7

"By the Moons, I've been slacking! I haven't taken such a beating since I was in warrior training,"

"Don't mock me, Aaron! You won..."

"Yeah. Barely. And you're a girl!"

"I did not see that coming from you..., I thought you were different."

"Well, it sounded better in my head. It was mean as a compliment."

"Yeah, right."

"Common, Jena! Don't be such a baby. You know given perfect identical conditions men will surpass women in strength and stamina."

"But women have better agility and pain tolerance. Yeah, I know what Conall says."

"In truth, I should have said the way he trained you, I couldn't tell you lacked in either stamina or strength."

"You mean you underestimated me."

"Of course I did. Being a girl makes you look deceptively innocent."

"Even after you saw my take out Brayden in one shot four years ago? He underestimated me too."

"Yeah, I know. I just can't help it. Half the time my wolf says it was a lucky shot, the other half he's calling it a cheap-shot."

"Lana would like to prove him wrong."

"I'd rather not be a mess in both forms. But you should actually use that to your advantage. If I did that, and I know you, imagine an uninformed opponent. Honestly, you could easily stand toe to toe with Alpha Sorin right now."

"Thanks, I guess. How come you know so much about Sorin's fighting skills?"

"Didn't you know? Him, your father and I all went through Conall's warrior program. We were actually close back then."

"Really? What the hell happened then?"

"Well, we were all very competitive and we continued to be so even after we became Alphas to our own packs. You have to understand that Southern Star is where it is today because of Sorin. Your grandfather was the strongest Alpha in the entire Southern Calla. He and my father had a non-aggression pact that involved using our lands as sanctuary in case anything ever happened to the Oasis Pack and that's about it since your grandfather didn't even consider Mountain River a threat."

"Wow. There is so much I do not know about my family."

"Yeah. Well, I was Sorin's main rival during school since your father tended to slack off because he was pretty arrogant at the time, and we were always arguing about how we will each make our pack the greatest. Secretly, I think we were both hoping to get our packs closer to Oasis Pack's strength."

"Then Sorin became Alpha."

"Exactly. And he started absorbing packs one by one. He went for a duel with the rival Alpha and got their pack, but then Alphas started refusing to duel, so he started wars with each one of them, one by one, but by now he had sufficient numbers to wage said war. Once he got strong enough, smaller Packs had no other option than to duel or simply accept defeat. Those that didn't resist, were actually well treated and word got out so further on he met little resistance."

"Did he want to attack Oasis Pack?"

"I think eventually he would have. But while he had great numbers, he lacked the water to have enough quality warriors to fight against Oasis. So..."

"So he turned to his friend, now Alpha of the Mountain River Pack."

"Yes. He wanted water from me so he could retrain his army. But I didn't like what I saw in his eyes back then. His ambition was dangerous and I realized I would only be valuable to him if I had something to give. Let's say I helped him; how long till he turned on me because of the small chance I would refuse to give the water to him. His mouth was saying one thing but his eyes told a different story."

"So you refused and he attacked you instead," Jena concludes for Aaron

"He did. But we were holding our own because we had the mountain working for us. We knew the trails and we never fought him in the open. We always had more elite warriors than he did in the field. That is when your grandfather intervened."

"Guess he didn't like that."

"He went ballistic. Basically, he was frothing at the mouth. You grandfather had cut off his retreat since he had placed his camp in a valley at the base of the mountain so he was stuck. Magnus's father then called for talks between the three of us and said Sorin was a warmongering ambitious fool to his face. He said he knew what Sorin's ultimate goal was though he denied it like the plague. So it was decided we should duel it out. Together we could have crushed Sorin right then and there but your grandfather wanted to play the arbiter. So we dueled. And I won. But barely. Sorin was forced to retreat but he swore he would come back for me one day."

"That's why you were so intent on not letting him or his son take over Oasis Pack."

"Exactly."

"So what happened next?"

"Well I didn't sit idly, that's for sure. I liked your grandfather's tactic so much that I decided to make it my own."

"By getting your own allies."

"True. I started offering Sanctuary for high-ranking members in Mountain River in case of trouble and also what anyone on Calla wants: water."

"You bought your allies."

"At first, yes. Though it was more of a defensive alliance I had with them. They would help only if I was attacked. In time those relations improved and there are a few Alphas I can now call friends."

"Yeah, I noticed you are very popular with many of the Alphas."

"When your father became Alpha, he called a meeting. He then proceeded to challenge us both to a duel, but with the stakes of us accepting his proposition. A proposition he had yet to make."

"We agreed as long as it didn't involve anything like handing over our packs to him or anything similar. I half believed it was a joke."

"And what happened?"

"What else? We fought. I was first and he defeated me after a decent amount of time. Sorin asked if he wanted a break to recover, but he refused. He defeated Sorin in less than 2 minutes. Apparently, he had been holding back with me and he never told us his training with Conall had continued long after we finished the warrior training. That part I found out later. This is what he said next: 'My friends, you will always be my friends but we are all Alphas now, and I will place my duties as Alpha to my pack over our friendship anytime so this is why I'm proposing a three-way agreement. Sorin, I hope you realize with the allies Aaron has now, you can't really attack him. And should you consider yourself strong enough and try, I will come to his aide. Let me finish before you argue. Aaron, if you get any wishes to go after Sorin with your allies, I will help Sorin defend against you. I'm also counting on you two to put me back in my place if I get any ideas about attacking either of view. Think about it. There is a balance in this Tri-Pack Agreement which ensures peace,' and of course, we agreed. What he was saying made sense, plus he had already gotten our acceptance through the duels. Wow, I'm sorry. I must have bored you to death."

"No, that was actually quite interesting. I knew about the Tri-Pack Agreement, but didn't have the inside information about it."