Chapter 5

**Elliott POV**

“Last chance to change our minds and just skip this thing all together,” I half joked as we took the exit to River bed pack. God, I hated these parties— almost as much as I disliked visiting this pack. Alpha Victor was a flashy, ridiculous man who was pretty clearly compensating for something in my opinion and his children were even worse. 

“Don’t be like that, you know we have that treaty meeting and we can’t miss it,” My beta, Jasper chastised. I saw his blue-green eyes glaring at me in the rear view mirror as if he was assessing whether I’d leap from the car to escape or not. 

“It was just a joke, ‘dad’.” I teased, putting air quotes around “dad” just to mess with him further. My beta was great at his job and a fantastic friend—brother, even— but good goddess did the guy need to loosen up a bit. 

“Haha! ‘Dad’! Hey ‘dad’ can we stop at a gas station and get some snacks?” Cameron, my gamma, snickered. His brown eyes widened and he blew his long blonde hair out of his face feigning a look of childlike innocence. In contrast to Jasper, Cameron was all jokes. The two of them cancelled each other out quite nicely. Even their appearances couldn’t be more different. Where Cameron looked like a hippie straight out of the 70’s, Jasper looked every bit the clean cut militant man that anyone who didn’t actually know him would assume him to be.

“Oh no,” Jasper grabbed the bridge of his nose. “Can you two not make that a thing? I don’t want that to be a thing. You’ll make the drive back utter misery just like last time when you guys spoke in those obnoxious southern accents.”

“But ‘dad’ we were visiting a pack in Dallas, we had to make sure we would acclimate to the culture, we wouldn’t have wanted to stick out. Lord knows that would’ve been so embarrassing, I do declare!” Cameron chirped in the same accent he’d used that whole 12 hour trip. Jasper looked like he was seriously considering throwing him from the car.

“Alright, Cam. Let’s get a game plan going. We’re twenty minutes out.” I was already regretting having to ruin the fun we were having at Jasper’s expense, but we needed to know how to get through the next 24 hours and get home. “We know we’re not renewing the treaty with Red River because it’s not beneficial for us in any way with an army as small as theirs. We also know that alpha Victor’s daughter is— and i cannot stress this enough— the most annoying and desperate woman alive and she’s been nonstop coming after me since the last event at red river. So I propose we stay as close together as we can during the event and you both come with me to the alpha meeting the next morning. We reject Amelia at the party, we reject Victor at the meeting, we get out of there as soon as we can with as little complications as possible. Sound good, gentlemen?”

“Yep!” They both answer practically at the same time.

“But what if your mate is part of this rinky dink pack?” Cameron blurted out, earning him a punch in the arm from Jasper.

“I’m 24. If I haven’t found my mate yet I highly doubt she’ll be part of this pathetic pack.” I snapped perhaps a bit too sharply. Mates were a sore subject for me. For our kind, it was rare to move far into your twenties without finding your mate and watching everyone around me successfully find theirs was getting a bit frustrating. Jasper had found his mate 3 years ago when he was 19 and I was kind of expecting roughly the same time line. I was beginning to think maybe it just wasn’t in the cards for me.

“Well, my mate could be here,” Cameron mumbled. He was 23 and beginning to lose hope along with me. As positive as he tried to be all the time, Cameron was worried that his mate may never come too. 

“Maybe she is.” I reached up and clapped my gamma on the shoulder. “And if she is, we’ll find a way to make sure she comes home with us. I know this pack has a reputation. She’ll probably be happy to leave!” I attempted to cheer him up and he smiled and nodded his head. 

“Just sniff the air really hard. That’ll help you find her faster.” Jasper said solemnly. Cameron nodded enthusiastically, far too trusting of Jasper and his almost unreadable facial expressions and I did my best not to laugh out loud knowing that this was about to be hilarious. 

Within a few minutes, we were at the albeit rundown gates of Red river and coming up the path to the pack house. I saw Cameron try to subtly roll his window down and turn his head, his shoulders giving away the gigantic sniff he’d taken as we began down the dirt path to the albeit rundown packhouse. It always made me wonder what kind of alpha would allow their packlands to look this shabby and still invite neighboring packs over, especially when hoping to negotiate a merger. The landscaping looked old and overgrown, the path was uneven and desperately needed to be paved or at least filled in, and one look at the packhouse had me wishing we could’ve made hotel arrangements so we didn’t have to stay here. If only Alpha Victor hadn’t aggressively insisted we stay the night to the point where there was no polite way to decline.

Old, crappy looking patrol cars with varying degrees of damage lined sides of the packhouse. I was taken aback that an alpha wouldn’t make it a high priority to equip his warriors with at least updated equipment. How were they supposed to defend the pack or get to the borders in a timely manner in these junkers? I’d seen better vehicles in front of the human motels on the way here. My dad had always taught me that appearances aren’t everything, but a packhouse’s state reflects the state of the pack, and especially the state of the alpha running things.  If my father had come here with us he would’ve felt disgrace on the behalf of the alphas before Victor.

We were received at the front by none other than the alpha’s daughter, Amelia. Her bleach blonde hair was straightened down to her shoulders. Her bleached white teeth were showing possibly too much in an aggressive smile as she squealed and ran towards us. Oh no.

