The sight of Kylie's dead body was terrible to behold. Logan immediately closed his eyes as a sharp pang of pain went through his body. Not Kylie, no! He thought.

Like the other pack members that had been killed, Kylie was in half-human, half-wolf form. Her torso and limbs were in wolf form, but her head and neck were human, though covered in sparse fur. Her thick blonde hair was framed around her face like a halo, and her grey eyes stared lifelessly at the sky. Her torso had been slashed repeatedly. Logan could count four slashes, deep as knife wounds. Her intestines peeked from the wounds like fat red tentacles. 

Casper and Jesse soon joined them. Casper cursed silently as he saw the dead body. "Damn." He said. "When had this happened?"

Indeed, when had this happened, Logan thought to himself. He had been on this training ground barely six hours ago. It must have happened when he was busy interrogating the rogue wolf. Her skin already looked pallid and rigor mortis had begun to set in. He found tears coming to his eyes and hastily wiped them away.

He turned to Jesse his gamma and said: "Fetch some guards and tell them to prepare the body for a burial." The gamma nodded and bowed, leaving the scene. 

Logan walked away from the scene and towards the packhouse gardens to clear his head as the guards came to clear the body. He needed some time to mourn his pack member personally before the general burial.

He couldn't help but feel a gripping pain as he thought of Kylie: her life in the pack, and her horrendous death. He had known her since they were little wolves. She had been a very pretty, vain child but had an uncanny habit of getting people to fall in love with her. She had also been a very strong wolf, one of the strongest of his generation that he knew. She could be a very petty woman but he had seen her in battle and he had never for once doubted her abilities. 

This was so unfair. She was too young to die.

Soon he heard the loud sound of a conch horn coming from the pack house. The sun had set already, bringing with it the dark blanket of night. It was time for the burial. He turned and walked back to the training ground, where people were already gathered for the burial. As was the custom of his pack, torches had been lit and set into the grass at intervals around the training site. The wolves had gathered around a pyre, where Kylie's body wrapped in white cloth had been placed. In one corner was Kylie's younger brother. He had his hands wrapped around Kylie's mother and was consoling the woman who was crying profusely.

Logan walked to the front of the pyre. He looked at all his remaining pack members and silently made a head count. They were barely up to 150 members now. Once upon a time they had been a formidable pack of 500 members. For once in his entire life as an alpha, Logan felt the irrational desire to kill all the rogue wolves that were responsible for this with his bare hands.

But instead he pushed down that desire and faced his remaining pack members. "My fellow Lycans, another sister has gone to rest in our quest to protect our pack. Her blood will not go unavenged, as long as the Goddess watches over us. She is in a better place right now, because from the Goddess we came and to the Goddess we shall return."

"From the Goddess we came and to the Goddess we shall return." The members echoed.

Logan was handed a torch from one of the standby guards and he collected it, then raised it high above his head. The gathered wolves began to chant the usual Lycan burial words and he closed his eyes. The whole timeline of Kylie's life flashed before his eyelids, from when they had been ten years old and she had pushed him into a murky pond because he had refused to kiss her, to very recently when Aella had told her off and he had watched from the window of his gym.

He opened his eyes as the chanting got louder and lowered the torch to the dead body. The fire spread fast and engulfed the body like a sponge soaking up water. The body began to burn fast and thick smoke went up into the air. Soon the chanting shifted to howls as the smoke went up, and each pack member began to change to their wolf form. 

The howls were loud and full of agony as they pierced through the night. Logan felt the pain and loss like a second skin. He grieved for Kylie, for all the pack members that were killed. He closed his eyes and let the emotional pain of each of the howling pack members fall over him. He carried them on his shoulders like they were his. He knew their pain, he shared their pain because he was their alpha.

Soon the howling stopped and Logan turned back to the pack. They were all huddled around in blankets as they morphed back to human form. Those who brought clothes had changed into their clothes. Only some of the young children were standing naked before him.

"Battle is near. Nearer than we've ever expected." He says to the crowd after all of them had morphed. "The rogue wolves could attack now. We need to be strong, to be prepared. We need to protect our pack and our legacy. Our legacy must live on." He looked at the faces of each of the little children that stood before him.

"One of the rogue wolves was captured earlier today close to the border and he is currently in our custody." Logan continued. A murmur swept through the crowd as they whispered "Rogue wolf?" to each other. Someone at the back shouted "Kill him!" and a few others echoed his words. Logan calmed them down, then dismissed the meeting. 

He saw Kylie's mother and brother in a corner, her mother still shedding tears of grief. He walked over to them and placed a consoling hand on the aged woman's shoulder "I want you to take heart, ma'am."

"Kylie was a sweet little girl. She didn't deserve to die, not like this. Oh my poor Kylie, my sweet baby!" She wailed and her son rubbed her shoulders, murmuring consoling words. She dried her tears, then looked at the alpha again. 

"I want you to find her killer, Alpha. Make him pay, make all of them pay for this agony that we feel." She urged Logan and he nodded. "I will find them, ma'am. They won't go scot free, not on my watch."

He left the crying mother and walked back to the packhouse, where he went straight to his father's wing. He needed some time alone to think and reflect on what had happened, and didn't want the distractions of others.

His father was fast asleep as usual, with a picture frame clutched to his chest. Logan walked to his father and gently pried the picture from his aged fingers. The picture was, of course, one of his late mother. This one was an engagement picture of the late Jessica. She was smiling, her beautiful dimples the centre of her face, her dark hair blown around by a soft breeze.

Her fingers were splayed for the camera. Logan could see the silver band on her finger, set with black diamonds around. It was their family's engagement ring which had been passed down from Luna to Luna when they got married to an Alpha. Logan smiled as he looked at the ring. One day he hoped to put that ring on Aella's finger and make her his Luna forever.

His eyes traveled up Jessica's hand to her wrist area. There was a stamp of black there, and as Logan squinted, he realised that it was a tattoo. He had always seen the tattoo on his mother's hand but rarely paid attention to it when he was a kid. Now, the tattoo stood out like a beacon to him.

It also tugged at his memory as he tried to remember where he had last seen it. Then something clicked and he realised that the same tattoo was on the neck of the wolf that was captured.

Why would his mother and a rogue wolf have the same tattoo? He wondered. As he stared at the crescent shaped tattoo set in a black circle, something else clicked in his mind and his eyes widened at the realisation.

His mate had the same tattoo on her shoulder.