Chapter 5

Ethelbert looks up at the moon with deep tormenting sadness that ran right down into him, possessing his darkening encumbered soul, the blood from the kill he still held in his mouth ran down his thick fur muzzle. Ethelbert closes his eyes and silently pray to the moon goddess to help them, for soon he fears that it would be too late for either of her sired races, for even he had long run out of reasons to hope. 

The sun was threatening the night sky by the time Ethelbert returned to his manor from his hunt. After he had satisfied his beast's hunger for still-warm raw flesh with his kill, eight plump rabbits, Ethelbert had then ventured into the city to hunt something different, something far larger and far more deadly. 

He had killed no less than three damned this night, two fallen Lycans and a fallen vampire but he hadn't been in time to save five mortal women the damned had hunted. Four mortal women had been killed by the group of two Lycan damned who had been feasting upon their still-warm flesh and the lone fallen vampire damned had drained the fifth of her life's blood. 

After he had set fire to the bodies of the damned to hide the evidence of their existence, Ethelbert had then seen to the bodies of the women; even though it was easier to dispose of the bodies by means that they would never be discovered, he respected the mortal's rituals for their dead. Instead of destroying the bodies, Ethelbert chose to hide their true cause of death and leave them somewhere they would likely eventually be discovered, mostly after the elements and nature had made it impossible for their true cause of death to be determined. 

The half-eaten body of four women Ethelbert had placed deep in the forests, off a hiking trail that wouldn't likely be used until the weather changed. When they are finally found, the condition of their body would be attributed to the elements and wild animals. He was regretful that he was forced to prolong the suffering of the mortal woman's loved ones but they would eventually be found and laid to rest and the last one, with whisper words of regret, Ethelbert had slit her throat and thrown her into the flowing stream that ran through the park near the university campus. It wouldn't be long before her body was discovered. 

It surprises him and gives him a dying ember of hope that an innocent mortal's death still had some effect on him. It was evident that there may still be enough of him left, despite the growing strength of the feral beast within him, that was saddened and angry at the loss of life, especially that of delicate mortal women who had been helpless to defend themselves against the maliciousness of the stronger, faster, immortal damned. 

In his wolf form, Ethelbert silently and lithely jumps the story-high solid white stone wall that surrounds the manor, his home, and sanctuary. The one place he didn't have to constantly guard himself. 

His wolf form was that of a sheer black wolf that was easily eight times the size of the largest wolf of nature. There was no other color that detectable in his pelt but in the light of the sun his pelt gave off a slight brownish tint that otherwise went unnoticed. His eyes, even though their shape changes into the more circular shape of the wolf, his natural color remain a brown. 

The eyes of his mom. 

There was a part of him that yearned for the lush green damp earth of the land he had been born upon, the land now called by the name town X. 

It had been centuries though since he had called the island land home, the place from which his parents ruled all of the Lycan kind. A part of him had been sorry to leave, so many centuries before but the time had come in which his beast had been unable to be leash by his dad's right of rule. Ethelbert had been born to be an alpha, a king and it was common knowledge that two alphas couldn't remain under the same roof, not even family, for long before the compulsion to fight to establish utter dominance over the other overruled the bonds of blood and so, Ethelbert had left for the new world in which he had brought together a pack to call his own. 

His parents had understood, after all, it was the way of their kind. They hadn't been thrilled when a century later his much younger sister, his only sibling, had decided to follow him, to join his pack but she had done so for two reasons. 

Firstly, his sister Jessica loves her brother and wants some freedom of her own from their royal parents and secondly, one of Ethelbert's most trusted and skilled brothers in arms who had been given the title as his general, his beta, had claimed the Lycan princess as his wolf mate. 

Hardy had been reluctant to leave his alpha, friend, and brother, for the sake of life in the royal court but for her, he would have. Fortunately, Jessica hadn't asked it of him, instead, she had gone with him to a new life away from the Lycan royal court. 

Ethelbert's closest and most trusted friends and brothers were his betas, his seconds in command so to speak. In the beginning, there had been four in his inner must trust circle, Hardy, Jessica's wolf mate, Favian, Gideon, and Lagan. 

Now only three remain as Lagan had, centuries before, become too close to losing control of his beast, the risk of him falling and becoming a damned had been great. He had given up any hope that he would find his wolf mate in time to save his soul. Rather than fall to his beast and become one of the damned that they hunted, Lagan had instead taken on an impossible mission, a suicide mission, from which he had never returned. He had chosen an honorable death rather than betray and endanger his brother, his alpha, and his pack.