I knock on the door of the Head Alpha office, and wait until I hear an "Enter" before I head inside. Father is seated at his desk, covered in the usual papers but now with the addition of a few maps. Some are of our territory, while others show the territories of all packs in the area. Which is what father is studying as he gestures to the seat in front of the desk. I place the reports from me and Jaden on top of the clutter and take a seat. He moves the papers aside before looking up, finally acknowledging my presence.

"I see you recovered quickly," he says, glancing at my healed shoulder.

"Yea, thanks to the pack healers. The others are fine too, though Jaden is a bit upset about the loss of her fancy fireworks. But she'll live," I say, chuckling to myself. Jaden was more upset about having to write the report than the fireworks, but I wouldn't tell him that. Father's already skeptical about who I have in my team, but I trust my friends, and I know that they'll help me make this pack bigger and better.

"Glad to hear. Now," he says looking back at, and sliding the pack territory map towards me, "your little party wasn't the only place attacked that night." There's a big red X over the area where the party was, but also six smaller Xs far north in the territory.

"Seems like they were trying to split up our guards so the party attack group would have even less things to worry about," I say, studying the map. Now I'm really glad that we found them when we did.

"Exactly. One of our guards even went missing during the attacks. Odds are they either really wanted to get to you, weaken our pack numbers, or both. Which makes me wonder why you thought that having that party near the southern border was a good idea in the first place," he says, giving me a stern look.

"How was I supposed to know that their numbers would be that large? Besides, you told me to continue on as normal until we knew more about the rogue pack. Cancelling that party without a proper explanation would have raised some questions. Especially from Luke."

"You should have said that I forbid it."

"He still would have had the party, even if it meant not telling me. Which would lead to all of them getting attacked anyways."

"So, you think that your little friend would have defied a direct order from his Head Alpha?" father says getting increasingly more irritated.

"I'm not saying anything for certain, it's just a guess," I say, trying to calm his nerves. Luke is already grounded; I don't need him getting in more trouble over a "what if" scenario. "All we know for certain is what did happen. So, lets focus on where to go from here."

Before he can respond we hear a knock on the door. Father calls for them to come in and a pack guard enters the room, kneeling before us until father tells him to rise. "Sir, the body of one of our own was found this morning near to edge of the eastern border," the guard states, handing us printed out photos of the gruesome scene. The body was Caleb, an older alpha guard in our squad, shown brutally mutilated and covered in blood. I can barely hold back my snarl as my blood begins to boil from rage. Father also becomes more rigid next to me, his jaw clenched tightly as we examine the photos. There also seems to be a craving on his chest: . What could that mean?

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You may leave," father says to the guard, who nods and quickly leaves the room. Father sets the photos on his desk, taking a deep sigh as he sinks into his chair and cracks his knuckles.

"This is getting worse by the day. These attacks are starting to escalate in size, and my soldiers are being killed off by goddess knows who!" he says, slamming his fist into the desk. "I've studied the maps of surrounding pack territories and there is not enough land in between each of us to house a rogue pack of this size. Something is not adding up here."

"Maybe one of the packs are using rogues to weaken us before attacking head on," I say.

"Not possible. These packs know the reputation that our pack holds when it comes to wars and battles. Not to mention our number in allies outweighs the number of our enemies. They wouldn't dare try to attack us, weak or not. Though it's odd that none of the other packs that I've met with so far have had any attacks in the past year."

"Also, what could this carving mean?" I say, pointing to the photos. We bounce back and forth theorizes as to what it could possibly mean, none of them seeming to fit. Sitting in defeat, father rubs at his temple, clenching and un-clenching his jaw as his frustration grows. Come on Gray, think. These psychopaths wouldn't take the time to carve this into a dead man's chest unless they wanted to relay some type of message or demand.

"At this rate, we won't be able to have the answers to any of these questions until next year," father spats out bitterly.

Wait a second... "That's it!" I say, jumping up from my chair. "New Years! The carving is a date."

Father ponders my new theory until he starts to slowly nod. "It does make the most sense. Also, if it proves to be true then we can have an estimated date for their next big attack."

"Which means we need to prepare. I'll go inform the others and then we can-"

"Hold on now son, we still need to keep this under wraps until we have more information. Possibly from those prisoners," he says stopping me as I try to leave.

I look back at him confused. "Father how can we prepare for an attack if most of the pack doesn't know that anything is wrong?"

"We still don't know what we're up against, or how many people we will need for this battle. I'd rather use this time that we have to gather information and contact our allies to get some reinforcements from them instead of throwing more of our people into the fight. Not to mention, it makes the other packs a bit weaker in case your theory is correct."

