With Titan now gone from the room, all Ayla had was the words she left him with.
"They want you."
Orion knew that she was coming, and he said it was easy to trick Julius into going with them.
Orion knew she would come for Julius.
Was it all a ruse to get her to the pack?
He told her that they had no desire to hunt her or capture her, but she was getting a funny feeling that he was deceiving her.
If so, she fell for a trap for once, but deep down, she already knew it was a trap.
One she was waiting for.
There were other things she hadn't planned on.
Distractions like Titan and the witches, but she had handled them well.
Or so she thought.
Titan did that on purpose, got her all worked up.
He filled her head with nonsense to get her mind racing.
He intended to make it impossible for her to sleep to get back at her.
Now, she was angry, as she climbed out of bed and made her way to the room next door to give him a piece of her mind.
She could feel his smug mood.
Without knocking or giving any real notice, she barged in.
He was sitting up in bed, as if he were waiting for her.
"Why would you do that? You filled my head with all kinds of thoughts that I didn't need when I was trying to go to sleep. You knew what you were doing."
Titan shook his head, "No. I would never do that," he smirked, "I was just trying to talk to you while it was just the two of us. Warn you. It was hard to have time like that before we got here, so who knows when that will happen now."
She squinted her eyes at him, "I don't believe you. Remember, I can feel what you feel. You seem excited. Which part has you excited? Me being upset?"
"I will never be happy or excited about you being upset. However, you being in my room... that's another story. Let me help you calm down. No funny business. Promise. You made it clear you don't want to have sex with me. Pinky promise I'll behave."
Ayla could feel that he was being sincere to some degree.
She put a hand up anyway with a pinky out, "pinky promise."
"Okay, now turn around and sit down. Remember, I said no funny business. I can't help what happens if you start anything."
Ayla side-eyed him before she did what he asked of her.
Titan began to massage her shoulder, arms, and lower back.
Then, when she began to loosen up, he began to pepper the nap of her neck to her should with kisses.
Ayla turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow.
He raised his hands, "Totally innocent. I just like kissing your skin, it's so soft, and it feels so good."
"Right. Keep your lips to yourself."
Titan continued to massage her until she was fully relaxed.
"You deserve a bit of peace for once. Before you go running into the wolves den again."
Somehow he knew that she would cause some kind of trouble in the day to come, he just wasn't sure what yet.
She was so relaxed at that point that she slowly fell back into him as he continued, until she fell asleep on his chest.
Without much movement, he was able to help her lie down as he curled in behind her and cuddled with her until he fell asleep too.
The night seemed to fly by after he fell asleep holding Ayla.
To him, she felt like home, just as much as he felt like home to her.
No matter how much she fought it.
The bite seemed to be magnifying it, making it nearly impossible to restrain herself.
If Ayla was anything, she was strong-minded.
That is why, while everyone was asleep, including Titan, she managed to wake up.
While doing so, she pulled herself out of his embrace and snuck out of the room, looking back once to ensure that the new member of the group was still sound asleep.
When he was, and she sensed through the new bond she now realized was there that he was deep in sleep, she continued to the back door.
Once there, she tuned into her wolf's senses, which were now heightened, listening for any kind of sound.
Any kind of movement, breathing, speaking, anything.
After a short while, when it was the dead silence of early morning, she felt like it might be safe to slowly and quietly open the door.
Clearly, they didn't think any of them would be brave or daring enough to try and sneak out of the back door, because it wasn't guarded in the least bit, not that Ayla could tell.
It was that, or they assumed that someone on the inside would prevent them from leaving through that door.
Now that Ayla had successfully broken out of the willing prison, it was time to find out what was going on in the Moonlight Shifter pack.
Where was Julius, and would she be able to find him?
This wasn't going to be easy, because she had no idea how the territory was laid out, or even where to start looking, but something told her she would be fine as long as she used the cover of dark and looked for the largest dwelling and started there.
With that, she stuck close to buildings and made her way to what she thought was the center of the village.
It was the opposite of where they came from, so it was a good place to start.
All the smells so far were roughly the same, with them all smelling like Stella with subtle differences.
That was until she came to a small tunnel entrance that didn't seem to lead anywhere.
From the outside looking in, it appeared to go into a mountainside and then disappear.
Clever wolves.
Hiding the best places deep in nature.
This smell seemed almost familiar, like she had been with it before, so she decided to follow it.
About the time she entered the tunnel and closed the gate behind her, Alexander woke up and decided to check on everyone to make sure they all survived the night.
Couple one was giggling and showed signs of life, so he left them alone.
Then, the second couple finally answered after three rounds of knocking.
When it came to Ayla's room, he knocked a total of five times before he opened the door and saw it empty.
The bed was a mess, but Ayla was gone.
He searched the house before realizing she had to be in one of two places, Titan's room or missing.
If he knocked on Titan's door looking for Ayla, then it would look like he was jealous again, even though he was both jealous and concerned that she was missing.
Finally, it hit him, "KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK."
"Yeah, give me a minute," Titan's voice came from the other side of the door.
"Just doing checks to see that everyone made it through the night. Stella, Phoenix, Rhae, Raphael, and I are accounted for. That just leaves you and Ayla."
Two seconds later, his door flew open.
"What do you mean. Ayla isn't accounted for?"
Titan began looking down the hall toward her room and back at Alexander.
"What are you playing at, Alexander? She should be in her room, or the kitchen, or bathroom, or something."
Alexander knew something was wrong then.
"No Titan. If she isn't in your room, then she either pulled and Ayla, or someone has taken her while we were sleeping."
"What do you mean, pulled an Ayla?"
