Carson, the pack doctor above

Chandler POV

Honestly, I would laugh if the circumstances were different because the situation is extremely funny.

I'm a hunter; for God's sake, how did I end up with a werewolf curled alongside me in one bed? She is small, snow white, and actually pretty, and of course, she now gives me her puppy's dog eyes.

"Are you Pearl?" I ask, and I know she understands me.

But I must admit she is good. First, she managed to sneak out of the packhouse in the middle of the night unnoticed, came here, and also unnoticed entered the house full of hunters and then into my room and into my bed. And I didn't spot her; I guess I'm used to relying on my dog in that matter too much, and he is not here.

I stand up, and she whimpers slightly as if trying to apologize. I get to my wardrobe, take out one of my T-shirts, and toss it in her direction.

"I'm going to the bathroom, shift and put this on before I'm back," I say.

As I brush my teeth, I really think it's funny, I've been killing werewolves since I remember, and now one of them is in my bedroom intending to spend the rest of her life with me.

I return to the room; she stands up and smiles.

"Why are you here, Pearl?" I ask.

"You my mate... Kiana wants to be close to you... I want to be close," she says, fidgeting with her finger.

"I'm a hunter. You are not scared of me?"

"No" she shakes her head. "Second Daddy is hunter and Daddy good for Pearl and Ivory. And you mate, Pearl's mate, and... you don't hurt me."

I sigh; well, in this one, she is right; I don't want to hurt her; I hope I will never have to.

"How old, Chandler?" she asks, and I smirk:

"I'm 31, and you?"

"26, Pearl not clever, but daddy and sister says my heart very big, and it's... enough. Sorry, I come without permission; Kiana, my wolf wants Chandler... wants close to Chandler."

"Okay, and how did you enter the house without being noticed?"

"Pearl's scent weak and daddy taught how to move without being notice. Said Pearl has a talent for it. I often did that to warriors in Howl pack; they laughed a lot and said Pearl is like a fairy."

I'm sure she is a bit like that, very delicate. I sigh and stand up, telling her that I will take her home, her mood instantly goes a bit down, but I don't let it influence me. We go downstairs, and Alistair chokes his coffee; seeing us, some of my men in the kitchen look confused. Right, nobody but Anne and Alistair know about me having a mate.

"How the hell?" Alistair manages to whisper between his coughs.

"You tell me. This house is full of hunters, yet nobody has noticed her entering. We must do a lot of training when I am back," I say, and Pearl catches my hand, I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I don't protest.

As we go slowly toward the packhouse, we pass our guardian in wolf form, who, just like us, was outsmarted by petit omega girl.

"Can I ask you something?" I start to break the silence. "How did you end with Terry?"

"Mommy died and first daddy... first daddy didn't like Pearl and wanted to hurt sister... Ivory bit first daddy and run, we run many, many days," she whispers, and subconsciously I grip her hand a bit stronger "Sister got sick. Kiana look for food in dumpsters, and second daddy noticed Kiana and gave her food, and next got sister healthy and next said he would look after us."

This story matches what Terry told me, so I know he didn't lie about it.

"Does your daddy like werewolves?" I voice the next question.

"He loves me and sister; he likes some warriors in the pack and doesn't argue with Alpha Alexa, but aunty Celia said that the best daddy can do is tolerate them. Daddy says that doesn't like wolves but was tired of killing. But Pearl doesn't talk much with daddy about that, daddy love Pearl, and that's enough. Are you angry because Kiana slept in your bed?"

"No, but don't do this again, don't come uninvited, okay?"

She stops walking, and because of that, I have to stop too.

"Daddy said it's good if I reject you, but I don't want. Kiana loves you; I can love you, love is good, and..."

I hear tears in her voice; shit, I don't want her to start sobbing.

"Pearl, I don't know you. I'm human; I don't feel this bond the same as you. I have come here for the job and job only. First, the job must be done; later, we may think about what to do with our bond."

