The Alpha Emperor’s Resurrection

8: Robin

Saga demanded I find somewhere to stay in Castelli Romani without offering an explanation. She had gone off to explore on her own, and when she returned she seemed to be distressed.

I knew there was no point in arguing with her, and I didn’t really care where we went as long as we weren’t around people.

I had been looking forward to visiting our old territory, but staying in Italy for the summer was no big deal to me.

I found somewhere on AirBnB; I really didn’t want to stay in a hotel surrounded by humans, and the place was closer to the forest than anything else I could find.

She had disappeared again while I was trying to arrange a place to stay, and when she returned it was clear why she had been so concerned; there was a large gray wolf over her shoulders.

Not just a wolf - one of our kind. But he wasn’t from a pack that we were familiar with, and he was in bad shape; he was probably a Lone Wolf, but she wasn't going to leave him to suffer.

She stayed in the forest with him until I had collected the keys to the little Villa I had found for us, then brought him in and deposited him in one of the bedrooms before she finally decided to discuss the situation with me.

She had found him alone in the forest, he seemed incoherent, and she felt compelled to help him. There wasn't much more she could say. He was too weak for her to learn anything of value from reading his mind, and all we could do was wait for him to regain consciousness.

I didn't ask about the flights - it was obvious enough that she wasn't going to be leaving any time soon, and our family would be furious at me if I abandoned her with a stranger, even if he seemed too weak to be a risk to her.

I went to pick up some food while she watched over the guy - it seemed like the only way I could make myself useful when she had made it clear she didn't want me to bother her until the man was awake.

He woke up just as I was getting back - Saga was trying to communicate with him in Italian, but she seemed to be struggling with it and I guessed he was probably from somewhere with an unusual dialect.

When she finally emerged she rummaged in her bag, then wrote something down in a notebook, tore out the page, and thrust it at me.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" I asked, glancing down at the note she had written in obnoxious neon pink gel pen on pale pink Hello Kitty paper.

"You could start by reading it," she snapped.

It was hardly an explanation - two names and a basic physical description.

"Am I supposed to know what you want me to do with this?"

She groaned, and waved me off dismissively.

"You need to see if they're still around; get in touch with my mother - she'll probably know."

"Saga," I warned; her mother would have a thousand questions for me if I got in touch with her asking to track down a couple of people with no explanation.

"He speaks Latin, Robin. He has no idea what happened to him, or how he ended up in the forest. Those women were his family - he's insisting they will still be alive, and he seems so sure of it that it's worth checking. I don't know how he ended up here, but they should be the ones to deal with him if they are still alive."

None of what she was saying to me made any sense, but she was being deadly serious and I read the names again and sighed.

"What am I supposed to tell your mother? She's going to think we're crazy if I call her and ask if she's heard of these people."

She shrugged dismissively. It wasn't her problem, she had decided it was mine.

"Ask my dad first, then. He's always said his ancestors had some sort of link to wolves with a ridiculous lifespan, he might have heard those names before, and I'm inclined to believe this guy."

"Believe him? He's barely conscious, he's probably out of his mind, and for all we know he's been living on his own because he did something f****d up. I really don't think getting in touch with a couple of people who may or may not actually exist is a worthwhile use of my time."

"Do you have to be so stubborn all the time?"

A typically oblivious statement from the most stubborn person I had ever known.

"What exactly am I supposed to say if I do find these women? 'My sister picked up a strange guy in the forest and he's insisting you know him' is hardly a compelling opening line."

Saga just sighed, rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

"I'm not asking a lot. Will you just try to figure out if they're still alive? And you need to pick our things up from the city - we're going to be here for a few days and the guy has no clothes. We can't leave him with nothing."

I raised one of my eyebrows.

"I haven't seen the guy in his human form, but I highly doubt he's going to suit a Versace sundress."

She glared at me. She wasn't going to dignify me with any more of a response; my job was to find these women and pick our things up so she could give the guy some of my clothes to wear, and I didn't have a say in that.

The thought of asking Saga's parents for help was not something I relished - I wanted a few weeks away from everything and the last thing I needed was the rest of our family showing up to help search for a couple of people who probably didn't even exist.

The ride back to the city took long enough for me to try to find them online; Saga hadn't even given me a surname to work with, or a description beyond them both being blonde, but I scrolled through countless profiles in search of some evidence that the women in the pictures were ancient werewolves.

It felt ridiculous, but I didn't exactly have anything better to do.

I was about to give up when I found a profile that seemed like it was actually worth looking at - she was an attractive young blonde woman with golden brown eyes, and she seemed to travel a lot.

It was the only evidence I had, but her most recent pictures were in Rome and they had only been uploaded a few hours before I found the profile.

I still wasn't sure how to approach her without sounding insane, but I saved one of the pictures and sent it to my sister so she could ask the guy if it was the right person.

She called me an i***t and told me he would freak out if she showed him her phone - she really seemed to believe he was ancient.

That really didn't help, but I sent the woman a message and suggested my sister had found something that belonged to her.

She responded almost immediately, dismissing my suggestion with a frustrating flippancy that made me wish I hadn't bothered.

'what do you suggest we do with a grown male wolf?'

Asking her as directly as that was the only way I could think of convincing her without being dangerously open.

I received a response a couple of minutes later - the name of a hotel in the city with no further instructions - and I showed up, despite my better judgment, with no idea what to expect.