After the Cobble family, Carrie knew she had a problem to cope with or tackle.
When she and Ken entered a long dead-ended road everything on it looked like a dilapidated version of a southern trailer park with un-mowed lawns, equipment that was hazarded parked looking abandoned, and the houses trying to fall in.
Before entering the road they dropped off four armed guards plus they had four more with them.
The inhabitants of the street were gathered on a huge front-covered porch of your atypical biker bar/cafe at the end of the road.
A midsize muscular male and female couple walked out from the crowded porch. Both were dressed in well-worn biker t-shirts, loose blue jeans, and croc shoes. Missing were the expected tattoos, and piercings because when you changed they came with you. Usually painfully and always obvious. Not a good thing.
He stated "So you're our new Alpha (with a slight hesitation). What do you want with us?"
Carrie answered "Yes! I am the new Alpha! We are checking on all the buildings I now own and all the people living here. None of you were evicted when asked to. Why?"
"You can't order us around! What are you a female Alpha going to do about it? Cry?" the male asked.
"No! I have 3 options for all of you.
1. You all clean up this mess or leave.
2. I call the sheriff's department. Have them evict you while they check for illegal items.
3. You pick a champion and we do the same. Then you make the challenge to either concede or to the death. Then in an open circle, they fight with armed guards to ensure there is no outside help or any problems before or afterward.
OH Yes. We need to know which form the champions are going to be in. There will be no switching after the start. There will be cleaning and inspections before the challenge in both forms to ensure no more accidents like Larry's. I'll give you an hour to talk it over and decide.
Carrie, Ken, and the guards walked away around the end of the houses onto a partly blocked paved alleyway. From the rearmost of the houses were in well-maintained shape, a couple could have been in house and garden magazine. Before passing behind the bar was a single house its back matched its wrecked front. In the center of the bar were French doors which opened outward across from an opening into the forest that paths quickly branched off of.
Turning to the other side of the road they saw the same view without any unkempt houses.
As they neared the end of the road one of the guard's phones buzzed. He said "they're requesting we return.Please."
Standing in front of the bar were many additional people in the front. Many of them had Pledged Allegiance earlier.
The man and woman stepped forward again saying "Sorry for our last meeting. I'm Bart Coulter and this is my wife Mary. While you've been gone we've had an education about you and your treatment of our village. We were only told that you had killed the Alphas and had arrived to take over "Your" village. We were surprised to find out you had members of the World Council with you. Sorry! Can we start again?
We are not what we seem. We've kept our rough bad boy look in our street to keep the old Alphas away and scared.
We have by a verbal majority voted to Pledge Alliance to you. You've already allowed people to leave with their belongings and talked about them selling their homes and businesses with World Council's help."
From the back of the bar, a huge scruffy long-haired and bearded person pushed people out of his way yelling "I'm here to challenge you for control of this pack. I'm challenging you for Alpha Greg Putin; He'll be here later today to assume control of this pack. I'm his cousin Bryan Putin. Are you going to accept?" Carrie said simply "Yes."