She looks at me and once again seems happy:

"I don't reject you now; I don't have to?"

"No, now you don't have to."

As we are close to the packhouse, I see Terry and Tonya sitting on the porch; they don't seem surprised.

"There was only one place she could go, but I must admit she managed to fool also me," he states. "Come, Pearl, breakfast and serious talking are waiting."

Before she goes after him inside, she kisses my cheek, which makes me feel, actually, I'm not sure what. I sit next to Tonya.

"Should I know something more about this mating?"

"If you sleep with someone else, it will be excruciating physically for her, so if you could take that under consideration. The biggest problem with Pearl is that she will probably follow the mating pull blindly because she trusts people. But if you keep your distance, she will sooner or later accept that she can't force anybody to love anybody. I hope, at least. If you are already here, let's go to my office, Terry will come too, and we may start discussing things."

I nod and go after her; we pass a tiny boy with ginger hair in the hall and the way Tonya glances at him... strange, she was glancing like that for this other one. So, both chased by Shadow Pack are here, and clearly, they have some connection to Tonya, which may be interesting.

A couple of hours later, I leave Tonya's office; I'm tired but content with our discussion's results. I like clear rules:

First, no lies; each party is obligated to answer any question from other parties truthfully unless we feel that it can harm ourselves or our people. If we can't answer, we say we can't tell and proceed next. The arbiter will voice an opinion if we have a reasonable reason to withhold some information.

Second, each party will restrain violence towards the other until we have all the answers about our enemy.

Third, the creature's body will be examined together by the representative of each party, and the details will be given to each party simultaneously.

Fourth, we will exchange all details about missing packs and Prescot, so maybe we will be able to notice why they were targets in the first place.

Fifth, each party will check their records from at least ten years ago, looking for strange and unexplainable cases that may be linked, especially testimonies of tortured rogues.

Sixth, a representative of each party will also check records from the last ten years in human resources, looking for something that may have happened on the human territory.

For basic rules are not bad; good that Tonya, Terry, and I are on the same page in one matter. We believe this is serious, so we really have to have hard evidence to convince the Werewolf Council and hunters that the danger is real and our past problems should now be put aside at least until this is over.

We prepared a list of what should be done first and decided who would take care of what. So now the thing we must get here first is the creature's body, which should be here in a couple of hours, and that's when the first strike comes letting all of us realize that our enemy is closer than we may think.

Noah POV

I haven't seen Tonya the whole day, maybe because she was busy or perhaps because she avoided me. But I also know that there are some serious problems. In the afternoon, Tonya and Chandler talked in her office in a big hurry and worried, and soon after, they left. They, I mean Chandler and his two deputies, Tonya, Kathy, the Trio, and also Terry, each very heavily armed, and the rest of the hunters were confined to their house, and additional guards were dispatched.

Carson told me there is a chance of a big rogue attack that the pack has been warned about. But honestly, I don't believe it, James and Rosie have come back soon from Twilight pack, and he is now in charge of the pack, sitting almost all the time in Tonya's study with his father.

My training was peaceful because Sam was in charge of guarding hunters, and nobody else seemed interested in harassing me. Maybe because nobody else knows that I'm mate to their Alpha. I was more eager than usual to put my whole heart into the training today; it helped me not to think about the future that hasn't seemed too bright.

And now Charlie is sitting in the living room with Rosie, Pearl, and Kathy's kids, playing board games. At first, I want to pass them quietly, but Rosie notices me and asks me to sit down with them, so I do. Maybe I don't want to be alone.

When my parents were alive, we spent lots of time playing; my mother was a sworn enemy of television, so we didn't have anything like that in the home, so we spent time in different ways. My mother was a housewife, and my father was a tracker; he started teaching me very early, and thanks to that, I could begin hunting so effectively soon after my first shift.

I sit next to them, just watching until Rosie pulls me by my arm to come to play with them.

"I don't think that's a good idea. Rosie, Rosie, do you hear me?"

