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Artem

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The day after I rescued those three boys, cousins named Cohen, Benton, and Julian, I spent all of my time looking for the family that was holding that girl prisoner. Kent said he saw her and that was all I needed to know. I would not let more people be treated that way in my pack, or anywhere else, if I could help it.

In the month since I took over the pack I had slowly been rescuing people every weekend. With the most recent three I was up to six. They weren’t easy to track down, and with the four of us having been away for most of the last four years there were a lot of people we weren’t that familiar with anymore.

Four years in college and coming home to take my place in my father’s architecture firm was just another step in my path to becoming an Alpha. I needed a way to support myself and my family. No man could be an Alpha without stability.

Toby Collins, Morgan Rogers, and Kent Hall, my three best friends, had been with me every step of the way, since we were kids. We went off to school together and planned to reform this pack together. They had all lost someone they knew to this pack’s twisted ways.

Yeah, we could have left, like a lot of people do when they became adults. There were so many newly adulted wolves who ran away from here frightened of what they would become if they never left. Me, I wouldn’t run. I was going to stop all this. That was the fundamental difference between them and me.

I wanted to scour the forest where Kent had found the girl. I wanted to follow her scent and track them back to where they had come from. Kent had wanted to do the same last night. But that man who dragged the girl back had sent his little hench dogs to patrol the area, just in case Kent did just that. Everytime Kent tried to get close to the trail he could hear them tracking and protecting it from him.

The first thing I noticed when I went into that clearing where the girl had run right into my Beta was her scent. Of course I would smell it, I am a wolf and an Alpha at that. That meant that my sense of smell was heightened compared to everyone else’s. I had noticed that change in me right away.

No, it wasn’t just that her scent was there, it was the scent itself. It smelled like a midnight breeze in the middle of summer, a breeze that had just blown through a field of wild lavender. I smiled the instant it hit my nose.

“What the hell are you smiling for?” Kent asked me, sounding as if I had gone insane. I blinked in surprise, bringing myself back to my senses.

“Huh?” I asked him, trying to act as if I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“You look like you’re happy. What about this situation makes you happy?” Kent was often surly when it came to these rescue missions. They reminded him of his baby brother, Nico, who was the first boy we saved when we came back home and took over the pack.

“I’m not happy.” I assured him.

“Could’ve fooled me.” He was still piercing me with a sharp glare. His hazel eyes shining in the light from the moon and his black hair nearly disappearing in the dark altogether. When he was out in the night like this he often looked more like a vampire than a werewolf. He truly was intimidating to most people when he stood there at just over six feet tall, but not to me. I was stronger, faster, and taller by two inches, plus he was my friend and I had seen him as a gangly little kid.

“Really, I’m not happy. The smile was an involuntary reaction to something I smelled.”

“And what did you smell?”

“Just something.” How was I supposed to tell him that my wolf had grinned and was now chomping at the bit with only one word in mind. ‘MATE’.

Would Kent think I am crazy when I told him that I had scented my mate? Would he call me an idiot because I was already lusting after a girl I had never seen but had only smelled a day old scent trail? Yeah he probably would.

“You’re not getting off that easy. I know you and something is up. What is it?”

“It’s the girl’s scent.”

“Yeah, I smell it too Artem, what about it.”

“It’s very pleasing.” I grinned.

“If you like lavender, yeah. Not my thing though.” He shrugged his shoulders as if that was all he had to say about it.

“I never thought it would be mine, but apparently it is.” Kent quirked an eyebrow at that and tilted his head to the side. Clearly he was confused.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked me.

“That my wolf seems to really, really like her scent.” I emphasized that for him, hoping he would understand.

“Oh.” His eyes went wide, clearly he did understand it.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?” He squinted now, unsure of my sincerity.

“Very, my wolf is practically howling the word nonstop in my head.”

“Well, that’s something. Now we just need to save her.” He smirked at me. “How many men get to really be their mate’s knight in shining armor? Shining fur? Which is appropriate here?” He was laughing softly, finding humor in his own words.

Subconsciously I growled. I wasn’t angry at Kent, or at anything or anyone near me. No, I was just intensely aware that I had to rescue my future mate and that meant that these people were now insulting me personally.

And now, I was wondering what those assholes had done to her. What had they subjected her to all these years? That pissed me off. They touched my mate, I don’t care if I wasn’t officially mated yet or not, she was still mine, fated to be since birth. Wasn’t that how the legends and stories always put it. It was fate and they had hurt my fate.

“Watch it there Scorch.” Kent said, glaring at me. “Your eyes are almost a dark hunter green now, any darker and they’d disappear in the dark.”

My eyes had this tendency to change colors based on my moods. Well, the color was always the same, green. They could go as light and crystal color as seafoam or mint, that was when I was in a really, really good mood. But when I am in a bad mood, or angry, my eyes get darker and more intense, like forest, hunter, and olive greens.

“Let’s just get a move on, we need to know what we’re dealing with here.”

“Yeah I know.” Kent was still in serious mode, all jokes aside. He wasn’t going to let anyone be abused anymore than I would.

It was time to get down to business. The two of us made sure her scent was firmly set in our noses before we took off in search of the trail. I had a brief moment where a wave of jealousy hit me really hard. It was like I didn’t want Kent smelling her scent so much. But that was ridiculous, I had to let that go, right?

With the scent memorized and fresh in our minds and noses we each set out on one of the paths she had taken, the one when she ran to the clearing and the one where she ran away from Kent out of it.

“Hey Kent.” I spoke softly but I knew my voice would carry enough for him to hear me.

“Yeah?” His voice answered softly.

“Do you think she ran away from you last night because she was scared of her family chasing her or because she saw your ugly mug?” I just had to have one last joke before he was too far away for me to talk to him.

“Fuck you, you stupid hot head.” I heard the chuckle under the words and grinned.

“It’s a thought.” I joked back before we both went silent.

Kent had taken the path that brought her from her house to the clearing, I had taken the one she ran away from him on and then was subsequently dragged away on. This trail gave me traces of what the others smelled like. It would be a lot easier to know who I was looking for if I had at least a slight idea of what they smelled like.

The family smelled like a giant mix of filth. Was that just some sort of inherited quality with them. The things I was smelling included dirt, old laundry, mildew, stagnant water, so many things that were unpleasant and made me want to sneeze.

The trail went on further than I thought it would. Given that Kent said it looked like her leg had been broken and she was running fast I didn’t think she would have gone nearly four miles before she ran headlong into my Beta.

Thankfully there was still plenty of the trail left to follow. Try as they might the wolves from last night didn’t manage to mask it. They had tried, I could tell that much. They had run all around the area in different directions trying to confuse us on which path to follow, but even with all those cris-crossing scents, two of the scents only went one way.

When I finally reached the end of the trail I saw a very large, very old house. It was almost as big as the pack house. If humans had seen it they would call it a mansion. It was made mostly of brick and stone in light colors that made it shine in the light of the moon. There were lots of windows that could let in a lot of natural light. It looked like something from a movie. But given its place, secluded and hidden in the forest, and the horrors I suspected happened in there, it was most likely a horror movie.

I had found the house. I had found where she was being kept. And next, I would save her. But I couldn’t rush this. I may be young but I’m not stupid. If I rushed in there not knowing who lived there, how many people were likely to be there, or anything about that family in general, I could potentially be walking into a shit show.

No, I needed to find out who these people were. I needed to know what I was up against. I would come back for her tomorrow.

I skirted the outside of the property, checking the house number would help to gather info. Only, there was no house number, and there was nothing at the end of the three mile long driveway. They really didn’t want anyone to know about them did they? Just who the hell were these people?