Hann and Michael were keeping everyone updated on the news, whenever they could. They wanted the pack to be informed and ready for anything that Gabriel could send their way. Gabriel was nowhere to be found, and his cabin in Utah had been thoroughly searched for any sign that could help out the shifters. They hadn’t found anything. The cabin didn’t even seem like it had any sign of life staying there, let alone a forgotten map or anything.
Michael was continuing to try to find Gabriel, as well as continuing to track all of the main rogues that were rumored to be the leaders of Gabriel’s whole movement. The theory was these rogues were the ones on the ground spiking uprisings and gaining more and more followers in Gabriel’s name, while Gabriel was the one who was putting together these massive plans and strategies.
Michael was also trying to come up with the cure to fix Gabriel’s magic poison that he instilled in the rogues’ claws and teeth in Michigan a few weeks ago. Hann assumed that Gabriel didn’t use this on the rogues for various reasons. Maybe he just thought they were life that needed to be sacrificed. Maybe Gabriel had to magically produce this poison for each individual, therefore leaving him drained if he produced a lot. No one quite knew what it was, and it hadn’t been seen since those weeks in Michigan. But Michael was trying to find a cure because everyone knew that was what would be used in the final uprising battle with Gabriel as the leader.
And everyone wanted to be as prepared for that day as they could.
Everyone in Maine was still pretty shaken up about the whole thing. Even though no life was lost, it was still a scary situation that everyone was having a hard time dealing with. Finn was worried about Lea and Lorelei. Both of them had had one-on-one rogue incidents before the huge battle, and he was worried that it was going to get to them. However, after pressuring both of the girls and making sure they were okay, Finn felt a little better. He knew that they just needed time. And he would always be there to protect them when they needed him.
Finn had just gotten to the gym, and it was packed. For six o’clock in the morning, that was pretty impressive. Especially after a bunch of rogues just came to town and tried to kill everyone the night before. He had to give it to the shifters here. They knew when to buck up and get ready for war.
And he did notice the atmosphere was changing. As Finn walked through the gym to get to the locker room in the back, he walked around mats and workout machines. And every single shifter that caught his eye sent him a nod and a good morning.
It was like he was living in a different world.
Only a few days ago, he had walked into the pack bar and basically been ignored. Treated as if he wasn’t one of the group. As if he didn’t exist. And now, it was like he was one of them. It was crazy to him, but he wasn’t going to question it. He assumed it had a lot to do with Hann’s speech, as well as the shifters from the Moonlight Maine Pack realizing that all the shifters, regardless of whether they were a part of the Maine pack or not, had shown up to fight against the rogues.
Once shifters went into battle united with each other against a common cause, Finn assumed attitudes changed. And he was a living example of that. He hoped that he wouldn’t go back to being that outcast that everyone liked but no one wanted to hang out with. He would much rather be a friend to the pack than an outcast to the pack.
He had to admit that the majority of the pack really was pretty friendly to him. Hell, take Lea, for example. She’d never once acted like he was anything different because he was from another pack. She never questioned him, never made him feel as if he was unworthy of her love because he wasn’t from a pack as strong as hers. Nope. In fact, she made him feel like he was worthy of being anything that he wanted to be.
Kato, Annie, Lukas, Grant, and Britta; they all were accepting and friendly to him from day one, never treating him any different.
Finn got to the other end of the gym, after stopping to say hello to a few people and laughing with a few others, when he saw Lea, much to his surprise and delight. She was laughing with Hazel in the corner of the gym, leaning up against the wall as she stretched her legs. Her long blonde hair was up in that high pony tail she wore when she worked out, and she had no makeup on, letting her natural beauty shine through.
Finn felt his heart skip a beat, and he wondered when she began to affect him so much. He didn’t care, though. He loved her and she loved him, and that was truly all that mattered. They were happy. And while he was sure there would be some bumpy moments along the way, he knew that they would make it. They were like two puzzle pieces that stuck together without any help. Without any glue. Just gravity and themselves–that was all they needed.
