Hell Hounds novel Chapter 53

             The group left the dining room quickly once they’d finished their breakfast. Once they found their meeting’s conference room, inside, they found only the back of the room available. Yolanda looked at the people already there. Ambassadors and staff, military, and someone from almost every branch of the pack’s command structure.

             “What’s going on? I don’t see Edith or Allen. That mage dude isn’t here either.” Ian leaned over and quietly asked Yolanda.

             “I don’t know, but the Dragon ambassador isn’t here either. The bears are. Maybe they’re just late for the meeting.” As she finished saying this, a screen rolled down and a mage, she didn’t know, cast several images there. Images of several people, including those they’d just discussed. Gregory stepped forward and appeared to be taking a mental note in attendance of who should be here. “Not late, just not here. Guess there’s news.”

             “Hm… it’s still weird how mages do that. Why don’t they just portal people where they’re needed?”

             “Power consumption. It’s traceable and portals are power hogs. They’re afraid the Fae will track that consumption to us.”

             “Well, that makes a weird form of sense. Portals are emergency only.”

             “I’m sure there’s a time limit to how long portals can be open and who can open them. Seriously, I don’t understand magic, but the Fae change the entire playing field, and power structure. The less the Fae know about us, the better if you ask me.” Someone sitting ahead of them grunted in agreement with her words.

             “If that’s the case, why don’t they use technology to communicate, then? Facetime and Zoom and such?”

             “Simple. The reverse may alert humans to us. We’ll try to keep things like this to a minimum. They dropped unnecessary things. They will monitor all communications and possibly record them when possible. It’s just one of those things most people don’t think about. Maybe, if we have enough heads put together, they will take enough things into consideration.”

             “You sound so cynical.”

             “No, realistic. Oh, I think they are starting.” Yolanda pointed towards Gregory.

             “Good morning, everyone. As many have noticed, we’ve sent out our first teams to a non-disclosed location. I’m sorry, but we need to keep information like this quiet. A discovery of something came to us recently. It took several days to verify the information. After that, a physical discovery of something else within the area came to our attention. Because of the nature of these discoveries, we felt the need for secrecy and a need to move on to secure them. We didn’t want to lose the chance to claim the information or endanger anyone because we hesitated. Now that we’ve investigated both situations, we decided it is time to inform you. As you can see, we have ambassadors from all factions represented here or linked to us for this. I’ll pass this briefing over to the Mage and Wolf Shifter Ambassadors, they will explain further.” Gregory stepped back away from the screen, where several images of strangers Ian didn’t know appeared.

             “Thank you, Gregory. Good morning, everyone and thank you for giving us your time. I’ll start for everyone and explain my part in the investigation and then I will let the Mage Ambassador explain his findings and their planned actions pertaining to these discoveries.” Allan stood in the foreground, with Edith in the background on part of the screen. “We apologize about not involving everyone in the beginning, but once we’ve explained, you can understand that we did not see this as something important until we could confirm and gather all the information. I don’t bring this news forward easily and it’s far from complete. We are still open to further investigation by other factions.” Allan paused and took a sip of water before he continued to speak.

              “A wolf shifter pack, Alpha contacted us with a twin experience with his mate. Actually, they appear to have experienced two different visions that have parallel information. Information that holds a darker meaning than anyone else could anticipate. I’ll explain the information we gleaned from the pair before I explain the discoveries the wolf shifter, dragon, druid, and mage ambassadors made when they looked further at the information willingly offered to them by the pair.” Another sip of water. Yolanda watched the man and knew he wasn’t thirsty. He drank to let people keep up and react. “Now, we could discount the first vision as a dream. Because we couldn’t pinpoint it to a location or time of a real-time event, even with the extreme detail of it. But if you consider the vision of his mate, changes this assumption. They experienced these visions at the same time. Now, she believes a being who is the Goddess, or a being pretending to be the Goddess, forced her into the Dream Realm to speak with her.” That received a loud response from most of the group.