Chapter 36: Vote
They hear eight gun shots that gives Mike an opening. He takes a major risk to split one bear off from the rest. He pays for it with the lost of a back paw. But, the bear is trapped away from its buddies. Given he can no longer fight, he shifts to human to hold the wound. The wolves kill the one he forced away by pinning its back legs to snap its neck.
When the wound heals enough to stop bleeding, he releases it. It will be an hour before he has regrown his missing foot. It would take longer to learn to travel on three paws and fighting without it is impossible, until he learned to balance properly.
He watches one of the teens take a risky shot. This one is his son and heir. He separates another bear out and survives it with hardly a scratch. This makes Mike a very happy proud father and a pissed off alpha. Definitely, more conversation for later. The remaining two get split shortly after.
Ten minutes later, the bears are all dead. All of the living soldiers show up, just a bit later. Of the one hundred and fifty that started the fight, sixty-two survived. Kam shows up two minutes later and stabs each heart.
The teens are sent off to stop the pack from continuing any further. A soldier is sent to each of the other packs to get them to turn around and return to the condos. Because it is closer to the condos still, than the parking lot.
The rest get split up to find the various bodies left behind and to carry them home. Mike stays put to join the pack as his foot should be usable by the time they get here.
Kam attempts to pick up a dead bear, but is stopped. Mike states, "you should not touch those foul creatures."
Someone else states, "Alpha Tom died saving us. You should carry him."
Kam goes back to the spot he shot the bears. He picks up both pieces of Tom and carries him back. The dead bears are burned without ceremony. The wolves are memorialized and cremated with honor.
With only two alphas left living and only two heirs, a vote is taken on what to do now. Every pack's adults votes on one of two choices, keep existing pack and select their alpha, keep their pack and wait for an alpha with Kam's, or join Kam's.
Mike's Pelham pack voted to go home, as it remains, with their alpha and heir. Bethlehem decided to hang around with Kam, until their heir is an adult in three years. The other packs decided to stay with Kam's, until new alphas were found or created.