“Elliott!!! You’re here!!!! I’ve been waiting all day for you! Cutting it close to the party, aren’t we silly?” She hugged me as tightly as she could and lingered, almost as if expecting a kiss.  I couldn’t help but notice that with her obviously colored blue contacts, she looked like a real live Barbie and not exactly in a good way. At least Barbie was smart enough to be a doctor or something, Amelia openly behaved as though her only aspirations were to be a ranked wolf’s arm candy one day and honestly I could only hope it was an act. If my sister were running around acting as Amelia did, I could only imagine how difficult it would be to handle ourselves professionally around official visitors. She was completely undermining her father’s ability to be taken seriously.

“It’s only 4, we have 3 hours which is hardly too little time to put on a suit.” I replied dryly. Amelia giggled as if I was joking, and led us into the pack house. It was clean but kind of dated on the inside and overall not very impressive for a pack that boasted the fortune in assets that alpha Victor claimed to have. The obvious fact was this pack was cash poor and they were trying to advertise themselves as otherwise, an indication of how trustworthy and above board all of their treaties and potential business ventures would be.

“I managed to get the three of you some rooms on the alpha floor right down the hall from yours truly!” Amelia paused, turning around to touch her chest in some strange attempt to “dazzle” me by drawing attention to the low neckline of her hot pink shirt. As she turned to continue walking, she made sure to angle herself directly in front of me as she led us to our rooms so as to guarantee i had a view of her ass. It was less impressive than she probably thought it was, and I didn’t find someone so obviously attempting to seduce me as alluring as she assumed.    

“Here we are!” She opened the door to reveal just one room that seemed to be for all three of us. Guess we should’ve taken it with a grain of salt when she said “rooms” as in PLURAL. I was hardly a snob but the fact was these lodgings were pathetic for a visiting ranked team. When dealing with potential allies or treaty renewals, which both applied here, a pack should be trying their best to show off their amenities and accommodations. They should be putting their best foot forward, not shoving three full grown men into a tiny room. There was one queen sized bed and one full bed and to be honest the bedding looked like the kind you’d find in a cheap motel. The crowd they were accepting tonight was pretty small with closer visiting alphas returning to their own pack houses at the end of the night, so I was surprised to see there weren’t separate rooms prepared for my beta and gamma, especially considering this pack’s beta had no family and there hadn’t been a gamma since around my father’s time as alpha, so both floors would be mostly if not completely empty. Why not utilize those rooms, especially after the insistence of us staying here? It just didn’t add up to me.

“Thank you, Amelia.” I offered her a curt smile and shut the door. 

“Dude, she’s gonna be hard to dodge all night.” Cameron snorted. 

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I ran a hand through my hair. What had I gotten myself into here?

“Let’s all grab a quick shower and go over our intel on River bed and then we’ll get ready for the party.” Jasper said, getting his things together to hop in first.

I thanked the moon goddess that when I entered the pack house, I didn’t smell any sign of my mate on the ranked floors. Having to be connected to this pack in any way shape or form would’ve been a literal nightmare.

**Amelia POV** 

Elliott was finally here and my plan was well underway. I’d managed to intercept them and make sure he and his friends were staying on my floor in the crappiest room we had so he would be sure to want more comfortable lodgings and I’d be all too happy to offer up my room for us to share. If he didn’t mate and mark me tonight or at least start seeing me on a more regular basis, I was one drunken hookup away from a shotgun wedding. That was a last resort, though. I didn’t much care for kids. I knew I’d eventually have to provide the pack with their future alphas, but my hope was to wait until I’d spent my 20’s having fun, and even then I’d definitely be going with a live in nanny for most of their needs, just like my mom did with Andrew and I. Either way, I would be Luna to one of the most powerful packs in the area. 

I ran a hand down my dress for the evening. It was deep crimson red and it hugged my body perfectly, showing off my slender figure and it had a slit that went dangerously high which displayed one of my shapely legs. A nice preview for my future chosen mate. I’d turned 18 last month and seen Elliott when he’d come to visit his brother at training school and I was there with my parents as my brother was being picked up after the headmaster had decided to expel his dumb ass, so I knew Elliott wasn’t my actual mate, but that didn’t really matter.  There was no way he’d reject me in this dress. It was totally worth stealing my dad’s credit card to get.

Soon my hair and makeup team would be here and I’d be in full glam. Elliott wouldn’t even know what hit him, but I knew he would finally see me as the poised and classy Luna I was born to be. My father would be absolutely pissed I paid for hair and makeup after he specifically said no but it was all for the cause. I wasn’t stupid, I knew we were close to flat broke but once I became Elliott’s Luna, he’d be all too happy to help daddy get back on his feet. 

I smiled at myself in my vanity mirror just imagining how jealous all of my friends would be at my Luna ceremony. I’d never been to Silver moon’s pack grounds but I heard they were gorgeous. Mountainous, giant lake, everything a Luna ceremony needs for a classy backdrop. I could almost see the whole thing unfolding in front of me.

In just a few short hours I’d be on my way to the life of my dreams one way or another, and absolutely nothing was going to stop me.