Sorry for disappearing on you folks! I am back now and on with the story...

Chapter 33

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Roma stared in to the fire of the fireplace lost in her thoughts. Alex sat across her his shoulders hunched an epitome of defeat. Looking equally absorbed in his thoughts.

"They are coming for us Alex" Roma whispered, her eyes not wavering from the fire, the fire reflected and danced on her eyes. A much potent fire raged within.

Alex did not comment, nor did he move.

"They want us next. They have taken so much from us and still not satisfied, they want it all" She said with venom in her voice.

Alex remained still.

"What do we do? Shall we lie down and expose our belly and neck so they can feast on us or do we show them what they seem to have forgotten. The bite of Roma."

Alex's eyes finally moved on to her.

"They want me to run, they want me to go back to Roma! They murdered Sebastian in cold blood and I run?" She spat.

She paused in silence.

"What we do here defines us, I refuse to be a coward." She added.

"It would be prudent" Alex whispered, resigned.

"We are outnumbered." He added.

"And? That has stopped us before?" Roma asked.

"I refuse to leave" She reaffirmed "I will not abandon this pack that I grew up with to be slaughtered."

"And you might just end up being slaughtered with them" Alex added, dispassionately.

She shrugged "So be it." She stated with finality "but if I am to die today, I will go down taking them...I will go down with a bang and not a whimper. I will not dishonor Roma, Sebastian...No, I will raise hell and if I am to be consumed in it so be it."

Alex's eyes widened, this was a side of her he had never seen, this was not the Evelyn he knew, this was someone put in her place by fate and destiny twisting her soul. The fire in her eyes...

But looking at her he suddenly felt his blood quickening, the cloak of defeat and misery started to shrink away from around him, a spark ignited.

Yes, they would make a stand...a final stand.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked her.

She gave a smile, a smile chilling to the bone "Death" she responded in a single word, conveying her meaning. "The American Avionics weaponry at our disposal use them to match the enemy number, let's take ten of them for every one of ours going down. Let's ensure that after this fight they can never raise and army, they might win in the end but let's make it as expensive as possible." She paused and added "I remember when we sought your help with the Rogues, the numbers were not on our side, but you delivered a victory a lot of us did not think was possible...so let's do it again, I want to make a last stand Alex and I want your help to make it count."

Alex stood up invigorated "You will not be disappointed" and with that marched out of the house with a singular objective in mind.

***

Nick came in after a while and saw Roma on the phone her expression troubled.

"Anything wrong?" he asked as if a few thousand wolves on their way for their blood did not matter.

"I am unable to reach Adrian. I called the palace and none of the staff are able to locate him" she said worried more to herself than directed at Nick "it is most unusual" She whispered in thought and looked at Nick. "Never mind that, I left a message so he will call me back what is the status?" she asked.

"Our scouts have seen the wolves, they are about four hours from here." Nick delivered the news.

"So we have four hours to prepare" Roma said.

"Looks like it" Nick added.

"Ok, let Alex know. Tell him I want to meet him in an hour to identify the plan."

***

Meanwhile Alex had already started rummaging through the equipment, the problem was he has more equipment than people and half of them were not trained enough to use the guns effectively. But now he had to think creatively. Think Alex think!

He would use the landmines, which was a no brainer. He had enough to take out at least five hundred of them but he still had two thousand wolves to confront and the landmines would be the last line of defense. He looked around the guns and explosives and then in the corner of the pile he found his gliders, two of them that he had used during the attack on the rogues. He stared at them. Wheels spinning in his head and he smiled...of course how could he forget?! They might just make it alive after all!!!

He pulled out his phone and started making calls.

***

The American wolves gathered around their alphas.

"Gentlemen, we make history today" One of the alphas said loudly above the crowd. "Roma has killed our leader, occupied our lands and attacked our packs. No more I say! She is now hiding in Colorado and I am sure busily planning her escape route as we speak but we will bring Colorado back in to our folds, kill evert traitor and take back our lands. We take back what is ours! Death to traitors!" he hollered

"Death to traitors!" the crowd roared back.

Another alpha stepped up "We have numbers on our side, I don't want us taking un-necessary risk we stick together and we take them down with our overwhelming numbers, every minute we wait we give our enemies chance to prepare to we move in right now and I expect by tomorrow Colorado will be ours!"

Yelling, cheering and lot of chest thumping ensured.

"Let's roll" The alpha yelled and one by one they morphed in to wolves and took off in to the woods.

