All Chapters of The Alpha's Mate: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

As we approach the beach in Baja, it’s immediately obvious that a lot has changed. Instead of one little cottage overlooking a pristine beach, there’s now a whole camp set up on the shore. Tents and campers are arranged in a tight circle surrounding the area where the prism glass was buried in the sand, and lots of strong fighters are patrolling the edges of the camp.We drive up a bit further, only to be stopped by two huge fighters. Layla parks the RV and I hand Stella to Juliana before stepping out onto the asphalt road to speak to them.“Who are you?” The guard’s tone is aggressive and demanding.“My name is Sarah, and I’m the Luna of the San Diego shifter pack,” I say with a gentle smile. “I need to speak with your Alpha about something very important.”“No outsiders are allowed into camp,” the guard says, glaring at me suspiciously. “We mean no harm,” Nash says, standing behind me. “We only want to help you.”“The Baja pack doesn’t need any help,” the guard ins

The Baja pack’s Beta and a few other fighters are about to try and grab me to force me into using my powers to create more prism glass. As soon as they get too close, Nash and Greyson will jump in to fight them, and it will be a full on battle between the packs - one that we absolutely do not need.I’m wracking my brain for something, anything, that I can do to diffuse the tension, when all of a sudden a strange, soothing song comes floating through the air.Everyone stops in their tracks, tilting their heads to listen. A few shifters access their wolf ears to hear it better, the tips of their ears going pointed and furry. The song seems to put us all into a sort of trance, and we can’t help but follow it. Walking slowly and calmly, we head in its direction, which leads us to the shoreline where the waves are gently lapping at the sand.There, Stella is sitting on the edge of the beach, patting the sand with her fat little baby hands. Her head is tossed back, and her mouth

The sun has just finished its ascent over the horizon, spreading orange and yellow rays through the skies, when Greyson comes running back. He isn’t hurt, but the look in his eyes tells us that he doesn’t expect that to be a state that lasts much longer.We’re all standing in a defensive formation, shoulder to shoulder, a few rows deep, surrounding the center of the Baja camp and the underground deposit of prism glass. As the leaders of the pack, Nash and I are front and center. His amulet pulses around his neck, and my hands are wrapped with leather straps that Layla gave me, infused with protective magics. Beside us are Greyson and Amanda, their shoulders squared. On the other side are Javier, the Alpha of the Tijuana pack, and his Luna. Carlos and Yatzil are elsewhere in the formation, leading their fighters. Layla, Arnold, Juliana, Samuel, and Stella are far away, having driven one of our smaller cars to a safe location as soon as they heard that a battle was imminent. I

Soon after we all fall asleep after the battle, though, we’re awoken by a horrible sound. I get up and open the door of the RV to see that it’s midnight, and the moon is glowing brightly. The sound is agonizing and makes me want to cover my ears, but as the Luna, I can’t just ignore it.I walk toward the noise, noticing that many other shifters have been awoken and are also peeking out to see what’s happening.I gasp when I realize where the sound is coming from. Out on the sands, the spirits of the dead Arizona shifters, whose bodies have been abandoned, are crying out to be returned to their ancestral caves. Pale tendrils, like vines, or chains, are pulling up from the bodies as if they’re trying to escape, but are trapped.They look sort of like the spirits that came from the bodies of my parents when I took them back to their ancestral cave, or from Caleb during his funeral, but there’s something pained about them, and their motions look more like struggle than freedom

We drive straight toward Flagstaff and the territory of Malcolm’s pack. Without Brandon as the Alpha, it’s possible that the Rogers Lake pack has fully joined the Flagstaff werewolves, or they may be under the leadership of a new Alpha. We’re headed for a situation where the dynamics of power have shifted, and we’re unprepared for what we might encounter.Nash is silent for a while as he drives, the only sound in the car the whooshing of the air conditioner and the occasional gurgle from baby Stella in her car seat. He navigates us along the Mexican coastline, past beautiful ocean vistas, until we hit the low hills and mountains of the border towns. The Tijuana pack give us solemn nods as we pass through their unofficial checkpoint, but we don’t have time to stop and chat, and they’re busy with their own dead and wounded. There are highway signs for San Diego, and it breaks my heart to have to pass them by, heading east instead of north, crossing the state border into Arizona. I