Chapter three

Lucy

After my talk with Shelly the other day, I found myself thinking about Andy frequently. Remembering the past and wondering what happened to him. I realized one day that I was selfish, I looked back and realized that I never actually found out if anything happened to him. I never asked what was wrong with him. I needed to go to the pack house.

Traditionally, all pack members lived in the pack house but since Andy became Alpha, everything changed. It wasn’t a written law it was more unspoken so he didn’t break any law. He just moved out of the pack house and surprisingly, most pack members liked the idea, especially the mated couples. The only person still complaining about it was Dad but even he couldn’t fault the logic behind Andy’s thinking: Beta’s lived at the edges of the town acting as a sort of shield for both humans and wolves. You can’t enter the town without someone knowing, which is another mystery surrounding Shelly. She just appeared and no one questioned her, even Andy.

As expected the pack house was quiet as I walked to the door.

“Mom?” I called out “Dad?”

“In here” mom answered

“Where’s here?”

“The sitting room dum dum” dad answered grumpily

I smiled brightly as I walked into the room wondering what made him grumpy again

“ Well well my daughter finally came home, this calls for celebration” dad called out sarcastically

“Dad, come on now, I’ve been busy” I replied as I hugged him. He just huffed and rolled his eyes muttering under his breath

“Hey Mom”

“Hey beautiful” mom replied and turned towards me. Seers eyes. I fought the usual urge to flinch as I looked into her eyes. It’s never easy to look a seer in the eyes especially when she’s your mom and a wolf. It’s funny because wolf’s and seers never mate but somewhere down the line when seers began to die out, Luna seemed it fit to mate them to wolves. Our family is the last to still have a functional seer bloodline others were mere Keepers but the bloodline will most likely end with Mom because I didn’t get the seer Gene. Thank goodness. Still we are one of the powerful pack added to the fact that dad is a pure black wolf, black wolves are near extinct. Since I didn’t get the seer blood, we thought Andy might have it but he doesn’t either. Seers are very easy to identify with just their eyes. They usually have normal black pupils but the abnormal part was the Iris. Depending on the strength of the seer the Iris differed. For mom, the outer part of the Iris is blue but the rest is white. So it’s like a blue ring filled with, white and a black spot in the middle. Very eerie. Having blue white eyes is abnormal on its own and mom wielded it like a weapon, pulling truths and secrets with just one look. I always wondered how dad looked at her.

“You obviously didn’t come here because you missed us” mom said

Being a seer apparently also means, you have no filter. “You could at least wait till I sit mom”

She just cocked her head and glanced at me. I looked back at her and waited. It had become a form of ritual when talking to Mom, to see how far and fast she could “see”.

“Its about Andy, yes?” well that was fast

“That was quick”

“Lucky guess” she replied and fell silent staring into space. I waited.

“ it really was just a lucky guess or not but he has been on my mind for a while now and frankly…I’m a little…scared” she turned completely to face me like she needed me to understand her fear and I felt it. Mom never got scared

“Whatever I say today, you have to promise to keep to yourself. It can’t get out. Not yet” mom said with seriousness

“Honey are you sure?” dad who has been silent interjected

“I have to, I don’t know what else to do. I think it’s the right things to do” or is it her face seemed today

She took a deep breath “I can’t see your brother” huh?

“You can’t see Andy? I don’t understand”

“Remember what a seer does?” mom asked

“See the future?” duh

“Yes, but the future isn’t certain. It can change. That’s what makes a seer's job so difficult. You have to find a way of knowing what future is certain and which can change. For example, your coming home today was certain but the reason wasn’t. I only knew when you asked”

“So much for lucky guess” I quipped making mom glare at me “okay, I get it but what does it have to do with Andy?”

“Except things that are hidden from me, which isn’t much, I see everyone’s future . Everyone’s certain future at some point” she paused “have you seen Andy’s wolf before?” she asked suddenly

“No, I remember the party on his 16th birthday but he didn’t shift and there was lot of talk” lots

“Yea”. Mom sighed “ we shouldn’t have assumed but I’d never seen or heard of a late shift. I’ve seen early ones but never late. I searched through all the books and totems I could find but nothing. Not even one reference to a late shift. I even contacted the keepers” keepers were essentially seers but didn’t have an active gift so they acted as historians in a way. She paused and something unbelievable hit me

“Wait! You haven’t seen his wolf either, have you?” I asked staring wide-eyed at both of them

“No” they both answered “not even once, not even a glimpse” dad continued

“But, that’s not possible, is it?” I asked

“the lines between what’s possible and impossible seem to have shifted” mom replied

We sat in silence and I suddenly felt guilty. Something was wrong with Andy and I didn’t even know but…

“ you still don’t know why he didn’t shift that day on his sixteenth birthday, do you? But wait…how is he the Alpha? If you guys haven’t seen his wolf, then I’m sure no one else has, how has no one challenged his position? Is be even a wolf?”

