Chapter 1 : College Bound

4.5 years later… (August)

Ashe’s POV

     I’m off to College with my best friend today. We met in first grade, at 6 years old and now at 18 we are packing up my car and driving 2 hours north, to Salem where we will be attending the same University. The only thing that could be more exciting for me right now would be if we were actually taking the road trip that we put off until next summer. Selyna and I both took summer jobs instead. She opted for 2 actually. Doing double duty waitressing at a local cafe and interning with an herbalist even though we are mostly sure she is not a plant witch. She has killed every plant Jane, her adoptive mother, has ever put in her care (I will probably have to take care of any houseplants in our apartment). The University is on another pack’s territory, but luckily they are allies. They are a much larger pack and encompass a huge territory north of Boston, which includes Salem and about half a dozen other towns. I remember meeting the Alpha and Alpha Heir once about 5 years ago. They had visited at my sister’s 16th birthday…I think my father and Alpha Sean had hoped my sister and Damian would be mates, but no luck. 2 years later Wendy found her mate when a pack from Rhode Island sent a contingency to set up an alliance. The Alpha of that pack had sent the youngest of his siblings, a guy named Davin. He’s a good guy and they are happily training to take over my parent’s duties. I am glad Wendy wasn’t fated to Damian, that would have made me the Alpha heir of our pack which is something I am not all that keen on. I heard that Damian still hadn’t found his mate even though he is now 22. Maybe he’d be less surly if he found one, not that he’s a bad guy or anything. He’s just not all that easy to be around. I have heard rumours about him being ruthless, about how he enjoys violently punishing anyone who breaks the rules. His father and mine are on the council together. The council has both regional and international levels of supernatural leaders who strive to set fair rules that help maintain peace for all supernaturals and help protect our secrets from humans. Not all packs live integrated with humans and other supernaturals, only a handful of us do things this way, most keep in close communities separate from others, but nearly half the town that I grew up in are part of my pack, the rest are mostly humans, with a  few witches, and fox shifter, but since her mate died she mostly keeps to herself. Anyway, Selyna and I are just shoving the last of our bags into the trunk. My father said the furniture he ordered for us will be delivered at noon and it is nearly 10 am, so we better say our goodbyes and hit the road. Before we leave town Selyna needs to stop at the herbalist she had interned with. Susan, the herbalist has a gift she wants to give her. 

We pull up to the shop and I wait in the car, while Selyna runs in. I play with the playlists I made to find the one I want and sync it with the car radio for the few minutes that I am waiting. Selyna runs out beaming and hops in the car, waving one last goodbye to Susan, the middle aged witch who leans in the doorway to her shop smiling as we leave for our next adventure.

     I know Selyna is as excited as I am as she drums on the dashboard singing along with the lyrics of one of our favorite songs. She turns to me and I swear i see a flash of silver twinkle in her eyes before they shift back to the ever changing shades of blue and grey (they seem to change with her mood and efforts to do bigger spells  often make the colors more intense, but i have never seen a silver glow in them in the 12 years of our friendship. Do witches even have eyes that glow with a different color? I don’t know. I have met some special wolves who have eyes that do. She doesn’t smell like a wolf and I don’t sense a wolf in her and given that she is a witch there would be less than one in a million chance of her being a wolf shifter and also a witch. I have never met a witch whose eyes do that before. Maybe she is a rare witch. 'Or maybe you imagined it,' my wolf, Phoenix, suggests. They don’t sense a wolf in Selyna either and they would know, they are a wolf who can sense and communicate with the wolf of any other wolf shifter. It is a rare ability, since normally we can only communicate with wolves in our own pack or family.

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    After 2 hours of driving we pull up to the brick building that houses our new apartment. Just in time to see the delivery truck pull up behind us. My father had Selyna and I pick out any furniture we wanted for the apartment. Selyna insisted on paying my father back even though he had tried to insist that it was a gift to us both. In the end he relented saying that she could pay him back in magical assistance as needed over the next couple of years. Witch’s magic can be pricey, especially from really powerful witches. Selyna is a very powerful witch and as well as getting her college degree she will be getting more training. Her Mentor and several other witches here in Salem have offered to let her join their coven. Salem has several and most of them work alongside each other and the Moonlight Dance pack, but only a couple have pacts with the pack and the one she is joining was the first coven to have a pact with a shifter pack.

