Chapter 1 - Thane
I tap my index finger on my glass full of orange juice, my tongue hardly absorbing the tart mixture, because truthfully, I’m in desperate need of something much stronger than a drink suitable for kids.
A stray blue balloon floats past me, capturing my attention and pulling me away from the birthday party. In some ways, the party serves as a gentle reminder that time isn’t waiting for us to get our ducks in a row, but my mind drifts to a pair of eyes I’ve yet to find, and with a heavy-hearted sigh, I return my attention to the party when the chorus of the birthday song is sung for the one-year-old in front of a cake adorned by burning candles.
I can see the underlying dread behind the smiles on everyone's faces, the worry they're trying to hide. Alpha Elias and Luna Aurora’s son, Emile, turned one today, and that means we’ve been dealing with the threat of demons from the underworld for almost twenty months. It’s far too long to be wrestling with something that threatens werewolves, especially our pack, but I’m the last sub-alpha of the Snehvolk pack who hasn’t found his fated mate.
Defeating the demons for good depends on me finding my fated mate, since Luna Yvonne once prophesied that it would take the gathering of four witches to help Elias's son lock the demons out of our world. Yet, none of us knows how to proceed with fulfilling the prophecy, or how I'm ever going to find my fated mate.
All I have to go on is Luna Rissa's vision she shared with my friend and her mate, Brooks, a few months ago.
I swat at the blue balloon floating past me as if purposely coming back to serve as a reminder that the only lead I have on my fated mate is the color of her eyes. Rissa and Brooks saw it in their shared vision—crystalline blue eyes that held so much ferocity that Rissa's heart skipped a beat before the vision ended, claiming that she sensed the fourth witch's sovereign powers without knowing who she was.
I've been on the hunt for those ferocious blue eyes ever since, but I've only been meeting dead ends. As a fellow subordinate alpha under Alpha Elias's governance, I'm supposed to be in charge of the hunting rotations, my skills and knowledge making me the head of hunting.
But searching for my fated mate feels like I'm failing dismally at something I'm supposed to be great at.
Grunting under my breath, the sound is swallowed by the final cheers of the party before Elias and Aurora blow out the candles on their son's cake. They're doing their best to keep their spirits thriving, as the main alpha and luna of Snehvolk, to uplift the spirits of their people.
Perhaps the disappointment I sense from them is simply a projection of my inner self-loathing, because finding my fated mate is proving more difficult than I expected.
By the time slices of chocolate cake are passed around, baby Emile becomes restless, yawning to signal that it's his time to sleep. Luna Aurora excuses herself to take him away, and Yvonne and Rissa tag along when Yvonne and Dawson's six-year-old, Gio, says he's tired, too.
With the witches gone, the four alphas of the Snehvolk pack are left to entertain the remaining guests. To my relief, the party soon comes to an end with most of the parents taking theirkids home, until the only ones left were the alphas and the elders who'd attended the party.
“I could use a stiff one…” Brooks murmurs, voicing the way I've been feeling all night.
Conceding with a thoughtful nod, I scan the room, picking up on a rising tension despite there being fewer guests now. Shrugging it off, I decide that it's just the way I'm feeling, like there's pressure that threatens to crack me open, especially in the presence of the elders and the alphas, as if there's a spotlight on me.
Clearing my throat, I turn to Elias in an attempt to deflect it.
“I'm gonna go down to the cellar and get us something to unwind with,” I suggest, and Elias nods. Dawson, one of the four subordinate alphas and one of my closest friends, offers to join me.
As we leave the main dining room, the pressure hangs on my shoulders and hardly subsides as we get to the underground bunker in Elias's house that leads to the cellar.
The secret room was built for his mate, Luna Aurora, after she'd accidentally burned his original house down with her untamed magic. Back then, she was a newly emerging witch, the first of three in Girdwood, and hardly had a clue how to use her gifts. It was soon discovered that her magic was the only thing powerful enough to combat the demons, joined later by Yvonne's and Rissa's.
“You alright, buddy? You've been awfully quiet all night,” Dawson comments when he catches me staring a little too long into the room where the witches train.
Clearing my throat, I snap out of my stupor and see the concern written in his eyes.
“Yeah…yeah, I'm fine, Dawson,” I say, tearing my gaze from the crystal amethyst ball in the center of the witches’ training room. “It's just that it's been almost two months, and I have no idea where to find her.”
Dawson chuckles nervously as he opens the cellar door, turning to me with a grimace. “Maybe you're trying too hard,” he suggests with an arched brow. “You're the expert in hunting, I know that, but the fated mates thing defies logic.”
Frowning, I consider what he's said for a moment. I've always relied on logic to get me through my tasks, but maybe this doesn't require it.
“Are you saying I need to trust my instincts, rather than my mind?” I ask, to which Dawson shrugs.
“It's how I found Yvie in Sunrise. I didn't think I'd find her there. Heck, I wasn't even looking for her back then. But I found her, rescued her, actually, and it turns out she had my kid, too. Say…” Dawson turns slowly, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You didn't get any she-wolf pregnant, did you?”
I snort, rolling my eyes as I grab a bottle of bourbon from the shelf and march out of the cellar.
“Wouldn't you just love it if you weren't the only one who knocked someone up?” I chuckle, and Dawson grimaces.
“Can't blame me for hoping,” he chuckles back nervously. “But then again, I have no regrets that Yvie had my child. We found our way back to each other, and now we're a family.”
“Yeah, well, I'm happy for you, buddy,” I sigh as we pass the witches’ training room again on our way back up. “But that's not the case for me. I’ve been rather…careful.”
