The Bare Truth part 2

Chapter 14

They gave up after the 13th pack.

No one wanted to talk about Dorrian. No one would hear a word against him. And most of the Alpha's weren't nearly as nice about it as Pearl had been.

In the basement under a bar in Baton Rouge, the Alpha of a pack of alligators had threatened to eat them if they didn't leave immediately. The Alpha who had set up shop on a riverboat in New Jersey had simply stopped talking to them as soon as they mentioned Dorrian's name. She had sat in silence until they gave up and left. The Alpha in Bangor actually had them thrown out.

A few had at least spoken with them, but they all had the same message as Pearl. Each said they were perfectly happy with Dorrian in charge, and advised Joe to concede as well.

Six days after they set out, the jet-lagged pair boarded their flight back to Washington.

"What else can we do?" Joe asked her as the plane touched down at Seattle International.

Sierra sighed.

"I don't think there's anything else we can do," she said. "I think if we don't want anyone to get hurt we have to give him what he wants."

They went straight from the airport to Sleuth. Joe called everyone to a gathering and explained to them what was going to happen. Many people protested. There was a lot of shouting, and people throwing things as Joe had done. Many insisted they could fight Dorrian's people off.

But then Joe and Sierra explained the full scope of Dorrian's power, and how curiously unwilling the other packs had been to turn against him. Little by little, the protests quieted, until everyone arrived at the same forgone conclusion Joe and Sierra had. Without help from other packs, there was simply no choice but to give in.

Unable to form the words himself, Sierra called Dorrian for Joe that night, and told him they agreed to his terms. Dorrian said he would be there tomorrow morning, to speak with the pack and accept his surrender. Sierra hung up the phone feeling sick.

Neither of them felt like making love that night. Instead they just held each other. Unable to sleep, they lay awake for most of the night, staring out the window at the moonless sky. Not talking. Just wrapped up in each other, thinking about what was to come the next day and trying in vain to think of a way out of it.

Sierra finally drifted off to sleep thinking about Pearl. Pearl, who had a pack of 200 wolves, and wasn't scared of anything. What had made her so afraid to fight back? What had they gotten themselves into?