Alexander smiled, "She has a tendency to run off on her own and handle things without our help. Have fun with that," he smirked as he started sniffing to see if he could pick up anything unusual.
Unfortunately, everything smelled like a stronger version of Stella in the house.
"Well, they didn't take her; they wouldn't do that. The last thing they want to do is piss her off. She had to have 'pulled an Ayla'. Where would she go or why would she do it?"
Alexander turned back to Titan, "You seem to know them so well, and what they would and wouldn't do. You also seem to know what they want. Odd. Whose side are you on?"
Titan was pissed at the insinuation, "I'm on my side. My pack's side. Aylas side. I can't explain it to you right now, but it isn't possible for me to betray Ayla."
Phoenix came out of his room with a knowing smirk, "You CAN'T betray her?"
"No, I can't," he said sternly, trying not to encourage the shenanigans.
Raphael was now coming to join the group, "Leave him alone, Alexander. For now, he is on our side. He can help us find Ayla. That's all you need to know."
"What! You two just want to roll over because he says some pretty words. I don't think so."
Raphael grabbed his shoulder to help calm him down, "It's more than that. You don't want to know any more than he can't betray her for now. Okay. Let's get through this and find Ayla and Julius."
Alexander knew there was something the guys were keeping from him, but he was choosing to be oblivious in that moment.
"Fine. I'm watching you, though."
"Whatever makes you happy. Since they know me, and Ayla has run off, I'll try to track her before they realize what she has done."
With that, Titan was making his way to the front door to leave the others behind.
Alexander and the others would be trapped in a house in foreign territory, while Titan was allowed to go and save the day.
Phoenix and Raphael could tell that it wasn't sitting right with their comrade, but they didn't have much choice as they heard Titan greet the wolves outside the door like old friends before it closed behind him.
At the minimum, it would give Ayla time to do whatever it was that she was doing or at least give her a head start.
That was, if he was on their side.
Now, all the others could do was sit quietly and bring as little attention as possible to themselves to give her more time in their own way.
If they were the quiet little wolves, playing the part of perfect, willing prisoners, then Orion would take his time returning to them.
One thing Raphael wished in that moment was that Dominic was there to give them some kind of guidance.
Dominic would know just what to do.
He would have known how to get through the night at the camp the previous night, or at least how to have avoided this situation altogether, let alone that Ayla would have run while they slept.
Their former General would have had the answers to quiet their inner wolves from the unease that they felt in that moment.
Unfortunately, he was dealing with his own issues back in Scarlet Crest.
Things were not going as smoothly as he had hoped for after the first day.
After the return of Lucius, the relations seemed to shift between him and Rollo for the worse.
Lucius was roaming the city the day before, but even Deva seemed to have a different bounce about her that morning when she came to visit.
Her usual oversharing personality seemed a bit more tight-lipped.
For a reason he couldn't figure out, she seemed to be holding back.
Deva had peered over his shoulder at the monitors to see everything he was watching and seemed to be sniffing a bit.
She excused it away, saying she felt a small cold trying to come on, but something was off.
Rollo managed to effectively avoid him all day, not making a single stop in to see him.
After the morning visit, Deva was off to the restaurant, and then she managed to steer clear of the cameras the rest of the evening.
Oddly enough, Rollo wasn't able to be seen either.
Dominic knew something was up, but he would have to rely on Lucius to figure out what it was.
They had managed to blind him with all the surveillance he had.
The next morning, when Deva came to see him, she had her reports and Rollo's.
She apologized for him, saying he was caught up with some personal matters and asked her to bring them for him.
Dominic knew something was up, but he had no way of looking into it himself.
All he could do was hope that Ayla and the group were managing their mission better than he was.
Somehow, he knew that Ayla was doing what Ayla does best.
If he knew one thing, it was that Ayla was a lone wolf who worked best by herself.
In a way, he knew that was the only way his son was going to make it home to him.
"Ayla, whatever you're doing now. Find my son and bring the rest of them home with him."
While she was deep in the tunnel, an overwhelming feeling of hope seemed to fall over her.
Somehow, she knew where it came from.
There was only ever one person who yearned for them to find Julius that deeply.
It hit her in that moment, the scent she was following.
The slight salty smell lingered within all the sweetness.
She had indeed found the one person she had been looking for, if she could only get to him.
Before too long, the tunnel poured out into a dungeon area at the base of a pack house that lay within a mountain.
There was no telling how big it really was, but it definitely wasn't small.
As she peered around the small room that was filled with doors, she saw a hallway that broke off with even more doors.
It was clear that the rooms weren't empty, and the scents that hit her were of several different packs.
Wolves that had potentially stumbled into the territory or attacked members of the pack.
That wasn't for her to decide who was here for good reason or not.
There was one wolf that wasn't here for a good reason, and she was determined to find him.
Nose in the air, she made her way to find Alexander's brother.
The air was stale and reeked of bad hygiene and poor hospitality.
After about twenty doors, she finally came to an area that smelled strongly of Julius.
"Julius?"
The dungeon went silent.
Eerily silent.
"Julius, are you here?"
"Ayla? What are you doing here? You need to leave, NOW!"
"Julius! I found you. Come on. I'm getting you out of here."
Ayla was at the door, playing with the lock, using most of her extra wolf essence from biting Titan to attempt to break the lock over and over.
"The stupid lock won't break," she growled.
She wasn't giving up, though, "GGRRRR," she growled as she used all her force to kick the lock.
Finally, it cracked enough that she could squeeze it between her hands and bust it open.
"Ayla," he said as he hugged her when the door opened, "I'm so happy to see you, but you have to get out of here. They wanted you here to find Orion's brother. It's a trap. They knew you would come for me. Hurry. We have to go now."