The past couple days had been spent on me going around the pack and meeting the new people. They all seemed friendly and genuinely happy to see Allison and me going around and making an effort to get to know them. 

They had quaint little diners, some small shops, there was one bookstore. All the people had been pleasant. Allison had thought so too. She'd been more than happy to go around with me to meet the new additions to our pack as well. 

"How about we go in here?" Allison asked pulling me toward a small boutique. 

I inwardly cringed knowing that she didn't just have meeting people on her mind. She wanted to shop. I had no problem with her wanting to shop. I mean she was a girl and totally entitled to it, I just had this feeling that she was going to drag me all throughout the small shop while she tried on every article of clothing that caught her eye. Which was odd because she hadn't been much of a shopper. 

As soon as we opened the door and stepped in, there was a cheerful blond woman who stepped out from behind some racks. 

"Good afternoon, Alpha, Luna." She looked slightly surprised and a little shy. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"We were just making the rounds. We want to get to know all of the new additions. And I believe Allison was wanting to look around."

Allison just smiled and nodded. Okay, I could put up with following her around and carrying bags of clothes as long as I saw that smile. She'd come so far from the closed off person she'd been when I got her back. I would do anything to keep that smile there. 

"Well please look around," the woman said with a grand gesture. I recognized her as one of the people who had come up to me after the ceremony to congratulate me and shake my hand. 

I started to follow Allison around as she looked everything over. 

The woman sneezed. 

"Bless you," Allison said as she flipped through more dresses and skirts before opting for the pants and shirts section. 

After a while I went up front to talk to the woman while Allison looked around. I knew if she needed me for anything she would just call me over. 

"So how long have you been working at the shop?" I asked. 

"Oh, I actually own it. And I'm the only one who works it. It's been open for about three years now. It's done alright, I'm hoping with the conjoining of your pack that maybe business will pick up."

"Well I'm fairly certain we didn't have anything like this, so more people can only be better I would assume. I don't really know much about owning a shop like this or how it all works so I can't say one way or another."

"That doesn't really surprise me." The way the woman said it didn't sound mean or snarky like some would sound. She just genuinely didn't think I would know anything about shops. It's not like I ever needed the business experience in it when I'd known what I was going to do. 

"What do you think, Alarik?" Allison called from the other side of the store. 

I stepped back and turned to look at her. She was standing in an isle wearing short jean shorts and a silky top that stopped just above her belly button. 

I think I want to come back there and take that off you myself, I said directly to her. 

"It looks great," is all I said out loud. 

Allison blushed shifted slightly before turning. Her hair fanned out behind her as she went back to the changing room. 

I really did want to follow her back there and be the one to take that off. 

The woman behind the counter started talking again. 

"That did look really good on her."

"I'd like to buy it please."

The woman smiled and started pushing keys on the register in front of her. Apparently she already had the prices memorized. It would make sense considering she's the owner and the only person who works the place. She would deal with every purchase, every stock order. 

"That will be eighty dollars."

I couldn't believe the prices in places like this. I handed over the cash and got my change as Allison was coming out with the outfit. She came up to the counter and laid them down. The woman behind the register reached out to grab them, stopping momentarily when her eyes caught sight of the scars around Allison's wrists. 

Allison immediately took her hands away, putting them at her sides and I pulled her into me, wrapping my arms around her waist and arms and resting my chin on her shoulder. 

The woman realized her mistake and shook herself, focusing back on the clothes. She folded them and put them in a bag and looked back up. 

"You two look absolutely adorable together."

I gave her a small smile and took the bag from her hand before releasing Allison. 

The woman sneezed again and wiped her nose. 

"Bless you," Allison said again. 

I gave the woman an odd look. 

"We got in some new perfumes late last night and I've been sneezing ever since. Haven't had the time to look them over and sniff out the trouble maker."

"Hope you find it," Allison said with a smile as we walked out. 

We walked around the pack a little longer, meeting some of the people who were out and about. 

An hour into our stroll around, a young man walking by fell to the ground. 

I stopped immediately and crouched down next to him. Others that had been out stopped and started making their way over. They were murmuring quietly amongst each other. 

The man was lying face down on the ground as if he'd just collapsed mid stride with no attempt to stop himself. I moved him onto his side so that his face wouldn't be buried in the ground. There were some scratches on his cheek and nose from the concrete. 

The man's eyes were closed and he was barely breathing. 

"We need medical help for him," Allison said in a panicked tone. 

A man stepped forward. "I work in the medical center."

