Part of the Plan (Book 2 in the 'part of' series)

Chapter 41 Worries

Chapter 41 worries

Randall's POV

"Where are they?"I whined towards the rest of the pack as we waited for the others to get home. "It's starting to worry me." I plopped myself down on the settee next to Hollis who chuckled at me and ruffled my hair.

"I'm sure they're alright." Elowen reassured me from beside him. Melina was sitting on her knee and cuddling into her. "They're some of the strongest we have. It's supposed to be a peaceful meeting."

"Doesn't mean it was peaceful." Moss muttered from where he sat with Tempest.The two of them were playing chess on the coffee table. "Their first priority would be keeping Aiden and Harlow safe." I nodded. Sometimes I didn't understand Moss, I've known him all my life but his thoughts never made a lot of sense to me. I wasn't sure if he liked humans, or if he was just constantly on edge. He called them by their names, showing some respect at least.

"They can't really look after themselves in our world." Hollis pointed out. "Besides, Aiden is Ralph's mate. That's extremely rare, there's got to be something about that which is important." I shifted uneasily.

"Yeah, but I thought that only showed that the beta would be alpha?" My confusion was humorous to the others as most of them chuckled or cracked a smile.

"That's exactly it." Tempest spoke up as she moved one of her pieces. "It shows that Lathen is probably not the alpha anymore. Once Ralph starts acting like it anyway." She shrugged slightly and stretched her arms above her head. "There's more to it that we don't even know."

"What are we talking about?" Beaumont entered the room and looked around, before sitting in the corner next to the bookshelf.

"Alpha's not telling us stuff." Moss mumbled under his breath and made another move. "Nothing new." Hollis shook his head in response.

"It's not their fault. They tell us all that they can." It was a failed attempt at sticking up for them. The pack all agreed that we loved each other. We were all a big family and we respected each other. "I can't imagine how hard it could be to explain."

"Having a supernatural bond with someone must be nice though." Elowen said as she started to tickle Melina's back. "It must be extremely complicated." The conversation had stopped abruptly as the six of us heard something. It was a howl, an unfamiliar howl.

"Who's that?" We had all jumped to our feet. Elowen rushed out of the room and down the hallway. I stuck back but I knew that I had to follow her soon.

"Another pack?" We all stayed silent in an attempt to hear where the howl came from. "It's not a human voice. Definitely a wolf. Not too far away, they don't seem friendly." Beaumont noted as we all started to get into action.

We each took turns going into the children's room and making sure that they had everything that they needed. Since I was technically still a child, I had to stay with the children and Abilene. The fact that you had to be eighteen in order to no longer be considered a child annoyed me a lot, but I enjoyed the fact that I often had to stay to protect the children.

Rhodes had been playing with the children as well as Abilene so she had to hurry and get prepared. Dad had decided that he would be going on patrol today. I was going to go with him but he told me to stay, that he wasn't comfortable with us going out into the forest at the moment. We were alone with no alpha to tell us what to do. "What are we going to do?" Rhodes asked as the noise came closer to us.

"I don't know." Moss shrugged and we all looked between each other. "Randall and Abilene will be with the pups. They can go downstairs?" With a glance to Abilene and a nod of confirmation he continued. "We can go and check it out, going in groups of three."

The others nodded as I walked over to Abilene. "The usual?" Elowen asked as she moved over towards Tempest and Beaumont. We had figured these groups out long ago. We all did a sort of exercise where we were stuck with the certain members of the pack in order to see who we were most efficient with.

Tempest was strong and fierce, Beaumont was a good tracker and Elowen was agile and sneaky. That meant that they worked pretty well together. Hollis was a good hunter and he was able to think quickly on his paws, Rhodes was as agile as Elowen was and Moss was a very strong fighter. It meant that there was someone skilled in each area in each group.

The two groups then headed out, Abilene and I took the children down to the basement where we continued to be silent as we possibly could. The children understood what the basement meant. They knew it meant that there was possible danger and that we might need to leave. It's a shame that they actually had to come down here.

Through the silence, we could hear howling, growling and a little bit of snarling. It wasn't comforting at all. We could hear a lot more down in the basement, I didn't quite understand how but we could. I couldn't tell who was who from where we were but there were far more wolves than there are in our family.

"Should we go?" I asked Abilene quietly. She was leaning on a wall and biting her nails.

"Where?" She whispered back to me. "We don't know where they are and the pack won't know where we are." I got her point but we couldn't just stay there and wait for something to happen.

"There are wolves around the house. We don't know what side they're on." The last time we ran away from the packhouse was when Aiden was visiting. We were told to run then. We had nobody telling us to run now. "It wouldn't hurt." I started walking down the corridor, Oren and Lowell following silently.

"Abilene has a point though." Channon whispered.

"Where are we going?" Channing asked in order to finish off his twin's statement. I shrugged slightly, causing them to huff a little bit. "If the bad wolves are at the house, they wouldn't expect us to be there."

"Hide in plain sight." Channon nodded, running up to me and walking on either side. "Draw on the bedroom walls and hide in the wardrobe." I stopped for a second and looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. Guess we know who did that now.

Melina was walking by Abilene and holding her hand. "Either way, it won't hurt to go down here." We just had to hope that the growls which we could hear didn't get any closer.