002 | It can't be you

Rhiannon’s POV

Tiger was still in a mood with me when we strode into the woods the next morning. I’d shifted into my huge white wolf form and was letting her guide us through the barren, snow-covered trees.

We were stationed at the very back of the pack, amongst the few other Omegas that had been invited on this hunt. The Alpha had to be getting desperate to allow so many of us to come on a hunt led by him. I’d even been taken off breakfast duty so that I could come along. 

‘I can’t believe you let him mark you,’ Tiger muttered, drawing my attention away from the thin, finger-like boughs of the deciduous trees. She was glaring at Stephen’s wolf, Brian, from behind, her upper lip curling back in a silent snarl. He trotted along happily, unaware and unbothered, his tail wagging, his paws padding merrily through the deep snow.

There was literally nothing to glare at. Brian was even more adorable than Stephen. 

‘Sorry, what was that? I thought I heard something,’ I retorted coldly. ‘Oh, wait, it was nothing. Nothing important, anyway.’

‘Oh, grow up.’ She kicked a rock; it hit Stephen’s wolf, Brian, on the back of the head. He turned around, his jaw swinging open in shock. Tiger just glared at him.

‘Hey,’ I hissed, ‘be nice. Neither Stephen or Brian have done anything wrong.’

‘You’re right,’ she huffed, ‘it’s you that I’m annoyed at.’

‘I couldn’t tell,’ I bit back sarcastically. ‘Anyway, I don’t know why you’re even pissed at me, Tigs. I thought you liked Stephen, and I know you like Brian. When you aren’t kicking rocks at him, anyway.’

‘Yeah, well – nobody could dislike Brian, could they?’ Her tone softened. ‘If this is truly what you want, then I want it, too. I just…’

I sighed. ‘Spit it out.’

‘I just don’t think it is what you want.’

Before I could think of a half-decent retort to that bit of nonsense, Brian dropped back to talk to us. His muzzle opened in a wolfish grin, and my frosty heart melted a little. He was shorter than Tiger, his head only just reaching her shoulder; his fur was the same rich brown colour as Stephen’s skin, and even though he didn’t wear horn-rimmed glasses I always imagined him with them on. 

‘Do you think we’ll find much today?’ Stephen asked softly, butting his nose against Tiger’s chest. 

‘I hope so.’ 

I knew I should’ve made more of an effort to talk to him, but I just… couldn’t. There was nothing else I wanted to say. My attention kept being drawn up towards the front of the pack, where the biggest wolves were ducking beneath low-hanging, gnarled branches. 

The landscape here had been beautiful, before. Now it was stuck: never changing from this lifeless stretch of ice and snow. We’d survived an entire year of winter, our resources declining more and more with every season that passed us by. 

I wasn’t sure if it made it better or worse that the other packs in The Valley weren’t affected by our curse. The Eternal Winter was a plague on the Night Wind pack – just us, and nobody else. In theory, it should’ve been better – there were others out there to help us, to bring us food and supplies when we needed them most.

That wasn’t the case, though. Except for our Luna’s old pack, Moon Chasm, the one she’d left to be with her mate, our Alpha, nobody dared bring us anything for fear of drawing the curse’s attention their way. We were stuck hunting these same woods for creatures that couldn’t survive any better than we could in the Eternal Winter. We came back with less every time.

I didn’t know how much longer we could survive like this. Nobody did.

‘I think we will,’ Brian rumbled, his voice lower and older than Stephen’s. Despite being a twenty-year-old wolf, he gave off the energy of an older gentleman with a bowed back, the sort one might find in an ancient, dusty library. ‘I have a good feeling about today.’ He fluttered his eyelashes at Tiger, who cracked a rueful smile at last. ‘Maybe it’s because I’ve found my mate.’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘Goddess knows we need a win.’

‘Yeah,’ sighed Stephen, and I could just picture him wringing his hands together. ‘Mum and Dad came back with their hunting party this morning.’

‘Your tone is already telling me it wasn’t a roaring success.’

‘They found one rabbit. One.’

‘Fuck.’ What more was there to say than that? We were screwed. Completely, utterly, fucking screwed.

Tiger’s ears pricked up. ‘Please tell me you mean one rabbit each,’ she said to Stephen.

‘One between the whole party.’