That's strange; she still touches my hand, and her nostrils are moving rapidly, meaning she sniffs, but for whatever reason, her mind seems to be elsewhere. She looks at me but doesn't seem to see me, and one single drop of tears slips from her eye.

"Rosie, okay?" Pearl asks, and even Charlie looks at us, a bit worried.

"Sorry," she suddenly smiles," I think something got into my eyes."

Bullshit, that much I know, but it's not my business, and the longer you don't interfere with other people's business, the longer you live. That much I learned, I still don't want to play, but Sonya seems not to be interested in my personal opinion and pushes dice into my hand. Sighing, I start; it's actually been years since I played a board game.

"So Noah, if I'm not stepping any boundaries, can you tell me you ended with all these scars on your back?" Carson asks me about an hour later; I've been having so much fun I haven't even noticed when he entered the room.

I wonder why he is curious, but I also don't have any reason to deny it. My scars don't bother me. I feel incredibly proud of that; I always have.

"My parents died when I was eight, there was a big fire in our pack, and because of it, suddenly, there were a lot of orphans in the pack. Per Alpha's orders, we all were relocated under the care of different families. I and two others ended up in the care of a married couple with four children of their own. She was working in the factory outside the pack, and he was disabled; he lost both hands in a hunter's attack some years prior. In the beginning, Alpha was giving them additional money for our support, but it soon stopped, and that's when an extreme winter came. Honestly, I don't know why, but the pack had big problems with food supplies, and feeding us all had become a struggle. The family, my friend was in, threw him away from their house because they decided that they didn't need another mouth to feed. In my house, every bit of food was strictly rationed, but my foster parents were good to us, and I asked them to let my friend stay with us because nobody else wanted him nor cared what would happen to him."

"And they agreed?" Rosie asks, listening till now quietly.

"Yes, but because of that, we have additional problems, and Alpha refused to make out rations bigger, and I thought I had to do something. So one night, my friend and I broke into the packhouse storage and stole as much as possible. My foster family didn't ask how we got this, but when we tried the same thing again, Alpha was already waiting for us, but fortunately, my friend got away. I told my Alpha I did all of it alone and ate all of this alone."

"And he believed it?" Carson asks.

"I think he didn't care; for him, the most important fact was that he got the culprit and could punish me publicly as a warning. I almost died but managed to live; it also helped that I had shifted recently, so Linus could help heal me. For the next year, I started teaching myself how to hunt, and soon I was so good at it that I could help the family a lot with food, so only this one winter was so difficult."

"Where are they now? I mean your foster family," Carson asks another question.

"They transferred the pack some years later, but Alpha forbade them to take me and the rest of the orphans with them, claiming he was our legal guardian and we should stay in the pack. Well, I was 16 and during warrior training so I could take care of myself. I wasn't very attached to them, and we didn't share strong bonds anyway, but I'm grateful that they cared for me enough to help me survive."

"And the fire that killed your parent, what caused it?" one more time Carson asks;

"Hunters' attack; we had a traitor in the pack," I spit, restraining myself from looking at Charlie. Honestly, I've never blamed him for this; his father's actions were his alone. I'm not sure he knows the details of his father's death.

"And you, Charlie? Where are your parents now?" Rosie asks, looking at my mate.

As always, he averts his eyes, I'm almost sure he will keep quiet as almost always, but instead, he answers:

"My dad died when I was seven and my mom when I was 14; she got injured in a rogue attack."

I frown; honestly, I do not know what happened with his mother. Charlie was meaningless for me and should still be; it will be better that way.

"Charlie not sad, Charlie safe here now," Pearl chirps.

"Where is Tonya?" I ask because, honestly, I'm curious and worried about her.

"Tough pack business; she should be back tomorrow," Carson answers. "Charlie, I know you don't want to, but I think getting you a full check-up is a good idea. Celia said today that you barely eat and you often throw up."

Charlie shakes his head, and I wonder why he is so against it. The medical check-up hasn't killed anybody yet.