I hardly noticed Rush’s hands on my shoulders as my chin tilted up towards the darkening sky. When dark finally hit the horizon, we would move.
“This will work,” his voice invaded my ears.
“It will.”
He smiled at the confidence in my pitch. The strength of the people in front of us was enough to keep my hands from shaking, it steadied me, excited me.
The moment the sun dipped behind the trees, we began moving. It was approximately a thirty-minute walk through our territory to the edge of the humans. There were no other sounds apart from the crunching of brush underneath our shoes.
Jonah had suggested shifting to travel faster and appear more threatening, but I softly shook my head. This was not a show of brute animal power; this was humans understanding each other. Our hearts held the same amount of blood, our brains fired the same neurons, or hands both shook in the cold.
Our DNA was the only thing separating them from shifting into a werewolf and howling at the same moon we do.
The tree line broke faster than I thought it would, and we came to the back of the shop buildings. Rush cocked his head to the side, leading us through a small alleyway, one by one, funneling out into the street.
I glanced around the town; a quiet emptiness filled the spaces. The human houses were not far from the shops, and it would only take one person to see us for the entire town to gather in the street.
We waited patiently, observing the way the streetlights flickered every few moments. Eventually, there was the quiet clack of car doors opening and closing and the low thrum of engines. Vehicles pulled up, one right after the next, each driver seemed to pull out a shotgun as they exited.
Harrison stepped through the mass; his nephews trailed after him. I searched for Hazel in the large group of strangers.
“I thought I told you mongrels to stay the hell away from my family,” Harrison growled, walking forward. Most of our groups stayed behind, Rush, and I stepped forward to speak to Harrison.
“And that would have been fine if you didn’t poison our family,” Rush said, his eyes narrowing.
“Now, how am I supposed to control what other humans do? I have no control over them,” Harrison grunted. His grey, freckled beard twitched.
“You have control over what you do. You could have informed us, but you didn’t. You could have shut down the water pipes, but you didn’t. So, we’ve come here as one last outstretched hand.”
“And what are you offering?” He seemed disinterested but asked anyway.
“Amnesty for all past transgressions.” Harrison’s eyes glittered. “In exchange for a treaty.”
“A treaty?” He smiled patronizingly. “You think a lousy piece of paper is going to change anything?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But your word can. I’ve seen the way these people look up to you, the same way our pack members look up to us. Our word is law. It’s the same for you.”
“What makes you think we even want a treaty after your mangy mutts came into our town and killed our loved ones?”
“Those wolves were a byproduct of what you all created.” Rush’s hand clenched around mine, and my fingers tingled with numbness.
“Like I said.” Harrison smirked. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Do you want to damn treaty or not?” Rush shouted. The humans shuttered, looking back and forth between each other. Harrison paused and tilted his head.
“I think…not,” he settled.
“You would deny your family the right to choose?”
Harrison glared at me. “My family and I stand as one,” he snarled. “We will not submit to some deranged beast who wants to tear our flesh and gut us.”
“Is that what you think we want? Not peace, not friendship, not an end to this back and forth, but to tear open your stomachs and eat your organs?” I scoffed. “You’ve watched too many movies.”
“Enough,” Rush grunted. He looked past Harrison to the large group of humans behind him. “We are offering you peace, we want to cohabitate this land, and you choose to fight us instead?”
Harrison’s nephews jogged toward us, hands filled with knives and guns.
“It’s time for you to leave our territory,” the buck-toothed one said. His brother puffed his chest out and stood strong.
“Your family is going to die,” Rush warned, slowly stepping back. “Your wives, husbands, children, mothers, they’re going to die.”
“If it means ridding the world of your kind, then so be it.”
“Do you really fear us that much that you refuse to acknowledge any other idea other than your own?” I smiled sadly. “You fear what you don’t understand, but you don’t try to understand it; you just kill it before it can hurt you. We weren’t trying to hurt you, but if it comes to a choice between your family and ours…we will do everything it takes to protect ours.”
“I’m glad we share the same values, she-wolf,” the blond brother called. “But we were here first, and we don’t like to share what’s rightfully ours.”
We didn’t refute their words. We continued to walk back to our pack members. They waited expectantly for our orders.
“We’re going home,” Rush announced. “We’re going to rest, with our own family, and then we’re going to start training for the day we come back here.”
“That’s it?” a younger Warrior asked, testosterone and adrenaline filling his blood.
“That’s it?” I mocked. “We just declared war on a race, we just decided it was okay to kill people, children. That’s not nothing. Take a moment to realize what will happen before you act disappointed that we didn’t give the kill order right now. Everyone deserves the chance to have one more night, one more night with their family. If you think this won’t affect you, you’re wrong.”
I let go of Rush’s hand and walked through our pack to the young Warrior. He stood
