The Alpha: Claiming His Enemy's Daughter-Chapter 22: NEW MOON

"The new moon will be in five days from now and there will be a lot of people," Jace reminded him. "The king and the five alphas. The new moon will be the night after the welcoming party. Do you think you can go through it?"

Cane was silent for a while, then stared at his surroundings. Before his pack had fallen and their slavery days began, he had visited Blue Moon pack with his father twice, since they were neighboring packs and shared some natural resources, like the mining area.

Especially after ten years of slavery, he knew this pack quite well. This pack was almost like a ’second home’, in a very horrible way to him.

"I will." There were no more words that Cane said after that as he listened to other reports from Jace.

They were still trying to find the remaining three men that managed to escape from their sneak attack the other night and from what Ethan learned, they were still trying to get Mason out of the dungeon. They wanted to gather their power again to counter attack them, but their chances were so slim.

They walked until late in the evening.

And when they arrived at the pack house, Aria had been waiting for Cane. She was inside his bedroom preparing evening tea and snacks.

"Alpha, I heard you went to the town," Aria said, her eyes lit up at the sight of Cane, a soft smile caressed her lips, thinking of the seductive dress she was wearing beneath her cloak.

Seeing that, Jace resigned himself, because he didn’t want Aria to throw him a glare, kicking him out with her sharp eyes. This woman could be very mean when it came to Cane’s attention.

"I will see you tomorrow, Cane," Jace said.

But, Cane stopped him. "Call Ethan, we need to talk about the pack house in the Howling Wolf pack. I heard there is a problem there."

"But, you need to..." Aria immediately interjected.

"Not now, Aria," Cane said, he didn’t raise his voice, but she knew that this was not up to debate.

"The king will be here tomorrow, Aria," Jace told her, before he provided her with a brief explanation, since Cane wouldn’t do it. "It is so sudden and the king will arrive four days ahead of schedule."

Aria frowned. "Why is he doing that?"

"I don’t know, he is the king, he can do whatever." There was sarcasm in Jace’s voice, since he didn’t like that man. He closed his eyes and ears when they were forced to slave away ten years and now he wanted to be involved? That was so silly...

"I need to talk about important things," Cane said, as he walked past Aria. He squeezed her shoulder lightly and then sat on his chair.

"Okay," Aria said in a small voice, she looked disappointed. "Make sure you drink your tea, Cane."

"Hm." Cane started to open a new scroll in front of him. "I will."

Aria knew that he wouldn’t drink it, but she was wise enough not to argue with him. And so she walked out of the room with Jace, who was ordered to find Ethan.

"When will we go back to the Howling Wolf pack?" Aria asked, as both of them walked down the corridor.

"We need to settle things here first. This pack lost its leader, after all."

"Why do we need to take care of this pack?" Aria didn’t have a good memory of this pack, just like the other people.

"If we don’t, those people out there, who are still very loyal to Alpha Gerald, will gather power and it will only be a problem for us in the future if we don’t get rid of them now."

"I don’t mean that. I mean, we can kill them all."

"It’s not that easy, Aria."

Aria was clueless about strategy, she wanted for them to suffer and killing them all was the only solution in her mind. Only a few people are exceptions. They needed to torture them the way they had done to them in the past.

Meanwhile, other aggressors were mostly the alphas from different packs. So, it was almost impossible for them to take revenge on, since their statuses were too high.

"I don’t know about that, but I will be happy if we can torture Gerald’s children. He will be turning over in his grave if he knows we gave his son and daughter to the savages and let the guards rape them."

Jace could understand Aria’s anger, all of them shared the same feeling, but right now, the situation shifted and the problem that they were facing was akin to treading in dangerous ground, one wrong move and they would be thrown back to slavery, since this pack was still vulnerable. This was what Cane had been working on the past two months, since he sat in the alpha position.

"You can go back to the Howling Wolf pack, I think Cane will give you permission if you talk to him."

Aria frowned. "I want to go back with him, what will I do there if he is not coming?"

There was no point for her to go back to the Howling Wolf pack if Cane stayed back here. Even before they were captured and she became a slave in the Blue Moon pack, she was a slave in the previous pack, therefore, she didn’t hold any sentiment to that place.

"Don’t worry, it will not take long, though he didn’t say it, Cane must be missing his home too."

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Iris walked toward the nearby tent when she felt so thirsty. Even with the bucket hat that Hanna gave to her, it didn’t help at all. She still felt dizzy because of the scorching sunlight above her.

Her throat was so dry and she didn’t think she would be able to continue if she didn’t get to drink any water.

"Can I have a drink?" Iris asked timidly to the nearest slave trainer. His height and body was so intimidating to her.

The man turned around, looked her up and down, and seemingly remembered how she had saved Stone’s daughter and then tossed a waterskin to her without saying anything.

Iris was too surprised, thus she failed to catch it in time and the waterskin fell to the ground, fortunately, the water didn’t spill.

Seeing that, the man threw a disdainful look and turned around. It was clear that he didn’t want to deal with her, nor did he want her to be around.

Taking the waterskin, Iris walked away from the tent after saying a ’thank you’ and gulped down the water. It was not sufficient, but at least, it was enough to moisten her parched throat.

This mining site was the second largest in this continent, where there were many magic stones buried inside of it.

As a shifter, they didn’t have any use with magic stones, but the magicians and healers would pay a high price for one, especially people from different continents, where most of the magicians and healers lived.

Iris decided to take a break for a while under the shade of a big rock, because she felt so restless. She stared at the vast barren land blankly.

She felt this nagging feeling when she came here for the first time, but didn’t think much of it, but now this feeling became more and more clear to her.

As if there was something that forced her to go to a certain spot, but she ignored it. It simply didn’t make sense, but it didn’t take long before her curiosity got the best of her and she started to follow this strange feeling.

She had this urge to move.

Iris stood up, she continued walking forward, a few steps away from where she took a shelter and then crouched down and started digging.

They needed to crack every rock there to find the magic stones, sometimes they needed to dig so deep toward the mountain, but that area was purely restricted for men, since the risk of encountering a monster would be higher there.

Meanwhile, Iris started to think about what Hanna said this morning. She heard that the king and the five alphas would come in a few days and people would start to make preparations for a welcoming party.

Iris was worried that the king’s arrival would press alpha Cane to release her brother and let him lead the Blue Moon pack, since he was the rightful heir to the title.

If that happened, Mason would kill her without any scrupulousness, now that their father had been killed.

Amidst those depressing thoughts, Iris found something interesting, she stared at the black stone that she managed to dig out of the rock. She managed to set apart the rock and the stone.

And when she raised the stone against the sunlight, the dark stone started to change its color to dark blue.

"Is this a magic stone?" She muttered to herself. This was the first time for her to hold something like this. She had lived for twenty years, but she didn’t have much knowledge about her surroundings, since she rarely went out of the pack house. "This is so beautiful..."

Iris blinked her eyes and then she saw something, like an image, but she couldn’t tell what was that about... the image overlapped with the scene before her eyes.

But, before Iris could figure it out, someone grabbed her shoulder.

It was that man! The man that declared he was from the former beta’s family. The one that was beaten up by the slave trainers. He survived the monster attack apparently.

"You found a magic stone!" He exclaimed and then snatched it out of her hand, his eyes lit up as he started to walk away.

Iris didn’t remember his name, but he used to be around when Mason threw a party or two.

But, that was the last thing that Iris could think of, because the moment the stone slipped from her fingers and was taken away, the image disappeared.