Treasure
Family Law

Thomas Manchin called his Alpha back in Bitterroot with the bad news. “Sir, Rori King and Chase Nygaard are here but we couldn’t get her,” he said.

“FUCK!” He had been in a bad mood since the Casper Pack had lost them three days ago. The idiots who found them in the rest area truck parking had foolishly tried to apprehend them instead of waiting for help. They hadn’t been seen since. “What happened?”

His men had spotted the two inside the line of motorcycles and followed them to the restaurant, not knowing that a dozen members of the Oxbow Lake Pack were already inside. When they all left, they could do nothing except follow them to the Pack Border. “They were never accompanied by fewer than a dozen humans or Pack members, sir. There was nothing we could do, no chance to grab her. There’s more, sir.”

“Now what?”

“They’ve completed the mating, sir. I could see the mark on her neck, and her scent has changed.”

“This gets worse and worse,” he said. Now that she had mated, giving her to his son wouldn’t work. They would have to hold the pair until they delivered a daughter to continue the line, then wait for the daughter to grow up. Everything would have to push back another twenty years, but the basic plan could still work if they did it right. There was still a chance for the money if they acted soon. “Where is the lawyer?”

“He was at his office, sir. I pulled everyone off him when we got a positive identification of Rori, I needed all the vehicles for the surveillance and tracking.”

Alpha Forrest thought for a moment about their next move. The Oxbow Lake Pack was harboring her; he could bring this up, even have Chairman Gruber call them and threaten them with sanctions, but she had blood ties to them. He was sure they would withdraw from the Council before handing her over. That gave him an idea, one he could use to shut down the momentum Rori was having among the Packs. He set that aside for now. “We cannot allow her to sign those papers, Thomas. Visit the lawyer and replace out where the original probate papers are being kept and bring them to me. Make sure you get all the account information, passwords, everything we need to execute the final disposition of the estate after the time runs out.”

“He won’t just give them to me, they are legal documents kept in locked safes!”

“Well, you’ll just need to convince him to open them for you. Do I have to teach you how to wipe your ass too?”

“No sir.” He thought for a moment. “What about the lawyer? What do I do with him when I have everything?”

“Take him somewhere deep in the woods and bury him, preferably on Arrowhead Pack property. Make sure no one ever replaces him,” he said. “Don’t screw this up, Thomas. We’re running out of time here.”

“I understand, sir. I won’t let you down.”

Alpha Forrest hung up the phone and tossed it back in his desk. He was disappointed that they had missed their chance, and Chase and Rori were spooked enough now to surround themselves with people. He went to his laptop and set up a group video conference with the other members of his conspiracy. “It’s bad news, gentlemen,” he started as the other two came online. “Rori King has once again involved humans in this mess.”

“There’s more since what she did with the Casper Pack?” Chairman Gruber was nervous, that had been too close for comfort. Several men had been injured and they almost got in a fight with two humans on the freeway. They were lucky nothing had been reported to law enforcement.

“Yes. She is back in cahoots with the Steel Brotherhood, and the motorcycle gang escorted her all the way to the Oxbow Lake pack. She arrived there this afternoon, confirmed by our men in the field,” Forrest said.

“Has she made contact with the lawyer yet? We’re screwed if she does,” Waterman said.

“Not that we know of, and my men will make sure she doesn’t,” Forrest replied. “They have him under surveillance, and she can’t execute the estate without being there in person.”

“How are you going to prevent that from happening,” Gruber asked.

“They are going to replace the papers for me, then kill the lawyer and hide him where he’ll never be found,” he said.

“That’s risky. If they get caught it goes straight back to us.” Gruber felt like a gambler with a run of bad hands, betting more each time convinced his luck had to change soon. “Miss King is becoming more trouble than she is worth.”

“She is mated with Chase now. My men confirmed it.”

“SHIT!” Gruber pounded the desk, causing his camera to shake. “They have ruined EVERYTHING.”

“They have messed with our timing, but long term we can still get what we want. We have to do something quickly to stop her,” Waterman said. “If she has time to rally a couple more Packs to her side, she will have enough votes to dissolve us and then we’re dead men.”

“I have a plan,” Forrest said. “We need to strike now and hard. Rori has given us an opportunity; not only is she slam-dunk guilty of exposing us to humans, she now has the Oxbow Lake Alphas giving her aid and shelter. Such aid to a wanted Council fugitive is against our laws and gives us reason to depose the Alphas.”

“They might fight that,” Gruber said.

“If we catch them with the fugitives in their Pack, what can they say in their defense? None of the other Alphas will be able to argue against them being punished. We remove the Alphas, maybe a prison sentence, and put our own man in charge of their Pack. They’ll never get to a two-thirds majority if we control four of the eleven Packs.”

There was silence as the other two men thought it over, but he was right. It was the only way. “How do we do this,” Waterman said.

“Send all loyal Warriors from all the Packs and the Council Enforcers to Duluth immediately,” Forrest said. “We surround the Pack and take over as soon as they are in place. We hold the trials immediately afterwards, before any allied Packs can respond.”

“Do it,” Gruber said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, as soon as we have them in place, we attack.”

Rori was deliriously happy, and that feeling was shared among many that afternoon.

