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*Humphrey's P.O.V. *

I cannot explain the way I felt on the day that Charlie disappeared. Though I was repulsed by the state of his body and the impending qhorrors about which he foretold, I found, once the initial shock of his appearance in the park wore off, that I had developed a rather peculiar fascination with him. I know it might sound ludicrous, but in spite of our vastly different circumstances, he and I were a lot alike in a sense. No one knew who he was, where he'd come from, or what merciless demons had drained the soul from his body, and his identity, along with every piece of his previous self, was reduced to nothing more than a source of empty intrigue for those who set their gaze upon him. To them, he was a mere spectacle, an entity of speculation and of gossip, as all things unknown become to those who do not have the courage or desire to seek the wisdom of that which they do not understand, but to me, he was so much more. So when he finally disappeared for good, it felt as though a piece of me had gone with him.

My fascination with Charlie did not go unnoticed by my mate, and while I feel as though it made her uneasy, she was far too busy to confront the complicated emotions that the situation had brought upon her. After all, by the time he made his third appearance, we had both found ourselves lost within our own obsessions with him, though for vastly different reasons. While I merely wished to know Charlie, and to unlock the mysteries of his past so that in death, he could have a better life than the one I have been forced to bear, Kate's mission was to find out who had orchestrated the horrific display of necrotic theatrics that terrorized the park and bring them to justice. Being the lead investigator in this murder, Kate had personal access to him any time he would manifest within the park, but I would always study him from afar, curious, and ever hopeful of being able to unlock the parts of him that mattered not to those who sought his killer, or who whispered conspiracy or conjecture when they spoke his name. I always believed that there was so much more to him than what horrors dwelled on the surface of his existence, or within the lingering thoughts that he burned into the minds of any who saw him. He was, after all, a wolf just like the rest of us- though clearly an outsider, or an outcast as no missing persons reports had been filed in our pack. I wondered, briefly, if maybe he had come from my original home, or if he ever even had a home to begin with.

The scars and calluses on the pads of his paws told the story of a nomad and the stringy stature of his muscles seemed to count every hungry mile he had walked along whatever path had led him here, but with each time he disappeared and then reappeared, and with each attempt that was made to be rid of him, his body had become less like a wolf and more like a creature. However, this did not seem to deter my interest or disturb me like it did to so many others. To me, Charlie represented everything that was true to my life, and it made me realize that what others may see as off-putting, or frightening or weird can actually be quite beautiful in its own right.

Acceptance would be granted by only a few and that's just the way the cards were dealt for wolves like him and me. No amount of change or growth would alter the minds of those who had already judged us. There was no divine answer to our happiness or our being. We were who we were, and that was enough. We had people in our lives who loved us, and that was enough.

In spite of this, though, in the days following his permanent disappearance, I felt... almost empty. Kate's resulting frustrations once his case had gone cold did not help by any means, as she had buried herself in her work and spent hours upon hours poring over every clue in some last ditch attempt to piece it all together. However, that, too, passed when Janice disappeared.

*Kate's P.O.V. *

Her body turned up in five different places about three days after she had vanished, and after the autopsy, it was quite clear that this killer was not some interloper or rogue. This was somebody from our own pack, somebody who knew Janice well enough to know that she was a vegetarian. The bruising in her esophagus, the blood and cuts in the mouth of her severed head, and the contents of her overly engorged stomach indicated that she had been force-fed meat, but what had haunted me, more than even Charlie, was the look upon her face when we found her head lying covered with ants in the field that day. The look of pure agony and horror had been cemented forever in her glassy eyes and had been permanently etched into her face by the wrinkles from the screams that had carried her into death. This death hit close to home for me- not because Janice was a friend or anything. In fact, in spite of living in the same pack for two years, I had only ever spoken to her a few times and even then I never particularly cared for the way she and Reba flaunted their various alternative lifestyles.

