The Alpha & Beta's Regret
The Alpha & Beta’s Regret – Chapter 11

Luci POV

Life went back to normal, it seemed. She did keep an eye on the pack end of the lake for a solid week, and never saw any movement other than the border patrol, which she noticed had been doubled up. Nothing less to be expected after an attack of that magnitude. There were no unusual movements or searches for Alari in the lake, or not that she saw, when she was home anyway.

It was completely possible that they did look into it during the daytime when she was in the human town at her human job. She wouldn’t know. But had not seen anything while she’d been home.

Watching the boys swim on the weekend was good. Alari, however, was more than annoyed that she couldn’t shift to swim with the boys due to all the humans also using the lake. The boys were excellent in the water, took to it naturally, no fear of the water, and with Alari’s genes she was not really surprised at all.

She herself had never been much of a swimmer. She could swim. Her mother had made sure of it, but Luci had never liked the way the chlorine of the water felt on her skin. The few times she’d been to the ocean had been really nice though she had enjoyed that. Still preferred fresh water on her skin. Had always enjoyed laying in a nice warm bath for an hour or so after a long day while growing up.

The days passed quietly and without incident. Though Kali did scent out a rogue or two, they did not approach them. They saw them around the northern part of the lake. Prowling around in the same area, appeared to be looking for something, she thought ‘me?’ Alari queried.

It was possible Victor was known to use rogues to scout out things; he didn’t lose his own men that way. Rogues were dispensable. Though those creatures had never been allowed in her stepfather’s pack territory, but every time Victor arrived he brought half a dozen with him. They had to stay outside the borders. How the man enticed them into doing his bidding, who knew? Nor did she really care for that matter.

Those rogues did not go unnoticed by the pack either, they were hunted once seen by the patrolling wolves and reported. Saw an entire unit leave the pack, 8 warriors to one rogue. She did not get involved, not her job. She would not be leaving the boys either. That unit was more than capable of handling it. It was a retrieving team, hunt and kill.

If they were Victor’s scout wolves, Rafe was sending a message. My numbers are bigger and I am prepared 8 to one. That he would show no mercy at all, anything that was sent would be killed, no prisoners taken.

Kali didn’t like it one bit, her wolf wanted out, to go and get answers about those mangy critters being there herself. She, too, was an Alpha-blooded wolf and more than capable of taking on a rogue or two.

The full moon came a week later and with it were two rogues. They were a lot closer to her home than she liked. Looked at the boys sleeping. This was the second sighting in just four days, it was too many sightings now. And these two wolves were too far from the pack for them to be aware of the rogues.

“Boy’s” Luci woke them. “Kali must go deal with something, stay inside. No matter what you hear.”

“Yes mamma,” they nodded.

She stepped outside of the hut and stripped off her clothes, glanced up at the full moon and felt Kali rip right out of her, it was fast and then she was gone a lone female wolf off of pack territory, she heard one of the rogues howl, they had scented her. It was what she wanted, to lead them away from her boys.

They would hunt her, and they did. She could hear them growling as they chased her. Whatever they were up to, they had been distracted by the scent of a female alone and vulnerable.

A female they thought they could corner and pin down to mate with. It was their singular drive. There were not many female rogues. The males would all be at them fighting and mating them till usually the female would die from it. It was not a pleasant way to die.

She ran, not at full speed, allowing the two rogues to keep pace with her, leading them well away from her home and further into the woods. Then just stopped and turned to face the two oncoming wolves. One did not stop its only desire now to mate her wolf, regardless of who she was, if she was Marked by another or not, it did not care.

She shot forward at full speed, right at them. Her cream wolf with white paws and underbelly was not that large but she was good and strong. They would likely scent her alpha b***d now too, but all they cared about now was mating her. One peeled off out of the way in complete surprise to her actions and then Kali was in a battle with the other, her claws ripping into it and her teeth sank into its flesh and ripped out chunks, forced it down onto the ground and ripped its throat out. She’d not forgotten her training.

Once she’d gotten her wolf, Orien had put her into training properly and when she had moved to the Black Forest Pack, she had trained and hard. Wanted to be useful to the pack and, being alpha-blooded, she was good and strong; Kali had taken to training quickly. Had always wanted to train, but without an actual wolf had not been allowed to.

Her green eyes locked on to the other, it snarled right at her but did not back down. She lunged at it and it at her, fought it till it was almost dead, saw it being forced back to its human form, she shifted back to being Luci. “Why are you here?” she spoke to it “What do you want?”

The man managed to laugh menacingly, and she saw his eyes glaze over, he was mind-linking to someone. Did not hesitate to kill him on the spot. Before the link was over, five seconds was all it got to pass its message to whoever it belonged to.

Though it was very uncommon for a rogue to be able to do that, it meant that this beast had a master. Her eyes glanced over his human form. He didn’t look mangy to her. Likely not a rogue at all, just using a rogue’s scent to throw one off as to who he belonged too. Saw a camera attached to the man’s chest and frowned down at it. That can’t be a good thing.

Kali’s hearing picked up movement in the distance, wolves were coming and more than one, she shifted them back to her wolf form and ran, though not for the boys, but a direct line to the lake. Hit that water at full wolf speed and dived right in, Alari shifted her and took full control and swam for their home, Kali’s scent gone at the edge of the water.

At least that mangy rogue scent, of disgusting rotting flesh, from the two wolves chasing her would cover her scent, up until that battle scene, they would only be able to track her scent to the lake.

Kali knew that her scent was soft and gentle, or at least it had been. Her Alpha and Beta had told her she smelled sweet like white tea and thyme. Soft and gentle. Something they had once desired very much, sometimes it sent them crazy in their need to mate her, not anymore though. No longer did they desire her, or even care for her, in anyway. They had never looked for her, as far as she knew.

Sadness filled her at that thought, of them. Alari’s soft melodic voice filled the water around her, that sad lonely love ballad that had called Luci and Kali to her the day she’d felt utterly broken. She sang as she swam for their boys. The song somehow comforted both her and Kali.

Shifted to Luci right before she surfaced by the jetty. They glanced around her before she walked over to her home and stepped inside. Glanced back along the lake’s edge and waited. She had killed those two men wolf on wolf. The movement she had heard though, had come from the direction of the Pack.

It was likely that the patrol had heard the howling of that rogue wolf and then the fighting in the still of the night, had alerted their Alpha, who would have been out on the pack run under the full moon. If there was no mating ball, wolves did love to run under the full moon.

She was standing inside the hut, with the curtain tweaked open enough for her to see “mamma?”

“All is okay boys.” she answered them, but did not take her eyes off of the lake.

“Okay.”

“Back to sleep now.”

Kali was fast being Alpha-blooded, and she was watching where she had run right into the lake. They had fled the fight scene at top speed. Where she had entered the lake had not been all that far of a swim for Alari to get here. It took several minutes for her to see movement, but there they were, in the distance. She used her wolf’s sight to get a better look, four of them, she could see the glow of their eyes mostly, not who they were. She didn’t really care who they were, just watched to see what they did.

Milled around for a short while and walked that stretch of the lake’s edge. Then they headed back the way that they had come, gone back to get rid of the two bodies Kali had left behind. She sighed internally. It seemed things were once again escalating for the pack. Though the way that man had looked right at her and laughed, that worried her. Like he knew something she did not, and that camera; It would have caught not just her but Kali as well.

He was not from her pack, she had not recognised him. Then there was why would her own pack members make themselves scent like rogues. It did not make any sense at all. Something else was going on. Huffed in annoyance, it could be Victor, she thought.