Into The Darkness [#2]

EPILOGUE

MAXWELL

"Ah, Maxwell, my man, you ready for what's about to happen?" Michael grinned as he threw his arm around my shoulder. I am pretty sure he was more excited about tonight then I was, then again, he was about to become Beta in place of my mum's best friend, so I guess he had good reason to be in the mood that he was.

"Don't call me my man, I've told you about that before," I chuckled. Despite there being an eight year age gap between Michael and myself, I actually got on better with him than I did with Daniel, because of the amount of time he had spent looking after me when I was younger; I became quite attached to him when I was six and he started looking after us every Saturday night so my parents could have some time alone.

Nicole was close to Abby, but that wasn't surprising given that they were practically the same age, but it got to the point where the two of them were inseparable. You would never find one without the other, even when we were at school, they each went where the other went and Uncle Luca actually had to phone the school to get them put into the same lessons; otherwise they refused to go to school and our mother refused to let that happen.

Even now, at twenty two, the two of them went around the pack together. They were always giggling about something, usually the hottest members of the pack they had spotted since neither of them had found their mates, or finding someone new to annoy the hell out of, usually the mothers of the pack by telling their children stories of their parents that they had discovered while growing up – they were quite the pair but, they were best friends, and you were never going to be able to separate them from each other.

The last time I had actually heard from Daniel had been the day he turned nineteen and declared that he was going to go around the packs in the area until he found his mate. For as long as I could remember my cousin, he had only ever spoke about finding his mate and he was the one who actually told me about all of that before my own parents had the chance to tell me, but it was probably the only thing he had ever been serious about in his whole life; most other things to him had always been a joke.

I remember when Uncle Luca married Aurora. Daniel thought it would be hilarious to take the rings from my father, who happened to be the best man, and run around the church with them until his father finally managed to catch him so to obtain what belonged to him. And then there was Michael's eighteenth birthday in which he thought it would be a good idea to grease the entire dancefloor the night before and then video as wolves where slipping all over the place – it's safe to say that my cousin wasn't exactly the most sensible person I had ever had the pleasure of meeting and he wasn't the most mature either.

"What's wrong with it? You're like my main man and I just like to make you aware of that fact," Michael shrugged.

"You're my cousin, so there's everything wrong with that statement," I gave him a look which he was so used to seeing now that, when I gave it to him, he burst out laughing and he was unable to take me seriously. But I guess that's why he was like my best friend, as well as my oldest cousin, I could be myself when I was around him and we could laugh at each other without getting pissed about it.

"Fine. Where's that hot piece of ass?" Michael looked around the room at the crowd of people who were slowly gathering. I knew most of their faces, there were only a few who I didn't recognise but apparently that's because there were some members from Elliot's father's pack here too so that they could celebrate with me as well, but I didn't know which hot piece of ass Michael happened to be talking about.

I remember when he used to be shy, he would never say a word to new people and you would find him with his head in his book, but now he was always there and you knew when he was coming. Sure, he still enjoyed a book from time to time but, with his increasing age and still being mateless, he would often look for the next person he was going to sleep with and I had lost count of which members he had slept with and who was still on his list.