“To be without a pack for so long, and treated the way . . ..” Luke ran his hand over his face, not wanting to contemplate what that had to be like. It was a torturous sort of trauma.
“Little Wolf is strong,” Caine assured them again. “But, it would be too risky to link his mind to the Pack now, if he would want that. We should give him time to recover before we ask him to make decisions. Have we considered the reasons why they would want to conceal him? Someone went through a considerable amount of trouble to hide Little Wolf.” Caine had morphed his descriptor into a name now.
“Either he’s dangerous or he’s important, that seems to be the most obvious,” Seath said.
“Sign me up for the betting pool on important over dangerous,” Caine said. “Although maybe we should contemplate some sort of obsession? A kept lover? Wars have been fought over less beautiful men. And an omega to boot.”
Seath felt himself heat, but said nothing, afraid to give away the strange pull he had to the new wolf. It was wrong to be so taken with a wolf that was not his betrothed. Honestly, Seath didn’t know what to do with the fact he was so enamored with the beautiful omega. He wasn’t a man given to obsessions. So far, he had tried to ignore it and pretend it was the concern of the Legate for a new member of the Pack. But it was more than that, and he hadn’t thought himself to be the kind of creature to let a pretty face take his attention from his intended. He was a betrothed Alpha, and he needed to act like one.
“He could be dangerousnow, though, after all he went through,” Luke mused.
Seath looked hard at his best friend. “Luke, you can’t be serious. . .”
“Look,” Luke retorted, “we need to accept the fact that he was likely torn from his pack at a fairly early age, severed from them and joined to a new pack, but probably never made part of it in a real way. In the pack he was placed into, although not part of, he was harmed in a brutal way. His mind is spellbound. His wolf locked away. The memories of his old pack were taken, his senses deprived, his wolf nature deprived. He was kept weak and submissive and wasbrutalized. It’s a miracle he didn’t go feral.”
“Or he went close enough to feral to get away,” Caine mused.
“We don’t know; and I accept that,” Seath said. “We don’t know what the result of trying to help him will be, but we have to try. It’s not enough to heal his physical body. The coven or whatever it takes for the rest of it, too. That’s what we need to focus on.” He tried not to think of Caine’s comment about becoming almost feral, and shivered at the memory of the lament on the wind.
“Agreed,” Luke said.
“Can you imagine? Not able to remember who you are? Not able to remember who hurt you? It must seem like he is trapped in his own mind,” Seath said.
“And back to that,” Caine said. “I would imagine that he is the son of someone important. The only issue is that the pack he was stolen from would never admit to such a thing, at least most Pack Alphas wouldn’t.”
“We’ve already contemplated the part where we can’t ask around either, even subtly, without giving away where he is,” Luke agreed.
“Any chance they already have an idea where he is?” Caine asked.
Luke shared a look with Seath who nodded his head slightly.
“There was portal dust, residuals anyway, beyond the territory border, so the working theory now is that he stole it and portaled himself. Nothing indicates it wouldn’t work for him, I mean, there isn’t anything inside him they could have tied off with magic to deny him the ability to portal, even a human could do it if they had the dust and knew how to use it. The precautions were taken so that he would be too physically weak for escape, not that he couldn’t use portal dust or other means. Portals are untraceable, so they wouldn’t know where he went and then he ran fordays to get from where the portal dust was to where he was found. I assume they looked for him, but they couldn’t have known where to even begin such a search. If they got close, they would have found him. Even with no smell, the blood and his trail was too obvious. Anyone would have seen where he crashed through the forest.”
“He may have had help in the escape, you know,” Caine said, knowing Seath’s mind for strategy had already thought of such things.
“If he did, it was a friend who stayed behind,” Seath replied. “The only residual signatures the witches could find in the area was around the portal dust. It was miles from the territory border, with nothing else around. So either no one came to look for him or they could cloak the residuals, which even he could not do. He may not have had a scent, but I could determine the lack of one. A sort of numb void. That, the witches could pick up, but no other.” Building theory from the confusing puzzle was giving Seath a headache.
“I don’t know how it gets any clearer than that,” Caine agreed. “No one knows where Little Wolf is, and I would imagine that makes some Alpha very nervous.”
“The family though,” Seath said. Although he wasn’t mated, yet, nothing was more important to pack life than family—family found and family by blood. “I can’t imagine not knowing where your son went—a beautiful omega son at that—not knowing what happened to him.”
“It would be a lot to stomach, Seath,” Caine cautioned.
“I know,” Seath agreed, no more happy about the prospect than he was earlier.
Caine tapped his glass absently on the table.
“Unless the family did know,” Luke said. “I don’t think we can take any possibility off the table. His family could have sold him.”
A low warning growl came from Seath. “I can’t contemplate that, on top of everything else . . . I know it’s a possibility, but . . ..” The large Alpha shook his head because there it was again. The thought of someone seeing this omega as a commodity instead of a person.
A moment of silence followed as they all took a drink, contemplating that even in the modern world, some very antiquated ideas still existed. Some existed even more strongly than they had years ago.
It was Caine who broke the silence. He had seen enough time pass to know the pendulum always swung back, and the progress of one generation was easier seen as two steps forward and one step back with the hindsight of a few more generations. There was no reason to dwell on it.
“You know, there will be an in-between, when his body heals and the rest is a work in progress. You will need to engage him in something in the meantime, and it might be quite the opportunity to see where hisinterestslie. What does he know about? They might have erased the memory of his first pack, but those weaves wouldn’t take away the things he learned and knew before he was taken. It won’t take away favorites or familiarity, and there may be a lot to be learned from Little Wolf’s favorites and familiars.”
“That’s a great idea, Caine. Maybe we can piece together something based on what he knows, or what he’s good at,” Seath agreed.
