Eclipse Child |✔|

|55|

And find the place where

every single thing you see

tells you to stay

-SEEKER

***

Things moved quickly after that.

Maybe too quickly for Orion's liking, but quickly all the same.

I started to see all the pack members. Each and every one.

Like in Alba Rosa when I took the time to painstakingly memorize names, now I applied that same practice here. Rex took me to visit them individually. Orion stayed by my side, his wolf eyes trailing after the children.

I encouraged him to follow them. To play.

But he stayed where he was, not moving away from me.

The pack seemed bewildered at this new acceptance in leadership. Almost like, with my arrival here, they were realizing that maybe, instead of a gathering of miscellaneous broken souls- they actually were a pack.

I could see it.

Members who had been broken and tossed aside from their previous packs- some had mates. Those mates followed them. It was an essential "package deal" where if one was unfit the other technically was also. This usually fell to the males. Females sometimes had a different story. Sometimes they could be hidden away.

But not the male.

And as these mates came into the pack, they brought with them the prospect of a family. Their encounter of being tossed aside lead to the feeling of betrayal. Of distrust and anger towards any pack system.

So they stayed.

Even if they recovered, and even if their pack granted them whatever pardon and saw fit to take them back. Once you had trampled on a soul, there was no way to repair the damage done.

So they stayed.

And their families stayed.

And their children, who had been raised to look at other packs in hate and mistrust over abandoning their fathers and mothers, and grandparents. Their aunts and uncles, siblings or other-

It was a pack.

I could see it was a pack.

The only problem was that they couldn't.

And neither could the outside world.

"They just need someone to... to...believe in them..." I stared at the reports Rex had given me, taking in the financials and other ways of income that could be provided for the pack.

"It's obvious something could be made out of this pack..."
I trail off when I see the look in Orion's eye.

"What?"

He shakes his head.

"Just tell me," I snap. I was already on a thin wire. Though I could see the potential, that potential seemed impossible to reach at this current point.

"Just..." He looked away, sighing, "just remember that there are people behind those papers..."

"I'm aware of that."

Orion turns his head to the side, eyes narrowing, "are you? This isn't Alba Rosa-,"

"I know that."