Caspian's POV
"Fuck me! That really was a long day!"
I finally let myself drop into the wooden chair.Like fell on it, not collapsed. Like my bones had decided they were done taking orders from me for the day.
The chair creaked under my weight as I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, hands dragging down my face. Grit, sweat, dried blood(someone else's, I hoped),came off on my palms. I huffed out a breath and stared out through the open doorway.
The curtains fluttered lazily, snapping a few times before settling into a gentle rhythm. Beyond those fluttering fabrics, the desert stretched out under the moon like a sea of white nothingness,occasionally sparkling here and there as if sprinkled with moon dust.
It was quiet. Finally quiet.And it was dead quiet at the moment.
For the first time since the chaos in the morning, our camp wasn't screaming.Either they had dropped down with exhaustion or they were all fast asleep.
I inhaled slowly. Held it for a few minutes. Let it go, as my mind, rewound everything,since the morning, slowly.
Fuck.
It had been absolute madness.
My senses were still fighting with her lingering scent and then the crowd pouring out of the inner periphery like termites running out of their burning nest…Ufff!
The way they were running, the women clutching their children, the elders shouting half-formed warnings. Young wolves shifting halfway…damn! Arms furred, eyes glowing, jaws snapping at nothing. Chest beating! Howling! Panic rolling through the camp like wildfire through dry brush.
The moment my boys were back, I felt a semblance of relief only for a fraction of a second when all of a sudden everyone started shouting orders.
"Get the kids inside!"
"No, keep them out, they need air!"
"Shift and defend!"
"Don't fucking shift, you'll scare them more!"
"Leave the inner camps and double the patrol at the borders!"
" No!Lock the gates!"
"Fuck, Brosky, we don't have any gates!"
" Shit! We don't! We Rogues now! Damn! "
Like what the fuck were they going at?!
Someone had even tried to climb a watchtower screaming about omens and blood moons.Like something was coming to get us all and we should hide underground…something like that. I still don't know who the hell that was.
Dealing with the children had been the worst.
Oh goddess! I swear by the Moon!
Tiny hands gripped my legs. Their high pitched sobs cut straight through my skull. One little boy had shifted his eyes gold and wouldn't stop repeating, "It's loud, Alpha, it's loud inside my head.Make it stop. Make it stop,please.Help me."
That one almost broke me.
Almost! If I didn't know what heartbreak felt like prior to this, I would have actually been humbled and wouldn't know what to do. But I did manage to calm him a little, while trying to make sense of what was wrong.
But there hadn't been much time. The camp was almost turning into a stampede. Utter chaos. Nobody was listening to anything. Everybody was trying to shout and yell and come up with their own solutions.
"Damn those fools!" I scrubbed my face again as I leaned back in the chair, and muttered as I remembered shouting until my throat burned.
"What a fucking circus…"
And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos,screams and shouts and yelps,I snapped.
I definitely didn't even plan it.
One second I was trying to shout over everyone like an idiot, the next my voice cracked through the air like a thunder bolt and the Alpha in me rolled out on pure instinct.
No warning. No countdown. Just boom!!!
The effect was immediate. Almost ridiculous.
Half-shifted wolves froze mid-snarl like someone had hit pause.
One guy was still halfway through a roar, mouth open, claws out, looking absolutely stupid.
The chest-beaters dropped their fists mid-thump and suddenly found the ground very interesting. Conversations died so fast it was honestly impressive…like the entire camp had collectively decided, "Oh shit, Dad's mad."
I remember standing there afterward, chest heaving, thinking."Huh.So that's what that roar does."
Took me long enough to use it.
I hated using it like that.
But it had been either that or watch my people tear themselves apart out of unexplainable, illogical fear.
I then forced everyone into formation. Sent the elders inside first. Ordered the healers to sedate the kids who couldn't calm down. Stationed guards at every perimeter point. There was no argument. No discussions.
Someone (Jax, I think) had muttered, "Easy, Cas, you are pushing too hard."
I'd rounded on him so fast he'd shut right the fuck up.
"You want me to relax?" I'd snapped, "Or do you want this mess to carry on with a dash of corpse?"
Silence.
Yeah. That had settled it.
I leaned back completely now, staring just at the moon, jaws tight.
The camp was so quiet because it was exhausted. Because fear eventually burns itself out when there's nowhere left to run. But that didn't mean the threat was gone.
Something had happened. Everyone wasn't hallucinating because of 'unexplained food poisoning'. That was just the bullshit we had to feed the mass to calm them down.
Whatever had spooked them… whatever had triggered that mass reaction…
It was serious.It had happened before but never this intense.
A soft knock came at the doorframe.
I didn't look. "If you're here to tell me someone's still screaming,I don't have the energy.Ask the healers to deal with it."
"Relax, Alpha," Jax said, stepping in anyway. "Just checking you didn't pass out."
I snorted. "Disappointed?"
"Hhhhmmm," he said, grabbing a crate and sitting opposite me. "You look like shit."
"Ah! Thank you for the compliment," I muttered. "Means today wasn't a dream."
He was quiet for a second, then said, "Kids are asleep. Healers doped the worst of them. No one's missing like the last time, thankfully.And luckily no one was seriously injured."
That knot in my chest loosened a notch. "Good."
"The elders are spooked though," he added. "They're saying... They're saying it felt like...they were being pushed. "
I finally sat up and looked at him. "Pushed how?"
Jax scratched his jaw. "Like something reached into the camp and rattled the wolves from the inside."
I laughed once. Short. Humorless. "Great. Psychic ghost stories. Just what we need."
"Hey," he said, holding up a hand. "I am just telling you what they said.I don't believe them either,but..."
I exhaled through my nose and looked back outside.
The desert breeze carried nothing but sand and cold, but my chest tightened once more.
Ki was back…close enough to shake my world.
What if my camp felt something from that far away…
I muttered, "Oh, Ki..."
Jax followed my gaze. "You thinking she's connected to this?"
"I don't know," I said quietly.
He studied me, then nodded once. "Then what's the plan, Alpha?"
I leaned forward, forearms braced on my thighs, hands curling slowly into fists.
Outside, the moon climbed higher.
"The plan is…"