She was hugged and kissed and welcomed by everyone in both Packs. Once they were settled, the first order of business was to form her Pack. When she arrived, she only had Chase and Coral in the Arrowhead Pack; ten minutes after the ceremony started, she had them all. Colletta was the first, she would be an Elder in their Pack and promised to help Rori learn how to do her new job. She no longer needed to return to help Sawyer; now that he had found Ashley for his Luna, her old pack would be in good shape after the challenge.

Ron Carlson had just watched the ceremony, intending to rejoin his Banff Pack at the earliest opportunity. Patty and the three other Omegas who had found their mates among the Oxbow Lake Pack were cheering on their friends as they made their declarations of allegiance. One by one, the Omegas walked up one by one to accept Rori and Chase as their Alphas. Rori was bursting with pride and love as her Pack grew and grew with each addition.

When it was over, and her Pack link throbbed in her head, she turned to Chase in wonder. “Is this what it is like to be in a Pack?”

He nodded, realizing again just how new everything was to his young mate. “Just wait until they need something,” he said with a laugh. “There are no days off in this job.”

“Congratulations, Alphas,” Michael said as the two Packs went off to start the party that would stretch well into the night.

“We will eat, dance and then tonight at sundown we will hunt,” Margaret said. “I’m so excited, we used to have combined hunts with your Pack in the old days, and I miss them.”

They sat at the head table, eating and drinking in celebration. Rori learned a bunch about her parents and the people of her Pack as the meal went on. Margaret even had her Pack email her any photos they had of Rori or the Pack, and they had put it into a slide show that was projected on the screen in the back of the dining hall. Rori had a tough time eating as she was so engrossed in the pictures and the stories.

“These are amazing,” she said with tears rolling down her face as a photo of her with her father, in wolf form, as she was crawling up on him. “Thank you.”

Michael reached to the table behind them and pulled out a wrapped box. She opened it up, inside was a photo album with a picture on the cover, her as a newborn with her parents. “Oh God,” she said as she opened it up.

“The ones people couldn’t let go we scanned and printed,” Margaret said. “Everything was burned in the fires, so this is all we can give you to link to the past.”

Rori jumped up and hugged her aunt, then her uncle joined in. “Thank you,” she said as she hugged them. She sat back, looking through the book as the plates were being taken. As dessert was served, Rori realized who had been missing the whole afternoon. “Where is Coral?”

“She is on assignment,” Colletta said. “The Council is bound to replace out that you are here, you weren’t exactly subtle in how you tore through towns on the way.” She laughed a little, dozens of bikers in formation were hard to miss. “There were three things we needed you to do, and you’ve completed two. You’ve mated, and you’ve reformed the Arrowhead Pack. The last thing is to receive your inheritance. It’s the next obvious thing for the Council to go after, especially since they are so desperate to get the money that is rightfully yours. We’ve been picking up wolf scents, both near our borders and in town. We’ve got our warriors on alert because of it. The Council has people waiting for you to show up.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Chase said. “We should see him tomorrow, first thing,” he said.

“We can’t wait that long to get this done,” Ron Carlson said as he approached with a man. “Rori King, aka Charlotte, may I present Ralph Emerson, Family Law Attorney.” The man was formal and dignified, wearing a three-piece suit, his greying temples against black hair.

Rori and Chase stood up and shook hand with the man. “Thank you for coming to see us,” Chase said.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment,” he said as he smiled broadly. “The last time I saw you, your Mom was burping you in your father’s office. They were good friends of mine, and good people. Your Pack is missed, more than you can imagine.” He lifted his briefcase. “Is there somewhere we can talk?"

Theta Thomas moved his men into position, approaching the target from three directions with the lakeshore in the background. His men had been watching it for a day, learning his habits and figuring out the best time to grab him. After his talk with Alpha Forrest this afternoon, they had stepped things up. Luckily, the lawyer was hard working and his light was still on well after the rest of the offices cleared out for the day.

The twelve men were divided up into four groups. Two men had one of their SUVs and were back watching the entrance to the Oxbow Lake Pack, making sure Rori and Chase didn’t slip out unnoticed. Two were covering the back entrance in case they ran, two were staying with the two big SUV’s out front, and the other five were going through the front door with him. One of his men had fixed the door so it wouldn’t latch, letting them get into the small office building after hours without a key. He left one man in the lobby, then led the way quietly up the stairs. His men were ready with cuffs and a hood, while he was carrying an autoinjector with a sedative powerful enough to knock him out for a few hours. All of them were armed, just in case. They needed to interrogate him and get the paperwork, and for that he must be awake, so he was planning to scare him into compliance.

They could hear the seventies rock playing through the closed door of Ralph Emerson, Attorney at Law as they reached the end of the upstairs hallway. They would be going in single file, he would be point. His job was to go straight for the target and get him away from any phones and alarms. The other two would make sure no one else was around, while the last guy would make sure the door stayed closed. It was a simple, foolproof plan, he thought as they lined up on the door. They pulled their pistols out and got ready. “Three, two, one, GO!”

He pushed the door open, the door alarm beeping its warning. Running through the waiting area and past the empty receptionist desk, he burst into the office, not even bothering to grab the handle. The other two were right behind him, all with their guns up.

He wasn’t there.

He heard a pop and felt something like a pinch in his neck. He spun towards where the sound was, but it was like he was moving through quicksand. He lost control of his body, falling to the floor. He tried to link, but nothing worked. The last thing he saw was a pair of motorcycle boots covered by black jeans.