Once Upon A Rejection

Talen Bancroft’s POV

Maybe I have a simplistic view on the world but I didn’t see what was taking so damn long. I thought this meeting would be over in a couple of minutes at most but we have already been here, arguing about tactics for hours.

Grayson, Leyton and I wanted to leave straight away. Before Dustin could work out that we were onto his hiding place or get some more reinforcements. Not everyone in the pack agreed with our assessment. Molly’s step father was still recovering from the last fight and he was concerned that we would be caught off guard again.

“We have plenty of lycans on our side and they don’t know that we are on to their location.” I argued, for what felt like the one hundredth time.

“We had lots of lycans with us during the last fight too. It didn’t stop us getting our asses handed to us.” Thomas replied. He banged his fists on the table in front of him in frustration. Ezra put his hand on his father’s shoulder and tried to tell him to calm down but Thomas just continued to shake his head.

“I am not going to let my daughter’s mates get themselves killed. We need more back up.” He shouted.

His words took me by surprise. I was used to my strategies being questioned by my father or other warriors but I wasn’t used to thinking about such things as a mate. Just thinking of leaving Molly behind made me want to forget all about fighting, but what would that solve? Dustin would still be trying to kill, I doubted that anything short of his death would stop him.

Sensing my hesitation, Thomas started to come up with some alternative strategies but none of them were particularly palatable. Most of them involved calling on the other packs for backup but the problem was, I didn’t trust any of them. They had good reasons to betray us, Dustin had taken members from most of the surrounding packs. We couldn’t rely on their help, I didn’t fancy being handed over to Dustin like a present.

“We don’t have time to work out which packs can be trusted. Dustin would have killed all of his prisoners before we made a move against him.” Rich argued.

“He’s right, we can’t wait that long. I might have an alternative solution to our problem though.” Leyton said, I could see the tension on his face. It looked as though he was trying to solve a complex puzzle in his mind and it didn’t look to be going well.

“Are you going to tell us what it is or do we have to guess?” Ezra asked.

“One day your mouth is going to get you in serious trouble.” Molly chastised her brother, who just shrugged his shoulders in response.

“I am pretty sure that lycans don’t take the time to understand werewolf pack structures.” He paused to look at me for confirmation so I nodded my head in agreement. Most lycans considered themselves superior to werewolves in every way. They would never take the time out of their day to think about such things.

“That means we could get someone who doesn’t have any connection to one of the affected packs to help us.” Leyton suggested.

“There aren’t any packs nearby that didn’t have at least one pack member who was taken.” Grayson replied.

“Not any official packs.” Leyton corrected him.

He went on to tell us about a project that he was working on for the council, to document all the unofficial packs. These were packs that the council didn’t recognise as official packs because their alpha wasn’t from an alpha bloodline or wasn’t from the usual line of succession.

The council saw these packs as little better than rogues. They refused to let them have any of the rights afforded to other packs. Their plan was to either wipe out these packs completely or replace each of their alphas with people they saw as being more suitable for the role.

Leyton also told us that there were a few such packs in the area that he knew about. He was sure that they would be willing to help us as long as we didn’t treat them as inferior, like the council does. Grayson seemed hesitant at first but after a while he became curious about them.

“How long have these packs existed for?” Grayson asked.

“Most of them have appeared over the last fifty years as werewolf numbers have continued to rise.” Leyton replied.

I wasn’t aware of werewolf population figures but I guess it made sense. After werewolves stopped killing each other so often, their numbers were bound to go up. Larger packs are more conspicuous so it was safer to form several smaller packs from them if they got too big. Something similar had happened to lycans about three hundred years ago, before the latest war against the werewolves.

“How quickly could you get them here for a meeting?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to the problem at hand.

“They will want to meet on neutral ground but I am sure that I can get something arranged for later in the day.” Leyton replied. He stood up from the table and started walking out of the room when Molly interrupted him.

“You still haven’t explained why you wanted to know if lycans understood werewolf packs?” She asked.

“I have a plan but it relies on them not knowing too much about werewolf packs. I will tell you more about it if they agree to help us.” He replied before leaving the room.

It was a few hours before he reported back to us with news. The unofficial packs were cautious, most of them were not willing to even meet us. They were worried that it was a trick, that the council was trying to get them all in one place so they could murder them all. There were a few of them that were willing to take the chance and they would be meeting us in a couple of hours a few miles away from the pack.

Molly and I went to get the cars ready while Grayson went to collect some of the fighters. We were on the road in a matter of minutes. Leyton was driving while Molly sat between Grayson and I in the back. Rich was sitting in the passenger seat anxiously checking his phone for updates from the other packs. We might not trust them but we were interested in how close they were to working out Dustin’s location.

The only person in the car who seemed in any way relaxed was Leyton. As he drove away from the pack he was happily telling us about some of the experiences he had while he was working for the council. Some of them were sad stories but most of them were just silly things that he did with his friends while he was there.

“Do you wish you hadn’t left?” I asked. I know that he rejected his mate originally to go to work for the council. I couldn’t imagine doing anything like that, I would have done anything to be with Molly. There is nothing that would make me even consider rejecting her.

“No. It was the worst few months of my life and I almost lost my mate over it.” He complained. I wasn’t going to say anything to make him feel better, he was a fool. I wasn’t even sure he deserved a second chance with his mate.

“At least you worked out what was important before it was too late.” Grayson replied. He was leaning into Molly and running his nose along her neck. He was only letting Leyton off lightly because he was his brother. If it was anyone else I am sure he would have called out their poor behaviour.

“Oh my goddess!” Molly exclaimed. She was looking out of the window in front of us and her mouth was open in shock. My lycan was purring, he liked to hear her slightly breathless like this.

‘Yes, and I can think of a few things to do to her with her mouth open like that.’

I ignored Jax’s comments and followed Molly’s gaze. We were just pulling off the road and into a field, there were hundreds or perhaps thousands of them standing together in a group near the centre of the field. When Leyton said that only a few of the packs would be coming, I thought there would be ten or twenty of them, not hundreds.

“There are more people than I thought would be here.” Grayson said.

“Brother, you have so little faith in me.” Leyton turned around for long enough to smirk at us before getting out of the car and walking towards the group of werewolves. We should have brought more people with us, there were enough of them to kill every single one of us if they chose to.

“Are we sure that this is a good idea?” Molly asked. She was nibbling on her bottom l*p as she watched Leyton join the group of werewolves in front of us.

“Not at all, but we don’t have much of a choice.” Grayson replied, the tension coming off him in waves.

“Then there is no point putting this off any longer.” Molly responded.