Fighting For Hope (The Hybrid and The Wolf - Book 3)

Chapter 8 - The Brothers That Care Forgot

I am in the Bayou with Jackson and Hayley, Aiden is with us too and he is freaking out because of what went down last night with Finncent.

"The wolves are freaking out," He told us. "They know it had to be an insider who took down Vincent last night, seeing as no one else could've been anywhere near him. "

"Did anyone suspect it was you?" My brother asked.

Aiden shook his head. "No, not yet but they'll gonna figure it out, which pretty much means I'm screwed unless we come up with a plan."

"Call a meeting," I told him. "The whole pack, tonight. If they're so scared, now's the perfect time to convince them they need to ditch Esther."

"She gave them moonlight rings," he said, raising his hand to show his own.

"Well, those rings make you slaves."

"No, they make us powerful. We were exiles before, but now we run the city! The vampires are scared of us and no one, including me, is gonna walk away from that because --" 

Jackson stood up, annoyed and approached Aiden. "Set the damn meeting."

I smiled as my brother walked towards the dock and gave Aiden a look before going after Jackson. Hayley followed me. When we reached him, he had just opened a can of beer.

"So, are you gonna work on an arousing speech or just get day-drunk?" I asked.

"Little bit of both."

"Jack, it's 10 am," I said, taking the beer can from him.

He then walked over to a table and picked up a book.

"You know, for months, I wrote down every single word Ansel said," Jackson informed me. "The entire history of our people. If only I'd known he was Klaus' father, I would've asked him a hell of a lot more. You know, I was up all night looking through this, trying to find something, anything that will help me figure out how to get our people back together."

"Let me guess, no such luck?" I asked as he threw the book back on the table.

"Nothing viable and now Ansel's dead, along with Ollie," he grabbed his beer back from me. "So, forgive me if I need a beer, 'cause right now, I can use all the help I can get."

I watched as my brother walked away.

"Jack," Hayley ran after him. "Jackson!"

I walked over to the table once they were both out of sight and picked up the book. I then started to read about my pack's history.

~*~*~

After reading the book, I went to the trailer where Hayley was watching Jackson chop wood.

"You wanna stop playing mountain-man and explain why you kept this from me?"

They looked at me in confusion until I held up Jackson's journal, my brother sighed before putting the axe down.

"Why don't I jog your memory?" I said as I read from the journal. "'The werewolves' power can be traced back to the myth of the Unification Ceremony, a ritual that bestowed certain unique abilities onto every member of the pack'"

I can see the guilty look on my brother's face while Hayley looked shocked. 

"Do you believe this?" I asked.

"I didn't at first," Jackson finally said. "Then Ansel swore he saw it with his own eyes and then he dies, and I found out he was resurrected from a thousand years ago, which means he was alive to see it."