Alpha Markus
Epilogue

Helios P.o.V.

I woke up on a beach after my sister took me away from the battle at the pyramids. I wasn’t sure where I was or why. I sat on the sand for hours thinking about what I had just seen. I mourned my mother and then, for the first time in a thousand years, I mourned the lives I had taken in my misguided journey of revenge. A couple of days passed before I stood up from the beach.

Find your redemption brother. That is the task she’d given me. I walked a couple of miles before I found a store. I grabbed the first newspaper I could replace. San Diego, California. Why would she send me to California? I was tempted to just leave but she had sent me here for a reason and I needed to replace out what that was. If whatever I was supposed to do here, had to do with my redemption, it meant there were people that were in trouble.

I found an internet café and contacted one of my warriors via email. I would need to relocate my base of operations to here. I sent him a list of instructions with immediate needs and things to get ready.

**

It’s been 10 months since I started moving all of my operations from Mexico City to San Diego. I’m still not sure what Selene wants me to do here, but I’ve found a new hobby to keep me busy until then. After warning Celeste and Markus, I was spending some time gathering information on anyone hunting her and her family. It was the least I could do after everything that had happened. I had already killed three threats and sent her information over a few more that may make their way to Arizona over email. I didn’t dare go see her yet. Some actions are hard to erase.

I had also bought out a shipping/exporting business that had been about to go under and expanded. While going over the books and schedules, auditing the logs, I found some discrepancies that the owner had not been aware of. For the last two years, there’s been shipping containers that have not made it into the logs. We’d reviewed security footage and found blocks of it missing and began to investigate. What I found did not surprise me. The import and export of illegal goods was fairly common in ports. I had weeded out the import of cocaine from Colombia in my own company in Mexico in the 90s when I had first taken over it after I’d come back from abroad. I had also found the black market and bought the girls from Celeste’s pack while looking for her in Arizona.

If the pattern I found in the books are correct, I would be able to see a container come into port tonight. I needed more information on what they were importing, and how much. I needed to figure out what I was up against before I acted. My new guards were too reckless and inexperienced and this work required finesse. I needed to cut off the head of the snake, not the tail.

I always liked to do the recon myself anyways. There were always details to be picked up. Nuances that let you know who was in charge and who was not worth leaving alive. I stopped thinking and focused on the task at hand as I saw men arrive in a solid black SUVs and a long van with no license plates. I grabbed my camera and began taking pictures as people began exiting.

They had one man jump onto the crane and began to make their way to a docked ship that was supposed to be exporting textiles. I saw as they removed 3 unmarked containers with identical graffiti on the side. They brought in two semis and parked them a little bit away from the opening of two of the containers. The wind was blowing downwind so I couldn’t quite hear much with the shutter in my camera going a mile a minute.

They opened the first container and clothes started spilling out. A couple of men began scooping them out the container to get to the real import. I saw as they began to remove boxes. Long and thing, squared. It was clear to me what these were. Rare black-market goods. Likely art pieces from the delicate way they were being handled. These didn’t go into the semis. They were loaded onto the van carefully. Confirming that they were deemed more valuable than the rest. At least it wasn’t people. I could take my time investigating this when lives were not hanging in the balance.

A small man with a clipboard was ticking off each item as it was pulled out and once that container was deemed empty, they loaded it back into the ship. They moved on to the next container. They backed one of the semis closer to the container and as they began removing the clothing that surrounded their contraband, I began to hear some sounds. I raised an eyebrow, camera at the ready. I could only imagine the level of noise down there if I could hear it with these winds carrying most of it away from me. Whatever was in there, was alive but it wasn’t human.

One of the men went in with chains while another followed with a long taser. I saw as they wheeled out a cage with a white tiger inside. I began to realize the scope of their operation. Usually, rare goods was a niche trade. Rare art, animals, or weapons. Rarely did you see an operations that dealt with more than one type of black market good. It required serious connections and muscle to be this broad and not get caught. That meant there was serious money and power behind these traffickers and it wasn’t going to be easy to dismantle it. I smiled as I took picture after picture of endangered animals begin brought out. I was going to enjoy this hunt.

The tiny human with the clipboard finally deemed the container empty and it was put back onto the ship. The semi left, leaving one container left. I leaned a little to far forward in anticipation. After giving up my misguided quest for revenge, I will admit that I had found myself bored without a good hunt. The third container was opened and a single cage was wheeled out. I was not expecting to see a giant beautiful white wolf wheeled out. I almost dropped my camera. That was not a wolf. It was most definitely a werewolf. Was this why I was here? Was Selene wanting me to save this rare werewolf. White werewolves were almost unheard of. They were deemed to have special healing qualities and occasionally other unknown abilities. I wondered briefly if these people, who appeared to be human, knew what they held in their hands.

I felt the wind swirl around me as I saw the wolf look up at the moon. Her white coat was glowing with a tinge of blue from the ocean waters and the moon. It lifted its head and after a moment, it cried out the most sorrowful and anguished howl I had ever heard. It constricted my heart and I was surprised to feel a tear falling down my cheeks.

The semi left and I left my hiding spot and returned to my house. As I downloaded the shots and video I took of tonight, I walked out to my balcony. I looked up as the full moon shined down from the behind the clouds. I won’t let you down sister. I vowed.