Crossing Paths With The White Wolf

Helios POV

This place is full of cockblockers - Ezequiel whined.

We do need to get a lot of work done - I pointed out - We get this done and we can have some free time when she comes back.

Fine, wake me when you're done - he said as he curled up in the back of my head.

Aren't you going to help? This is a lot of information. - I asked.

Saving my efforts for our mate- he said and yawned.

Like you help in that department. - I smirked.

I provide encouragement and advice! - He said indignantly. - Can we meet her wolf soon? If we're waiting for her to be ready to accept our mark, I would like to at least run with her. We can ask her tonight. - I suggested and he wagged his tail as he fell asleep.

I sighed and went to work. There was so much paperwork. I managed to fill out most of the application but it didn't look good in the end. There were a lot of empty spaces. I set up an appointment with Markus' accountants for the pack accounts for next week. The biggest blaring issue was space. So much depended on it. After I got frustrated, I took a walk with my tablet while perusing listings for the area.

"Do you want to go over the wording for tomorrow's ceremony now? Celeste was thinking we could do a small celebration afterwards," Markus asked as I walked into the living room on the first floor. The pups were sleeping in their stroller. I nodded and pulled up the notepad app on the tablet.

"It's fairly simple. They have to officially denounce their previous pack. The connection is probably really weak for most, but it needs to happen unless they were rogues already. They need to say, 'I, full name, do hereby renounce my allegiance to the 'Name of Pack'. After they complete that, they have to swear their fealty to your pack. It's also fairly simple. You will say "Do you swear your fealty to, did you pick a pack name?" He asked and I nodded, "Do you swear fealty to 'pack name', to follow, represent and obey the rules of the pack and respect all members of the Pack! After they accept, you make a small cut on your hand and theirs and you grasp hands to allow the blood to mix. That creates the pack link between you and the pack and that's it. Rinse and repeat until you're done inducting everyone."

"Sounds simple enough. There was something I wanted to ask before the council got here," I said a bit nervously.

"Yes, we'll be your sponsor," he said and then smirked when he saw the surprise in my eyes. "I read the requirements too."

I leaned back and let out a breath. "Well, thank f**k, because I don't know any other werewolves by name."

He chuckled, "Everything will fall into place. Just give it time."

"How do you even do it? It's f*****g exhausting and I haven't even started."

"My pack was already established by the time I became Alpha and my father taught me to deal with pack matters since I was 12. I did a lot of work when I took over to grow it, but the hard parts were done."

I looked at my watch, "It's been a few hours. Shouldn't they be back by now? Natalia said she would only be buying a few sets."

"She was keeping Celeste out of the house until dinner. Celeste texted a while ago asking after the pups and said Natalia asked her to get pedicures. It was kind of a favor to me. She rarely goes anywhere and I wanted her to have some fun." "Why won't she go anywhere?"

"Pack duties are never ending and she is a good mom. We have someone to take care of all the ranked pups throughout the day, but both her and Maya prefer to be more hands on. Not a bad thing, but she had a hard life before I found her and I would like her to experience things she's missed. Hard to do when you're stuck at home," he sighed, "I don't want her to ever resent having pups this early in her life."

"I don't think she will. Celeste may have missed out on a lot, being a slave to Alpha Geoff, but above all, she just wants a family that loves her and that is what your pack gave her. That said, I agree that it's good for her to get off the pack grounds on occasion. Now, do you have any idea of any property suitable for a new pack with room for expansion?" I said, picking up my tablet again.

"It will all work out, Helios. Trust your sister," Markus laughed, "Just relax until tomorrow."

I sighed and closed the tablet. I did trust Gonzalo to find us a suitable place. I was just really anxious about all the stuff that needed to get done. "What have you got going on for the next while?" I asked him.

"I'm trying to find a suitable gift for Celeste. Her birthday is in 3 days and I'm out of ideas. There's no way to top last year. At this point I'm going to give her an I.O.U. coupon book like the teenagers do these days," he chuckles.

"There's some Noches Luminarias thing at the botanical gardens in Phoenix. I saw them last year. It's pretty and it's not too far away. We can babysit for you. Make it a day with an overnight."

