Raised By Humans ✔

Ten

Sage's POV

I stared wide-eyed at the building in front of me. It was huge, easily capable of housing hundreds of people. How I hadn't known this pack house was here was beyond me. My own pack was pretty big, but we didn't all live together. That would be ridiculous. We'd need seven of these buildings just to fit us all and new members joined almost daily. Fabian's pack were traditionalists. They either lived together or there wasn't a pack at all.

"I don't understand," I mumbled. "Traditionalists have strong pack urges. If Fabian was born a traditionalist, how did he not completely lose it when his pack left him?"

"I think the better question is why did the entire pack abandon two kids if it would have been easier to just kick them?" Tiberius replied as he popped open his car door, stepping out.

"Why is it that all the buildings we go to are all rundown and look abandoned?" I questioned, following closely behind Tiberius as I studied the old building.

"As dumb as this might sound, man-made structures tend to fall apart faster if something bad occurred inside them." He chuckled dryly. "You can blame it on bad vibes or angry ghosts, but if a building looks worn down, it's more than likely that some bad shit went down. Or simply no one is around to keep up with maintenance, but I prefer the bad shit idea. It's more dramatic."

"I have noticed that you have a flair for dramatics. But what about dark forests? Like the one from The Hobbit?" I questioned, shoving open the heavy double doors at the front of the building.

"That one's a bit more complicated." Tiberius sighed, glancing around the dark and dusty foyer. "Sometimes bad things happened, sometimes horrible things happened."

"Like what?" I pushed, turning on my phone's flashlight and sweeping it across the room.

"Like an idiot that thinks it's a good idea to summon a demon. Or the massacre of an entire species." Tiberius shrugged, choosing a random door and disappearing through it.

"Massacre of an entire species?" I gawked. "That's happened before?"

"Of course, it has," Tiberius replied over his shoulder as he passed some broken furniture and starting up the stairs. "What do you think happened to the dragons a thousand years ago?"

I stopped halfway up the stairs. "Dragons?"

"Dragons."

I nodded my head slightly before hurrying up the stairs to catch up with Tiberius. There was no point in doubting him. It was unlikely that he was wrong. I pushed away the thoughts of dragons as I observed the walls. They were void of any pictures or paintings, completely blank. From what I had seen, all of the rooms were like this. partially filled with old, broken, dust-covered furniture and blank walls. It made me wonder what Fabian's room looked like.

"You're following Fabian's scent, right?" Tiberius questioned, reaching the top of the stairs and advancing down a long hallway full of doors. "I can't sense Fabian anywhere in the building but since we're here, I need to use something of his to perform the locator spell."

"His scent is the only one here," I answered. "Apart from dust and that gross stale smell."

"So glad that I don't have a heightened sense of smell like you wolves." He laughed. "You have any theories about what Fabian's room might look like?"

I grinned as I thought about it. "It's probably covered in posters of his favourite boy bands. Maybe some photos of him and Cassiel, possibly his family but I doubt it. If the walls aren't painted either black or pastel pink, I think I might cry."