The wolves returned from their hunt nearly a week later, the ceremony had been postponed until they returned allowing more people to enter the compound. On their return they came with hundreds of humans, women, men and children all clustered together in the same courtyard that Neema had met her fate in. She refused to witness their unjust punishment though she knew they had suffered whether she was there or not.

There would be more navy clad human bodies wondering around the compound just as there would be more forced mating's and separations of marriages. Unofficial challenges had already begun and more than 30 humans had found themselves at the infirmary with severe wounds other than the lashes that had barley begun healing on their backs. Emmaline had been occupied for the past 3 moons healing and consoling the weak and broken hearted.

It was a harsh reality but there was nothing Neema could do. Even with her improved relationship with Khan he remained reluctant to change what they had always known to be right. She tried to remain out of the situation but it was hard to sit by and watch people being treated this way when a month ago she was that woman begging for help. Crying, pleading for anybody to help her. It was hard to remain silent when all she wanted to do was raise her fists at the injustice her people were subjected to but she had no place discussing such manners.

If she hadn't been told so, the navy blue of her jumpsuit would have told her. She wasn't one of them, she was not part of the pack and so her voice needed to be quelled.

Around her friends and Khan, she could voice these opinions but they were raised under the rules of the Brethren, they could see no injustice and so she said nothing. Wolf politics was a touchy subject and any mention of it to Khan was quickly swatted a way like an annoying fly. He did not want to break their truce with what was clearly opposing political views. Khan supported the cause, how could he not when the whipping post was how he found his mate.

Their political views remained separate but their lives did not, they were slowly moulding together. Lunches together, night caps together, time together. It brought them closer. A friendship was forming, one that was a little strange and perhaps unconventional but it worked for them. Khan got his intimacy and Neema got her peace.

The days drifted by in a cocoon of happiness and warmth. With the family spending time together and kindling their slowly forming bonds. Khan's Alpha ceremony was fast approaching, by the end of the week he would receive his title and then they would begin relocating. Time was of the essence. It was slipping through her fingers. She had a short number of days to locate her sister because once the move was made there would be no accessing these documents. She only had this one shot and the strain was beginning to affect her.

"I just don't get it! There's nothing here. Nothing" she screamed as her emotions got the best of her. Her face turning red with frustration as she threw the papers in her hand across the floor. The stack billowing around the room as the cool air from the open door caused a mess with the sheets.

The documents were not forthcoming, no matter how many files they flickered through they still could not find anything on Lara. There were files on deceased humans from the early 2000's but not one little sentence about her sister who was born this century. Her sister was not on any registry forms for newly mated members of packs. She wasn't on any databases for new mothers and she wasn't on any databases for recently deceased, which was a comfort to Neema's slowly fraying mind.

Carson had even hacked into the telecoms system on his coms-device to watch videos on who was entering and exiting borders. Their names popping up on the screen as their eyes were scanned by the bright blue light of the machines at the random check points scattered around the regions. But still her name remained unseen, it was as if her sister had just vanished into thin air, never turning up again.

It was such a morbid thought but Neema couldn't keep herself from sinking into a pit of despair. She needed her family back. Even if they had made lives elsewhere and didn't want to live in this compound with her and Khan that would be fine. As long as she knew where they were and that she could see them again, she would be content. The uncertainty and not knowing was killing her. Thick drops of tears rolled down her face as her frame trembled with sadness. She couldn't bear to think she may never see them again.

"It is okay Neema, between the 3 of us we are sure to find something. You aren't alone," declared Sahina as her hand rubbed Neema's back and petted her hair, the strokes soothing Neema's hiccups. "You have me and Carson to help, and Vanya has the kids for anther 3 hours before Khan comes to take them to play so we still have time"

Neema's sniffles resided as she wiped at her tears that trickled across her face, a grateful smile on her face. She really did not know what she would do without her friends, they were her support system.

"You're right, these hormones have me over emotional" she sniffled, flipping her hair from her face. "Alright, lets go," her voice was filled with conviction as she picked up the stray papers on the floor and reorganised her pile. When her equilibrium was levelled she continued her search through the endless piles of paper.

Sitting around crying was not going to help her sort through all the documents any quicker Neither would her overwrought emotions. If she wanted to find her sister she was going to have to have a clear head.

