Mateless and Home Bound

Chapter 37: Meeting

She was right, and she was wrong at the same time.

She was right that it wasn't right of him to keep this all a secret from his parents. They were the leaders of this pack, after all. He didn't want to worry them so much, so he figured that it would be best if he waited until he got all of the information that he could off from him.

But that wasn't a manipulation tactic that the vampire was using. He didn't tell Eric to keep this a secret. He was actually the one that encouraged him to tell Pop. Which made him think that he really wasn't that evil after all. He didn't know how, but he just knew that he wasn't trying to harm anyone. It didn't seem that believable, but he didn't see any evil in those blue eyes of his.

He had seen plenty of evil when he was little. He knew that he hadn't seen everything that Jane had, but he still knew what evil looked like. That rogue that had kidnapped him and Dad all those years ago had showed him that. And every single one of his followers had that same look in their eyes.

He let her go and run in the forest, hoping to try and find some solution to all of this. Jane had said that he needed to start thinking about what the pack needed over his own, but wasn't that what he was doing? Instead of going with the instinct of killing that vampire, he listened for useful information. There was a saying of 'keep your friends close, and your enemies closer' for a reason. He needed to figure out what was going on in this forest and why there were so many strangers coming in. What better way than to listen to what this ancient vampire had to say?

There were so many things he could have said to Jane. If she thought that he was taking this issue personally, then she was on the next level of that. She took his order as a means of betrayal rather than trusting him and listening to what he had to say.

But, even when she was shouting hurtful things at him, and lashing out, he just couldn't participate in that game. He was furious at those words, but he couldn't turn that fury into words against her. One look into those eyes and he was a goner, no matter how mad they looked.

He would have rather dealt with a million hunters than that argument. But he supposed it was going to happen at some point. And he really did need to tell Pop his findings anyway. Maybe after that he could go and find her and they could sort things out. For now, he supposed he'd just give her some space.

The conversation with Pop turned into another full-blown meeting. Him and Reggie had been going to so many of those the past week. Now that he had some new information to share with everyone, it seemed to make things interesting.

"You said that he's looking for a secret mode of traveling?" Tyler looked at him curiously.

"Yeah," Eric nodded. "I think that's why he was looking for those symbols. He's been drawing a map out of the forest that he's been in to track everywhere that he's gone."

"I still think you should have just killed him," Sam, the Delta of the pack said. "Max, this is too risky to keep this vampire around. There's too many children and innocent in our pack."

"But he hasn't gone anywhere near any of the packs," Eric said. "Actually, it seems like he's just going deeper and deeper into the forest."

"Can you point out on our map everywhere you saw him?" Charlie asked.

He nodded and quickly marked it on their map. It wasn't as well done as the parts that the vampire had drawn, but it did the job. The two symbols that he found could be connected in almost a straight line.

"There's a pattern," Reggie said. He hadn't been talking the entire time. Most meetings he sat quietly, listening to what everyone had to say until they were almost done. His purple eyes were always calculating something whenever he was sitting at the oval table.