Somehow, I felt disappointed and relieved at the same time. There were a lot of things we needed to talk about, but I didn’t want to. So instead I went back out into my car to get my bag. Lowell went with me.

“He’s glad you’re here. He won’t admit it, but he is,” he whispered, but I knew he only wanted to cheer me up. We both knew just how cold our Father could be. “Reid…?”

“Fine.” I smiled at him weakly and then went to my room. It was upstairs of course as were all the other rooms. The pack house was big. It had to be. Not only was it the home of the Alpha and his family, but the Beta, the Shield, and the warriors lived here as well and all of them with families of their own. The upstairs looked more like a hotel than anything. I found my room easily, all the way at the end of the hallway. There was a little golden plate with my name on it. For some reason, it was smudged as if someone had touched it a lot recently. I took a deep breath and walked in.

It looked exactly the way it did ten years ago. The walls were made of dark wood and covered with posters of edgy bands I haven’t listened to in years, the fluffy carpet and the bed were styled in green and white, the table in the corner was covered with books and photos of me with my friends. My old school bag sat on the chair, where I always threw it after I would get home, my old guitar was leaning on the dresser by my bed right next to an old lacrosse stick… It was weird, so familiar yet so foreign. It almost made me feel like I was sixteen again, coming home from school. Except I wasn’t. I slowly put my duffel bag down and sat on the bed, it creaked. It didn’t use to do that. The room also didn’t use to smell like dust...

“Do you need help unpacking?” Lowell asked shily from where he stood in the doorway like he didn’t dare to walk in uninvited. Actually, there wasn’t a single scent other than mine inside. Did they just close the door and forget I ever existed for a whole decade?

“I don’t have much stuff.” I moved a lot, so I usually didn’t keep much. My dark jeans with some chains on them that I always wore, five different colored t-shirts with short sleeves, one nice black shirt, and my leather jacket were all I needed to survive. Lowell seemed a bit disappointed by that. “But I would like the company.” I smiled at him.

He brightened up a little bit and carefully came in. We talked for a while about not Bran-related things like school, his part-time job. He was trying to cheer me up, it was his nature. He wasn’t dominant like the rest of our family, he was a submissive wolf.

Every pack needed one, his kind calmed down the darker sides of dominant wolves, made us need to protect them, to take care of them, to make them happy. So, I smiled, nodded, listened, but my mind was still full of Bran. I needed answers, I needed to know. When we were done unpacking, we headed back downstairs. Trystan and Akira sat in the living room, quietly whispering to each other. Holly was in the kitchen doing the dishes by the sound of it. Nikolai and Katashi seemed to have disappeared somewhere.

“I’ll go help Holly,” Lowell said. I smiled at him gratefully, before he left. Then I took a deep breath and walked into the living room. Trystan and Akira immediately went quiet. Okay not suspicious at all. The big stone fireplace was lit casting an ominous orange glow at their emotionless faces. Gods how I hated that look, though I knew I sometimes looked like that too. In the end, we were all our Father’s children…

“How could this happen?” I asked, my arms crossed over my chest. I looked down on them, taking the advantage of standing while they sat on the couch. “Bran… He was one of the oldest wolves here and he was strong, damn strong. How could he die?” I clenched my jaw and tried hard to not let any emotions into my voice. I still remembered that something like tears or showing anger was something highly undesired in the Ghealach family. It quickly reminded me why I hated being in this place so much. It always made me feel like I was hiding behind a wall just for the sake of appearing strong.

“We don’t know,” Trystan said quietly.

“You don’t know?” I frowned and felt my wolf stir with anger.

“He died yesterday, Reid, there wasn’t much time to investigate,” Akira said with a bit of exasperation like I was too dumb to understand something so simple.

My frown deepened. “He was the Beta of this pack. He was Bran goddamnit!” I growled at them. Why weren’t all the warriors investigating this? What were they doing, eating pie and warming by the fire while the trail of Bran’s killer went cold? They didn’t say anything. They gave me a patient but tired look, the type that adults saved for children who just kept screaming they wanted the blue toy, not the red one. They were two years older than me, twins, but they always acted like they led the family like they knew everything, were the best at everything.

I turned around and left. It was either that or punching Trystan in the face and I didn’t think starting a fight three seconds after my arrival would win me any popularity points from the pack. I stopped on the porch outside and looked at the long road that led to town. I couldn’t see the city through the trees that surrounded the house; they made the house feel somewhat remote from the outside world. At least that was what it always seemed like to me. If I missed anything it was the quiet of the forest, the tranquility of…

“No way! No fucking way!” someone yelled and before I could even turn, something crashed into me from the side.