Chapter 8 Calling the elders
Rhett pov:
“Do you understand what you just saw?” I asked, my voice rough as I shut the door behind us.
Alexandra stood in the middle of the living room, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her face pale in a way I had never seen before. The scent of fear rolled off her in waves, sharp and metallic, overpowering everything else.
She nodded slowly, but her eyes remained fixed on the door Tasha had walked out of minutes ago, as if she expected it to burst open again.
“That wasn’t… normal,” she said carefully. “Rhett, that wasn’t just a wolf who came back.”
My chest tightened. I dragged a hand through my hair and paced across the room, the wooden floor creaking beneath my steps. This house had always felt solid, safe, a place of control. Tonight, it felt fragile, like one wrong breath could shatter everything inside it.
“She was dead,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Six months. I stood beside her to see if she caught a breath even for once, before her body disappeared. It took me the whole three days to make sure she was gone for good. And when her body disappeared, we tracked her blood until it faded into nothing.
The elders declared her gone. Her parents buried her without a body.” I didn’t mention the painful fact why I left her body there for three days,without doing anything about it. That horrifying view still shook me to the core.
Alexandra swallowed. “And yet she stood right here. Looking at us.”
I stopped pacing and turned to her. “You saw her eyes.”
Her lips trembled. “They weren’t wolf eyes. Not fully. There was something else in them. Something cold.”
A memory surfaced without permission. Tasha standing at my door, thinner, paler, her scent wrong in a way that made my instincts recoil and ache at the same time. The bond that should have sung between us felt distorted, stretched thin, like a snapped wire still humming with dangerous energy.
“She asked me why everyone was afraid of her,” I said quietly. “She didn’t even know.”
Alexandra took a cautious step closer. “Rhett… what does this mean for us?”
The question hit harder than I expected. I looked at her, really looked, and saw fear beneath the composure she always carried so well. She had aligned herself with Stoneclaw knowing Emerald Pack history, knowing Tasha was my mate by bond and fate. No one had expected fate to crawl back from the dead wearing something darker.
“It means,” I said slowly, “that we are standing on the edge of something very old.”
Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy.
“She didn’t attack,” Alexandra said after a moment. “If she were truly lost… wouldn’t she have?”
I exhaled sharply. “Not yet. That’s what scares me.”
I could still hear Tasha’s voice in my head, confused, wounded, demanding answers I had not been able to give her without destroying what little stability remained. She had smelled the truth on me before I even spoke it. She always had been too perceptive for her own good.
“She’s heartbroken,” Alexandra whispered. “And if what the old texts say is true…”
“They get stronger,” I finished for her. “Every rejection. Every betrayal. Every grief.”
Alexandra’s eyes flicked to the windows, as if expecting shadows to move beyond the glass. “Then we can’t pretend she’ll just disappear again.”
“No,” I said. “We can’t.”
I left Alexandra at the house despite her protests. This was not something I wanted her in the middle of, not yet. She was Snowpack, and this situation was already a powder keg. If the Emerald Pack believed Stoneclaw had a hand in what happened to Tasha, old alliances would fracture overnight.
The Deva house was dark when I arrived, but I could sense movement inside. Fear had a scent, and it clung to the place like smoke after a fire.
Tasha’s mother opened the door halfway, her eyes widening the moment she recognized me.
“You,” she whispered, as if the word itself burned her tongue.
“I need to talk,” I said. “Please.”
For a moment, I thought she might slam the door in my face. Then her shoulders sagged, and she stepped aside without a word.
The living room looked untouched, frozen in time, as if Tasha might walk in any second and complain about the stale air or the dim lights. Her father sat on the couch, staring at nothing. Ama’s door upstairs was shut tight, the scent of fear strongest there.
“She came back,” I said quietly.
Her mother let out a broken sound and pressed her hand to her mouth. “You saw her.”
“Yes.”
Her father finally looked up. “Then it’s worse than we feared.”
I frowned. “Feared?”
They exchanged a look that made my stomach drop.
“We knew,” her mother said, voice shaking. “The elders warned us what resurrection would mean for a hybrid like her. That if she ever returned…”
“She wouldn’t be the same,” her father finished. “And she wouldn’t belong to the living or the dead.”
Anger flared through me. “You knew this and said nothing? We could have buried her properly before her body disappeared.”
“We prayed she wouldn’t wake,” her mother sobbed. “We prayed she would rest.”
The words hit like a blow.
“She came to you,” I said. “She needed you. And you called her a demon.”
Her mother broke down completely then, sinking into a chair. “I was afraid. I didn’t recognize her. She felt wrong, Rhett. Like something wearing my daughter’s skin.”
I clenched my fists. “Fear feeds it.”
Her father nodded grimly. “That is what the elders taught us. Demonic hybrids grow through emotional rupture. Love denied. Home rejected.”
“So you turned her away, and didn’t inform any of us…” I said bitterly.
“We thought it would keep her from hurting us,” her mother whispered. “We were wrong.”
Silence settled, heavy with regret.
“What do we do now?” her father asked.
I exhaled slowly. “We call the elders. All of them. Emerald. Stoneclaw. Even Snowpack if we have to.”
Her mother looked up sharply. “Snowpack?”
“She was at my house,” I said. “Alexandra saw her.”
That sealed it. Fear rippled through the room like a living thing.
“She knows now,” her father said. “About the bond.”
“Yes,” I said. “And about us moving on.”
Her mother’s face twisted in pain. “That heartbreak alone could push her over the edge.”
I turned away, guilt clawing at my chest. “I didn’t think she’d come back.”
“No one did,” her father said. “But now she has.”
“And if she loses control,” her mother whispered, “she won’t just come for us. She’ll come for the packs.”
The elders gathered before dawn.
Stone faces. Ancient eyes. Power humming just beneath the surface.
“She is alive,” I said, standing at the center of the circle. “And she is not what she was.”
Murmurs spread instantly.
“A resurrected hybrid,” one elder said. “With warlock blood.”
“An abomination,” another spat.
I stiffened. “She is still Tasha.” Mentioning her as a demon still clawed at my heart…even after all that happened, I still couldn’t bring myself to hear them talk like this about her…it was like she was listening to us from afar. And that scared me.
“Is she?” an elder from Emerald asked coolly. “Because what walks among us may wear her face, but demons remember rejection. They remember pain.”
“She has already been rejected enough,” I snapped.
“That is precisely the problem,” the elder replied.
The room fell quiet.
“What is your proposal?” the head elder asked.
I hesitated, every instinct screaming in opposite directions.
“We will find her,” I said slowly. “Before she finds us.”
“And then?”
I thought of her eyes. Her confusion. Her pain.
“And then we decide whether she can be contained,” I said, voice low, “ If she has survived now, then she will have her own town to stay in. We can’t let her be here among others. ”
The word echoed like a curse.
As the meeting dissolved into heated debate, a cold certainty settled in my bones.
Tasha Deva was no longer just a lost mate or a tragic memory.
She was a force.
And whether she meant to or not, she was about to tear every pack apart.
An elder leaned toward me, eyes sharp and knowing.
“Alpha Rhett,” he said quietly, “if the demon hybrid has found sanctuary with a human… you may not be the one she comes for first. She will maul even the innocents.”
My breath caught.
“What do you mean?”
The elder’s gaze darkened.
“I mean,” he said, “she will protect what she claims and use them against us. That’s what demons do, play puppets to seek their revenge. And whatever she claims next will become untouchable… or dead.”