Chapter 2: Return to Jasper

"What's up in Jasper?" Humphrey asked.

"Your entire pack has been forced into hiding da King and the Rouge Wolves," Marcel said. "They're after Runt."

"Well, we have to go help them," Kate said.

"I'm coming with you," Humphrey said, getting up, still with much effort. His bullet-wound was still bleeding, but it was dripping very slowly.

"Humphrey," Kate said. "You can't walk in your condition. You're still too weak to move."

"Kate," he detto using a tone of voice Kate had never heard before. It was very serious and più like an alpha than an omega. "This is our home, and it's a direct threat to our son. I'm going. Pull me on the logboard if te have to."

"Okay."

Humphrey turned to Adam.

"Could te watch the pups while we go take care of this?"

"Not a chance," Adam said. "As the oldest sibling, it was my job to watch over te two, to keep te sicuro, cassetta di sicurezza and I failed. I'm not letting te out of my sight again."

"Alright then, the pups can stay with the rest of the pack."

"We're all coming," Adam told Humphrey. "We're family. We stick together."

"Well, they can't come with us," Humphrey said. "It's way too dangerous."

"Dad, please," Claudette said. "We've been through so much worse. Remember the trappers?"

Humphrey looked at Claudette, scoffed a little, and a very serious tone came over him.

"You think trappers are bad?" he said. "I've seen things te can only imagine in your worst nightmares. Things too terrible to talk about. What I told te this morning wasn't the full story. I left a lot out. Because te cannot possibly imagine, the horror it caused me."

Humphrey looked at Kate, and then at his pups. He paused and waited for these words to sink in and then added one last comment.

"Scared? te don't even know what it means to be scared."

Everyone was silent. This journey had brought about a new side to Humphrey. A side that had been hidden away for 2 decades. Behind the innocent, playful, slightly overzealous omega, was a lupo that had been through an incredibly traumatizing puphood. He had Lost his parents, his siblings, and his home, on the same day, all in a matter of minutes. He had been subjected to living alone in the woods for months, having to scrounge and scrape to survive. He faced every single giorno alone. He faced the elements alone, he faced hunger and injury and fear alone. He faced the other creatures of the forest alone. He was the lonest of lone wolves.

And every time things seemed to be getting better, life would take it all away from him again. He had made Friends in the woods that either resented him o had died gruesome deaths right before his eyes. And worst of all, when he finally settled down in Jasper, he forgot. He forced himself to forget his entire past life because it was so painful to think about. He forced himself to forget his Friends and his family, his real family. He forced himself to believe that he had always lived in Jasper, that he had known Kate his entire life. Only he knew what "scared" really meant.

"We'd better hurry," Marcel said. "It's pretty bad."

Humphrey laid down on the logboard and the group, now even bigger because of Adam and the rest of Humphrey's pack, quickly began to head back home to face the Rouge Wolves.

It took a few days o so, but the group eventually reached Owen's pack and what they found wasn't good.

Some of the Rouge Lupi had also attacked Owen's pack, too. As the group approached, they noticed that Kyle had been cornered da three fairly large wolves. Humphrey leaped off the logboard and attacked one of the three wolves. Kate and Adam followed and eventually forced them to retreat.

"Thanks," Kyle said. "I think I owe te an apology. I misjudged you, Humphrey. It was an accident. te never meant to hurt me. I see that now."

"I'm sorry, too," Humphrey said. "I was so sad when your father banished me, but I was also upset. I was just beginning to come to terms with what had happened to me and now te were throwing me back out into the woods. I never stopped to think that te never really knew everything I went through. te had no idea. Neither did Owen. He was just doing what he thought was best at the time."

There was silence as the two looked at each other in a moment of shared forgiveness. Then Humphrey spoke up again.

"We could use your help," he said. "Our home's been overrun da an entire pack of those Rouge Wolves, and our numbers are too little to fight them off."

"Humphrey," Kyle said. "If you're asking me to unisciti te in battle," he paused, and then smiled.

"Then te came to the right guy."

Humphrey smiled back as Kyle walked over to unisciti the group. He called for his pack to help aid him and Humphrey, and then looked back at his friend.

"I'd fight beside te any day."