The hour's tick tocked by, 4 o'clock was soon approaching and soon Khan would be coming here with her siblings so they could have their playtime. She needed to at least find something, anything in that time or else the despair would really sink into her bones and infiltrate her weary mind.

"I think I found something, I'm not sure but it's her name," shouted Sahina.

"Me as well, I'm not sure if it's her though" called out Carson.

Sprinting over towards them, Neema's foot tapped as they set up their findings. Carson first with a telecoms play back on his small coms-device, he tapped at the screen, flicking at squiggly lines and symbols that appeared on the device.

"Sorry, one second they are trying to block me out," his brow furrowed as his fingers flew across the flat screen of the transparent device. When the symbols stopped flashing he swiped his finger across the screen and all the lines disappeared. With a cocky grin on his face he cracked his knuckles and winked at Neema.

"I am not the best fighter but I am definitely good for something" he chuckled under his breath as he flipped the screen to face her.

Pulling at the sides he extended the coms-device so it was triple the size it originally was but still as light. Attaching a small black circle to the back of the screen he pressed play to the video.

"It's a check point we have them some times, this was about a year ago" he mumbled out as Neema stared at the screen. It felt like a century since she had last seen her sister and though it had been a while, she couldn't forget her face.

The memory of her laugh and voice may have faded but the image of her sister persevered throughout her mind. All she had to do was look at Jana to see a picture image of Lara. The two with their fair golden curls and big brown eyes were replicas of each other.

Tears ran unconsciously down her cheeks as she stroked the image. This was Lara as she remembered, even though the image wasn't clear she still knew who it was. Her light blonde hair was streaked with mud and her pale skin ruddy with dirt. Long legs and a skinny form from eating hardly any food, her sister was on the screen.

Her Lara.

"That check point was in Sunderland and she was heading away from London buttt," he drawled out as his fingers flipped the video down and brought up another one, "this one is from Wales and looks as if she is heading towards us, this was umm.. let me check" he zoomed in on the screen until he found the small code that declared the date and time. "That was 5 days ago."

The Lara on the screen was a completely different woman from the one they saw in the first video. Her eyes were light with happiness as she held an auburn haired child in her arms and grinned at a shadow in front of her. Her blonde hair was clean and rippled down her back and her skin was radiant, she had also gained some weight making her look a lot shorter than Neema remembered her to be. Her name on the screen was also different, on the first screen her first name and age had appeared in big bold black letters but in the second video her name read differently. It was almost a title, Lara Nyko, mate of Alpha Ferron.

"Well what I found is pretty redundant now" huffed Sahina as she took over Carson's screen and inserted her disk. It was an updated file of the Alpha registry for the year 2889

"It basically shows that your sister was mated to this Alpha called Ferron in a reserved ceremony 5 months ago" her tongue flickered out as her mouth widened into a smile, "I like this guy, he basically said fuck it to the Brethren's rule and mated your sister in private" her words bringing a smile to Neema's face.

It was good that her sister did not have a public mating, Lara was a lot softer than Neema was. She would struggle to recover from such a humiliating event especially if it was forced like most were. Though she couldn't tell if Ferron was a loving mate, from the small glimpse she got of her sisters face she could tell that Lara was happy and that was all that mattered. In this cold world love was so hard to find, even families were unfeeling to each other. She only wanted the best for her sister and though Lara deserved earth shattering love, Neema would be mollified if she had simply found peace.

It was more than most

"Now that we've found your sister I think you might be interested in watching this disk" mumbled Sahina as she moved through the piles of papers and disks until she found her desired one. It was a clear, thin, square disk that had a large distress label plastered all over it in bold red letters.

Pulling out the other disk from the coms-device she replaced it with the cautionary one and pressed play on the big red button that appeared on the screen. The video clicked to life, the images leaping off the screen and appearing in front of them, a projection in mid air.

"Woo, how'd you do that" gasped Neema as her jaw hung wide, her eyes flickering back and forth over the crackly images.

The sounds of Emmaline and Carson chuckling at her was so common she could almost block it out if she tried hard enough. They were always laughing at her expense. Her pronunciation of words, her lack of education on the modern technologies and her reactions to them always had them in tears whilst she stood by unable to join in on the joke.

The fuzzy images cleared up as the sound of a voice began to ascend over the muffled sounds.