“even the keepers have no idea what happened till today which means one of two things; it’s never happened before or…”

“it was deliberately wiped from history” I finished

“And no one has seen his wolf but we all feel him, we’re all connected to him as wolves so he’s definitely a wolf” dad continued

“He has been challenged few times” mom said

“What? And he didn’t shift?”

“He didn’t. The fight lasted less than 10 seconds…”

“In human form?” I cut in

“In human form. He caught him at the cuff and pinned him down. Ben said he couldn’t move…”

“Wait… Ben? Ben? Ben?” I was in disbelief “Ben, the enforcer? He pinned that Ben down? In human form?” I stared in shock as they nodded. Enforcers are not part of the packs rank because they are neither Alphas nor Beta’s. They were almost stronger than Alphas though Alphas has hold over them of they choose to belong to the pack. Becoming part of the pack is different for enforcers. They have to undergo a ritual and swear fealty to the alpha and the alpha alone, so essentially they are not pack protectors, they are the Alphas. Enforcers are neither Alphas nor Beta’s but occasionally, you get an enforcer that’s also a Beta like Ben and Raymond. So, the fact that Andy could pin down Ben while still in human form was more than surprising, it was terrifying.

“And Raymond?” I asked quietly Raymond

Mom stared at me till I looked away flushing guiltily

“Ray would never challenge Nick but he has also never seen Nick’s wolf” dad answered

“Please get me a glass of water” mom asked

From the kitchen I could still hear their voices, another secret hidden from my family, my hearing is better than any wolf or human.

“Is she still…” dad asked quietly

“Yes” mom replied just as quiet

“but …that’s not… we gave birth to impossibilities,” dad said with resignation

“No, we didn’t. There’s a reason and answer for everything, we just haven’t found it”

They both fell silent

“Mom” I called out as I walked into the room and handed her the water “I have to go back soon but I still don’t understand what you meant by 'you can’t see Andy?”

“it started that day” she began, staring into the glass of water like she was watching the events, which is possible “ his sixteenth birthday. At first, I thought, it was because he didn’t shift, his future started flickering…”

“ flickering?”

“Like it was on a boat, constantly moving but the same future. When he turned 17 and still hadn’t shifted, I knew something was wrong. His future started to change rapidly, it was so fast that I couldn’t catch it. So many possibilities, too many possibilities but I still didn’t get a glimpse of what it might contain”

“you said it was seers sickness”

“Yes, that’s what we called it. For a year, he’s future changed so fast I thought I would loose it. Few days to his 18 birthday, it stopped. The first clear future was Andy standing on that hill his house is at, Raymond beside him, looking down at the town and a voice chanting…” mom’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper sending shivers down my spine “he is coming…he is coming…he is here… this continued till his birthday”

“Blood!” I said loudly “I remember doctor Vincent coming here few days to Nick’s birthday. I snuck into your room that day. I was curious about “seers sickness”. There was blood coming from your eyes and ears. How did I forget that?”

Mom shook her head as if chasing a bad dream away and nodded

“She suddenly became okay that day, exactly 12:00am on his birthday. The blood stopped and she slept eight hours and woke up like we hadn’t gone through hell for the past year. I was so happy but then that’s when it happened.” Dad continued

“What happened? Something happened? I don’t recall anything happening. Except sending me off to Uncle Grey’s pack” I was still pissed about that. I thought I would spend more time with Andy before he became a Alpha. That’s where I met him. My demon.

“We sent you away so you wouldn’t notice” Dad said quietly “it was easy to hide it from others but we knew we couldn’t hide it from you”

“Hide what?” I asked even as I felt the pieces come together

“Andy went missing…for over a month” mom replied

“When?”

“On his birthday. At first, we thought he wanted to be alone but he never came home. We searched everyday but there was nothing. No trace. No scent. Nothing. We made the Beta’s and enforcers swear to secrecy. We couldn’t tell the pack members that the future Alpha might have run away. We didn’t even think he could have been taken. It was almost two months later, he came back but something was wrong, something was off”

“I sensed his wolf immediately he got to the pack house, everybody did, so strange but so powerful. He said he shifted in the woods and got lost.” Dad continued “but it was more than that, he was different”

“By that time, j had already stopped seeing his future. No, I had stopped seeing him entirely, anything about him was cut off, even the few times I see the pack he is not there” mom paused “but recently, a thought keeps coming back to me 'what happened that year”

“So what future do you see?”

“You don’t understand. The Alpha is the Pack. The Pack is the Alpha. If I can’t see the Alpha, I can barely see the Pack”