The reason why her death was so personal to me, was because it made me realize the reality that we all faced. I am ashamed to admit it, but somewhere along the way in the Charlie epoch, I had allowed myself to become complacent. After all, after so long with the same body and the same, empty threats I had become completely desensitized to it all, and had even begun to grow annoyed. We had no leads, no real clues, and my husband's bizarre fascination with the situation had really gotten under my skin. When Charlie finally disappeared for good, I felt almost relieved, because I felt like finally the game was over and that whomever had orchestrated it all had grown bored and decided to move on.

Of course, part of me was peeved that I was never able to crack the case and discover the truth, but the part of me that was completely drained by it all was far too tired to give it more than a passing thought. In the days that followed his final disappearance, I guess I had allowed myself to embrace the illusion that the looming danger we all feared had passed and that life in the park would return to normal. I lived in this wonderful illusion for nearly three weeks, and for the first time in a long time, I had found peace.

Humphrey and I began making plans for a nice vacation that we would take to spend time with each other, away from everything, before he left for Alpha School the next month, we made love for the first time in what felt like ages, and life as we knew it had fallen into a comfortable routine. However, when we followed the buzzards to all the places where the pieces of her body had been strewn, and we pieced together the blood-curdling message that had been spun into the various pools of blood and piles of offal that we managed to salvage from the scavengers, we were suddenly blindsided by the storm about which the preliminary calm had failed to forewarn. Much like when Charlie had first appeared in the park, there was mass confusion and panic, but unlike that fateful day when the unidentified wolf made himself known, the eerie tension, and the lingering paranoia that this death delivered unto the pack left us in a state of complete disarray

*Humphrey's P.O.V. *

When she disappeared, I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that if we ever did see her again she would be dead, but I never could have prepared for what we had actually found of her that fateful day. It's difficult to describe exactly what I felt when I arrived on scene and saw the bloodied, bloated torso displayed so carefully in the grass. Obviously shock, horror and disgust were quick to take hold of me, but I recall something else, something deeper than that and it flooded

my body with anxiety.

I suppose it was the inevitable clash between hope and reality that tore my mind asunder. The realist in me knew that the torso which lied in the grass before me belonged to the omega who had disappeared from our pack a few days ago, but hope and fear grabbed me by the neck and dragged me headfirst down a stream of denial. We couldn't know for sure that this torso did indeed belong to Janice. Sure, the color of the pelt before us matched hers, but there were no discernible features present to suggest that the slain wolf before us was one of our own, and the scent of blood was so prominent in the air that it masked all other scents around. Like Charlie, this could be any wolf. After all, the belly of this wolf was distended, and the gash along its side which had allowed some of its contents to spill onto the ground revealed an over-consumption of meat. Janice was a vegetarian. She'd never eat meat-especially not in such copious amounts. It had to be someone else.

I can't say exactly why, but this sense of denial quickly overpowered me and for an hour or so, I was able to live in a wonderful world of blissful ignorance. I was blind to logic. I was blind to reason, and in spite of the overwhelming mountain of evidence which mounted with each piece of the body we recovered, I remained in my world of denial, completely detached from a reality that I was not yet ready to face. However, that all changed when we found her head. I felt sick as my gaze fell upon the horrified look in her eyes which carried her into death because I knew that I could no longer deny the truth which had glared at me since we first discovered her torso. Janice was gone.

Death, of course, was no stranger to me at that point. For as long as I can remember, death has followed me as closely as my shadow, and after a while it had become yet another constant in my life. After a while, I had gotten used to it... Now, don't get me wrong, as my first encounter with violent death since my puphood, Charlie shook me to my core, but Charlie was easy to accept, because, while the tragedy which surrounded his circumstances was absolute, I didn't know him. I knew nothing more about him than what I and the wolves assigned to the investigation of his murder could scrape up from his shattered remains. But Janice... she was different. As omegas, we two had joked and broken up our fair share of squabbles together, so, while I never really maintained any sort of friendship with her, we were bonded by the code we followed, as all omegas are. We had each other's backs, no matter what, and she was a proud, faithful omega all the way up to the end. She was never ashamed of who she was, loved her girlfriend unconditionally and lived her life to the fullest. To see her come to such a brutal end... it really hit me hard- especially when I learned that whomever had so viciously killed her had only done so to deliver a message.