     It only takes an hour and a half for the furniture to be delivered to our appartment and the car to be unpacked. We have a lot of settling in to do, but that will have to wait. We need to go talk to Alpha Sean before the end of the day, as a courtesy. I know that He and my father have been friends for a long time, ever since Alpha Sean took the place of Alpha Demitri. I am too young to remember Alpha Demitri, but was told that he, his wife and daughter disappeared about 14 years ago. His daughter would have been about my age. Which makes me wonder if my father would have tried to see if she and I would have been mates if she was around. The mate bond is an interesting thing…when we first shift on our 16th birthday we can sense our mate if they are nearby, otherwise we have to wait for the Harvest Moon Festival in September or the Flower Moon Festival in May. It is rare, but some special wolves can sense their mates at any full moon. I’m 18 and have a special wolf, yet I have not even had a hint of my mate. Not that I am all that enthusiastic. I should be excited to find my mate, most wolf shifters are very eager to find theirs. I know Selene would only match me with someone who can accept me as I am, but I can’t help but be nervous about the idea of mating. Just the thought of anyone seeing me naked makes me shudder. Shifters are used to nudity, it is the norm, yet for some of us …it’s um, well awkward.

     “I just found a whole, huge box labeled ‘Kitchen’ I never packed kitchen stuff, did you?” Selyna queried. 

     “Mom packed it for us !” I shout standing up from my half unpacked box of clothing. “Leave it for later. We need to head over to the packhouse to meet up with Alpha Sean.” I grab my messenger bag that contains a package my father wanted me to give to Alpha Sean and walk out of my room to meet up with Selyna in the hallway. She looks down at herself and asks if she looks okay to meet an Alpha. I laugh, “girl, you have met alphas before. You never worried about how you looked in front of my dad, besides you HAVE met Alpha Sean before, about 4 and a half years ago.” She narrows her eyes…maybe she is trying to remember, but that look is something else, not her usual look of concentration.

     “Don’t tell me he is that big brunette guy that came to visit with the grumpy boy when we were 13!” she huffed. 

     “Yup, that’s the dude!” I say as I turn the door nob, “Come on.  Alpha Sean is an old family friend and may seem intense, but you would be too if you wer in his shoes. He has been searching for his best friend who disappeared without a trace years ago. Really he is a good guy.” I incline my head towards the stairs.

     Selyna mumbles “I guess I need to do this…he is generous enough to let us stay in one of the pack apartments for free.” I let her believe it is free, but really it is part of a complex pact between our packs, one that goes back hundreds of years and ties us to each other in ways most people don’t understand.

    We walk a block up to Lafayette Street,  turn right, walk the few blocks to Derby street, take another right and follow the line on the pavement that the tourists follow. It's the red line that runs through the town to all the witchy tourist destinations. It is so funny that “The witch City” is largely run by a conglomeration of not only powerful witches, but some of the strongest wolves to walk the earth. M ost of the rare or special wolves can be tied to this pack or one of the 2 ancient packs nearly lost to the history books in Europe. I know my great grandmother had been born in the Moonlight Dance pack and she and I both have some special abilities. The red line on the pavement leads us towards the Salem Common, a large town green with walkways and a playground. There is a large stone gazebo (for lack of a better word) with it’s columns and domed roof. Trees and an iron fence line the outer edges. The arched entrance opposite of where we enter is the direction we are heading. There are a ton of big, old , brick buildings, but as a wolf I can nearly sniff out the packhouse from here. Humans might mistake it for just another historic building or bed and breakfast. There are enough of them around here that it just blends right in, but wolf shifters can smell the werewolves within. We sense the power radiating off the place…we walk up the steps and to the big door. I open it without knocking, we are expected guests after all.

     The foyer reeks of wealth, elegance and power. I can see a hallway and doors ahead and to my left. The open doorway to my right has a seating area a a pretty red headed she wolf sits behind a reception desk. She smiles sweetly “You must be the young wolf that Alpha is waiting for. He told me to expect a young wolf and witch from the Midnight Star pack. I’ll let him know you are here!” her eyes glaze over and i know she is mindlinking Alpha Sean. 

     I hear a door open down the hall and footsteps approaching. They are too loud and rushed to be Alpha Sean. A large, dark blur of angry wolf passes as someone storms out the door. My wolf hearing picks up grumbles about “just another dead end, as always, dad! The girl is probably dead, just like Dimitri and his wife!” Selyna grabs my arm and I turn to her. Her eyes are flashing silver again and she seems to be hyperventilating. Her powers sometimes make her hyperventilate when she has an unexpected surge, but that eye thing I hadn’t seen before today.

      “I heard that, son and you are wrong!!!” Alpha Sean rages towards the slamming door, knowing that even if his son is already out he can hear. Turning to the reception area where i stand now supporting the weight of my best friend, who is now on the verge of collapse. “Sorry about that, the boy has no manners! You must be Ashe! You have grown so muc! This must be Selyna!” he beams. A look crosses his face that I don’t recognize and his eyes light as he catches Selyna in his arms just as she faints. Under his breath I hear him mumble “it is true” as he leads us to a large well appointed office and lays Selyna on a plush sofa, inviting me to sit before he slides around the desk to his office chair.