‘We can’t go on like this.’ Brian’s eyebrows drew together anxiously.

‘We know, Bri,’ I sighed. ‘We need to do something.’

‘What more can we do, though, Rhi?’ asked Stephen. ‘The Alpha is doing everything he can and then some. Unless we work out what’s causing the Eternal Winter, we can’t do anything to fix it.’

‘Maybe we can do some research.’

Brian’s eyes lit up at that. ‘Did you say research? I’m so in.’

‘Dork,’ muttered Tiger. 

I drew back into myself as our wolves started to bicker playfully. I let Tiger have full control, looking through her eyes out at the frost-covered thorns, glinting in the cold wintry sunlight, and trying to spot the flash of a white tail or a wayward antler. 

Before this – back when I’d have a choice over what I’d eaten – I’d been a vegan. It still made me feel a bit queasy to be hunting and killing cute animals, so I tended to let Tiger take the lead when it came to going out on these hunts. I enjoyed being out and about, stretching my legs instead of being stuck in the pack house cooking and cleaning, but the actual hunting wasn’t something I’d do if it weren’t necessary for our survival.

‘Stop.’ Our Alpha’s command bellowed through a mindlink that rippled through us all. ‘We’ll split into groups here. When the sun reaches its highest point, turn back and meet here.’

All twelve wolves dug their paws into the snow, skidding to an immediate halt. 

‘Luna Amelia and I will take the Omegas north. Warrior Wolves, split yourselves into two groups and take the east and the west.’

Everyone nodded their assent. I knew why we’d been put with the Alpha and Luna – because we were meant to be the least skilled wolves in the pack, and Alpha Caleb trusted his Warrior Wolves more. Bastard. I was as big as any Alpha, in and out of my wolf form. I towered over the other Omegas, and in training I was just as strong and fast as Alpha Caleb himself. Because of my status, nobody seemed able to see it. I was invisible, a servant amongst kings.

Cin was convinced she was going to find herself an Alpha mate in another pack. If not an Alpha then a Beta or, at worst, a Gamma. Sometimes, it didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world. A few people in our pack had gone against the will of the Moon Goddess and picked their mates for themselves – I just couldn’t believe I was now one of them. Though I’d support Cin no matter what she did, I’d never liked the idea of going against the mate bond. It was the mate bond – kind of a big deal.

‘Omegas,’ Alpha Caleb barked, and the five of us picked our way around the cluster of Warrior Wolves to reach him. The Omega closest to me, Marcella, was so shy she was barely worth bothering to talk to. Her wolf form was tiny, barely coming up to Tiger’s knee – a fault that was made all the more pronounced by the fact that she kept her head drooped meekly at all times. 

All thoughts of Mousey Marcella were swept from my head the second Alpha Caleb came into view. His wolf towered over all the others, and he would have been easy to spot amongst any crowd even without his distinct colouring. His sleek grey coat was splashed with black down his back and chest, and his paws looked as though they’d been dipped in ink.

My heart beat fast; my jaw dropped. His scent, which had always been pleasant but nondescript to me, hit me like a fucking tonne of bricks. It was like all of my favourite things rolled up in one: the crisp air of a brisk dawn and freshly cut grass and something deeper, muskier, manlier. 

I stared at him – and he stared right back. Our eyes locked. The world rocked on its hinges, shaking and changing irreparably, and he became every star in the sky and every perfect sunrise and every quiet dusk. He became both my wild Saturday nights and my lazy Sunday afternoons in that one, fateful, eternal moment. Time froze around us, as surely as it had when the curse had fallen upon our land. We were stuck in this moment, our hearts crossed like fingers, a single arrow piercing through them both.

He was mine. My chest heaved with wanton need, something pure and primal opening up in my heart and spreading in waves through my body like liquid gold.

‘Mate,’ Tiger breathed. ‘He’s our mate, Rhi.’

‘Our mate,’ I echoed, feeling every pulse of blood through my veins. There was none left in my head; it was all rushing to my heart.

‘Fuck,’ Tiger hissed, clarity ice-cold as it washed over us both. She shifted her weight from paw to paw, her gaze still locked on Alpha Caleb.

‘Yeah,’ I laughed, the sound a hollow, twisted thing. ‘That about covers it.’