The Moon Goddess' Chosen

470 Out of Range

Alpha Phillip froze for a moment, seemingly unable to digest what he’d just heard. He was the one supposed to take care of the Sirius empire in the absence of the king, was he not?

On top of all the work he had to do, a mysterious grey-eyed werewolf claiming to be the fabled and missing Seeker had come to him with the worst possible news any wolf would ever get the chance to hear…

His mind wrestled with accepting her words as true or simply downplaying them as delusions. He wanted to deny everything she’d just said. The empire had known peace for so long… and yet, here she was, talking about the world’s greatest threat… The Rogue King.

And what’s more, she claimed to know exactly where the man was. From the king’s journey to the Golden Moon pack nearly two years ago, Phillip knew of this woman’s existence and of her involvement with a mysterious attack back then.

Alpha Jackson had long shared his report on the matter. While there had never been blood or a body to speak of from the scene, the lady had, without a doubt, gone missing. Vanishing without a trace.

Except for just one.

Madeline, the girl who’d escaped from this ordeal, confirmed the presence of the Rogue King in that house that day. What was even more convincing were the memories she shared with the king through the mind link.

There was no denying it. She had the perfect image of the Rogue King in their living room that day.

If anyone knew the true details of what had happened that night, it would be this woman standing right in front of him. At the time, another source of insight allowed them to affirm that this really was a rogue incident.

.....

And that was the presence of a hunter named Micah Chase. The Cleanest Rogue Kidnapping… is what the incident had been named.

“I need to speak to the king. The royals need to know,” Beatrice spoke up, snapping the man out of his convoluted thoughts.

Alpha Phillip sighed before reaching for the landline at the king’s desk. As he dialled in the king’s number, he asked, “Is the king in danger?”

“He shouldn’t be… but… I’ve been hospitalised for almost two years. I don’t know,” the woman answered.

The man’s fingers paused and hovered over the buttons of the dial-up phone, “Two years… What happened?”

“I escaped… but they chased me down. I barely got away with my life. I honestly don’t know how I survived. I can remember drowning… over and over again,” Beatrice shuddered at the images that constantly looped through her mind while she’d been in the hospital.

“I’m sorry,” Phillip’s voice softened before he hit the call button.

“Would you…” Peter opened his mouth to say something, but the words got caught in his throat when he looked into the crimson eyes of the person he was talking to.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that he was standing in the royal palace of Sirius… and that Alpha Phillip was the beta alpha of the Sirius pack…

The feeling of safety and familiarity he’d begun to develop during the casual conversation vanished the moment he tried to approach the large man.

Phillip, on the other hand, barely noticed. He took the man’s sudden silence for respect and unwillingness to interrupt him during the phone call. Taking a casual guess about what the young man had intended to ask, he hit the ‘speaker’ button and placed the phone down before waiting patiently.

The phone buzzed for a short moment before the agent’s voice came through…

“The number you are trying to dial is currently out of our network’s range…”

Alpha Phillip held still as the message sounded three more times before the speaker went silent. The alpha scrunched his brows in confusion and tried the number again…

and again…

The fourth time, his hand was caught by Whitney’s dainty hand, calming him down.

“Where is His Majesty supposed to be?” Beatrice asked.

“At the Royal Games with the rest of the royal family except for the ones going through the Trials. That’s if the princess and prince haven’t finished with the Trials yet… Usually, they are done with that around now,” Lyla answered thoughtfully before the alpha could.

Her sudden interruption allowed him to clear his mind and come up with another idea immediately. “I’ll try another number,” he said to Whitney and began to dial someone else’s number.

The man turned on the speaker and mumbled to himself, “Come on, Jackson. You wouldn’t suddenly lose your phone now, would you?”

Despite the beta alpha’s silent plea, the same agent’s voice rang back through the speakers. The customer was out of their network’s range. This message was only ever heard when the phone belonging to that person was somewhere with no cellphone coverage.

When they were just about to call another time, the landline sprung to life. The screen flashed blue signalling an incoming call from:

‘Office of Lycaon.’

The alpha answered the phone, “Alpha Phillip of Sirius.”

“Phillip? Oh, you’re the one they left in charge of Sirius. I’m Alpha Caden of the Lycaon. I’ve been trying to call His Majesty but his number hasn’t gone through and was hoping you could help me with your king’s number. Queen Margaret, Alpha Jason and delta Bella won’t pick up their phones either and I’m starting to worry.”

“I have just tried to call King Davin but his phone seems…”

“…Out of range?” Caden’s voice interrupted.

“Yes.”

“I’m getting so sick of hearing the same thing over and over again. They can’t all possibly be out of range. I was about to call someone to get the landline checked when I called this number,” Caden replied.

“A few years ago, my daughter got involved in an attack by the rogues and claimed they had brought down the cell towers to keep them from calling for help. Could this be the same thing?” Whitney spoke up.

“Oh… that makes sense now. I always wondered why the teachers didn’t just call for backup,” Peter mumbled to himself.

“Yeah, I remember that. But then, that complicates this entire situation. The Royal games are among the most heavily guarded events in the world right now. Attacking the Great Colosseum would be suicide. That’s where most of the hunters have gone,” Caden said thoughtfully, trying to find a reason for taking down the communications to the Great Colosseum.

“But that’s the whole point, Caden. Everyone is so focused on the Royal Games right now that the Capitals and every other pack and village in between have their security drastically reduced. It’s not to keep the Great Arena from calling for help…

It’s to keep help from coming out of it. Without any way for us to contact the hunters and Royals at the Great Colosseum, the world outside of the Royal Games remains in grave danger.”

“But… that could be anywhere. The rogues could attack anywhere and we wouldn’t even know about it…” Caden’s voice began to waver.

“Yes. The best thing for us to do now is to remain calm and think rationally. From the sweeps that have been made through no-man’s-land, there is barely a rogue to speak of, which means, their numbers were heavily reduced during the last battle and they’ve had no way of increasing them. Not to mention the loss of the royals’ power to turn more people into werewolves,” Alpha Phillip reasoned.

“The best thing for us to do now is to focus on protecting the lives of people everywhere outside of the Great Arena. Thanks to the hunters, the Bunker Project was completed in under a year. Should anything happen, having the World Bunkers ready by the time of an attack would increase our chances of avoiding the worst.”

There was a period of silence before Caden spoke back, “Preparation for the worst… Shouldn’t we be trying to contact the Royals first?”

“The Royals are probably the most protected people in the world at this point. Not to mention there are so many people at the Great Arena.

If anyone was to find out that the rogues were behind this sudden loss of communication, we would have a mass panic on our hands and that will alert the rogues of our knowledge. Who knows what would happen then? You know what a rogue does when cornered,” Alpha Phillip didn’t have to say a lot after that.

Caden had witnessed rogue insanity firsthand back in Brigadia. The rogues had lost all their sense of self-preservation and gone rabid, “Anything to keep that from happening again,” he sighed.

“Again? Just how many things have you seen?”

“Enough for a single lifetime,” Caden replied, “I’ll get on activating the bunkers and getting everything ready in case of an attack. I’ll also notify all the alphas I can reach on this new course of action. Hopefully, your hunch is wrong and it’s just the weather.”

With that, the phone went silent with a final beep, “I wish we all shared that sense of optimism.”