Alera and Jackson sat on the sofa with their heads down as though waiting for punishment, like children called before the headmaster. Their faces were filled with shame and guilt, though the emotions manifested differently in each of them. Jackson's jaw was clenched tight, his hands gripping his knees hard enough that his knuckles had gone white. He knew he was in trouble. Real trouble and his wolf was whimpering in submission to the raw dominance radiating from Silas.
Alera, on the other hand, had no idea why she should be feeling guilty at all. What had she done wrong? She'd been trying to leave, to find her way back to the forest, and she'd accidentally collided with Jackson. That was hardly a crime. Yet the oppressive atmosphere in the room, the weight of the Alphas' gazes, made her feel as though she'd committed some terrible transgression. She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, wondering when they would finally let her leave. Though, she had to admit to herself with some reluctance, she would miss the food here. That meal had been the best thing she'd eaten in years.
Jackson, meanwhile, could feel the chilling dominant aura that emanated from Silas like cold radiating from a block of ice. It pressed down on him, making it hard to breathe, making his wolf want to roll over and show its belly in submission. Even though he was an alpha's son, he was not an alpha yet. He had the blood, the lineage, the potential but not the power. Not yet. His wolf was no match in comparison to a fully manifested Alpha like Silas. Not until his father died or willingly passed on the veil of dominion, which Jackson would inherit either way. It was inevitable, written into his destiny by blood and tradition.
The veil of dominion. A sacred aura passed from one alpha to another, either through death or through a ritual of passing that few Alphas were willing to perform while still alive. It was more than just power, it was authority made manifest, leadership crystallized into an almost physical force. It bent the wills of wolves without requiring force, like gravity pulling everything toward its center. Lesser wolves couldn't help but submit to it. It was instinct, coded into their DNA by the Moon Goddess herself.
Silas glared daggers at Jackson, his eyes narrowed to slits, his expression promising pain and retribution. He looked ready to tear the boy to shreds, to teach him a lesson about respect and boundaries and keeping his hands off women who weren't his mate. But then his gaze slid to the girl beside Jackson, and his expression shifted to something more complicated.
Her scent hit him properly now that they were in an enclosed space, now that he was paying attention. It was sweet and strangely alluring, with notes he couldn't quite identify, something like honey and wildflowers and underneath it all, something richer, headier, almost intoxicating. It unsettled him deeply. She smelled 'nice', better than nice, and he had to admit even in his anger that she was quite pretty. More than pretty, actually. Charming in a way that seemed almost otherworldly, with those impossible green eyes and that face that looked like it had been designed to haunt a man's dreams.
But he already had a mate, and he loved her deeply, truly. How could he not? She was the mother of his pups, his partner for two decades, the one the Moon Goddess had chosen specifically for him. The bond between them was sacred, unbreakable. So why was his wolf stirring with interest at this strange girl's scent? Why was there a pull toward her that felt wrong and right at the same time?
Still, despite his confusion, Silas eyed the girl with deep suspicion. Something about her wasn't natural. Wasn't normal.
"Are you a witch?" he asked bluntly, his voice carrying the weight of accusation.
"I don't think so?" Alera replied, her tone uncertain. She tilted her head slightly, as if genuinely considering the question. "My master never said I was. He would have told me, right? If I was a witch?"
Meanwhile, Derrick felt a surge of rage rising in his chest like lava pushing up through cracks in stone. Why had she left his office earlier? He had told her to rest, even though he had silently pleaded with her to be gone by the time he returned. But more importantly, was it because of Jackson? Was Jackson attracted to her too? Had his own son felt the same impossible pull that Derrick had felt? The thought made his blood boil with a possessive fury he had no right to feel.
His wolf stirred restlessly, longing for her, whining with need. The beast wanted to go to her, wanted to pull her away from everyone else in the room and keep her somewhere safe where only he could reach her. The intensity of the feeling was frightening in its strength.
Derrick shut his eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt, using the physical pain to ground himself. He took a deep breath through his nose, held it for a count of four, then exhaled slowly through his mouth, almost like a sigh, the sound of it carrying the weight of his exhaustion and confusion. He was trying desperately to steady himself, to push his wolf back down, to regain some semblance of control over his own reactions.
Silas, noticing his friend's distress even while maintaining his angry focus on the young people before them, nudged Derrick's arm with his elbow.
"Doesn't she remind you of that green-eyed witch tale you would hear as a pup?" he whispered, his voice low enough that only another Alpha's enhanced hearing could pick it up clearly. His eyes never left Alera as he spoke. "The Green-Eyed Lady. The one from the old bedtime tales. Those eyes.you can't tell me you haven't noticed. It's a bit creepy"
Derrick, still focused intently on the girl and his son sitting before him like guilty prisoners, did not respond. He couldn't. If he opened his mouth right now, he wasn't sure what would come out? a confession, command, or growl.
"Uh, excuse me," Alera said suddenly, her voice cutting through the thick tension in the room like scissors through cloth. All three men's attention snapped to her immediately. "I'm kinda lost. Do you know the way back to that forest I was living in? You know, the one you brought me from?" She looked at Jackson as she said this, her expression earnest and hopeful.
