Chapter One - Changes

Kari's POV

"Kari, do you have a moment?" Came the lyrical voice of my boss and best friend. I looked up from my computer screen and looked at her over the top of my glasses. Doctor Chloe Burbridge was a short brunette with chocolate brown eyes and a plump figure, her long, brunette hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, highlighting her freckled face. She was presently leaning against the frame of the door to my office. I smiled at her and motioned for her to come in and sit down. She flounces down onto the chair on the other side of the desk and puts her black Manolo Blahnik pumps on to my nice pristine desk. Her tablet is sitting on her lap. I lean over my desk and push her feet off it. She grins at me. Sadistic Bitch that she is. One thing I have picked up over the years is a slight case of OCD, and Chloe loves to make me itch with it. Secretly, I don't mind it too much, as I know it's her way of pushing me to help me get my mind straight.

"What do you want, boss?" I asked, lining the pens back up that she had knocked out of place. She had that look on her face that said she had plans, that involved me, and I wasn't going to be able to say no to her. Normally, this involved being dragged to a club or a bar on a Friday night. The one difference this time, was she sensed a slight nervousness in her that said it wasn't involving a night out this time around. I bit my lip nervously, wondering what it was going to be.

"So, you know how you want to visit Norway." She says, getting straight to the point, not looking up from the tablet in her lap, another sign to say she wasn't sure how I would react to what she had planned for me. She was one of the few people who I trusted with my whole story. She is my only friend who has seen my scars, mentally and physically, and the only one other than my last foster parents that knew I wanted to find my father or at least find some family. I stopped what I was doing and looked at her with a raised eyebrow. I knew something was coming from her, but this was definitely not the direction I was expecting it to go.

"Spit it out." I told her, a slight quiver to my voice. Her head shot up when she caught the shake, not expecting it.

"A Mr Ralf Johnsson, under the order of the CEO Mr Henrik Pederson of Nordic Research has requested your help with some research." She told me. "He said he had read your thesis and some of the journal articles you wrote about Listeria in the soil and has requested your services."

I continued to look at her with a raised eyebrow, urging her to continue. "They would like your assistance as soon as possible."

"I take it you've already accepted this invitation for me?" I huffed, sitting back in my swivel chair, nerves starting to kick in. I had never flown anywhere before, and I had never left the country, not even to go to Wales or Scotland. The other issue is, I already have three research projects on the go which are being funded by two universities and the company. "What about the work here? I can't really abandon that. The one for you isn't too much of a worry as it's your choice to send me away, but the two for Reading and Cambridge. I don't know if I can leave them in the position they are in."

"I have, I have told them I can only part with you for a month, as you have a lot of work to do here, Hubert and Caroline will look after your research whilst you are away." She said, referring to the two post-grad students who worked beneath me. They had also been sent from the Universities as part of their Thesis for their Doctorates. I sighed and nodded, there was no way I was getting out of this.

"When do I leave?" I asked as she continued tapping away at her tablet and not looking at me. This meant I really wasn't going to like this answer in the slightest. I took my glasses off and ran my hands over my face, the nerves really starting to set in now.

"Tomorrow, your flight is at 10 am from Heathrow." She said, cringing slightly in her seat.

"Faen i helvete!" I exclaimed. "Don't give me any warning, will you Clo?"

"I'm guessing that phrase isn't anything I want you to translate for me. Sorry, they are desperate to get you out there to help them. Something about tracing back an outbreak to some land. They saw your work and asked for the best."

"Suck up," I muttered at my friend. She looks up at me and grins, but there is still that hint of worry in her eyes.

"Melissa will send you your itinerary, and Dr. Johnsson will be waiting for you at the airport." She said with a smile as if to say you love me really. I grumbled at her. "If it helps, I have tagged an extra week for you to try and find any of your family."

My expression softens when she says that. "Takk Clo," I said and she smiled.

"I know what that one means." She grins at me. "And you are quite welcome. It is the least I can do as I am sending you out at such short notice and alone."

"Where is it I will be staying?"

"Konnerud." She said, looking at her tablet. I threw my head back and laughed at the way she tried to pronounce the place. Norwegian was one of several languages I spoke, so it always made me laugh when she tried to speak the words.

"It's pronounced konner-roo, not konner rud."

"I speak English not, Gibberish," She said with a wave of her hand.

"I suppose that means I get a free afternoon off then to pack, does it?" I told her.

"Yes, take the rest of the day, I am not that cruel a boss." She chuckled standing.

"Ubihørlig," I muttered, making her laugh. Suddenly, her face turned serious and I knew what was about to come.