I let him come to the man. He started checking the man's pulse and doing whatever he could without any tools. 

He glanced up at me. 

"Will you help me carry him to the center? He needs to get there as quickly as possible."

I nodded and we worked together to lift the man up from the ground and we carried him through the pack and toward the medical center with Allison following us. The whole way there people were murmuring. 

This wasn't a common thing. Werewolves didn't just collapse for no reason, especially not twenty-something-year-old werewolves. We bypassed the office and went straight in taking him to a bed and lying him down. 

A nurse came in and started checking all the vitals that the man had already checked on the street. 

Within moments they were hooking him up to wires and talking amongst themselves. 

"What's wrong with him?" I asked. 

"We have no idea. This doesn't look normal and it's too early to tell what could be going on. Tests need to be run."

"What sort of tests?" Allison asked. 

"We don't know yet."

"You don't know what tests you need to run? Isn't this your job?" I nearly growled

"Yes, but he appears to be perfectly fine."

"Fine? He's barely breathing."

"His breathing is perfectly fine. Everything looks fine. Well, fine for a resting rate. It's like his body is asleep. His heart rate, breathing, everything is at resting levels."

"But he was just up and walking around. He just collapsed on the ground. That's not normal. That shouldn't have happened."

"You're right, it shouldn't have."

"So what's wrong?" I asked getting a little agitated. 

"That's what we're going to find out."

I stood around as the doctors and nurses worked, watching everything they did. I was there for probably forty-five minutes when all hell broke loose. 

The man on the bed started to convulse. His body thrashed around violently, he looked like a fish out of water. 

I felt Allison tense next to me and I wrapped an arm around her pulling her into my side as my eyes were glued to what was going on in front of us.

Alarms sounded and doctors and nurses rushed in. They injected him with something and the convulsions slowly stopped. 

A couple moments later, blood started to trail from the corners of the man's eyes. 

"What the hell did you give him?" I shouted.

"Just something to stop the convulsing. It's standard. It shouldn't do anything like this." The nurse that had said the words was rushing to the man's side. 

His eyes shot open and he started to scream. He was screaming for help, he was screaming out of fear. 

I couldn't help him. 

I was his Alpha and I couldn't help him because no one knew what was wrong with him. 

You did what you could though. You got him here. That was all you could do, I thought to myself. 

But you should have been able to do more. You're supposed to be the protector of these people, another voice in my head said. 

It was that same damn voice that had made me think I was never going to find Allison. It had stuck around. 

The man was sitting up in bed, blood flowing down in thin lines, one from each eye. Slowly a third started to come from his nose. 

The man's eyes were red from the blood. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. It was like watching a car wreck. Allison turned her head into my shoulder. 

"What's happening, Alarik?" she asked with her face still turned into my shoulder.  

"I have no idea," I murmured as I ran my hand down the back of her head. 

I had absolutely no clue what was going on. This was nothing I'd ever seen before, this was nothing I'd ever heard about before. 

The man went silent but the machine took up the noise. A loud flat beep came from the box beside him showing there was no heartbeat. 

The people around him carted over a small contraption- a defibrillator. Using it they tried to jump start his heart again. They tried three times with no result before they stopped. 

 One man in the room shook his head, and the woman put the paddles down. 

"He's gone," the man who'd helped me on the street said. 

I couldn't believe what had just happened. I couldn't believe it because I couldn't understand it. 

He'd collapsed with no explanation. He' started convulsing and bleeding from his eyes and nose. None of this was explainable. 

When the man who'd helped me came out I stopped him. 

"Do you have any idea what that was?"

He shook his head. "I've never seen anything like it. We're going to have to take him down for autopsy and see if we can find something there. Whatever it was, it worries me."

With that he left Allison and me standing there. 

"Alarik," Allison whispered as she moved around in front of me and looked up. 

I looked down into her eyes and then pressed my lips to her forehead. 

We headed toward the front desk where the same man had gone. I told him to make sure he got into contact with me when they figured out what was going on. He'd agreed to do just that and the woman behind the counter handed over a bag. 

"Someone dropped it off, said it was yours."

It was the bag from the boutique. Someone had picked it up and brought it here after us. 

Allison silently took the bag from the woman's hand and her arm dropped heavily to her side. She was shaken, I could feel it. I was too. Neither of us knew what was going on, and we were the people the pack was looking up to. 

We had to figure out what had happened to this man. I needed to know what happened.

*************

Well... So that just happened. 

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