

Our group of Alphas operates like special ops soldiers; thanks to Alpha Flynn, we’re able to dodge the incoming attack of the hybrid’s vile claws as it flies toward us in a swift swoop. Blackened by the effects of the Alpha blood he’d been consuming, the preternatural powers innate to a wolf have been too strong for a human, turning him into the most hideous creature we’ve ever seen.

With greasy fur spread across its disfigured body, it rises on hind legs that have him towering above us, peeling back begrimed lips to reveal a set of foul, sharp teeth like yellowing blades.

A shot blazes through the air, hitting the hybrid in the arm and sending him flying back. He crashes into the shelved wall, sending a single item skittering to the floor when the beast falls in a heap from the impact.

Jackson is knocked down, and I catch the moment his eyes flit to the picture frame with broken shards of glass lying beside his disfigured wolf face. It’s like the moonlight filtering through the cracks of the window shines directly on the photograph, illuminating whatever is pictured there to cause the hybrid to whimper slightly. He loses the dark glint of rage in his eyes, and instead, those dark depths turn sad.

The Alphas stay alert, our weapons pointed at him in warning. But instead of getting back to his feet to fight us, he scampers to the wall, lifting a gruesome arm that slowly morphs into a human one.

“Wait!” he calls out, this time revealing his human form to us, speaking softly with his human voice. “Don’t shoot!” he pleads. “I am done fighting.”

Each of the Alphas exchanges confused glances, but Simon is the first to rush forward and extract a silver set of cuffs with his gloved hand. He moves in quickly to cuff the man whose brown eyes watch him appreciatively.

I’m not sure what just happened, but it’s almost as if the Moon Goddess herself lent us a helping hand tonight. Walking forward cautiously, I look at the photograph to see four smiling faces staring back at me.

A man, a woman, and two children with equal shades of dark hair and brown eyes. Lifting my gaze while Simon drags Jackson to his feet, I realize that the little boy in the photograph is the younger image of the hybrid wolf.

Family.

That’s what snapped him out of his mania and saved our lives tonight. It’s why he just surrendered and allowed us to take him into custody without squeaking another word.

It all seemed too easy, and our mission was a success, though we had no reason to doubt that tonight was going to go exactly as planned. Without a single tragedy tonight, we head back to Simon’s territory in Edmond to throw Jackson in solitary confinement in the dungeons underneath the laboratory building. With all of the resources at Simon’s fingertips, thanks to the pharmaceutical company he owns, he’ll be able to run tests on the hybrid until we’ve decided what to do with him.

All I can think about is the power of family as the night blithers on. Another meeting takes place, and Dorian is in attendance. He seems relieved that Jackson is captured and unharmed, though I’m confused by this since Jackson is the reason Sorian can barely stand without help.

It doesn’t matter, I decide as I make my way home. Now that the threat is taken care of, I can finally take care of my personal life.

My family.

My home.

I often wondered why Mysthaven didn’t feel like home without Cassandra there. As I enter the forest outlining the small town and bid my soldiers goodnight, I’m filled with a deep sense of longing that doesn’t feel empty anymore. It’s that feeling of familiarity, knowing that one is returning home.

Except now my home is complete because Cassandra is there, and someone is waiting there for me. Home was never a place but rather a person. A special she-wolf who makes everything in my life complete and fills it with peace and tranquility that only she can bring.

That wholeness exists on the other side of the woods when I approach the clearing where the trees open up to the meadow covered by the silver rays of the moon’s gentle glow. My “home” smiles broadly at me, running forward with feather light steps and open arms that get flung around my furry neck.

I shift into human form to scoop her into my arms, peppering her face with kisses as I swing her around, relief washing over me in waves of contentment and pure happiness.

“You waited for me…” I whisper in awe as I set her on her feet, pulling back only to stare into her eyes full of wonder and holding a mountain of love in their warm, earthly depths.

She nods shyly, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth. Groaning, I lean in to kiss her hungrily. She’s flustered and light-headed when I break away, only to give her a moment to catch her breath. With the way I’m feeling, I don’t want to stop. With a hand possessively on her nape, I’m about to pull her back in when she stops me with a firm hand on my chest.

“I have something to tell you…” she begins, her eyelids dancing open with the wings of long, dark lashes.

Goddess… She’s beautiful…

“What is it, baby?”

She stares at me with sparkling eyes, lips lifting in a sheepish smile. “I’m pregnant…”

“What?!” I exclaim, pulling her close and sweeping her off her feet to do another celebratory twirl with the amount of pride that swells in my chest. I never thought that those were the words I’d want to hear the most.

Not when I’d spent my whole life resentful that I’d grown up being the only child in my household. It was as if a switch had been flicked inside me when I realized I wanted Cassandra as my mate. Nothing else mattered then, and suddenly, all the rules and regulations I once saw as imprisoning became the things I wanted the most in my life. Not just as the Alpha of the Moon Shine Pack but as the man who greedily devours Cassandra’s lips and essence when his heart feels so whole, it might burst from the seams of his ribcage.

This is what being in love feels like. It’s a feeling so profound and so unexplainable that no words could ever do it justice. It’s all about feeling it, and no amount of Moon Shine lore books could explain what an Alpha feels when he finds his mate.

I guess this is why my mother insisted I take a mate. The void of a sibling is something I’d forgotten whenever Cassandra was around. The other half of my soul resides in her vessel. And Goddess! What a vessel she has, her body curves in all the right places, where I can sink my teeth in and have her in the palm of my hand to shower her with love and appreciation.

“You have no idea how happy this makes me, Cass…” I say as I set her to her feet.

She stares at me with golden specks swirling in her eyes, ignited like fiery sparks that attest to our love. “Oh, I think I have an idea…” she muses as she lovingly cups my cheek, stroking the coarse hairs of my beard as if their soft bristles beneath the pad of her thumb. “If it’s as happy as you make me, then I would know.”

“You have no idea how happy I’m about to make you,” I drawl, pulling her flush to me and relishing in the way her breath catches when she feels the hard outline of my manhood nestling against her thigh.

As her arms come around my neck and she softly sighs, she glances around the open expanse of the meadow and asks, “Right here?”

I nod. “Right here, right now,” I groan, gyrating my hips against her thigh to make my point.

“What if someone sees us?” she asks, without a hint of concern in her voice.

I chuckle lowly, my hands settling over the fullness of her rear. “I am the Alpha of this pack…”

The reminder curls her lips to a smirk. “Ah, yes, I did need the reminder.”

“Oh, baby…” I squeeze the full mounds and feel her melt into my touch. “... I’m about to remind you of so much tonight…”

As I capture her lips in a fervent, hungry kiss, it’s as if a bubble grows around us in which only utter bliss exists. I know now why I’d been dismissive of the idea of a mate all along.

It was only because the only she-wolf for me was Cassandra Chikara. She’s the only one fit to be mine. It's as perfect as a glove, made just for me by the Moon Goddess Herself. Just as I was made to be the Alpha of The Moon Shine Pack and to love Cassandra with every breath.