Page 28 of Alpha's Forbidden Bond

I clicked on the ‘1 New Email’ notification, and it opened up her inbox. The message waiting for her at the top of the list wasn’t work-related, however. It was personal. But that didn’t stop me from opening it. I saw a word that caught my eye and simply couldn’t resist.

The subject, in big, bold letters, said Information On Vilks, and the sender mysteriously went by the name M. S. Kingsley. I’d never heard that name before, but I needed to know why Georgie requested information on the Vilks family. And who she was getting it from.

The introduction to the email was simple. Hey Georgie, here’s what I could find. However, the body of the text was dense and inconsistent in formatting. I zoomed in on the first paragraph, which looked as if it had been copied and pasted from the online catalog of old newspapers. The font was like that of a typewriter, and the language made me think it had been written long ago.

Silverleaf will celebrate its 20th annual Harvest Fair this weekend. Vendors all over town have been asked to join in the festivities, bringing offerings in the form of vegetables, meats, cheese, and confections. There will be a small circus and animal show for children. Mayor Johnson is excited to invite everyone to celebrate another amazing year in this wonderful town and encourages those who hold reservations regarding some of the festival activities to come see for themselves that it is all in good fun.

*In the name of objective journalism, this publication would like to address the controversies surrounding the animal show and personally state that our own investigation resulted in no concrete evidence of animal neglect or abuse. Still, a group of vocal locals, spearheaded by Mr. and Mrs. Vilks, owners of the compound on the western side of town, have expressed regret over the town’s decision to display caged tigers, snakes, and wolves. They refused the chance to provide us with a comment on the matter.

“20th annual Harvest Festival?” I frowned and opened a new tab, googling the year the first festival was held in town. 1898. Which meant the newspaper clipping was more than a hundred years old. I had no idea the Vilks had lived on that compound for that long. But why did they care so much about the caged animals? Granted, I didn’t think it was right to keep tigers and snakes under those conditions either, but that was 1918. I didn’t think animal rights was a topic people often discussed back then. Perhaps I was wrong.

“Hey, are these the online orders?”

Georgie appeared out of nowhere, causing me to suck in a sharp breath that I hoped she hadn’t heard. I turned around and saw her pointing at the pages atop the printer.

“Yup. But I’ve got a couple more to print out.”

I spun back, exited the email as quickly as possible, and worked on the rest of the orders. It wasn’t until much later in the day that I got a chance to go into Georgie’s email and forward the message to myself when she wasn’t paying attention. I then deleted the forwarded email from her sent box and marked the initial message from M. S. as unread. I didn’t feel great about sneaking behind my friend’s back, but then again, she was doing the same thing, wasn’t she?

I knew that didn’t justify my actions, but I pretended like it did so that I could get through the rest of my shift without feeling bogged down in guilt.

I wasted no time looking for more answers after getting home that night. I opened my laptop the second I sat on my bed and went to check my email. Tearing through the rest of what had been sent, I soon realized that there wasn’t much in the way of pertinent information. There was another newspaper article from the early 1900s about a bar fight that included a man with the last name of Vilks. That didn’t strike me as being out of the ordinary. Apart from that, a photograph was attached to the email that depicted two men in overalls dragging a hoe across a rocky patch of land, and the label underneath indicated that the land was somewhere on the compound. There was no mention of who was in the photo or why it had been taken in the first place.

Finally, the most recent piece of ‘evidence,’ so to speak, was a link to an online article from 2011. When I clicked the highlighted blue letters, it took me to a primitive website with bright pink text against a purple background. It looked like the kind of website a teenage girl would’ve made after getting her first computer in the early ‘00s. Along the edges of the page were photographs of what appeared to be fluffy dogs, each with blood-red eyes.

WELCOME TO THE WOLF PACK

That was scrawled across the top of the front page, and the tabs underneath were labeled as follows: Blog, Photos, About Me, and News Coverage.

What the hell am I looking at?

I first clicked on the About Me section, where I quickly learned that my first impressions had been spot on. This website was created by a sixteen-year-old who solely identified himself or herself as Alpha. The paragraph they’d written about themselves included only surface-level information about how they were born and raised in California and were going to graduate high school a year early because they skipped a grade. The date at the bottom of the page told me that the person who wrote this would now be older than me. But why had Georgie’s informant sent her this? What did it have to do with the Vilks? I skimmed the rest of the bio, not really interested in this kid’s high school musings, but then—just when I thought my search had truly hit a brick wall, I was sucked in. The last few sentences of the bio were by far the most interesting if not evidence that whatever kid spent their time making this website was seriously troubled.

