[Alexander]
The pain inside me didn’t stop when I locked eyes with her, the way I thought it would. Something was wrong, I could sense it, and I had no idea why the woman laying on the bed didn’t have the effect on me that she always seemed to have. I moved closer to the bed, with the rails pulled up on either side, tubes criss-crossing all around her and needles turning her skin blue where they sunk into her skin - skin that was already blue and black in patches from the attack she endured.The face of the woman I sought, the woman I loved, was not the face I looked at now. She turned her head when she heard me calling, but when she looked at me, her brows were knit in confusion. Her eyes weren’t as bright as I had remembered, and now that I was closer, I noticed that her brown hair was too dark to belong to the woman I loved. Her face was also leaner, almost sickly so - as if life had been sucked from her cheeks.“Who are you?” Her voic[Valerie]** Eight Years Ago **Pleasant Hill High. The bane of my existence. I’d just had to wake up and make my own sandwiches for lunch, as well as my dad’s, and missed the bus to school. So now I walked on reluctant feet, towards the one place I hated the most.As I entered between the large metal gates, Mateo sprung out and startled me. I had to take a moment to collect myself. As if I didn’t already shake with nerves!“Mat! You douchebag!” I yelled at him as we both made our way up the paved pathway.“You should have seen the look on your face! I could have sworn you saw a ghost.”“I guess I’m unlucky like that. It was just you.” I rolled my eyes and shoved him playfully.Mateo was a year older than I was, and he already got his wolf about a month ago. He was also the only one who bothered to speak to me, both in school and amongst the pack.Mateo was very different from the oth
[Alexander]I caught Valerie’s scent across the border, stalking carefully between the trees so I wouldn’t alert the wolves or the witches of my presence. The furthest I had gone into this part of the woods was that day with Valerie.Her scent was growing stronger, and I had forgotten just how sweet it was.I was nearing the tree where I’d finally caught my mate. I sniffed all around it, and felt the strong urge to cry out to her, but held my tongue so I wouldn’t make a noise.The wolf’s senses were on high-alert, and owed to the fact that I could see the shape of her body, her luscious curves highlighted by the soft glow of the sun. If I closed my eyes, I could feel her smooth skin just as the day I touched it. I inhaled deeply, the faint scent of her I could get, and found myself curling up on the grass where we laid that day. It wasn’t warm enough - not as warm as when she laid her head on my chest, and inside my chest, I fe
[Valerie]** Eight Years Ago **The rain had finally stopped, but Mateo still held me as the sun came back up and dried off any trace that the rain came down today. I didn’t want to leave, I just wanted the comfort of my best friend’s warm embrace until I knew nothing else.I had no idea that I wasn’t theirs. For fifteen years I walked around thinking that Agnes and Harold were my parents. I thought that Agnes had carried me in her womb, and Harold was the first to carry me in his arms when the doctor handed me to him as a newborn baby. I thought that when my parents saw my brown eyes for the first time, they saw love in them. I thought that when I was born, I forged a deeper connection between Harold and Agnes, and sealed their fate as mates and spouses. I thought, but I was wrong.It all seemed to make sense now, the longer Mateo and I sat in silence and watched the sun consume the clouds. They never did look at me with love in their eyes. Not
[Alexander]“Release her right now!” I yelled at the witch who remained standing at the broken door.She laughed with her wicked tongue, and turned red eyes on me. “Who do you think you are, mutt, to give me orders?”“I am Alexander Young, Alpha of Mystic Moon, and I am not afraid of you, witch!” I spat the word out, and boldly straightened my spine, taking the first step up.She wasn’t going to move, but as I stalked up the stairs, I noticed that her eyes darted to either side of her as if she was looking for a way out. I tugged the sheet covering the lower half of my body off, and invoked the wolf as I jumped across the remaining steps and sunk my teeth into her neck just as she turned to escape. I growled from within, taking a huge chunk of her neck and spitting it out across the floor in disgust. She smelled sweet but tasted bitter. She was crying, pleading with her wretched scarlet eyes for me to let her go, but the
[Valerie]** Six Years Ago **I had often wondered why it took as long as it did for my wolf to come. I was already well past my seventeenth birthday, and was the only one in the pack who remained there without a wolf.Garrett - the jock of Pleasant Hill High - was giving Mateo hell for his decision to keep me there. The Beta seemed to hate my guts, and probably hated the Alpha more than that. I had no idea why he looked at me as if he’d punch my face if I said something wrong, but I kept my distance and said nothing for my own safety.Mateo was preparing to leave for college, and it worried me more than I thought it would. It felt as though I was losing my best friend, who had proved that I could trust him with my life when he kept my secret safe - from the pack and from his own parents.Even though I only knew the vague details of my birth, I was well aware that I was never born to be a part of the Shadow Hunters pack. Which is why I accepted my fate
[Alexander]I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I pushed off the chair, hearing it fall behind me, and kept sceptical eyes narrowed on the witch leader. I was trying to process, trying to find a loophole in what she said.“She led you to her pack! She led you to her Alpha.”“I read her palms before she did any of that. She is of Alpha blood, Alexander.”Alpha blood? How was that possible when Valerie was an Omega?“She told me herself!” I defended her. “She is an Omega of her pack. She led you to them to climb up the ladder. It’s not possible.”“Oh, but it is,” Elena said calmly, “She just doesn’t know it yet.”“Why are you keeping here?”Elena stood up gracefully, as if she was floating instead of standing on her own two feet and beckoned me to follow her. I wasn’t sure if she had some kind of an effect on me - after all, she was a w
[Valerie]** Five Years Ago **For my best friend, I endured even more of the bullying. Not just because I knew he was there to protect me and defend me every time someone crossed a line, but because I loved being around him. His Beta stopped pairing up with him to go around impressing Selena, so Mateo and I partnered up on these hunts.A year after my wolf came, Mateo taught me everything there was to learn about the “perfect hunt”. How to train my breathing so that I barely made a sound, how to walk, how to prowl, how to run faster than any other animal out in the woods. Running was the hardest part for me - not because I couldn’t do it all, but because I was smaller than the rest and always ended up being left behind. Mateo showed me how to use my size to my advantage and to the disadvantage of my prey, and become a nimble werewolf with a tiny frame.They never did stop teasing me. From pack meetings to our last year in high school, I was alw
[Alexander]I was determined to see Valerie one last time before I left. The witches seemed pleased to know that I was willing to give up my pack and myself, and I was just pleased that it meant my Valerie could be free from them.As I stood in the witches’ house, waiting on their leader, I thought about what it meant to give ourselves up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell Adam about the deal I just made. I would just tell him to stay at home, where he was safe. If there was one thing I did know was that these witches craved power, and would target Adam as soon as they knew he was my Beta. No. He’d be better off at home, with his wife Amelia and their daughter Ava.It pained me to think about what I was giving up for Valerie’s life. Not my own - I hardly cared what would happen to me - but the lives of the five werewolves the witches would choose. Each member had a family, had a life outside of this, and I felt like the villain in my own story.