HOW TO ERADICATE A VAMPIRE COVEN

8 FEBRUARY, MONDAY, SPECIALIST FIGHTER TRAINING

I woke up to snarling and some kind of horrible sounds. A dream? I flared, nearly falling over. Mate reached an arm behind him to stop my fall. Ben grabbed me by the scuff. I could hear him snicker.

Oh. Not a dream.

I would've turned around and hit Ben but the trainers were showing some video footages of previous missions to give us an idea of what to expect. And I got immediately sucked into it.

These videos were taken from cameras attached to the specialist fighters. This was new, they only equipped them last year and obtained a wealth of data from each mission.

The video quality was blotchy though, I think because of the poor lighting and wind. Last year, the Black Forest found a hidden underground coven on their lands and stormed it.

It's a good thing I hadn't missed any of it. The snarling sounds that woke me was just them trying to get the audio to work. Just the regular technical glitch.

Now that it was playing, the first part was exciting. The warriors were all like, "Mind links off, it's go, go, go!"

They were all wired up with special earphones and mics to help them communicate without mindlinks.

They also had their cameras imbedded in goggles, which also calibrated the wind direction and "vampire vacuum", so they could actually see a bluish purple flame like shape behind the trees or walls even before the actual vampire came into view.

That was cool, because it visualized what I only could sense. That was exactly how my senses would see vampires too.

After fighting off what seemed to be countless vampires, they finally got deep inside enough to find one with the largest flame. "Vamp Lord sighted."

And then on "A Team go. Go! Go! Go!" They went in all at once. The Vamp Lord raised his hand up in surrender and tried to speak, but the guns went off all at ones and he was instantly a crumpled heap on the ground. There were a few other vamps who retaliated but were no match for the quick volley of silver bullets.

A quick check was made, heads were cleanly lopped off. But the team didn't stop there, they found a hidden door and went deeper.

Inside they found an entire floor of fire under their feet, "Nest found."

This part of the video was horrifying. I could barely watch it. Tbh, I didn't.

I was excited at first when the goggles showed a huge "fire" in what might be the cellar of some sort.

The warriors stormed in together. The first vamp they faced when the cellar door was crashed down was a girl, around my age. She screamed in terror and they lopped off her head. The rest of the vamps in the cellar were similar, girls, women, children, infants. I shut my eyes and hid behind Mate's broad shoulders and willed it to stop.

The warriors slaughtered everyone in the cellar. Except for a few women trying to defend their babies, none of the vamps fought back.

"And that is how we eradicate a coven. Vamps live forever, and unlike the established Covens, new underground Coven's breed at an alarming rate. First you need to take out their warriors, then their Coven Lord and the rest of the males. Once you find their nest, it's clean up time. You need to do a thorough job or else they would respawn, and your Packlands would be crawling with blood suckers." Trainer M explained.

That girl could have been Maria.

I didn't look up from Mates back.

"Ah, sorry." Trainer M seemed to noticed me belatedly and apologized, "I normally wouldn't show this video in front of ladies. I didn't mean to frighten your young princess, I thought she was sleeping... But gentlemen, that is the cold blooded reality of vampire eradication. This video is highly confidential, but Alpha Solomon allowed for us to share it with you. As I've said, you need to take a good hard look. This is the only way we had successfully managed to keep the Black Packlands vampire free. Our objective by the end of these 8 sessions is to provide you with the intel, tech specs, and training techniques for you to train and build your own specialist teams."

Harvey raised his hand, "Yes, thank you. But just to clarify, what we asked for was training on how to defend our warriors against vampires in the unlikely scenario that we should meet with some. We do not have covens, hidden or otherwise in the Green Packlands."

Trainer M nodded, "I'm glad you brought that up, beta. It is one of the most common fallacies of vampire fighting. Unlike Lycans, who might clash and then forget about it, with vamps, the best defense is offence. In fact, it is your only defense. Vampires operate in Covens, kill one and the rest would hunt you down, and not just you but your entire pack. In the same way, when losing a warrior to one, you need to hunt down and destroy the entire coven. This will stop them from picking off your warriors, and be a warning to the other Covens not to mess with your wolves. That's the only way to communicate that you mean business."

Trainer L and XL nodded gravely in support of these words.

"I see." Harvey answered calmly, "Thank you for your guidance."

How could Harvey be so calm about it? We were the monsters in that video, not heroes. I know they were vamps, but not all vamps were bad... Oh. I was beginning to sound like River.

I was spending too much time with Maria! I had to remember what I've been taught from young. Everyone knew that vamps were blood sucking rats! They were a dangerous menace to the world. Even if you ignored their sick and twisted ways (living eternally could do that to a person), their blood sucking alone made them almost always lifelong criminals. I mean, very few vamps could afford to buy packet blood from the labs like Maria did. Most vamps fed like robbers and sometimes rapists...except instead of taking your valuables, they took your blood, and whatever else they wanted in anyway they wanted since their victim would be completely mindwrapped in their control. They were the worst!

They were evil and depraved! But then, why did that video make me feel like we were the monsters?

Mate touched my head and then pulled me close to his shoulder again. I recognized it now as the equivalent of the wolf gesture of one wolf resting its muzzle momentarily against another wolf's shoulder, taking momentary shelter in the second wolf's protection. It was an intimate and protective gesture, usually only used within an intimate circle of family.

So it wasn't a hug. And it was never intended to be a long hold. Mate released my head and turned back to face the trainers as if nothing happened.