To anyone who thinks I’m making this up, please refrain from posting on here and/or harassing the rest of the wolf pack. Negative or hateful posts will be deleted. We know what’s real, we know we’re right, and not believing in werewolves doesn’t make you better in any way, shape, or form. It just makes you naive.

“Werewolves?” I stared at the word for a second, making sure that I’d read it correctly. It wasn’t a word I encountered all that often in daily life. “What?”

I took a second look at the ‘dogs’ lining the edges of the website and realized my mistake. Those weren’t huskies with red eyes. They were werewolves. My curiosity piqued after this, and I started going through the entire site, trying to figure out why the person Georgie was communicating with about the Vilks had included this link. How was it connected? After roughly two hours of furiously reading and clicking on corresponding links, I still had no idea what to make of it all. The blog included posts about possible werewolf sightings in the Silverleaf area, but mentioning my town name was the only thing that seemed even remotely relevant. Other than that, what I encountered wasn’t much more than the ramblings of some over-imaginative kid. Was it possible the emailer had mistakenly put the link in the email?

Then, finally, when my eyes were starting to ache from all the screen time and I was thinking about calling it a night, I clicked on an old post from when the website first went live over a decade ago. It was the last piece of information I would read before closing my laptop, and it happened to be the most pertinent. The post was about the compound in western Silverleaf and how there had been not one but two mysterious animal attacks near the Vilks’ property. Due to the nature of this kid’s beliefs, they were chalking the attacks up to werewolves, but I figured there had to be at least a handful of real animals in the forests over there that could’ve attacked.

It was definitely werewolves. The local authorities have ruled these murders accidents, but that’s because they are being paid off. Or they know about the wolves and are too afraid to stand up to them. I’ve got all the information I need, though. I finally know where the pack is located, and I’m going to search for more evidence. I’ll go to the compound at night when they are more likely to be roaming about in shifted forms. Updates to come.

Considering the fact that the following dozen or so posts didn’t mention anything about the Vilks property or the kid’s trip to the compound, I assumed that he or she chickened out. I couldn’t blame them. The one time I’d stumbled onto the Vilks’ private property, I was so scared I nearly destroyed my car trying to make a speedy getaway. Or perhaps their parents told them they couldn’t go galivanting around a strange compound in the middle of the night, and that was the end of their epic adventure. Either way, a part of me was relieved to find that nothing bad had happened to this strange, albeit well-meaning juvenile. If they’d gone up the road to the Vilks property at night, who knows how someone like Andreas might’ve reacted? A sixteen-year-old, fueled by the excitement of their paranormal beliefs, wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, even in the dead of night.

On the other hand, I could probably sneak up there and look around—go undetected—as long as I was very, very careful.

The moment the idea struck me, I knew I had to act fast. If I sat around considering how stupid the plan was, I would surely talk myself out of it. But I needed to know the truth about this weird family, about the lives they lead on the compound, and maybe even find out if there was anything even remotely real about the stuff this kid wrote about over ten years ago. Not that I thought any of them were actually werewolves. That was insane. But that didn’t mean they weren’t still dangerous. And now Georgie had potentially put herself in harm's way by looking for this information, which was another reason I couldn’t ignore my concerns about the Vilks.

I threw a black hoodie over my pajamas and slipped into my boots. Checking to make sure the pepper spray was still on the keychain in my purse, I opened the door as quietly as I could and snuck out into the night. When I got to my car, I paused, my fingers curled around the door handle. A burst of wind rushed past me and brought with it a sobering thought—if I got caught trespassing on Andreas’ land again, he probably wouldn’t hesitate to call the cops. It didn’t matter what had happened between us the last time we came face to face. I could tell this man valued his privacy over just about anything else, and the fury I might unlock by showing up unannounced, in the middle of the night, no less, was suddenly causing my stomach to twist up in knots.

This is a bad idea.

The adrenaline I’d felt a moment ago was still burning hot in the pit of my stomach, but now it was only making me more anxious. My mind raced with all the ways this plan could go horribly wrong.

I let my hand drop and laughed under my breath. “What am I doing? This is insane!” I was looking down at my feet, and that’s when I noticed a little piece of paper poking out from underneath my boot. Frowning, I bent down to pick it up and held it up so that the streetlamp would illuminate the text. It was a black business card with light gray text. Very professional. There was no name listed—only information about a company.

But not just any company.

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