"I am not sure she would go for overnight without the pups. If the young girl weren't in danger, I wouldn't have gotten her to go to California. Dad said it's a new mom thing, but if it's in the gardens, I may be able to convince her to go and take the pups. We can take the stroller, can't we?"

"It's a big nature walk in essence. Plenty of room." I said.

"How are things going with Natalia?" He asked.

"Better. I think we ran circles around each other for the whole first month. No one giving the other any information about who we were to protect ourselves," I sighed, "It's a little overwhelming. Having a voice in my head, shifting, pack, mate. I am hoping I don't f**k it all up."

"Just keep trying. People meet you half way when they see you trying." Markus said.

"Alpha, the cameras are back on," Evergreen's voice came from behind me. "You're going to want to see this."

'Sebastian, Gonzalo. Meet us at Evergreen's conference room,' I mind linked as we stood up.

We made our way to the room where the conference TV was displaying the camera feeds of the lab. There was a clean-up crew in most of the rooms. My eyes immediately zeroed in on following one man in a suit that appeared to be in charge. There are three other men behind him walking with their heads down and warriors to either side of him. One of the men with his head low seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. Danny, Gillian, Sebastian and Gonzalo all came in around the same time. "What are we looking at?" Sebastian asked.

"Anything that stands out to you. Evergreen, you've got facial recognition going?" Markus asked.

"Can't until the feed makes it up to their cloud, Alpha. If I try to access the feed through the software, they'll find our access and follow it back to us."

"We don't need facial recognition for this guy" Gonzalo said, pointing at the man that looked familiar, "Blake Caster. He is the general manager of our shipping yard. He oversees the receipt of the shipments and dispatches our drivers to deliver them to the clients. He has been working at the company for about 25 years. We couldn't find anything abnormal with him at the time we were looking for the mole. Clearly, we missed something," he sighed. "Evergreen, if we can get you access to his computer, are you able to see if you can find out who these people are?" I asked.

"You already have access," Sebastian said, "Evergreen installed his security package at the company. We should have access to all his emails, company phones, and incoming and outgoing phone calls if he keeps his personal phone on the network while at work. We just have to give him the new access information so he can log in."Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

"Do it, let's -" There was audio coming from the TV suddenly. I turned to look at Evergreen with a questioning look.

"One of the warriors is logged in to their network. I hacked his phone. Whatever we're listening to is what's happening right now." He grinned at me.

"Or he can do that," Sebastian laughed.

We watched in silence as they walked the building. It had been almost a week and I took satisfaction that some were trying not to wretch at the smell.

"All of the computer towers were taken, sir." One of the cleaners came over to the suited man.

"Backups?"

"This place was in an enclosed network. Backups were local. The servers were also taken, sir." Everyone took a step back as the man thought over what had just been said. He turned around to look at Blake.

"Do you have any idea how much research was just lost? You were in charge of this shipment. You assured me everything went well. What the f**k happened? We take one tiger shifter and suddenly we lose a decade's worth of research. Everything went to s**t after I promoted you over the i***t that sold the shipping company. Explain how we were found out." Blake only trembled, unable to answer. "Well? Don't make me ask twice."

"The shipment was delivered to the auction successfully. This wasn't my fault. Sir, please, I have a family." Blake was visibly shaking now.

"Who else could be behind these attacks?" The suited man asked them.

"Sir, the man that was in here being questioned at the time of the attack was also the man that bought some of the shifters, but he was in no condition to be the one to do this sort of damage." The other spoke. "What do we know about him?" The suited man replied.

The man with the clipboard looked through a file. "His name is Ramon De la Luz. He owned a bunch of shipping companies in the 90s. He made a lot of money in the stock market and retired in his early 40s. We couldn't find much in the way of history for them outside of that, birth certificate, last residence, passport information. He keeps a private life."

The suited man followed up with, "Where is he now?"

"Unknown, like I said, he was in here getting questioned for some purchases at the last auction. He was here for weeks before the raid, it's possible he was just taken along with the other shifters." I let out of a breath I didn't know I had been holding. At least they can't find us yet.

"How did anyone find out about this facility?" the suited man asked.

"We're not sure sir. The lights were severed before they arrived, so we have no idea who or how many came through." One of the men answered.