But it was enough to calm me (and my hair.)

The trainers went on to start our first training session on the mat. Our first exercise would help us train our mental control, specifically to keep our mindlinks closed off and the vamps out of our heads.

"Never look a vampire in the eye. Keep all your mindlinks closed. Never speak to vampires, they love to mess with your mind and will never overlook a chance to mess with you." Trainer M told us.

It was really kind of extreme, but I was too polite to open up a debate. Let's see what techniques they could teach us first.

Trainer L taught us a couple of exercises, the first one was similar to the regular control exercises that we did at our night training sessions, the second one was a variation of it. These two coupled together were the strongest foundation of control they said. Actually, our control exercises were more advanced, but no one disputed them. We were all very polite wolves like that.

The third exercise was new. It was a mindlink sealing technique. It was very difficult and only wolves already well versed in control techniques could do hold use this technique for more than a few minutes.

"Think of it like not breathing." Trainer L explained.

Which made me think that it was impossible to do at first, but it turned out that it was just variation of my mindseal, but focused only on available mindlinks.

I was quite sure a vamp like Maria could slip into this set up since vamps didn't link to your mind, they wrapped... But it was probably solid enough to keep out lesser vamps. I had to remember that Maria, even though she was quite young, was a purebred from some old power.

And it turned out that most wolves felt being connected via their mindlinks to their packs and family members as important as breathing. So closing of such connections was very difficult.

Anyway, we all tried and were all surprising successful at it, even those of us who said they never did it before.

Flynn had a panicked mindlinked from Macey when he cut of the mindlink, but he immediately linked back and reassured her he was just practicing a new technique. It wasn't just Flynn.

Trainer M smirked at how the men around were suddenly dealing with an onslaught of concerned family members etc who felt them cut off, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, you probably should let your loved ones know you're in special training before trying it."

Now he tells us! But then again, it turned out they didn't expect any of us to successfully do it on our first session.

Trainer L was very impressed. In his experience, most warriors had to train weeks to gain enough control over their wolf powers to shut off their mind links at will the way we were doing it.

I just stood around and watched. My mindseal was still on by default. None of the trainers came to test me. I guess this exercise was not meant for princesses.

The test was simple, they got a partner of equal ranking, faced off, and took turns to force each others' link open.

I watched amused at the intense expression Gamma Endo and Gamma Harry were making at each other. It looked like they were both constipated. Hahahaha.

My Betas took turns growling at each other. Dad and Bell sparred a bit. Bell won. Dad's control was magnificent, but Bell used to live in a fight cage.

In the same way, Ki was winning in the beta arena. Ben was losing and it was cheesing him off. I wasn't surprised, since the trainer said the power of our ability to mind block was linked to our control over our wolf power. Ben wasn't exactly the most controlled wolf.

But I've come to realize that experience was a big deal. The wolves who could survive and climb up the fight cages were those who had immense control over their wolf powers to use them to fight/heal/survive/shield themselves from each other and the vamps around them.

It was us packwolves that never had the need to control our wolves that struggled. For us, control techniques were mostly for discipline and to manage our wolves, and of course to keep the merging technique balanced. The more powerful our merging technique, the greater control we require to not let our wolves surface or take over our human form... Not that I was great at that.

Ben was young, and I doubt he was the kind who focused all that much on boring control technique training. At any rate, our pack only taught it after the first shift. Morning Light too, since our training syllabus was rather parallel, except for the firearms part.

Anyway, Harvey naturally had the advantage, just because he was older.

Ben came over to me, I suppose he was looking for someone he could beat, and he reasoned that if he could force a mindlink before, he would be able to force a mindlink now.

What he didn't know was that when he "forced" the mindlink, I only felt his urgency and allowed him to connect the link. It wasn't completely "forced" except that I was forced to notice it. I usually didn't even notice if someone was trying to link.

So I let him try, we stood facing each other untouching. I was completely planning to cheese him off by denying him victory. I felt Ben in my mind trying to link. I blocked him. He pushed harder.

I realized that his previous "forced" wasn't really "forced" on his end either. Wow, he was persistent and he didn't hold back, it was like someone trying to pry open my mind with a crowbar.

"Uhn." I said and shut my eyes when he pushed harder.

And then the pressure suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes in surprise, just in time to see Mate grab Ben and throw him.

Eh?

Ki and Harv were immediately over to do damage control. Which consisted of dragging Ben back up to his feet to face Bell and standing protectively to block me from harm's way.

Ben was growling, his wolf on the surface, but he wasn't resisting either Ki's hold. Mate was growling...and then Mate shook his head, "It's nothing, just reflex."

And then he stepped back and looked away.

Ki released Ben, whose wolf calmed too. He looked at me, "Did it hurt?"

What? I blinked, "Did what hurt?"

Mated growled protectively.

Oh, the mindlink exercise? Was it supposed to hurt?

"Perhaps it's better not to participate princess." Trainer L said, "It can be quite rough. Our specialist fighter training was designed for male warrior wolves."

"Fighting vamps isn't something for princesses." Trainer M said, "Those blood suckers are even worse in real life and I've lost count of the number of time big grown warriors are left crying and shaking after meeting one."

"I think it's better to leave it to your mate and betas." Trainer XL spoke now, "I wouldn't want to see any of our women near a vamp, much less a princess."

Normally, this would just make me all grrr... But hahahaha tonight, Wolfie just wanted to have fun.