When we arrived home, the car that had brought Piercing back was nowhere to be seen. He was most likely already locked up in a cell where he belonged. We all got out of the car we'd been traveling in. "What will we do about the Aston Martin?" I asked as I followed Aiden inside. He had his arm around my waist and was glaring fiercely at any male wolves who spared me a second glance.

"We'll just get your dad to send someone for it - don't worry about it babe," he responded, leaning down and pressing a kiss to my forehead.

Rian made a gagging sound from behind us. "Ew, you guys are so disgustingly cute. I feel like I need to get a b- girlfriend now."

I frowned, noticing that he was going to say something else but changed his mind at the last second. However, I didn't want to pressure him into saying anything he wasn't comfortable with, so I just let it go. Aiden chuckled at his statement while Lisa expressed her agreement through vomiting noises.

'Perri? I need you in my office, now.' I suddenly heard Dad's voice in my head and even through the mind link I could tell there was something wrong. I hoped it was nothing major.

I tugged on Aiden's arm to get him to stop. "Dad says he needs me in his office. Do you want to come with me?" I asked, and he furrowed his eyebrows but nodded.

I called out bye to Lisa and Rian and walked the familiar route to Dad's office. I knocked on the door lightly and his deep voice called for me to enter. There was no one except Dad himself inside. He was standing at his desk, a deep frown etched into his features. It seemed as if he was always looking like that nowadays. The stress of running a pack was getting to him.

"Dad?" I asked, stepping inside with Aiden right behind me.

"Oh, Perri," he greeted. "And Aiden. Well, I've got some bad news you should probably be informed about, before someone else tells you."

"Which is..." I prompted, wanting him to just get on with it.

He sighed heavily, sitting down on his desk chair. "Just before you and your friend left, a group of teenagers decided to go to the beach. Whilst there, they were attacked by some rogues that we suspect to be working with the group who have been sending us messages. They fought back, but the rogues were strong fighters. We ended up losing a pack member."

My insides went cold. Was it someone I knew? Probably, if it was a teenager who was a member of the pack. I was almost afraid to ask, but I felt as if I had to know. "Who - who was it?"

Dad's face was grim. "Annie."

Oh no. It felt surreal - Annie had always been annoying, and sure, she'd had more than her fair share of men, but she was always there. She was always doing her nails, or gossiping about the latest trends in her fashion magazines, or flirting with every eligible guy around. The last conversation I'd had with her was when we'd had a tiny spat in the cafeteria, and now she was just dead.

I cleared my throat, trying to speak. "Um, were there any other casualties?"

"There were a few injured, but nothing too grave. We didn't manage to capture any of the rogues, but some of the warriors have returned with the one who attacked you, and we might be able to get some information out of him. Some of the teenagers gave a pretty good description of who killed Annie, though. They all seemed to agree on it."

Dad spoke matter-of-factly, but I could tell that he was just as shaken up about this as I was. He was trying to put his emotions aside and be a good Alpha for the members of the pack so as not to make anyone freak out. He knew as well as I did that Annie didn't deserve this. She still had her whole life ahead of her. The whole ordeal kind of spurred me to want to get to the bottom of this, and wipe out the rogues.

I had forgotten that Aiden was behind me until the spoke. "What did the guy look like?"

Dad glanced at a sheet of paper on his desk. "They said he shifted halfway through, but whilst in human form he had dark hair, dark brown, almost black eyes, and extremely white teeth, although I don't see how that should make a difference. And in wolf form, he was just a regular dark brown ordinary-sized wolf."

I stiffened slightly when I heard the description of the man who killed Annie. There was probably tons of guys who looked like that, but to me, he sounded exactly like Rick.

~•~•~•~

Later that evening, I was sitting in my room, staring out the window as a group of children chased each other around on the grass. It was quite nice outside - the sun looked as if it would set in an hour or so.

Mark was busy comforting Gail because she had been quite good friends with Annie and she was pretty grief-stricken. I wanted to cry, but somehow I couldn't. I felt remorse that Annie was gone, but I didn't miss her. I didn't think it had sunk in properly yet. I kept expecting for her to burst into my room like she used to before I met Aiden, and tell me about how she kissed the face off some college guy at a party she'd attended, or ask if she could borrow a select shade of nail polish that I'd never used. But it didn't happen.

Dad had given a speech to the whole pack earlier, about how she'd been a valuable pack member and how we needed to make sure that she was remembered in the right way. I myself felt as if that were bullshit. She hadn't been a valuable pack member - no one had really liked her all that much, and she was too lazy for words.

But missing someone means that you'll notice when they're gone, and you'll want them to come back, sometimes just so that you can gain the sense of normality that they'd bring. One thing was for sure - we'd all miss Annie.

There wasn't going to be a funeral. Her hysteric parents had requested a private burial, where only family were invited. It was a little unfair. So many people had wanted to say goodbye, and because of a pair of self-righteous idiots, we weren't going to be able to.

But we'd all get over it, in time. Some would forget she even existed, others would remember her for reasons that no one would want to be remembered by.

Everyone walked around with sullen faces, and I hadn't seen a smile on anyone who wasn't a small child's face when I'd gone down to dinner. It was only one death, but everyone had known Annie in some small way and we all felt her absence.

"Perri?" Aiden asked, stepping into the room and approaching me. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," I said, not looking away from the window. "I'm okay, I guess. I'm just worried for the pack."

He sighed, taking a seat beside me. "The pack will be fine. We've told your dad that it might've been Rick; he'll sort it. There's nothing more we can do."

