Free Alphas Unleashed 3 by Cora Wolf Page B

started to paw through the hundreds, maybe thousands of photographs inside. So many sunny days, so many smiling faces. It seemed like a box from an alternate dimension, rather than just a decade ago. It didn't seem possible that the world captured in those photographs was the same world that we lived in. But the pictures didn't lie.
    There was nothing new to learn in that box though. So I put the lid back on and started on the next box. I took the first thing off the top, which was an envelope, and opened it up. I took out a letter, the paper musty with age, and read the neat handwriting:

Dear Marcus,

    Things are well on the island. As I'm writing this it is summer here, though I don't have any clue when this letter will get around to being posted. Life moves slowly here, and trips to the mainland are few and far between.

    I have good news though. I am pregnant. Again! I remember when we were young, how I was adamant that I would never be a brood mare for some alpha male. Younger me would be horrified at the person I have become, but that is life. What about you? Who have you become?

    Conall is also well. He sends his love. Begrudgingly. He has his hands full leading our pack. Just last week another pack of werewolves, fresh in from somewhere south, arrived on our island, looking to make a home there. Conall and a few of the strongest pack members went to them and told them the island was our territory, and that they weren't welcome. Thankfully they went peacefully, but more and more werewolves seem to be coming north every day, as word spreads that the vampires stay away from these extreme parts, where the sun sometimes never sets.

    Have you considered my offer to come and join us? I know you and Conall weren't exactly the best of friends when the two of you first met, but he promises me he is willing to let the past be the past, if you are. Becoming a father has seemed to mellow him somewhat. Or at least shifted his priorities around. The truth is we could use you here, big brother. With all the new werewolves streaming in to Alaska, we need strength more than ever. There will surely come a day when some new pack washes up on our shores and they refuse to leave peacefully.

    In happier news, your niece is growing up every day. Even at ten months she is fierce, and has a force of will that is impressive. Conall claims she takes after him, but personally I think she takes after you. I truly hope that you get to meet her one day.

    Are you getting these letters big brother? Are you still alive? I was told you are, but sometimes I wished you were not, heartless as that may sound. It would make your silence easier to bear. Sometimes I dream that you finally found a way to make yourself in to a human, and you escaped the destiny that was waiting for you. I hope you did. I hope you found your own little slice of happiness, and are off right now living it, and these letters are all unopened, in a mailbox somewhere.

    But if you are there, and you are reading this, then please write back. I miss you. I hope that you miss me.

    Love, Amelia.

    I looked at the date. The letter was eight years old. I wanted to run downstairs and brandish the letter in Marcus' face and scream at him. Why hadn't he gone north to be with his sister? Why was he still there in that house? He had a family that loved him and might still be alive, and a safe place to go to and live, and people that needed him, and he was still there in that damned house with its dusty rooms and awful silences.
    I didn't understand it, and I couldn't not say anything.
    I left the room and went quickly down the stairs, before my brain could catch up with the outrage that I was feeling and tell me that this was a bad idea. I went right in to Marcus' room without knocking, and just as I had thought he was at his laboratory desk, hard at work trying to make more werewolves.
    "Why haven't you gone to be with your sister?" I said, brandishing the letter at him.
    He got up in one