***

"Remember this?" Alex pointed to Roma.

"Should I?" Roma asked looking lost.

"These drones helped us with surveillance on the rogues when they were picking your old pack out back in the day" Alex explained.

"I remember" Nick added from next to Roma.

"But what on earth did you do to them?" Roma asked. They were strapped with something all over, with duct tape literally.

"Explosives, high grade, just the way I like it." Alex added. "Each drone can carry three kilograms of additional weight, that's three kilograms of explosives, I have embedded the trigger in them so they blow on impact."

Nicks eyes widened.

"Should create a satisfactory fireball and take out their numbers handsomely" Alex said.

"When do we do this?" Roma asked.

"Right now" Alex said "They have numbers on their side, they will be cocky and confident, lets change that but the downside is we will have a large number of enraged wolves on our tail soon." He added "But we could use to our advantage. We have a gift of landmines waiting for them and snipers on tree tops to take them out the plan is to reduce their numbers to as less as possible before we engage them."

"Ok, how many of them can we take out?" Nick asked.

"With two drones on suicide missions plus landmines and snipers a minimum of half" Alex said confidently.

"That's still twelve hundred wolves on our tail" Nick commented.

"I am improving our odds by half" Alex shrugged "I can't do miracles"

"No, this is good, this is better than what we hoped for" Roma said. "How much time before we drop the drones on them before they attack us?" Roma asked.

"The drones should reach in about forty five minutes after we drop them I assume they will try to get to us in full speed so an hour tops before they hit the pack borders." Alex added.

"And the landmines?" Roma asked.

"Ten minutes in to the pack lands" Alex said and added "And the surviving wolves you can expect to engage in less than ten minutes after that"

Roma nodded and looked at Nick "Get the pack ready Nick, I will come and talk to them, have them ready and ensure the young and old are well protected" she added. They both knew that if they lost there would be no safe, no wolf will be spared.

Nick nodded and walked away.

Roma stayed back while Alex fiddled with the drones.

"What are our chances? With the equipment we have?" Roma asked Alex.

Alex sighed "The equipment is not the issue Roma, people are. It's just not enough time for Nick's pack to be trained to use our equipment. They are going to be counterproductive at this point, I would recommend they stick to what they know. Our men are geared but we are outnumbered. If only we had more men." He wished desperately.

"We do what we Alex and I can think you have done more they we could imagine, thank you!"

Alex gave a quick nod in acknowledgement and started working on getting those drones in the air.

"Any chance of all this attracting human attention?" Roma asked after a moment.

"We are too far from civilization we should be good, mostly" He said, there were always variables. "But, if anyone comes across the carnage left behind they would know something sure happened."

Roma rubbed her temples "We will worry about that later, right now let's focus on surviving."

"Where is Serena?" Roma gently asked.

"I stuck her with the folks hiding out, no point exposing her to more danger." He added.

She nodded in understanding.

Alex fiddled with the drones and then stepped back "all set" he said in satisfaction.

He headed over to a temporary command center he set up and few of the Roma wolves were manning it.

"How are we doing?" he asked two members who will be piloting the drones.

"All good boss" One of the pilots told him. "Whenever you are ready."

He looked up at Roma who saws standing across the command center and gave her a thumbs up and she gave him a nod.

"Let's rock and roll" he told them.

The men flew in to action to get things moving.

***

Alex sat glued to his screen with Roma and Nick peering down his neck.

"Let's do a flyby" he instructed.

"I am going to circle overhead to get some images to identify sweet spot, it's going to be difficult with a moving target but we could do a guestimate" Alex explained to his audience.

The IR cameras picked up massive blobs of red all over the screen.

"My god!" Nick exclaimed. There were an awful lot of wolves out there, the image just put things in to perspective.

"Good, these guys are sticking together so let's target these areas five hundred meters apart, I want near simultaneous explosions before they get a chance to disperse." Alex barked the orders.

The drones circled one last time.

"Ready sir" the pilots said in union.

"Dive!" Alex barked out and the pilots directed the drones to the ground below.

"One minute to impact sir" someone said.

Alex's eyes just stayed glued to the screen.

"30 seconds"

Everyone waited with baited breath.

"5...4...3...2..." Someone counted down.

"Drone one Impact!" the pilot of the first drone said.

"Drone two impact!" the pilot of the second drone added.

The screens of both the pilots was filled with static.