“Hey, Finn!” Hazel exclaimed from where they were sitting. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer!”
Finn hadn’t even realized he was staring. He chuckled as he walked over to them. He didn’t care. He wasn’t embarrassed. Lea was his girl, and he could stare at her as long as he wanted. And from the way she was laughing; her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling, he knew that she didn’t mind.
Finn sat down next to Lea, kissing her head in a hello as Hazel cooed at the two of them. Finn rolled his eyes, as did Lea, but both of them were smiling nonstop as they waited for their class to start.
Finn knew that they all had to prepare. He knew that they had the worst possible thing coming for them. But in that moment, as he looked at the woman he was now sure was his one true love, he didn’t care. As long as he had her in his arms, they would be alright.
* * *
* * *
Book 5: Ethan
Chapter 1
“There’s been a murder,” Hazel’s best friend, Lea, exclaimed as she burst through Hazel’s front door. Hazel was sifting through her mail, separating the bills from the random spam mail that she always seemed to get in bountiful quantities. That statement alone made Hazel stop her sorting and look up into the wild eyes of her best friend. Those blue eyes held fear and confusion, and Hazel knew that, as she processed the whole situation, hers looked the same.
“What do you mean?” Hazel asked, not exactly knowing what else she was supposed to say. She put down the mail, throwing it back down on the little accent table she had in the front hallway, and followed Lea as she walked deeper into her house.
Lea paced around the kitchen, and Hazel took that as her cue to pour her friend a drink of water to try to calm her down.
“Was it another rogue attack from Gabriel?” Hazel asked as Lea took a huge gulp of the water she handed her.
Hazel shuddered as she remembered what happened not that long ago to her packmates. A huge quantity of rogues led by the whisperings of Gabriel, a rogue Elder that wanted to destroy the shifter society and gain leadership, attacked the Moonlight Maine Pack one night. While no lives of any shifter were lost, and while they defeated the rogue shifters handily with only minor injury, the whole thing still set everyone on edge.
And the realization that it was a setup, a trick to get Michael, a leading Elder in the society, and Hann, the Moonlight Maine Pack’s alpha, off of Gabriel’s back so that he could meet with actual rogue leaders around the world and set up an actual uprising wasn’t much better. Everyone was on edge and just waiting for another attack or for a lone rogue wolf to waltz into town and attempt to bring carnage and destruction to their lives.
Life in Maine for any shifter had been crazy for the last few months.
And now, it seemed like life was just getting crazier and crazier.
And Hazel could barely stand it. She found herself twitching slightly as she waited for Lea to finish drinking that damn water and tell her what, exactly, was going on. The mystery and danger were eating her alive in her kitchen as she waited for the news.
“No,” Lea finally muttered, looking back at Hazel with those worried eyes. But there wasn’t much fear there. If a rogue had come to destroy the shifter community, Lea would’ve had a lot more fear in those blue eyes of hers. Considering she was on the receiving end of one of those rogue att
acks last month, Lea would’ve been freaking out if there was another one.
“What do you mean, no?” Hazel asked, growing more and more confused as she stared at her friend. “So . . . it wasn’t a rogue? It wasn’t someone in the pack?”
“No, you’re not understanding,” Lea sighed, those eyes holding so much emotion. “None of us were injured. We’re all fine, and we’re all accounted for. It-it was a human. A human was murdered.”
“I’m confused,” Hazel admitted, sitting down at her kitchen table, her mind racing. “That’s horrible, I know. But . . . why are you looking like this? Why are you freaking out over a human death in town?”
“Because the death didn’t occur in town, Hazel.” Lea took a deep breath, shaking her head as if in disbelief. “The death happened in the forest. In our forest. More specifically, the forest that Hann owns, according to the United States government and every human around.”
