Page 5 of Fated Alpha Baby

It’s a feeling of intense yearning, and I can’t quite understand why it feels so strong. It’s been years of progressively losing the ability to wield air magic, but this pang in my chest…

This feels different.

“Have you spoken to Amos yet?” Grandfather Bernard asks from behind me, prompting me to turn around and school my expression into something less solemn.

“We have been speaking every day, Grandfather. The research team is planning on conducting the ritual for a third time.”

Grandfather’s graying brows furrow, the wrinkles around his lips deepening as he clenches his jaw and curses under his breath. His frustration is nearly palpable, but I know it’s been months since he’s been able to wield his magic.

I’ve been struggling, too.

“Perhaps they need to try another method.”

“The ritual has worked for Damian and Heinrich.”

“So the problem is you.”

My nostrils flare as irritation courses through my veins. “Are you trying to be sarcastic, Grandfather?”

“No. I’m being realistic.”

I sigh heavily, then turn my back to him, facing the window again. The misted glass has since cleared, the fog gone as if it was never there.

Back when my powers were still strong, I would have shattered the glass with a single breath. Now, my breath counts for nothing more than an ordinary human’s, and I hate it.

“Nothing about the demon threat is realistic, Grandfather. Neither is our mere existence,” I scoff. “Or the fact that we are losing our strength. Losing wolves. Losing our lives.”

“Then certainly you know that you must find your mate.”

I gulp hard, keeping my gaze fixed on the view beyond the window, where the valley seems to exhale with me. The valley has been hurting, and the only way to save the packs in the three corners of Bitterroot is through the fated mate bond.

A bond I couldn’t care about.

I had long since given up on the idea of love and happily-ever-afters when life dealt me the cards I was forced to accept as my own. Forced to step in as the alpha of the Iron Breath Pack by my nineteenth birthday, I’ve kept myself armored against such trivial matters.

But the council, along with the research team, believes that the alpha finding his true mate through the specialized ritual found in ancient texts is what will help us regain our lost strength—the power and natural healing abilities gifted to us by Lord Selene, and weakened by the demons over the last four years, when they first began attacking.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes—first with Damian and his human mate, Sophie, and then with Heinrich and his human mate, Annika. But it isn’t enough to convince me that a true mate is the answer to all our problems.

Not for me, at least.

Perhaps it’s my reluctance to take a mate that made the ritual prove useless twice. The application of kambo on an open wound in wolf form didn’t work either time I tried.

Where I was supposed to see her face and hear the spirits of the psychedelic venom whisper her name in my hallucinatory state, all I got to see was the back of her head, a faint scent I could hardly recognize, and a burnt burgundy spark in her palms as she wielded a power that wasn’t like anything we’ve seen before.

A mix of fire and air.

What was strangest was that she already possessed those powers. She isn’t just human.

She’s a practicing witch.

Though they’re humans, both Sophie and Annika emerged as very powerful witches, descendants of the Ashclaw Pack from the south of the Bitterroot Valley whose alpha mated with a witch before the pack was wiped out by demons for their fire power—the only magic that can end them. The child of the Ashclaw Pack and the witch was saved nearly a century ago, and his descendants went on to live as humans, scattered throughout the ordinary human world until the reemergence of the demons and their threat forced the remaining three packs in the valley to actively seek the alphas’ mates, their bonds to alpha wolves igniting magic they didn’t know they possessed.

Not only have the lunas of Red Moon and Silver Stone helped to fight off the demons, but they’ve also brought back strength to their alphas.

I look down at my hands in my lap, gulping hard again because I know they’re right. Grandfather is right. The council is right. The research team is right.

But nothing about actively seeking out a mate feels right to me. It feels strange. Wrong. Like there should be another way to regain my lost powers without the need to tie myself down to another, even if she is my fated true mate.