The Full Moon Effect

Chapter 15: Hope and Home

Don't think

I don't understand

Loyalty just

Because I

Have no one

Left to be

Loyal to

**********

After coming to the conclusion that Connell and Asena were not sadistically holding Castor against his will only to kill him in front of us and crush our hope of avoiding this war, we settled in the living room. Alpha Weylyn and his Luna were on edge, understandably. If a war I had nothing to do with was brewing in my backyard, I'd be frustrated, too. Weylyn's Beta and warriors remained outside, used to the colder temperatures.

We were also introduced to Connell's Beta, Everett. A stocky man in his mid-thirties, he embraced us with joy despite the circumstances. His mate had recently given birth and because her recovery process wasn't going like planned, he was spending every waking moment with his mate and pup. He apologized profusely, but Jones dismissed his apologies with tenderness and he went back to his family.

"This is one of the reasons we could not leave the territory," Connell explained. "If we had left and Ulric or Leyton decided to pop in for a visit and killed Castor, I have no doubt Advocate Adron would've worked out some way for the declaration of war to be valid."

"You have a crucial piece of the game Leyton is playing with us, Alpha Connell. Why could you not mention this over the phone?" Advocate Cervantes questioned.

I was glad to see she made him as nervous as the rest of us.

"I believe my brother has been catching on to me. The fact I have not also declared war upon your pack and my father whispering into his ear breed a dangerous bed of doubt. I did not want to risk saying something over the phone that could change the tide of this war. If he caught me offering to aid you, I could play it off as a mere ruse. Mentioning Castor's concealment on our land would be too much—Ulric would have to check to make sure it was not true."

Jones spoke up. "You mentioned you were the one who informed Ulric of your father's existence—how did you find out?"

"My mother never told me why she fled from my father, but I knew that it pained her to do so. She came here—far from her mate's pack, far from the one she grew up in. She would have been alone, carrying twins, if your mother had not joined her, Tara. After giving birth to us, she joined this pack, but separated us. My mother raised me, yours raised Ulric in the pack he now runs," Connell said to me.

"As an adult, I realized they did this to prevent our father from finding us—twins are rare amongst werewolves after all. But for the first eight years of our lives, Ulric and I were merely friends, not brothers. But despite everyone's best efforts, Ulric and I still became friends. My mother left around then, abandoning me, and I haven't heard from her since. Another family within the pack adopted me, raising me as their own. Kat, Tara's mother, sat us down soon after and told us we were brothers, which we had pretty much already surmised by that point. At fifteen, she told us who we were and who she was to us. Ulric stormed out, shifted, and ran off. He spent the majority of his time as a wolf anyways—it was always more natural for him to be a wolf than man. And with Ulric off tearing up trees in the woods, she told me about our father.

It took me years to contact him—eight in fact. At first he was suspicious, but when he saw a picture of me, he knew there was no doubt about it. I told him what I knew over the phone, found out our mother had not returned to him, and he was here the next day. I regret many things about this time in my life, but mostly, I regret not telling Katherine. As soon as Leyton put eyes on her, he shifted and attacked her without question. She put up a great fight, but not even her protective instincts were enough against Leyton's rage. Ulric was devastated; he'd just gained one parent and lost another. Neither of us would speak to him then. He hung around for a few days and then left. I refused his calls, but I guess after a while Ulric began speaking with him again.