"Make sure you face time with me regularly. Let me know how you are getting on, how you are coping. If you feel any panic attacks threatening, you call me instantly any time, night or day." She tells me. I smiled at her and nodded. She has been a Godsend since the day I met her at a talk when I was doing my Bachelor in Microbiology. She hired me after I completed my four years and continued to pay for my further education. She comes around my desk and gives me a hug.

"Get yourself home and get a good night's sleep. Call me as soon as you arrive." She says before leaving my office. I huff before standing and gathering what I will need from my office before leaving and locking my door. I pick up the itinerary from Melissa and pop down to have a quick chat with Hubert and Coraline before leaving and getting into my little Audi and driving back to my one-bedroomed apartment to pack and sleep. I messaged Chloe to ask if she could just check the apartment every three days and make it look like I wasn't away. She had her own key. Once I had eaten, downed a glass of wine, I set my alarm and lay down to sleep. I needed to be at Heathrow by eight and the car Melissa had booked for me would pick me up at five to make sure I arrived in plenty of time. Sighing, I turned off my light and hoped sleep would take me.

Henrik's POV

I am sitting at my office desk looking through some paperwork when there is a knock at my door. I already knew who it was, it was my Beta. I could smell his scent.

"Come in, Ralf." I said, not needing to shout because of our heightened hearing. My second in charge walked in and I looked up at him, hope shining in my eyes that the task I had given him had come to fruition.

"All sorted, she will be here by lunch tomorrow. She will land in Oslo, and I will be there to meet her." He says as he sits in one of the comfy chairs opposite me. "I have her set in one of the houses on the edge of the compound on Minkstein." He tells me. I nod.

"That was easier than I expected," I told him as I ran a hand through my dirty blonde hair.

"Her boss said they could only release her for four weeks," Rolf said, chewing on the end of the pen in his hand, a pet peeve of mine and a nervous trait of his.

"Hopefully, once she is here with us, she won't want to leave," I said with a sigh. My father dropped a bombshell on us a few months ago, and we had been searching for this bombshell since then. It was through pure luck that my brother Magnus had found a journal article whilst studying at university that we had found her. She was meant to be here, and she should have been here years ago, but due to circumstances involving my very strict grandfather, things didn't go how they should have done. As much as I loved the man, I am glad his tirade is over. As soon as I was old enough to take over, my father was relieved to hand me the reigns of the pack and company.

Yes, you guessed it, we are werewolves, we live by certain rules and we live in the shadows of humans. I am the Alpha of the West Nordic Pack, the largest pack in Scandinavia and it covers most of Norway. My Grandfather believed in power and that the idea of fated mates was pathetic. In his opinion, a mate should come with something to further his strength. He had rejected his fated mate and taken a chosen mate who came with land and a pack that he could integrate into ours to make it larger and stronger, whereas, as my father was of the same mind as me, our fated mates were more important and they were chosen for us for a reason, and they were the real reason a pack was stronger. Don't get me wrong, he learned to love my mother, and they had 5 pups together, but he never forgave his father for forcing him to leave his fated mate. He informed us recently that we actually had a half-sister. His fated mate had been human and he had changed his name and disappeared to be with her. When his father found him, he was told that if he didn't return, he would have his fated mate killed, so to protect her and his daughter, he left without a word. After my grandfather had passed, my father broke down and told us about it all. He explained he couldn't tell us before as he didn't trust his father not to kill them. He explained why it had taken him three years before he could fully accept my mother and mark her, he had allowed her to mark him and she was pregnant with me within a few days, but couldn't bare to mark her, and knowing the reason why, she understood from day one and didn’t rush him. After he had filled me and my siblings in on it, the first thing I did, was search for my sister and her mother.

"Have you told your father?" Rolf asked, looking at me, sadness in his eyes.

"No, not yet, I want to make sure she arrives safely and settled before I tell him, or he will be on her in a flash, and I don't want to overwhelm her straight off the mark. We need to keep her unaware to start, just so she settles. What little I have found about her, which I also haven't told Dad, isn't good." I explained to him. "I need to tell him about Jennifer as well."

"What do you mean?" He frowns.

"Apparently she has PTSD. I don't know the details, I can't get access to the full file." I explained. He nods and lets out a long breath. "We will take it one day at a time, I don't want to scare her off."

"What about Jennifer? I guess that is his mate." Ralf asked.

"Was," I explained. I threw a file at him. "She took her life, the day he marked my mother."

"What happened to Kari?" My Beta asked, his head shot up in shock at the news of her death.

"She went into care. After that I can't find out, her files are locked, and being England, I can't get the access I could if it all happened to her." My best friend sighed.