Hazel instantly shot up in her chair, realizing why Lea looked so frightened and out of place. A human, dead in shifter territory? That wasn’t good, especially if the human was killed by a shifter. Hazel knew that the Maine police would come sniffing into Hann’s business, as well as the whole pack’s business. Humans didn’t know about shifters, and they wanted their secret to stay a secret. Having humans, especially detectives that questioned everything, all over pack territory wasn’t going to be good.
And Hazel knew exactly the kind of detectives and police officers there were in this little town. She worked for them.
And they wouldn’t stop until they got the truth about what happened.
“Tell me everything,” Hazel told Lea, a fierceness in her eyes as the need to know all about the murder kicked in. She needed to make sure that she protected her pack.
And she really hoped no one in the Moonlight Maine Pack was to blame. That wouldn’t be good for anyone.
“Hann found the body this morning when he went on his morning run with Ross,” Lea began, sitting down at the kitchen table across from Hazel. “They knew that they had to call the police, though, they had to go back to Hann’s, change into their human form and grab some clothes before racing back. By the time the police got to the scene, every shifter out had cleared the forest, per Hann’s request. That’s how I found out. I was out with Finn running to work out at the gym.”
Finn was Lea’s boyfriend, and Hazel almost envied how close those two were. They were adorable, and Hazel was happy that Lea had found someone as caring and loving as Finn to spend the rest of her life with. While Hazel was a bit shocked at Lea’s choice to be with Finn, she quickly realized that Finn was leaving all of his bad boy ways at home and supporting and loving Lea in every way she needed. They were the most stable couple Hazel had ever seen.
Hazel, on the other hand, was single. Other than an ex-boyfriend that constantly annoyed her and tried to make her jealous, she was getting no action. Other than when she and her ex-boyfriend accidentally fell into bed together, that is.
“What else do you know?” Hazel asked, jolting back to the present as she realized the danger that they could be in. If the humans in their little town figured out just what they were, all hell would break loose.
The pack really didn’t need this right now. With Gabriel trying to ruin their world, and with rogues attacking any chance they could get, the whole pack was on edge.
“That’s all I know,” Lea told her, sighing and feeling a little better now that Hazel knew what was going on. “Hann told everyone that he’d update the whole pack later when he knows more, but everything is up in the air right now. And, of course, the rumors are spreading even more than before.”
“Rumors? What are the rumors of?”
“Everyone wants to know how the human died. There are so many rumors about what really happened. Some say that it was an accident involving those teenagers that always come to hang out in the forest away from their parents, others say that it was a rogue that killed the person and is now trying to blame one of us. The rumors are crazy, and Hann won’t tell anyone anything yet. Including the age or gender of the murder victim.”
“How do they know that it’s murder, though?” Hazel figured it could’ve just been an accident. Or maybe an older person was walking or running through the woods, resulting in a natural death.
Something else could’ve happened. Murder was a word that Hazel had a hard time speaking.
“According to Hann, he just knew that it was murder.” Lea had a look in her eye, and Hazel didn’t want to ask any more questions, though she couldn’t stop herself.
“So, it was obvious then,” Hazel sighed. “The body was obviously . . . well, it was obvious that someone killed that person.”
“Yeah.”
Hazel and Lea sat in silence, staring at everything and each other as they processed how crazy they knew their lives were going to be as the human police force combed through their woods, trying to find out what really happened. Hazel wanted to know what really happened, and she was sure Hann, her alpha, wanted to know what truly happened as well.
“Have you heard anything from work, yet?” Lea asked Hazel, to which Hazel shook her head.
Hazel worked as a secretary and administrative worker at the little police department they had in the small town of Jerome, Maine. With a small population, there wasn’t much crime in town, and the police were only ever called when teenage kids were causing issues every now and then. For the most part, though, the town was quiet and picture book perfect.
Until now.