"But-"

"My decision is final. We keep this under wraps for the time being, understand?" he says, growling out the last word with a glare.

I hold back my own growl but narrow my eyes at him. "Yes sir."

"Good, your dismissed," he says, waving me away as he looks back at his papers.

I leave the office, letting out a groan once I'm out of ear shot. I'm definitely updating Vic and Jaden on these recent developments so we can think of a more solid plan of attack. Then hopefully, father will accept it once he has whatever information he's looking for. I really need to find a mate, or else I'll be stuck following father's orders forever.

I walk into the den in the pack house to find Conner, looking through a ton of photos on the big coffee table. I know he said that he enjoys the process of developing photos, but I'm sure that it must have taken a while to still do all of these. I plop down next to him on the couch, startling him a bit from his work.

"D-Do you mind?" he says, glaring at me.

"Nope. Not at all. Keep doing what your doing," I say with a shit eating grin.

Conner rolls his eyes and goes back to looking through the photos. Glancing over them myself, I notice that they're all shots of the volleyball team. Oh yeah, Conner did mention doing an article on a club at school for the paper. I don't think I know anybody on that team, though that's probably because everyone at school calls it an "omega sport". So, I didn't really bother. Then I notice a familiar face, and have to do a double take before confirming that it's the right person.

"Wait, Eli is on the volley ball team?" I ask Conner, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, and he's really good. He sent the ball sailing over the net every time that he served, which made for some really cool action shots," Conner says, handing me some of the photos. I have to admit, he does look cool in them. I can tell that the level of focus he has in the game is intense, like a wolf in the middle of a hunt. But he's still annoying. And most of the credit should go to Conner for capturing the cool shots anyways. I can hear Onyx snort but I choose to push him to the back of my mind.

I guess I was looking at them for too long because Conner clears his throat, gaining my attention again. "You can have one of them of you want," he says, wearing his own shit eating grin.

"I see what your doing, and thanks but no thanks."

"What? Me? What could I possibly be doing to a big, strong alpha like you? I was just offering a photo to you."

"Oh, you think your funny."

"I'm hilarious. Besides I never know when I need to have backup images for something. The least you could do is hold on to it for me, pretty please," he says fluttering his eyelashes at me with an "innocent" looking face. I roll my eyes before taking one of the photos and shoving it into my pocket.

"Thank you, and don't mess it up. Every photo I take is my baby."

"Well then you're an awful mother if you're giving me your baby," I chuckle.

"Hey!" he shoves me, but we both end up laughing. That is, until mother walks in, dressed formally, and Conner's laughter dies quickly. His body language going back to small, shy, and... scared?

"Oh good, you're both here. Your father and I will be meeting with another pack leader today so here's some money for a pizza," she says handing me some cash.

"Is this really a good idea? After what happened last time, can't you just call or facetime the other pack members," I ask, furrowing my brows together.

"It's easier to establish trust with your allies if you meet them face-to-face. Not to mention we need to scout out their soldiers for recruitment. We will have a slew of guards with us this time. It will be fine; we will be back the day after tomorrow." She turns to leave but spots the photos on the table and turns back towards us, wrinkling her nose.

"Conner what is all of this? Shouldn't you be focusing your healing studies?"

"I-I am. T-this is for a club p-project," he says, somehow shrinking even further into the couch.

Mother sighs. "I simply do not know why you indulge so much into this hobby of yours. You were born with a special gift, to heal others. Something that is very rare and valuable in the world. Do you really want to throw away an admirable career of helping and healing your pack, for a life of taking pictures?"

"N-no ma'am. I'm s-sorry. I'll clean this up."

"Thank you. I must be going, make sure you both go to bed at a reasonable time please." She leaves as we both respond with an "Okay." Conner swiftly, but carefully, picking up his photos.

"Hey dude, don't worry about what mother said. You still have the rest of high school to enjoy photography, so there's no rush," I say, giving him a small smile.

"Yeah, the rest of high school. But then what?" he says with his head down, trudging upstairs with his stuff.

I feel really bad for Conner, but mother has a point. There's only a 6% chance that someone can be born gamma, and having a gamma can be a game changer for a pack. Especially if there's a war or battle going on. However, with that great healing power is a greater danger, with gammas having been hunted in the past, and sold to the highest bidder. While I would tear down any person or pack that would even consider taking Conner, I can still understand his reluctance. Besides, he should be able to choose what he wants to with life anyways. Either way, I have no say in this situation so hopefully they can work this out.

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