'The end. How could I forget the end. There was soo much noise, p-p-people screaming, buildings exploding. There was fire everywhere. We had been building underground bunkers for years because everyone knew that there was going to be a war. One without men but with weapons. Nearly every country had some sort of nuclear weapon, or-or robotic armed force. It made things worse. The end came from the sky, balls of molten lava, l-l- liquidising everything that wasn't underground. It-it was menacing'

The voice from the disk carried over their laughing voices, casting their humour in dark silence. The pain filled eyes of a black woman shone back from the projection as she told her harrowing story. Her body was covered in soot and debris, while part of her arm was an irritated red colour. Skin hanging off as boils began to form along the limb. Her hair was standing on end, parts of it missing, her hair burnt so bad flesh wounds were visible in her scalp. Blood tricking down her face as she ran a dislocated hand across her face. She had clearly been burnt by this molten lava she spoke of.

Her voice was husky, a wispy sound that barely made it over a whisper but there was a strength behind her words. As if she had seen the worst of man and survived and she had.

'No one understood how it could become this bad and it all started over r-resources. The world was going crazy for them. Not enough food, not enough oil, not enough water. And then it became about race, nationality. Everything was a mess and so we all s-suffered. Buildings that had been there for centuries, just poof. Gone. N-n-nothing but ash and dust.'

Her face was buried in her arms as she cried gut wrenching sobs, the video flickering to places in the world that were surrounded by this fire. Homes flattened, trees blown away, humans crushed. Her face came back into focus as the camera picked back up on her voice, her frail dark body looking worse along the white of the hospital sheets.

The camera panned out and took in rows and rows of beds rammed with bleeding, wounded, dying people. Sheets stained red and black from the blood and dirt from their worlds destruction. More people were in stretchers by the doorway of the hospital, the facility blown wide open so the carnage of the world outside could be seen.

'So many deaths a-and for what? We hid all right and we will be hiding for centuries more. There's nothing left for us above ground, nothing b-b-but destruction.'

The camera panned back out and took in the view of other cameras recording people, a clip of the news. Japan's fire had been doused by a tsunami that had rocked the nation harder than the bombs detonation. The White House in Washington blown apart and the streets of the destitute city full of outraged and fearful people. There was a riot going on in that continent, a riot that had been coming for years' and had exploded at the sign of a World War. A World War like none of the past. A war that actually saw the end of their world.

'Terrorism. They taught us to fear terrorism but our governments were the biggest terrorist's of our century'

Her face scrunched up as the tears that had been dripping out of her red tinted eyes dropped in torrents across her dirty skin, leaving streaks across her face. Her hands covered her face as she began crying with more vigour, the sounds of her hiccupping and gasping for breaths were a crescendo until the image of her disappeared. Transitioning into bright lights of fire and explosions. This was clearly what she had spoken of.

People were running frantically, women holding their children. Old people hobbling to get to safety. People stuck under buildings. Shrapnel flying and striking down. The images were flitting from one scene to the next. The next more frightening then the previous. Mother nature's wrath was made known as Hurricanes and Tornados raked across the sky, Earthquakes shattered the plates of countries and Tsunamis washed the lava from the bubbling volcano's.

Guns and knives exposed as people slashed through each other to get under ground. A trail of blood left behind as humanity descended.

The only constant was a white number on the screen and even that was changing. Until the number was so big it was virtually impossible to say. The number of deaths and casualties was astronomical. The woman of the video one amongst the death toll.

More than half the world was gone, by man and by nature. A small note trailed behind at the end of the destruction a message to those that lived.

"I can't believe it," sobbed out Neema, her mouth gaping wide as the heaviness of the playback sunk in.

Humans had done this to themselves. For years they had hated wolves under the misguided belief that they had taken their homes and killed their people. Yet the dark truth had been and always would be that humans had killed the world. With their greed and their fear and their hatred, the world had been splintered into irrevocable pieces until the werewolves had taken over. They had built back this world, not to its former glory but in a way that the past still echoed in their future. Old disintegrating buildings alongside new ones, so one could never forget the history of the God forsaken world.

Yet humans had forgotten, or maybe planting a dark and foreboding story about werewolves was easier to believe then the actual truth.

The truth that humans had caused their own demise.