Silas's eyebrows rose toward his hairline. "You live in the forest? Even we werewolves don't do that anymore, girl. We have civilization now. Towns. Electricity. Running water. You are weird." He pointed at her as if to emphasize his point, the gesture almost comically blunt.
Alera scoffed, sitting up straighter, her pride clearly pricked. "Well, excuse me, but my master lives quite comfortably there, thank you very much. We even have a magic library. A whole room where the books organize themselves and float through the air when you call them. I don't see any of your books floating in the air." She smirked, clearly pleased with her comeback, her chin lifting with satisfaction.
"Magic books?" Derrick echoed the words in his mind, his thoughts racing. Books that floated and organized themselves, that was advanced magic, the kind that required either immense power or years of careful enchantment work. Could she really be a witch? Was that why he was so drawn to her, because of some spell or enchantment she was radiating? It would make sense. It would explain things except... she seemed so genuinely naive and innocent, so clearly confused by what was happening. Could someone fake that kind of authenticity?
"So you are a witch," Silas said, seizing on her words like a lawyer pouncing on a confession. "You just admitted it. Magic library. Floating books. That's witchcraft, girl."
"Unfortunately, I don't have cool powers like my master," Alera said, her tone carrying genuine regret and a hint of envy. "He can do all sorts of amazing things-move objects without touching them, create light from nothing, read the weather patterns, brew potions that can cure any illness. He's so vine-tastic!" She said the last word, beaming with a sense of pride.
The three men all gave her strange looks. 'Vine-tastic?' The word was bizarre, childish almost. No one used words like that, not in any dialect pack region they were familiar with. 'Is she a foreigner?' they all wondered simultaneously. 'Or just really strange?'
"Are you from around here?" Jackson finally asked, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness for a moment. "Like, from this region? This continent even?"
"I don't think so," Alera said thoughtfully, her brow furrowing slightly as she tried to remember. "I didn't even know such species as you actually existed until very recently. I mean, my master told me about lycanthropes in stories, but I didn't necessarily believe their existence— no offense. I thought they were like the other stories. Myths. Like dragons or phoenixes. But you're real! The lycanthropes created by the Moon Goddess, creatures of the moon, bound by her laws and her gifts." She said it with such fascination, such genuine wonder, her eyes moving from one man to another as if trying to memorize every detail of these impossible beings who had stepped out of legend into her reality.
She leaned forward slightly, her curiosity clearly overwhelming any sense of danger or propriety. "I also heard that your mating process requires sexual intercourse for a bond to be fully formed or instated. Did I get that wrong? And if that's correct, what happens if you bond with someone who isn't your chosen mate? Like, if you sleep with the wrong person before you meet your true mate? Or if you're already mated and then sleep with someone else? What happens to the bond then?"
The innocent, academic curiosity in her voice made the extremely personal and intimate questions she was asking somehow even more awkward. Jackson and Derrick exchanged uncomfortable glances, neither wanting to be the one to answer, both feeling like they'd been caught in a trap they didn't know how to escape.
Silas, however, smirked, a proud, all-knowing expression that said he was more than happy to educate this ignorant girl. He loved being the expert, loved displaying his knowledge and authority.
"Well, if you must know," he began, settling back into his chair like a professor preparing to give a lecture, "when one does that. When a wolf bonds with someone who isn't their true mate chosen by the Moon Goddess, it's unbearable for their wolves. Absolutely torturous. They lose joy, lose the ability to feel happiness or contentment. They fall into a depression so deep it's like drowning in darkness with no hope of reaching the surface. The wolf and the human side become disconnected, at war with each other."
He paused, making sure she was following, then continued. "It doesn't necessarily kill them, not directly. But in extreme cases, when the wolf simply cannot imagine being bonded to someone who is not their other half, their true half, crafted specifically for them by the Moon Goddess herself-they can will themselves to death. They simply... stop. Stop eating, stop fighting, stop living. That kind of despair is what sometimes leads to cheating or divorce among mated pairs who weren't true mates to begin with. But even then, even if they separate, they are still bonded. The mark remains. It is just eternal agony, living with the wrong person marked into your soul forever."
"Then can the partner from the couple just bond with someone else at the loss of their mate that they were married to?" Alera asked, her head tilting with genuine curiosity.
"You can't just do that," Derrick said, his voice coming out low and groggy, deeper than usual, rough with emotions he was fighting to control. The question had hit too close to home, had dragged up memories he'd been trying to bury.
He cleared his throat and continued, his tone bitter with old pain. "You can't break a bond once it's formed. It's for life, literally carved into your soul by the Moon Goddess's own hand. Even when a partner dies, it's nearly impossible to find another half. Most wolves who lose their mates never bond again. They can't. The part of them that could bond is... broken. Dead. Gone with their mate into the grave." His voice had dropped to almost a whisper by the end, and he was clearly lost in a reverie of memories of his own mate, dead for the past decade, of the emptiness she'd left behind.
