Humanity /2/ TO

Ch. 8 The Brothers That Care Forgot

OUR DAUGHTERS
[2×08]

NOW THAT FINN AND KOL WERE BOTH BEING HELD CAPTIVE IN THE COMPOUND, I HEADED TO THE BAYOU. Kol insisted on mocking me, and Finn was just psychotic. I didn't want to stay in the same house as either. Right now, though, I was dealing with the current pack drama.

"The wolves are freaking out. They know it must be an insider who took down Vincent, seeing as no one could've been near him," Aiden was telling me, Hayley and Jackson.

"Anybody suspect it was you?" Jackson asked.

"Not yet. But they're gonna figure it out which pretty much means I'm screwed unless we come up with a plan," Aiden said.

"Call a meeting. The whole pack, tonight. If they're so scared, now is the time to convince them they need to ditch Esther," I said.

"She gave them moonlight rings," Aiden said, holding up the hand his ring was on.

"Those rings make you slaves," I said.

"They make us powerful. We were exiles before, now we run the city. Vampires are scared of us. No one, including me, is gonna walk away from that-"

Jackson stood up, getting in the younger werewolf's face. "Set the damn meeting," he said, and walked off.

I exchanged a look with Aiden, before me and Hayley followed Jack out to the dock. We found him with a beer in his hand. "So are you gonna work on a rousing speech or just get day-drunk?" I asked.

"Little bit of both," he said.

"Jack, it's ten a.m.," I said, taking the beer from him.

He picked up a notebook. "You know, for months, I wrote down every single word Ansel said. An entire history of our people. If only I had known he was Klaus' father, I would've asked him a hell of a lot more. I was up all night looking through this trying to find something- anything, that'll help me figure out how to get our people back together," he said, and threw the book back down.

"Let me guess. No such luck," Hayley said.

"Nothing viable. And now Ansel's dead. Along with Ollie. So forgive me if I need a beer because right now I can use all the help I can get," he said. He took the beer back and walked off. I glanced at the book, before picking it up.

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Me and Hayley walked towards Jack, who was chopping wood. Hayley seemed fairly ticked off by what we had found in the book, but I was pretty sure she was really just scared on the inside.

"You wanna stop playing mountain man and explain why you kept this from me?" she asked the werewolf, holding up the book.

Jackson sighed, dropping his axe. "Why don't I jog your memory?" I asked, grabbing the book and beginning to read. "'The werewolves' power can be traced back to the myth of the Unification Ceremony, a ritual that bestowed certain unique abilities onto every member of the pack.'"

"Do you believe this?" Hayley wondered.

"I didn't at first. Then Ansel swore he saw it with his own eyes. Then he dies and I find out he's resurrected from one thousand years ago, which means he was alive to see it," Jackson explained.

"How did we not know about this?" I asked.

"You two didn't grow up out here. Every kid grows up hearing the stories. Back in the day, werewolf bloodlines were all distinct. Some had speed, some had strength, some could sense enemies miles away. Now, to evolve we would perform a ritual. A shaman would marry the alphas of each bloodline. And then the special abilities of each would be inherited mystically, by everyone who participated in the ritual. See, after a few centuries, everybody had the same abilities so alpha marriages became political. They became about power, about territory," Jackson explained.