Aiden himself wasn't taking the realization that Rick probably killed Annie too well. They'd been friends, and to discover that your best friend was out to get an entire pack was not something to be taken lightly. But he was putting on a strong front, and I really appreciated it. I was trying to do the same, although I probably wasn't doing the best job.

"I suppose," I said. "I just want to forget it all, in a way. I want it to go back to normal. It just changed so fast."

"I know," he replied. "But we'll be okay, trust me."

"I hope so," was all I said, going back to my staring. I probably looked creepy to the children below, of they saw me.

"Hey," Aiden said, placing a hand on my knee. It sent familiar sparks shooting through my body and I smiled a little. "Why don't we pack up a picnic and go somewhere to watch the sunset? It can be like a second date."

I wanted to look at him as if he were crazy, and say, really Aiden? You're thinking of taking me on a date at a time like this? But if I was honest, it sounded nice. So I smiled and stood up, dusting my clothes off. "Okay, let's go."

~•~•~•~

We didn't take too much food; dinner hadn't been all that long ago. I snagged a wicker basket from the laundry room, and Aiden threw in a couple bags of chips and two cans of soda. There was a jumbo packet of chocolate raisins in the fridge, so we tossed them in as well. We weren't exactly healthy, and it wasn't a proper picnic, but it was enough.

We made sure to stay on pack territory as we walked around hand in hand, trying to find a good spot to watch the sunset. Dad had warned everyone against leaving the area unless you had at least two pack warriors with you.

We stopped at the top of a little hill that overlooked a small pond where I used to play with Dan as a child. "Is here okay?" Aiden asked me, already setting down the basket. We hadn't thought to bring a blanket, but the grass was dry and I wasn't worried about stains.

"It's perfect," I said with a smile, flopping down beside him.

"I just can't believe it," he murmured, taking a sip of the soda he'd just cracked open. "Rick was my friend. And now - now it's like he's someone completely different. In high school, he was the first to help anyone at any time. He was just that kind of person. I guess a lot can change in three years."

"Yeah," I replied, just as softly. "I guess it can."

"But at least I met you," he said, shooting me a bright smile. I laughed at his cheesiness and leaned in to press a small kiss to his lips.

"Yeah. Remember when we first met?" I asked, and he rolled his eyes.

"No, I completely forgot how I was captured by your dad and brought to your pack prison, where you came to visit me in the middle of the night and then the next day your dad let me go because I was your mate. I can't believe he was being so nice," he said, laughing at the last part.

"He's like that," I told him. "He has this weird ability where he can tell if a person's lying or not, and I guess he saw the good in you. I'm still not sure how I've gotten away with so much over the years. I think he was just humoring me."

"Oh yeah?" He said, a smirk tilting his lips upwards. "What kinds of things did you try to get away with?"

"Nothing, really," I said sheepishly. "Dan and I used to play pranks on my mom because she was always trying to force me into being her doll. She's a fashion designer."

"I bet you looked adorable," he said, his smirk still present. I shoved his shoulder lightly and went on.

"Anyway, we did all sorts of things. Once, we snuck into her office room where she keeps mountains of clothes. We spilled juice boxes on this white dress she had ready for someone who was going to a wedding party," I said, laughing slightly at the memory. "Mom almost cried. She yelled at me so I blamed it on this other kid and then Mom cut off the parts of the dress that had been stained. She stitched it up with a different type of material. Turns out it was better than the original one. To this day, she still thinks it was the other kid. When she told Dad he didn't even glance at me, but I think he knew because when Mom left the room he winked at me. It was pretty funny."

Aiden laughed. "I don't really have any memories like that. My dad was incredibly stupid, so when I was five years old he attacked Rian and Lisa's pack and they basically destroyed each other. I lived with a pack elder. Her name was Nora. She used to bake me cookies every day when I came home from school. She died when I was sixteen, though."

"Do you miss her?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes, I guess. She was the only really mother figure I had, even if she did burn the cookies a lot."

I laughed. "What did you do then? When she died, I mean."

"I was only sixteen, but I managed to evade social services. I got a fake ID and rented the apartment, got a job, all that jazz. When I saved up enough I bought the place. The landlord was a bit iffy, but I paid him a good amount. Then I met Mark and Jesse, and then Rian, and then Lisa."

"What about Sera?" I said. "How did she and Jesse meet?"

He rolled his eyes. "It was terrible. She was going to get a cup of coffee from this café where he worked, and then he saw her and somehow broke the coffee machine. He got fired," Aiden told me, laughing a little.

I laughed too. The sun was starting to go down, and it was spreading an orange glow over the sky. The shadows from the trees around were beginning to lengthen as the sky turned all different shades, from red, to pink, to orange, to the last faded embers of yellow.

It soon slipped down past the horizon, and the area around us was dark. The first few stars were beginning to appear in the sky and the moon was peeping out from behind a wispy cloud. It was a beautiful night and I wanted to stay out for longer, but we needed to get inside. I was getting rather tired and I didn't want to wake up with a stiff body from lying on the grass all night, soaked in dew. And I didn't want to put Aiden through the ordeal of carrying me all the way back, so I stood up and held out my hand to him.

He grinned, standing up and intertwining our hands together. He picked up the picnic basket and we began the walk back to the pack house.

I was glad I'd agreed to come out here. I needed a few hours to just enjoy the presence of my mate and forget the fact that Annie was dead, and that Rick was still out there somewhere with more than a few rogues, possibly planning our death.

And it had worked. I had had fun tonight. I hadn't been over thinking and instead I had just had a good time with Aiden and watched the sunset. All in all, it was a good second date.

~•~•~•~

Short and sucky chapter but lol at least its something

so I'm thinking of changing the title of this story, any ideas??? COMMENT

XO