ALPHA MARCELLUS STORM

Marcellus had been in a sour mood since his mate had thrown him out of her house, akin to the way that he had thrown her out of the pack on the very first day that they had met.

It's quite funny, actually. What goes around, comes around. His wolf chuckled though the sound was rather strained and far from humorous.

Please tell how this is funny? Marcellus growled at his wolf, uncaring of the fact that his pack members probably thought that he had gone crazy with the way he had been silently brooding around the pack for the past few days, unable to get control over his emotions and feelings.

Please do tell me how my mate throwing me out of her house and telling me to never return is funny? He growled again, pausing to slap his hands down on the kitchen table, completely unaware of the wolves around the kitchen that had been holding their breath since the moment he stepped in there while pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds much worse than it is.

Oh, really? He snorted as he rounded the kitchen island and headed out of the kitchen, heading straight for his office which had been his safe haven these past few days. There's absolutely no way that this fucking mess that we're in is worse than it is. It's so fucking bad already. There's no possible way for things to get even worse.

You're looking at this from a negative perspective. His wolf noted aloud in a hesitant tone, clearly trying to turn the horrible situation over on its head but with no luck; failing just as he had done every day since they had last seen their mate.

Unable to suffer through this back and forth any longer, Marcellus sighed and closed the door behind him before he moved to drop himself in his desk chair.

While he wanted to agree with his wolf and try to look positively at the situation, but he couldn't help but fear that there was nothing to look forward to anymore. With the way that he had chosen to approach the situation and handle everything – or rather in this case, not handle anything at all – he had seriously fucked up. So much that there wasn't room to fix anything. And whenever he tried, he just seemed to make things all that much worse.

He wanted nothing more than to head back to his mate and show her just how sorry he truly was but it appeared that when she was involved, he couldn't do a thing right. He couldn't apologise properly or before she had the chance to rebuke and cut him off, and he certainly couldn't stop doing things that set her off.

Despite all his needs and wants, ultimately, he knew that he needed to give her time and space. Since he seemed to be making things so much worse whenever he tried to do any good and make amends, that seemed to be the only option.

While he had called and texted her a few times on the first and second today – obviously with absolutely no luck – he had forced himself to leave her alone on the third day by giving his phone to Dalton and strictly instructing him to only return it when there was a very important phone call which couldn't be ignored. Thankfully, most of those came directly to his desk phone and not his personal phone.

A few more days of this silence and he would try his luck again but at the moment, nothing was looking good.

Marcellus groaned and rubbed a tired, aggravated hand down the side of his face before he booted up his laptop for the day, determined to bury himself in work so he couldn't have to face the horrific reality that was his life.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to cling onto that hope for long as before he even had the chance to login to his email, Dalton came bursting through his office door, Marcellus having scented him the moment he stepped out of his room a few minutes ago.

"Why do you look like that?" Marcellus asked with a confused expression on his face as Dalton never acted this frantic. While he often burst into his office, he never burst into his office looking this crazy before.

"Because I just got off the phone with some terrible news." Dalton sighed as he dropped himself into his usual chair on the other side of the desk.

"Tell me more." Marcellus prompted as he pushed down his laptop lid, sensing that he wouldn't be able to get any work done while Dalton was here, the news that he held over his head demanding his entire attention.

"Your phone was ringing this morning." Dalton began with a grave look on his face, reaching into his pocket to place the device on the desk and pushing it toward the Alpha. "I missed it the first time because I was asleep, but Winnie picked it up the second time."

"I'm not mad you picked up my phone, Dal." Marcellus chuckled lowly, amused with the way that his Beta and best friend was beating around the bush. While this usually wasn't an issue or something to be worried about, Marcellus hadn't been acting like himself these past couple of months and frankly, Dalton had no idea how to approach his friend with bad news anymore.

"Okay, now that we've moved past that, let me tell you it was Alpha Gabriel."

"What did he want? Was there another fight at the school?" He asked, referring to the South High School which he shared with Alpha Gabriel.

"Oh, I wish it was as simple as that." Dalton groaned as he rubbed both of his eyes, still tired. "You know his half-sister. Amy?"

Marcellus nodded warily, having remembered meeting the girl a few times when he had visited Alpha Gabriel at the Red Howler pack over the years. While Gabriel was his senior by over fifteen years, his only sibling was younger than even Marcellus, the product of Gabriel's father, the former Alpha, choosing to have unprotected sex with a bunch of females while coping with the recent passing of his wife and mate.

The fact that the former Alpha of the Red Howler pack had lost his mind to the extent that he had started sleeping with everyone and everything that was willing to open their legs to him was bad enough to fuel the rumour mill, but the fact that he had managed to impregnate a human just made things all that much worse.

While he personally didn't have anything against humans or wolves that were paired up or mated with humans, he couldn't help but feel bad for Amy, especially since hadn't received her wolf at puberty like all the other wolves, alienating her even more. Marcellus was just glad that Gabriel didn't look at her any different despite the unfortunate circumstances around how she was conceived.