*Kate's P.O.V. *

I remember the silence that overtook my husband as he stared down upon the slain omega's severed head. It was as though, in that moment, the life had been drained from him. He stared down upon her for a few seconds and then without a word, he turned and began to walk away. Hutch attempted to call after him, but I quickly demanded his silence and we simply watched as he slowly vanished from our sight. A silence fell upon us which was broken by Hutch.

"You can't protect him forever, ya know," Hutch said to me, flatly, "whether he likes it or not, until you two assume the throne, this is his job."

"Come on, everyone," I commanded with no heed to the Beta's words, "we have work to do."

A&O

We didn't even know where to begin when we started cleaning up the crime scene. So vast, so bloody, and for some, so personal was this murder that for a moment it seemed as though we were frozen in place, but eventually, we began to divide ourselves into groups and proceeded to conduct one of the more unpleasant parts of our job description. I remember feeling as though my mind was lost within a dense fog as we transported her various pieces to where we'd found her head earlier that morning. Nothing about that day seemed real. What we were doing felt more like a lucid nightmare than it did reality, but the reality of the situation was inescapable each time I would take a piece of her into my mouth and be assaulted by the foul stench of death in my nose and the taste of rotten blood upon my tongue, by the incessant buzz of the flies which skittered back and forth between the dead flesh between my teeth and my face, and by the sinking feeling that plagued my stomach as the gravity of the situation began to press down upon me.

Finally, after what felt like ages, we finished collecting her body and prepared to take it to the coroner, but we found ourselves once again frozen in place as we collectively stared down upon her severed head.

"Well... you know one of us is gonna have to carry it back," I said finally as I watched the ants and maggots crawl into and out of her eyes, "so who's it gonna be?"

All eyes around me averted themselves away and a silence fell. I couldn't say I blamed them. The same apprehensions which held them in place had arrested my body and mind long ago, but one way or another, the job had to be done.

"Okay," I said through a sigh, "there's really only one fair way to do this."

I turned to the small male to my right.

"Candu, go and get me some short twigs."

The male nodded and then began to scour the area for twigs, and then once he returned, he set them at my paws.

"Okay," I began as I took the twigs into my paws and then mixed them up, "you all know the drill."

With only the tops of the twigs showing, I raised my paw and then one by one, each alpha pulled a twig from my grasp until only one remained.

"Alright," I sighed, hesitantly, "show 'em."

With great suspense, we each held out the twigs we'd selected, and when I realized that I had drawn the short stick, my stomach sank.

"Fuck..." I said, numbly.

"Sorry, Kate," Hutch muttered softly.

"It's okay," I replied, though inside I was not sure if I possessed the strength to do what I knew I had to do, "fair's fair."

Slowly I turned and set my eyes upon her head once more, but fear and disgust briefly held me in place.

"It's okay, Kate," Scar suddenly chimed as I felt a paw fall upon my shoulder, "I can carry it if-"

"No, it's okay," I interrupted, "I drew the short stick. So I carry the head. Those are the rules."

Scar nodded and stepped back as I drew in a collective breath then stepped toward her head.

"Okay," I said at the bottom of a breath, "let's do this."

I tried not to think about it as I lowered my mouth toward her head and opened my jaws, but that was easier said than done as the stench of death invaded my nostrils. I paused for the briefest moment as my mouth drew near to one of her ears, and then, quickly, I latched upon it and lifted her head from the ground, but as I raised her head higher, something suddenly fell from her neck to the ground. Startled, I instinctively dropped her head and retreated a few steps back, but it wasn't long before I realized that it was only her tongue.

"Oh, goody," I said, disgusted and exhausted, "another piece to carry."

With a roll of my eyes, I approached her tongue and prepared to pick it up with my paw, but when my eyes fell upon the message which had been carved into it, my blood turned to ice.

"Have we got your attention now?"