Ch 6

Nora It had been 15 years since Nora had rid herself of Jace’s Venom and everything that was in her past, she’d changed her name, officially reinventing herself, to keep Jace from tracking her down, and now she went by the name Nora Rosa, and although all her degrees were still under Nora Rosa Hammond. She'd always included her wolf in all her documentation because they were one and the same, so it was only right that Rosa also got to hold part of all the university degrees that she attained or any further education as well. There were no businesses attached directly to the name Nora Rosa Hammond; it appeared to the world that Nora Rosa Hammond had just quietly disappeared, from not only the wolfen world but the human world as well. She'd done this after attaining her degrees, helped by one Alpha Scott who she'd gone to work for right out of university. Now here she stood in her office inside the packhouse of the pack that she belonged to, that five minutes of the pain last night, it was over and done with, and she’d slept like the dead all night after it passed. As she did every year, it just seemed to sap the same amount of energy from her, as it had the very day that Vitirol had removed the venom from her. She and Rosa were both calm and settled upon waking up that morning, their body was well rested, and they'd never had to suffer it again. That had been the very last time; it was all over, her life was now as it had once been. She stood looking out the window, the sun was up, and she was holding a cup of lavender and rose tea in her hands. It was something Caliver had given her and told her to drink when she’d woken up on that altar. She had then given her a bag of it and told her to make a cup every year, and drink it upon waking; which she did. Nora had not only designed this packhouse that she now stood in, but she had also built it. It was a sleek all-glass building with rounded curves and a beautiful waterfall feature. All her buildings were designed around the moon’s halo. Taking inspiration from the very night, she’d rejected her Mate, and their Moon Goddess had seen fit to wash everything clean for her. It had rained that night soft and gentle, started right after she’d rejected that place, and continued to rain for nearly an hour. This packhouse; it was only a three-story building, but it was curved and long, held everything a packhouse needed, but it was as grand and luxurious on the inside, as it was on the outside. With lights inlaid into the curvature of the ceilings, and at night when all the lights were on, it kind of looked like a neon-lit nightclub, with an orange yellow glow. The grounds she’d had landscaped around the building, there was a massive pond for the waterfall to drop into, all the rocks had carefully been placed around the pond to make it look completely natural, and as though the packhouse seamlessly flowed from it. She’d had rocks brought in to match the deep dark grey metal of the building’s roof and designed halo where a waterfall fell from. There was no lockdown feature to this packhouse, but every inch of the glass was unbreakable, made with hammerglass; something she’d tested out, the pack’s wolves had all tried to break through it; none could. What she’d saved on the cost of a fully reinforced lockdown mode, which would have ruined the aesthetic of the building, had been put towards the hammerglass. She did know all packhouses used a polycarbonate glass normally, and then added in a layer of a lock-down to reinforce it. Not this packhouse; it was the first of its kind, and already she had offers coming in for her from the Wolfen Council to design packhouses for new rising packs. She had seven offers on her desk right now and was waiting on a return call from Alpha Garrett; he was busy currently. His Luna Harmony was in labour when she’d called, and his Beta, Wyatt, had told her it looked to be going to be a long hard labour. She’d understood that and told him she’d wait and hoped Harmony would do well. But she also knew Alpha Elyssa needed her new packhouse to be underway soon. She was expecting her son’s Alpha, of a father, to come and try and claim his boy soon. By the end of the year, she was guessing; if it wasn’t in the next month or so. If the child’s lineage wasn't kept from his Alpha father; who had no idea about the child at all. By his own father and stepmother, half-brother all who’d just found out that her son; was their grandchild and nephew. Her son, Matthew, had just had a kin bond snapped into place between him and his uncle, who was a few months younger than himself, a pup created between Elyssa’s mother and stepfather. Both of those boys were now at the same Alpha College, under Alpha Gretta’s tutelage and had come face to face for the very first time. That had made Nora laugh when she’d taken Elyssa's call, and Nora had stated, “Really, after everything you went through and suffered at the hands of your stepfather, what that bastard did to you himself? Do you really think Reid will come and try to claim your boy?” Elyssa didn't know the answer to the question herself, but was wanting to push her building of the packhouse ahead of schedule in prep for that very thing. It was