"What about Amy?" He asked curiously after a few minutes, surprised to hear her name since the last the last time he had been at the Red Howler pack, Gabriel had mentioned that she was away at a human college, having come to the conclusion that she wanted to live the rest of her life as a normal human. While he didn't quite understand her decision – most probably because he wasn't half-human and didn't have to face any of the prejudices that she had to – he respected it and was surprised to hear Amy's name pop up suddenly, especially because she had always been unproblematic.

"Well, it turns out that she's been missing for a few weeks now."

"What do you mean missing? How can she be missing for a few weeks without Gabriel realising?" Marcellus asked warily with a small frown on his face, unable to comprehend exactly what Dalton was trying to tell him.

"She's up at Columbia and when she hadn't been returning Gabriel's calls for a few weeks like she usually does, he went up there to visit her."

"And she wasn't there?"

"Even worse." Dalton shook his head. "Her roommate had said that Amy left a note saying that she had decided to quit college and was moving back home, but obviously that's not true. That was a few days ago."

"They realised that she was missing a few days ago and they didn't tell anyone?" Marcellus questioned with alarm. "We could have helped look for her."

"That's exactly what I said, but Alpha Gabriel said he decided to keep that information to himself as most of the other Alpha's tend to look down on Amy already."

"That's bullshit!" Marcellus groaned and shook his head as he rose to feet, determined to help in any way that he can. "I'll speak to Gabriel while you round up the warriors. Let's set out to leave in twenty minutes."

Dalton shook his head and was quick to push the words out of his mouth before Marcellus began with his grand plans.

"There's more to the story."

"How can there be more?"

"They found her body last night."

"What?" Marcellus questioned in shock, dropping himself back down on his desk chair, sensing that this would not be something that he would want to be standing up for.

"One of the warriors found her body on the border of the pack last night when she was on border patrol."

"She's dead?"

Dalton nodded, his eyes stormy as a shaky breath escaped him, also struggling to wrap his mind around the fact that sweet, innocent Amy had been missing for weeks without anyone realising and then turned up dead.

"Gabriel couldn't speak to me so Luna Avery took the phone. She told me that Amy's body was torn up from the insides."

"What do you mean by torn up?" Marcellus dared to ask even though he knew that he wouldn't like the answer; already struggling to wrap his mind around all the news that he had learnt so far this early in the morning; so early in fact that he hadn't managed to enjoy his first cup of coffee yet.

"Her insides were spilling out of her stomach and there were gashes all over her middle but the weird thing is, everything was on her insides. Luna Avery told me that other than the skin of her stomach that that basically doesn't exist anymore, there were no other marks on her body. Not even a hair out of place."

"But how can that be?"

"The pack doctor says that she was pregnant."

"The baby, too?"

"They think the baby killed her."

"What?" Marcellus sounded aloud, almost as if he couldn't believe his ears despite all the crazy shit that he had heard already.

"Amy was pregnant with a wolf pup and while they're still carrying out tests, they think the baby killed her. They think that the wolf pop tore her up from the insides."

"That still doesn't explain how or why she had been missing for weeks. Or even how she got pregnant with a wolf pup if she was surrounded by humans."

"Yes, exactly." Dalton groaned aloud; his mind now clouded with such disturbing images. "Nothing is really adding up."

Marcellus merely hummed in response, needing a moment to mull over everything that he had just learnt.

"This has got to be related to all of the other kidnappings that had happened." He sounded aloud with a distant look on his face, still trying to figure everything out. "They were all part wolf too."

"But they all were returned safe and sound. Other than some temporary memory loss, they were all perfectly fine."

I can't explain that part, but I'm confident that all of this is correlated somehow." Marcellus spoke with the utmost belief in his theory. "It's almost as if these crimes are escalating. As if they're more than just kidnapping these females, but we just didn't realise it at first."

"Then why do they think that the baby killed her?"

"I can't explain that part." He shook his head and sighed softly, his mind perplexed as he tried to think of a valid and plausible explanation as to what had happened to Amy but as the minutes stretched out, he still couldn't come up with anything.

"I need to speak to Gabriel." Marcellus sighed as he reached across the desk and grabbed his phone, his mind still clouded and his thoughts heavy as he scrolled through his contacts in search of Alpha Gabriel's number.

When the phone rang seven times before going to voicemail, neither Marcellus or Dalton was surprised. Instead, they decided to round up some warriors and head over there anyway. Even if they couldn't physically help Amy as it was far too late for that now, they could provide moral support and help with investigating exactly what happened, as well preventing something like this from happening again.

Twenty minutes later, Marcellus shifted into his wolf and led his wolves toward the Red Howler pack, all of them ready to help out other wolves in need, especially in times as dire and uncertain as these.

Despite his good intentions, Marcellus couldn't stop thinking of his own mate; the very one that swore she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. The fact that his mate was also part wolf worried him immensely, genuinely afraid that there was the possibility that she could end up in the same state as poor, innocent Amy.

That very thought pushed him to run faster and harder, take bigger strides, almost as if he feared to find Anastasia suffer a similar fate.

-

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Layla Knight

14.11.2020