Unknown I still can't believe I volunteered for this. What the hell was I thinking when I said Yes? Don't get me wrong, I love my Nephews to death, but taking them to a cave about ten minutes from home to spend a night? I must have completely lost my mind when I said I would take them camping, but then again it was worth it when I saw the smiles on their faces. Both boys are fast asleep a few feet away from me, and I smile as I see them snuggling closer to one another. They have been asking for weeks to go camping without their parents, but they are too young to go by themselves, and I offered to take them camping. I had to promise my Sister I wouldn't go too far, though. A soft breeze enters the cave, and the hairs on my neck rise as I smell the scent of blood—blood that smells very familiar. I slowly make my way out of the cave, and I take a deep sniff of the air; I wasn't mistaken. It is the scent of blood I smell, and my other half growls as I recognize the scent. I run towards home, making sure I am as quiet as possible, and I nearly roar out loud when I see a Wolf dragging a member of my family out of the caves we call home. Once he is outside, he doesn't waste time and rips one of my Aunts to pieces. A young female walks out of the cave. "They are all dead; get them out here and burn them," she says, and I see about twenty Wolves emerging from the tree line. I want to save my family from getting burned, but I am outnumbered, and I have my Nephews to think about. I watch the female as the Wolves drag my family out of the caves, and once they are done, one of them shifts back to his human form. "That is all of them, Wenonah," he says. In a matter of seconds, I am looking at the burning bodies of my family, and I am not sure how I am going to explain this to my Nephews. We are all the family the other has left, and I don't think I could keep living here. Just as I am about to leave, I see the female going into some sort of trance, and my heart skips a beat when I hear her say, "One male got away with two Pups; find them and kill them." I don't hesitate as I run back towards the cave where I left my Nephews. I give them a rude awakening, and the moment we are out of the cave I shift; both boys climbing on my back fast. We need to get as far away from here as we can, but I can already hear the Wolves closing in, and I decide to take a stand. "Get behind those bushes and stay quiet," I whisper, just before I shift back again.The Wolves look surprised when they see me in their path, and I doubt they understand that I am the one they are looking for. I get onto my hind legs as I roar in their direction, but most of them are going too fast to stop in time, and the first four are dead on the ground before most of them have come to a halt. I count eight more Wolves, and my claws rip two of them to shreds as they charge at me. The others start circling me, but I keep my eyes on the two in front of me, and when they lunge at me, I slice my claws through their chests—dead before they reach the ground. Keeping an ear on my Nephews, I keep slicing through the Wolves until I drop the last one dead to the ground, and that is when I hear a noise from behind me—a twig breaking. I hear one of my Nephews growl before I hear a loud whimper, and I run through the bushes to take down whoever hurt my Nephew. The Wolf looks terrified when he sees me emerge from the bushes, and before he can turn around, I have taken his head off. I turn to the boys to see what happened, and my heart sinks to my stomach; both of them are injured. It will take a long time for them to recover without their other half, and I need to find a place to hide. I find a huge oak not far from where we are, and I move both of them onto some sturdy branches before I tell them I will be right back. I head back towards home, hoping they have left by now, and to gather a few things I don't want to get lost. As I approach the caves that were once my home, I see the female staring in the direction I just came from. "They're all dead; it would be suicide to send anyone else after them. Let's get back to Night Shade and inform Calliope," she says before she turns her back on me and walks away. I wait another ten minutes before I walk towards the burned bodies of my family; I quietly send a prayer up to the Goddess and ask her to grant my family peace. I walk into the caves, and I find that they tossed everything upside down; they were definitely looking for something. They didn't find it though, and they never would have, even if they had spent weeks in here searching every inch of the caves. Only a few of us know the location, and those are also the only ones that can get to it; I happen to be one of them. I walk to the back of the cave that functioned as our living room, and unless you know what you are looking for, it looks like one solid wall. I place my hands on the side of what looks like a huge boulder, but it is just a flat stone that looks like a boulder, and I start sliding it to the left. Once it is out of the way, I walk into the small room behind it and quickly place the journals and the necklace in my backpack. I push the stone back in its place, just in case they return. I wouldn't want them to realize that someone took what they had been looking for. The boys are sound asleep when I return, and I decide to take a quick nap as well. I wake up after a few hours of sleep, and after we have some breakfast, we start walking. I am going to see if I can find the territory my Grandfather mentioned in one of his journals. He described where to find the entrance to a hidden territory, surrounded by mountains and only one way in and out. It will be the best place to hide for the time being, for the boys to recover and to come up with a plan. If my calculations are correct, we can get there sometime tomorrow afternoon. If it had been just me, I could be there in a few hours, but my companions are injured, and they are too young to travel that distance as fast as I can. They knew something had happened to our family, and I tried telling them the truth as easy as possible, but there is no easy way to tell two youngsters that their parents are gone. They have been awfully quiet, and I feel as sad as they look. We stop a few times along the way before I find us a place to spend the night. Both of them are so exhausted that they drift off to sleep the moment they lie down, and I ask the Goddess how I am supposed to look after two young boys. Unlike most in my family, I never found my fated Mate, and I gave up on finding her a few years ago. No one rubbed it in my face or made fun of me because of it, and I think they all understood me when I said I had given up. Even though I think my Mother had hoped I would keep looking until the day I die, but she never said it out loud. I will miss her hugs, the ones she still gave me even though I am thirty-six years old. I will miss her cooking, her scolding me for walking in butt naked, or how she would sometimes run her hand through my hair. My Nephews worshipped her, and she loved them to bits, and the three of us will have to learn to live without her. I lost my Sister, but my Nephews lost their Mother. Together we will have to rebuild our lives without our family, and I will make sure my Nephews will never want for anything; I will raise and love them as if they are my own. They will be my rock during these hard times, and I will be theirs; together we can make it through this great loss. The next morning, I wake the boys to have some breakfast and continue our journey towards our new home; I just hope I can find the territory. The boys are a bit more talkative this morning, but not as much as usual, and it might take a long time before they will be their old selves again. We keep to the forest and avoid the main road; I feel safer traveling like this with the boys. I can help them into a tree if trouble shows its ugly face, and I will deal with it while they are safely up in a tree. We take a few more stops than yesterday, and I fear we might need to find another place to sleep for the night. I keep their injuries clean, but I can see it is taking a toll on both of them, and at dinner time I find us a place to spend the night. It doesn't take long before both of them are fast asleep again, and I decide to look around and see if we are anywhere near our destination. Through the trees I see a light, and I wonder who lives in this area. I nearly lose my footing when I see a diner and motel as I look out of the tree line; that was not what I was expecting. I can smell Wolves and Lycans in the area, and as I sniff again, I even smell the scent of a Leopard—again something I wasn't expecting. I watch as a young female is cleaning the tables, and I hear a male at the door tell her that border patrol will keep an eye on her as she closes up the diner.