"Fascinating," Alera said, nodding slowly as she absorbed the information. Her eyes were bright with intellectual curiosity, completely missing the pain her questions had caused. "I can't wait to tell my master what I found out. He loves learning about different species although," she added with a small shrug, "I'm sure he already knows most of this. He seems to know everything."
Derrick felt a sharp spike of possessiveness lance through his chest at how easily she mentioned that so-called master, at the affection and admiration clear in her voice when she spoke of him. Who was this master? What was he to her? Teacher? Guardian? Something more? The thought of her belonging to someone else made his wolf snarl with jealous rage.
"What's your name?" he asked abruptly, his voice sharper than he intended.
"Alera," she said, offering him a small smile that made his heart do something complicated and painful in his chest. Her name was as unusual as everything else about her, beautiful and foreign and perfectly suited to those impossible green eyes.
"Alera," he repeated, tasting the name, letting it roll off his tongue. "Why are you here? Really. What brought you to our territory?"
"Well, he brought me here," she said matter-of-factly, raising her index finger to point directly at Jackson with all the accusatory certainty of a prosecutor identifying the guilty party.
"Oh really?" Silas growled softly, his eyes swinging back to Jackson with renewed fury. His hand landed on Jackson's shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to make the younger man wince.
Jackson broke into a nervous sweat, feeling the pressure of that grip, the promise of violence barely contained. "I thought she was lost!" he blurted out quickly, desperately, his words tumbling over each other in his haste to explain. "She was alone in the forest during a storm, and she looked terrified, and I just-I couldn't leave her there! It was the right thing to do! The humane thing!"
"Derrick," Silas said, his voice carrying a dangerous edge even as his lips curved into a smile that promised pain, "I'm going to train with your son. Right now. We have a lot to discuss about proper behavior and respecting mate bonds." The words were polite, but the subtext was clear, he was going to beat some sense into Jackson, teach him a lesson he wouldn't soon forget.
He stood, quietly but firmly dragging Jackson to his feet and toward the door. Jackson shot one last helpless look at his father and at Alera before being pulled from the room, leaving only Derrick and Alera behind in the sudden, heavy silence.
Derrick let out a groan, a sound of pure frustration and need, fighting desperately against the urge to cross the distance between them and hold her now that they were alone, now that there were no witnesses to his weakness. 'She smells so good,' he thought miserably. 'Why does she smell so impossibly good?'
"Excuse me," her voice jolted him from his spiraling thoughts. He looked up and realized with a start that she had already left the sofa, had crossed the distance between them without him noticing. She now stood next to him, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body. At 5'10", she was tall for a woman, but Derrick still towered over her with his height of 6'2", could still look down and meet those incredible green eyes that seemed to see right through him.
"Is there a way back to where that guy got me from?" she asked, her voice soft and hopeful. "I really need to find my master. I've been away from him for too long already, and he must be worried. Or maybe..." Her voice faltered slightly. "Maybe he's not worried. Maybe he's glad I'm gone."
Derrick stepped closer without meaning to, his body moving of its own accord, closing the distance until only their breaths mingled in the air between them. He could count her eyelashes at this distance, could see the exact pattern of colors in her eyes not just green, but flecks of gold and amber and darker emerald, like looking into a forest in summer.
"Why do you want to go back?" he asked, trying desperately to sound casual, trying to keep his voice level and calm and Alpha-like. But his wolf's growl slipped through, a possessive rumble that colored his words with threat and claim.
"Because I have to find my master," she said, and now there was sadness in her voice, real pain that made her eyes glisten with the threat of tears. "He's all I have. He raised me, taught me everything I know. And one day he just... left. Told me to stay where I was and that he'd be back. But he didn't come back. Days passed, then weeks, and he still didn't come back. So I went looking for him." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "What if he abandoned me? What if he decided I wasn't worth keeping anymore?"
She was completely unaware of the predatory gaze Derrick now had, completely missing the way he was looking at her like a wolf eyeing prey, hungry and possessive and barely restrained.
"Do you think I'll be able to find him?" she asked softly, looking up at Derrick with those eyes that were starting to glisten with unshed tears, vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking in their innocence.
Derrick looked down into her worried eyes and sighed, a sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest. Before he could stop himself, before rational thought could intervene, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her. The embrace was meant to be reassuring, meant to comfort her and tell her without words that yes, she would find her master, that everything would be okay.
But the moment his arms wrapped around her, the moment he felt her soft body pressed against his, his wolf went absolutely wild. Every instinct screamed at him to tighten his grip, to pin her down against the nearest surface, to claim her in the most primal way possible. He could feel his body responding, could feel his control slipping like sand through his fingers.
He stood there, holding her, fighting the greatest battle of his life, the battle against himself, against his own desires, against the wolf that was snarling and demanding he take what was so clearly meant to be his.
His wolf was deeply, profoundly dissatisfied with just holding her.
And Derrick knew, with a certainty that terrified him, that he couldn't keep fighting this forever.