The suited man was playing with the sleeves of his suit when he asked, "Any other facility get hit?" "No..."

"But?" He asked when the man hesitated.

"One of the buyers in the last shipment had his compound breached. He sent an email requesting replacements. He was willing to pay twice what Mr. De la Luz paid for the wolf and leopards. Mr De la Luz was grabbed so he could be convinced to give the animals back, but he refused."

"The animals he bought, were they all animals or shifters?" The man in the suit asked while rolling up his sleeves now.

The man looked at his clipboard again, "We think the leopard cats were just animals, sir. They didn't have the size usual for shifters, but the white wolf was most definitely a shifter by the size metrics on the manifes-"

He was not allowed to finish his sentence before the suited man interrupted him. "Did you just say white wolf?" "Y-yes sir." He stammered

"And you're sure it was a shifter?" We could see the change in the man's demeanor and everyone around him.

"Not 100% sure. It never shifted, but it was too big to be a normal wolf. There's also not many white wolves native to Korea," the now petrified man explained.

"WHY WAS IT SOLD THEN!?!? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU GAVE UP? My grandfather has a standing commission bonus of $100 million for anyone that would lead to the capture of a white shifter wolf. A white wolf would have sped up our research exponentially." I growled lowly as I heard him yell. Ezequiel was raging with anger and need to protect our mate.

"I'm so-" before the man could even finish, a claw extended and cut the throat of the man. He turned to the next and did the same. Two of them tried to run, but he was on them within seconds. At the end, only one remained.

The man straightened his hair and suit before he turned to the last man standing, "Find the white wolf. Grab whoever you need to. Nothing else matters right now. We need the white wolf. She is the key."

He walked away from the dead man with the cellphone and we lost audio. He gave some sort of instructions that we couldn't hear to the cleaners and his car came around the front as he rolled his sleeves back into place and he was driven out of the research lab. We stood in silence as we processed what we had just heard and watched. The man experimenting on shifters appeared to be a shifter as well. He was experimenting on his own kind and wanted my mate.

"I'll keep recording until they are done." Evergreen was the first to speak and then the TV image split and there was some sort of running software, "I should be able to have the encryption cracked in a few hours. It's taken a few new tricks to crack it. This is one of the more complex encryptions I've seen...That wasn't created by me, of course," he said.

"Let us know when it's done. We need to find out what kind of experiments a shifter is running on other shifters and what exactly they want with Natalia." Markus said, making me growl. "We won't let anything happen to her, Helios. You have our support. The council will see all of this and reach out to other shifter councils. This is a problem for all shifters and the vampires. Everyone will be hunting down these bastards soon."

I nod gratefully at him. "Sebastian, text Theo and make sure he knows Natalia is currently a target. He needs to be on alert, though I doubt they will find us in under an hour. She won't be able to leave the grounds without guards anymore." I pulled a hand through my hair, knowing she might not be happy about that. "Go through Blakes' devices please Evergreen. See if anyone else in my company is involved. Gonzalo, you'll take point in the company for now. I need to remain unseen since they weren't sure if I had anything to do with the raid. They might eventually connect Ramon to the owner of the shipping company and I won't make it easy for them to find us."

I turned to Markus, "I would like us to join your training sessions. None of us have any training as wolves."

"I got that one Alpha," Danny said, "Trainings are every morning from 7 to 12. Advanced is from 3 to 5. You can all begin tomorrow and we'll move you to advanced if needed after I assess you. You're an Alpha, so you can train with Markus after basics." "Natalia will train as well." I told him and he only nodded.

My phone dinged.

Natalia: Theo looks like they just took away his puppy. Everything OK?

Me: It is OK for now, but we have some developments. We can talk about it after dinner.

"I'm going to go finish some paperwork. Gonzalo, can you check in with our warriors coming back? We need to know when we can expect them and if they've brought anyone with them?"

"Yes Alpha."

I headed up to my room and completed some paperwork as I waited for Natalia to come back. Ezequiel was pacing in my head. Now that she was the target, we weren't comfortable with her being so far away from us.

The door opened twenty minutes later and we breathed a sigh of relief as she walked through the door.