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“Of course. This is just one tribe. One clan. There are a lot more that I don’t even know about. Tribes that have stayed hidden from the beginning and will always remain hidden because that is our way of life. Some of us venture into the other worlds every now and then to keep up with happenings, and how would we relate to you if we can’t speak your language?”
“So you knew we were coming then? You knew I killed my Alpha?”
“Yes,” Merine said. “The news got to us, and there were many fights in the woods. We had to keep children away from it. We know all about what happened in the city.”
“Did you know about the trafficking? The kids James was selling off?” Hayley asked. She posed her question aggressively.
Merine didn’t reply but just kept walking, and I could see our destination as the smell of roasted meat came from a gathering of people with a bonfire in their middle. Hayley walked in front of Merine and stopped him. She put her hands on his chest, which caught the group's attention. They all stood up and watched what was going on. They were all ready for a fight.
“Did you know what was happening with the kids?” Hayley asked again.
“Yes,” Merine answered finally.
Hayley moved away from him, pain and disappointment washing across her face.
“Why didn’t you do anything?” she asked and turned around suddenly. “Why didn’t you stop them?”
“It wasn’t my place to,” Merine said.
“They were children. They were like them!” Hayley yelled and pointed at the kids running around in the village. “They were innocent, and you just allowed them to be sold.”
“It wasn’t my place to stop them,” Merine maintained. His voice retained a calm tone, and he didn’t seem bothered that Hayleywas disappointed in him. I could tell that this was something he had discussed with his people and mulled over on his own a long time ago, and they had come to a decision, and he’d learned to live in peace with that decision.
“You people have your wars and your conflicts. They never stop; we never interfere because it isn’t our place. Just as it isn’t in your place to take action on whatever is happening here. James had the support of the council. If we had interfered, what do you think would have happened? We would have stopped one, and then would we have been there for the other? What happens when in trying to stop them, they kill us? Then these children lose fathers and mothers fighting a battle that wasn’t theirs? That is a bigger guilt that I would not be able to handle. What if we risk our position because we helped them? We’ve remained hidden for millennia, and I wasn’t going to expose my people to harm. We have seen the weapons your people have. Your guns, your bombs. They can decimate people and split them in two. We would never stand a chance against them. Our best option was to remain hidden, keep out of your business and remain safe. We all made that decision, and whatever contempt you think about us, we do not share the sentiment with you.”
The quiet that followed looked like it was going to last forever. It just went on and on and never ended. Then one of the men by the bonfire spoke up, breaking it.
“Does anyone want some meat?” he asked.
We were hungry, so we had to oblige them. I walked to Hayley to talk to her.
“Do you understand the position they were in?”
She looked up at her, anger still in her eyes, but she had mellowed a bit.
“I do. But it is hard to imagine they would just abandon those kids to their fate. Why would anyone do that?”
“We are here now,” I told her. “We are not abandoning them. We would save every last one of them. But we need the stone to do that. We need power, and they can give it to us.”
We walked to join the others, and they made a seat for us while one of them cut meat from the big bull roasting on the fire and served it to us. He passed us a big cup of wine too. I looked at that, shocked, and they smiled at me.
“We like the good things, too,” one of them said.
That got a chuckle out of me, and I started to wolf down the meal. Hayley did the same as Merine continued the story.
“Yes, where was I?” he said, but he didn’t need our help reminding him. “Tarloux stayed his hand and waited until he inherited his family’s wealth. Then when that happened, he used the wealth to accumulate soldiers and for himself weapons. He trained the people that believed in his vision that were willing to fight too, but a bulk of his soldiers were humans. You call them human hunters now, and they have that sigil of an eagle in flight. But the first human hunters were trained by Tarloux, and the first werewolf hunters were his people that wanted to fight. He trained them on how to kill werewolves, and they did it dexterously. He did that for years, and all the while, the royalty knew what he was doing, but they were unperturbed. They’ve had rebellions before, and it had been nothing but a sting to them. They had power beyond measure and were confident they couldn’t be conquered. It had never happened before. But theywere going up against Tarloux. A man who knew their strength and weaknesses. It was a flawless victory for him. We wiped out the entire royal family. It was a blood bath. But Tarloux remained loved amongst the people because he never harmed the masses. His war was with the Royalty, and it remained so. It just so happened that when he started the war, the two families had pregnancies. The Peline princess was pregnant, and so was the Heline queen. So, they came to us.”
Merine looked up when he said that. He looked at Hayley specifically as if to tell her the next couple of things he wanted to say were for her.
“That was the first time we dabbled in business that wasn’t ours. We had stayed away from other werewolves, but they needed help, and we couldn’t turn pregnant women away. We let them in, but we lost over a thousand lives before they finally left. It was a sad moment for us here. None of us here ever witnessed it, but we heard the stories, and we saw the graves. Tarloux didn’t kill the masses in his land, but he settled on us because we had helped his enemies, and he slaughtered us. Still, we couldn’t just send the pregnant women away. We let them stay until they gave birth. And when it was done, they asked us for one final favor. The moon stone. They wanted to bind the two children together, and we did it for them. We bound them with the moon stone and the pendants. We also promised to hold the stone until someone worthy comes back to claim it.”
“Well, I guess we are here then. You’ll hand it over to us, and we’ll be on our way,” Hayley said.
Merine smiled at her. “No, it doesn’t work that way. I allowed you in because you had the pendant. Consider that a key to get inhere. Now, to get the moon stone, that decision will be left to the moon stone.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You want a stone to make a decision.”
“It is not just a stone,” Merine said. “It holds within it power beyond measure. You would have to go through a ritual to get to the moon stone. The moon stone will pick you. If it wants you, it will show itself to you. If it doesn’t, you will have to leave the village immediately.”
