Chapter1: First Encounter

I was standing beside the mall’s escalator, staring at my phone when I heard a loud thud like a heavy mass landed behind me with a whoosh. My phone fell out of my hand and clattered on the ground. “I’m sorr—"

He apologized, and I pulled him up to his feet. The kid was a tall, gangly boy who looked like a skeleton with big glasses that overwhelmed his face, and he was shaking badly. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled. “Those guys are dicks.” He pointed to the pack of laughing jackals from the second floor railing, peering at him and hollering.

Did they drop him from the second floor? Assholes. I looked up and glared at them, shaking my fists. They only laughed harder. I turned my attention back to the kid and helped him straighten his clothes and brush the dirt off his back. “Hey, are you okay?”

He adjusted his glasses, mumbled yes, then ran away.

I bent over to pick up my phone from the ground and shoved it into the left pocket of my skinny jeans before stepping on the escalator. When I looked up, my eyes met with piercing green ones which belonged to a gorgeous young man with jet black hair and a perfectly sculpted face.

My heart stopped and for a moment, I couldn’t get enough air to take into my body and I got a little light-headed. When he shifted his attention to the pretty girl next to him with a charming smile on his face and put his arm around her shoulders, a wave of disappointment swept over me. 

I didn’t realize I was gawking at him until one of his friends approached him and whispered to him while gesturing toward me, and someone tackled me from behind, nearly causing me to stumble. With a snarl, I whirled around to confront the bitch who dared to assault me, but it was just my friend Gia, who was grinning at me.

“You’re lucky I have lightning fast reflexes or I would have strangled you right now,” I hissed, lowering my fist. “Didn’t your momma ever tell you not to play around on the escalator?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Whoa, what’s with the attitude?” She straightened her posture and hurriedly fixed her clothes. “OMG, bitch, fix your voguing face.”

I almost got a whiplash from her rapid change in moods. “What the—"

“The future alpha is coming down the escalator right now, bimbo,” she whispered through gritted teeth, clamping down on my hand as though she meant to crush the bones.

The thing is, I’ve never encountered our Alpha or Luna, and their children, in person. This would be my very first opportunity to meet one of them. My entire life cycle thus far only included going to school and heading back home. My parents weren’t the type to force me to join any pack activities or associate with other wolves if I didn’t want to.

“Show him respect once he’s within greeting distance.” Gia was all about pack protocol, while I wasn’t. She put on her brightest smile, while I bit on my bottom lip. I pretended to look away while tapping my fingers on the rail, wishing this damned escalator would go up faster.

“Matteo,” my best friend said in her most congenial voice even as she buried her nails into my arm.

I chanced a look in their direction only to see one of his friends smirking at me. Those piercing green eyes met mine again and stared back this time. He appeared to be contemplating if he wanted to say something; instead, he just stared.

Any other girl would have basked in that moment and swooned over his brooding good looks and fanned themselves because he was so hot. All I could think about was touching his face and tracing his jawline with my fingertips.

But of course, I ruined the moment for both of us. I held his gaze a little too long, then turned away from him with a glare. I wanted to make it seem like his presence didn’t faze me at all even though my body was on its way to breaking down and melting to the ground.

He and his group passed us, and I heard his friends hooting and howling. Some of them whistled out loud, which caught everyone’s attention. All the mall rats from the second floor, it seemed, rushed to the railing to see what was happening on the escalator. I wanted to die.

I took one last peek before he stepped off the escalator only to be met with his wink and those damn dimples as he smirked at me. I quickly turned away before he could see me blushing like a red-ripe tomato. Ugh, I’m such a ditz.

“You blue-ribbon idiot!” Gia smacked me on the back of the head and pinched my heated cheeks.

“What the hell?” I batted her hands away when she tried to pinch me.

“Why did you have to act like a total spaz? Now he’ll think we’re losers.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, right, because we registered so hard on his radar before.” I grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the stores. I had to find a dress for our big family dinner as I was finally turning eighteen the very next day.

I couldn’t wait for my wolf, Alera, to come into her own as a mature wolf and finally receive all her abilities. I had shifted at sixteen, which was almost unheard of, but I was still unable to sense our mate or fully communicate with my wolf. Everything else was right on schedule.

Gia was still babbling. “You should see him and his friends when they’re shirtless. Ugh, they did this carwash fundraiser for the football team last spring and I… let’s just say my car was thoroughly washed that weekend.”

I grimaced and smacked my friend’s shoulder. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not just talking about your car?”

“Gia, are you being a pervert again?” demanded a high-pitched voice behind us.

“Finally! Oh, Cora, you’re here. Please knock some sense into this silly ho.”

Cora and Gia were my best friends, the only two people I’m close to. Gia was the daughter of our Delta, Mr. Cavrillo, and Cora is from another pack. Her brother, the Alpha of the Crimson Pack, sends her to Boulevard High, where we all met. Now we’re all in our senior year.

Boulevard is an all-girls school and the only one run by the damn Council. We’re known as the Moonstone Pack, fourth in power ranking as far as other werewolves were concerned. Cora was staying with us in the meantime but visited her brother during summer and other school breaks.

Gia was still going on and on about our future Alpha. “I swear, Matteo is a hunk. I don’t care who his mate is. I will make it my life’s mission to bang him.” She lay the back of her hand against her forehead like a melodramatic actress. “If there were only boys in our school and he were the head-boy!  Damn. Too bad he’s not our age. Oh, who cares? What’s three years?”

Cora frowned then shook her head before clamping her hand over Gia’s mouth and forcibly dragging her to a fashion and accessories store. I followed them, laughing.

       “Well, dear, I hate to burst your bubble but your hunk isn’t here, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t spring the dough to buy you an underwear, so shut your trap,” she said as she began to sort through the racks of colorful matching bras and knickers.

Cora was the queen of comebacks.

Gia shoved her away. “Oh, gosh, I had no idea that underwear has replaced flowers as the ultimate offering for true love. Has Jem been sending you some?”

“Every damn week, sweetie. Haven’t you been checking your DMs?” she shot back sarcastically.

“You two still keepin’ it on the down-low?” I asked Cora, and she smiled. She was two months older than us, and Gia was the youngest out of the three of us.

“Yeah, don’t want Dante to find out about us.”

“Cheeky!”

Grinning, she pushed me aside as she continued to look through the racks of underwear. Afterward, we combed through every clothing store in the mall in search of the perfect dress for my birthday.

Thinking about the future made me want to throw up in nervousness and wished I could stay seventeen forever, so I tried to shake off my gloomy thoughts as I allowed my two best friends to cheer me up.

It’s funny. I know I should be thinking about my mate as he would be finally revealed to me as soon as I turned eighteen, but I didn’t want to dwell on it. I couldn’t. These were the happiest days of my life. Finding a mate was a different chapter entirely and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.