"So?" Nick asked anxiously, unsure what happened.

"It's done" Alex said, they did not have any back up drones to capture the mayhem, so they hoped for the best.

***

Stench of death was everywhere, men moaning, groaning, wolves howling. The American contingent was in chaos. A perfectly harmonious advance had been scuttled, they were still not sure what had happened but one moment they were marching on to their enemy and the other there was an explosion amidst them taking lives of their brothers in hundreds. Panic and chaos were rampant.

"What is the count?" one of the alphas asked shaken.

"We can't really tell sir but we think it's close to a thousand." One of the wolves responded.

"My god! My god" another alpha drawled. A thousand in a few minutes?

"Do we know what if was?" One more alpha whispered in fear.

"No sir, survivors mentioned someone saying something approaching from the sky...that's it" The wolf replied.

"My god!" the alpha responded.

"Sir there is panic in the ranks, they are unsure...we need to...we need to do something" the wolf suggested.

"What do we do?" One more alpha said defeated "If this is Roma what chance do we have?"

"No" the leader apparent to the group said.

"This might be Roma for all likelihood but if we are still standing here it means this was a last ditch effort to try to deter us...no more of those explosion occurred, why? Why not kill us all?" he asked the group around him "Because they cannot and whatever it was they are done with it." He said looking around.

"So we proceed, we will mourn the men after our victory but for now we march on, full speed. The men will want revenge, will want justice and let them have it." And without waiting he morphed in to a wolf and let out a deep mournful howl to the moon, everyone joined in, folks who had changed back in to humans not changed in to wolves again and responded to the howl of an alpha.

The alpha howled again and in it he poured all the anger and his thoughts of justice and vengeance. A thousand howls responded and they started running in to the forest, for their revenge.

***

"Now what?" Roma asked.

"Now we wait" Alex said.

Nick looked at Roma and said "The pack is waiting Roma"

She nodded and moved towards the pack house where the entire pack was gathered. She moved to the entrance of the house where she stepped on a bench so she could see everyone and everyone could see her and she say hundreds of eyes on her.

"Thank you" she began licking her lips in nervousness "Thank you for being here" she said and paused still gathering her thoughts, this had been Nicks idea to motivate the masses.

"They are coming for us" she started without preamble "Our enemies, not satisfied with the people they have killed and taken from us they are coming for all of us and leave no room for doubt in your head that they want us dead. So, we could either run and be hunted or we make a stand here and fight."

She looked around the crowd "I have been told that I have a plane in the airport on standby if I do choose to leave" she paused letting that fact sink in to the crowd "but I refuse to do so, and you might wonder why?" she paused again "The answer is simple, before I was Evelyn Roma I was Evelyn Parker, a nobody who came to this pack nothing but her clothes on her back and this pack took her in and showed her nothing but love and affection , my mother...is buried in this pack. The only father I knew, Jeff is buried in this pack and so if fate does choose to be unkind to us today I would like nothing much but to fight to death for pack for what it has given me." She paused and added "So, I ask you, will you stand with me, will you help me defend this pack?" she asked.

And the crowd roared in response.

"To the death!" someone from the crowd roared above the rest.

"To death!" the crows responded back.

And just before anything could happen any further, the sounds of roaring trucks broke in and trucks and hummers started rolling in.

Everyone confused stood on the sidelines and some of them had weapons ready but waited for the convoy to stop, but the trucks and hummers continued to roll in and Roma stood frozen in this new development. One of the hummers diverted towards the pack house and people gave way as it rolled in and stopped in front of the house, just meters away from Roma.

The hummer stopped and the door opened. Whispers from the crowd grew and gasps came in as they saw who it was.

Even Roma's jaw dropped in surprise.

"What are you doing here?" she asked surprised, in the background truck after truck still poured in to the pack.

"Surprise!" Adrian said "I come bearing gifts!" he said.

Alex stepped out of the crowd towards his brother.

"But how?!" he asked shocked, in the trucks were men, Roma soldiers to be specific, someone they did not anticipate they could make it.

"Long story short, some luck and creative flying" Adrian said "You need to thank Seb, he was the mastermind behind this, he wanted five hundred men and as promised I deliver five hundred men!" he said with dramatic.

"And taking of the devil, where the hell is he?" Adrian said looking around. And then he looked at Roma and his brother and their expression.

"What?" he asked "What happened?"

He was only met with cold silence. A sinking feeling in his stomach had taken root.