“No, not yet,” Hazel sighed, grabbing her phone from where it was in the middle of the kitchen table and making sure she didn’t have any missed texts or calls. One glance and she saw that there were no unread texts or missed calls. She knew that once she got to work, though, the precinct would be a mess. There’d never been a murder in Jerome, or any of the tiny, tiny, towns surrounding Jerome as long as Hazel had been alive. She didn’t even think that there had been a murder in the last few decades.
“I can’t believe this happened,” Lea sighed, shaking her head in disbelief. Hazel couldn’t either. And she had so many questions.
Hann obviously knew that it was a murder, otherwise he wouldn’t have immediately called the police and told everyone to stay away from the area. Something was weird, that much Hazel knew.
And she knew when she got to work, she would figure out what really happened.
Hazel instantly felt the difference in the air when she got out of her car that morning. Dressed in her usual bland work attire, which consisted of plain black slacks and a white button-down shirt tucked into her pants, Hazel walked up to the front door of the police precinct.
And it was swarming with reporters who were shooting out questions to each and every person who walked in and out of the building, regardless of whether they were police or not.
Hazel quickly jogged inside amidst the shouted questions and continuous flashes of the cameras. She caught her breath as she found herself safely inside, immediately walking to the back room where administrative workers kept all their belongings in a locker. She guessed that each and every journalist and blogger in town was outside trying to figure out what happened. Considering that there were only two newspapers in the small town of Jerome, Hazel found the crowd outside quite big.
Inside the precinct, however, was no better than outside. People were rushing about, wild-eyed and crazy. More than one person almost barreled into Hazel, and her quick reflexes were the only thing that saved her from being knocked to the ground. Hazel could smell the distinct smell of cigarette smoke in the precinct, though, they weren’t allowed to smoke indoors anymore. She assumed some police officers were probably ignoring the rule for just today. She didn’t blame them.
After all, it wasn’t every day Jerome got a murder. And Hazel could see how crazy everyone was acting. She wondered how the townspeople would act once they all got up and turned on their phones to find out that someone was murdered in their very own town.
&nbs
p; Hazel finally made it to the locker room in the back, sighing in relief as she slumped against the side of them. Today was already exhausting her, and it was only eight in the morning. It was going to be a hard day. She just had to get through it and help the precinct as much as she could.
And help Matthew in any way she could. Matthew, the lead detective. Matthew, her ex-boyfriend.
She sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning and started to put her belongings in her locker. She checked her phone to respond to a few of her friends in the pack that had texted her, wondering if she had heard about the murder in their territory. They were looking for answers, and they assumed that she had some since she worked at the police department.
She knew absolutely nothing, though. She was hoping that would change soon. She needed answers, and her inquisitive and constantly questioning self wanted to figure out just what had happened last night.
Hazel pulled her brown hair back into a messy bun on the top of her head. She didn’t even care if she looked like a mess. One look at everyone else working told her that she wasn’t the only one that was beyond stressed. Everywhere she looked, she saw the fraught faces of the men and women that used to work in a peaceful police precinct where the worst crime that happened was an unruly teen causing trouble.
Now, there was a murder.
“There you are,” Annaleigh, Hazel’s friend and human coworker, sighed when she saw Hazel. “It’s been crazy here since four in the morning.”
“You’ve been here since four?” Hazel asked, grimacing. Annaleigh, the head secretary of the whole department, must have been called in earlier when the body was first found. Hazel walked behind the main desk to join her friend, noticing the tired eyes and the sloppy low bun that barely contained her red hair. She looked like a mess, and Hazel instantly felt bad for her. It must’ve been crazy when news first broke, and it didn’t look like the chaos would calm down anytime soon.
“I got called in when they found the body,” Annaleigh told her, her green eyes wide with fear. Hazel grabbed her hand instinctively and squeezed, hoping that would comfort her friend in some kind of way. Annaleigh was always pale, being a redhead, but Hazel swore she looked like a ghost from the fear she was very clearly feeling.
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