seen by herself as more urgent than other builds, and she would reschedule things according to the urgency; it was in all her wolfen contracts that if an urgent safety issue arose for another pack, they had to agree to their job being pushed back to accommodate it. Many argued over that clause, but she didn't budge and the Wolfen Council could also push work back in favor of something they wanted. Those that wanted her to build for them either signed it and dealt with it, or didn't get the build at all. It was that simple, in her mind, she would not be harassed or bullied into anything either. That would just end the contract right away. She’d shaken her head after getting off the phone with Elyssa because she also knew Elyssa’s son, Matthew. He was pure-blooded. ‘Good luck to that Alpha,’ she’d thought absently to herself. She smiled to herself as she looked over the pack; a pack that was now hers, not something that she had ever expected to have, being that she was born of low-ranking warriors. But she was in charge, this wasn’t just her home, but it was her pack; and it had been for 10 years now. She, however, did not smile at the memory of how she’d gotten it; today was the anniversary of that fateful day, and like the ripping of that venom from her veins every year. She recalled the horrid events that led up to this life-changing moment as well. She’d nearly died the night she’d stumbled into this deserted pack, not knowing it was a pack at all, she’d just been blindly fleeing for her life. She and Rosa had been running away from the dead rogues that had been hunting her in case others smelled the blood and came to investigate. Fleeing from the place where she’d had to fight off two male rogues who’d come across out in the depths of the woods, in human form, she’d let Rosa out and had just shifted back to take a swim in a stream. They had scented her out and wanted a piece of her, taunted her about she’d be ruined when they were finished with her, and she’d barely managed to escape them intact. She’d injured one severely. Rosa had managed to rip her claws through its leg and hit a main artery by pure chance, and it was out of the fight, would bleed out in a matter of minutes, but that had not deterred the other one at all. He’d been bigger and stronger, and she was only small and, although she had taken to training in human gyms to learn to fight, to better to protect herself when off pack territory. She’d just suffered the agony of removing that venom from her veins the night before, something that she usually followed up with a run in the woods for Rosa, to be out and free so they could forget the pain of it. She’d taken a drive north from Triple Moon to just be alone out in the woods of forest. That rogue, he’d nearly gotten what he wanted from her, a piece of her body. She’d fought like a demon to save herself from being brutalized by it. She’d not even known she’d gotten a blow into it, that would turn the tides and save her life at first. A scrapping of her claws to its chest as he’d gotten hold of her wrists to pin her down finally, which had seen one of her claws in her effort to push him away and stop him, go between two of its ribs and punctured its lung. The rogue had struggled to breathe suddenly and become weaker in its fight to have its way with her, and that was when she and Rosa had gotten the upper hand; that single moment, had saved them from being taken against their own will. They’d sliced its neck open once they’d freed a clawed hand from its weakened grip, when it had suddenly clutched at its chest, while it tried to breathe, and given her the opportunity to save herself. She’d shoved him off her and kind of lain there on the ground for a minute, unable to do anything but sob, she'd been terrified and was filled with pain, from all her own wounds, and she’d had many of them. So many it was hard to get up and move away from the scene of the fight; but she had somehow managed to do it. Pick herself up and stumbled blindly along in the dark of the night through unknown woods, not knowing where they were going, she’d just been fleeing away, lost track of where she’d been, where she’d left her car. When her foot had hit ground that she knew to be pack territory. The very distinct difference had been felt by her, and she’d prayed someone would come along and help her, but there was no one there. No border patrol, no warriors; nothing, it was an old, abandoned pack. She kind of stumbled and staggered about looking for a place to hide her injured body and had crawled injured and exhausted into a bush and rolled all the way under it in the hope she would be out of sight. There was nothing she could do about the smell of her or the blood that was oozing from her still open wounds, but with her body hidden as it was, she was hoping any other rogues out there that smelled all the blood would think she was a dead rogue. She had both their bloods on her as well, and seeing as she was half buried. She’d fallen unconscious under that shrub and woken up with the sun shining, and she’d felt very weird all over. She’d opened her eyes and looked about her, to see where she was and seen she was lying under the greenery of a rose bush.