"Faen!" He muttered. "This is Det er for jævlig!"

Suddenly, the door slams open and a small flurry of pink, white, and blonde hair flies into the room and into my lap. "Pappa!" my 3-year-old daughter squeals, wrapping her arms around my neck as her mother, my mate, wanders into the room behind her slightly out of breath, her hand on her rounded belly which carried my twin pups.".

"Henri, I'm sorry, she's so damn fast." Ingrid, my mate, says. I chuckled, wondering where the Nanny was this time. The Nanny was an Omega, one of the bottom ranks in the pack system. They tended to work around the pack house, making sure the day-to-day running went smoothly. They looked after the likes of cleaning, cooking, and just making sure everything was kept to a high standard. Some packs used them as slaves. My grandfather used to himself, but my father changed that, and they now not only get a wage, but they also get all the basic necessities that they may need. Which led to us becoming a happier and stronger pack.

"It's fine my love." I smile as I crush my daughter on my chest and she lets out a giggle.

"I'm sorry Ralf," Ingrid said, knowing that we had been in conversation. No doubt she had heard the cursing as she approached.

"It's fine Luna," he chuckles. "We were done here anyway."

"Is everything OK?" Ingrid asked, her blue eyes flitting between the two of us as she closed the door.

"Yes, all is being sorted." I smiled warmly at her.

"Oh, that is a relief." She said, picking up Heather from my lap. "Your father has suffered in silence for far too long."

"Why don't you go and jump on Bestefar." I wink at Heather and she grins, wiggles out of her mother's grasp, and is out of the door in a flash. Ingrid huffed and followed after her. 'Send her barnepiken after her my sweet, don't tire yourself. You have another pup to worry about now,' I said to my mate through our mind link.

'I will discuss that with you later my love.' Her response came. That couldn't be good.

"She's gonna be a nightmare when she gets her wolf," Ralf says, and I hear my wolf cackle in my head.

"According to Thor, our pups will keep us on our toes," I sighed. Thor was my wolf. He was a giant midnight black wolf with blue eyes, and he was not someone you messed with, unless it was our mate, our pups or my baby sister Angelica, who had just turned ten, and now no doubt Kari once he met her.

"Do you think she will have a wolf? She is half-human, is she not?" Ralf asked, turning the conversation back to the previous one.

"Until I see her and Thor senses either way, I can't say," I told him as I rubbed my hands over my face. I was a little worried the PTSD was due to her shifting at sixteen and not knowing what the hell was going on.

“You want my opinion,” Ralf asked. I nodded. “Tell your father now, it gives him time to come to terms with it, you are a carbon copy of him and you are only a year younger than she is. She will likely remember what he looks like, a little girl always remembers her pappa.”

I sighed. He was right, I couldn’t hide this from him, and telling him now gives him time to think it through before she turns up tomorrow. “You are right. I will mind link him now and get him in here.”

Ralf left and five minutes later, my father walked into my office and smiled at me, a smile that no longer reached his eyes.

“What do you need son?” He asked sitting down. No time like the present. I took a deep breath.

“I found Kari.”

“W-what?” He stutters nervously, a trait he had picked up whenever he spoke about Kari.

“Yes, We have found her, in fact, it was actually Magnus that found her, he found a journal article she wrote,” I explained. “She is coming here under the pretense of work, and we need to take it one step at a time, it needs to go at her pace.”

“W-when does she g-get h-here?” He asked

“Tomorrow, Ralf will pick her up at midday and bring her to meet me, we will see how it goes. We need to handle her with kid gloves.” I said to him. “From what little I have managed to dig up about her, this is what she will need.”

“W-what do you m-mean? And w-what a-about Jennifer?” He asked and I quickly mind linked my mother, she would need to be here for this.

“Kari has been in foster care since she was eight, she suffers from OCD and PTSD and nightmares from what I have managed to uncover,” I explained as my mother walked into the room. She looked between the two of us and frowned at me. “Pappa, she has done well for herself, she is now a Doctor in Agricultural Microbiology, hence how we got her out here. She has managed to overcome a lot of whatever she went through and seems to have a lot of it under control, but you need me to see how she is going to be in person before we go too far ahead.”

“What about Jennifer?” He asked again and it suddenly hit my mother what was going on. She knelt down next to my father and took his hand into hers before looking at me, hope in her eye.

“She died when Kari was 8,” I said before taking a deep breath. “ She took her own life.

And that was when, for the first time in my 21 years, I saw the strongest man in my world crumble into a pit of tears and sobs. It broke me.