Chapter 2
Alice
This strange sensation within me doesn’t fade away, even as I run the whole way to the healing center. I keep rubbing the center of my chest with my left hand, trying to get rid of this feeling.
The man doesn’t follow me, and I’m grateful for that.
I know most of the shifters around here. Whoever that man was, he wasn’t part of the Moonlight Pack. He seemed to be around the same age as me. There is no way a good-looking shifter like that would not have been included in the pack’s social events. The fact that he was sneaking around the border of our territory makes the whole situation even more suspicious.
I should just forget about the whole incident. About him. And whatever this feeling is, it’ll fade away soon.
The Moonlight Pack’s healing center is a large compound with different buildings. Each building is dedicated to different parts of the territory. This way, the healers are not overburdened. The building that covers my area is Number Five, but when I walk in, the receptionist looks up and then rolls her eyes.
“We’re busy today.”
I’m not in the mood to argue with her. “Is Mary in?”
“Do I look like your secretary?” the receptionist, Sarah, snaps. “I told you, we’re busy. Come back another time.”
I let out a long breath, trying to stay calm. My entire face hurts. So does my neck, and every other part of me that was beaten. The blood has trickled down the side of my face, and I can taste it now. I am pretty sure I have a concussion because everything seems to be spinning around me.
“You’re not busy.” I scowl. “You only have one patient, and I can see him all the way from here.”
Sarah gets to her feet, her voice haughty. “If I say we’re busy, we’re busy. We heal shifters, not useless lumps of meat like you.”
“Lump of meat?” I roll the words around in my mouth. “You’re not even a healer, Sarah. You’re just a receptionist. Why don’t you do your job for once and go get Mary? And if she’s not available, I want another healer.”
I don’t care that I’ve hit her below the belt. There are different kinds of shifters. Some are born with the ability to heal, but sometimes that ability is not enough for that shifter to become a healer. Sarah is one of those unlucky ones. She has a desperate desire to heal, as all healers to, but her ability is simply not strong enough.
I refuse to feel bad, though. She and others like her have used their words to hurt me plenty of times. I don’t believe in being the better person. I believe in getting even, if I can.
“How dare you?!” she spits out, her eyes welling up. “At least I have my wolf spirit! You are just a charity case living in our pack. You don’t deserve our resources! Get out of here!”
I refuse to budge. “Get me a healer, or I’ll file a report with the pack’s council for discrimination.”
The pack’s council is a group of elders who oversee civil matters that don’t need to go to the alpha. While they are a step below Alpha Black, they are known for being fair and just, and they are the reason I wasn’t killed when I was discovered.
Sarah’s face pales but she refuses to budge. “Report all you want! They don’t care. Even they would be glad if you dropped dead!”
I’m not surprised by her ruthless words. Sarah was one of the orphans I grew up with. I remember her being sweet and kind at one point. We shared a room till we were ten. She was the first to turn against me. Things like spitting in my food and cutting my hair while I slept were childish pranks she indulged in that soon escalated into violent ones.
“If you’re not going to get me a healer,” I say tightly, “I’ll just go inside and look for one myself.”
She immediately walks around her desk and steps in my path. “You walk past me, and I’ll kill you. Just give me a reason.”
I raise a brow even though it hurts my face. “You’ll kill me? For seeking the healer I have every right to see? I wonder how that’s going to look on your record?”
“Well, I stopped you from going in, and you attacked me. I had no choice.” Sarah looks smug, as if she has devised an ingenious plan.
“Why don’t you try it?” I sneer. I may not be as powerful as a shifter, but I can fight dirty. It’s the only way I survived as a kid. Young wolf shifters don’t really know how to hold back when fighting; whenever I was ganged up on, I had to do whatever it took to survive. And here, now, I may end up with some vicious injuries, but the prospect of being able to get some blows in has me motivated.
“There will be none of that!” comes a loud, annoyed voice.
Both of us stiffen, and I look behind Sarah to see an older woman approaching us. She’s one of the senior healers in the pack, Edith Monroe. Her silver hair is tied in a severe knot, but she looks quite good for her early sixties.
“Sarah, get back to your seat. I’ll be having a word with you later. And you, Alice, what in the world happened to you? Can’t you go one day without coming to me all black and blue?”
Sarah bristles. “Bitch probably deserved it.”
Edith’s eyes narrow into dangerously small slits as she turns to face the receptionist. “Say that again.”
Sarah snaps her mouth shut.
Edith steps toward her. “I let you work here because you begged me to. You wanted to be part of the healing center even when you didn’t qualify to be a healer. I could have refused you. But I hired you because you seemed sincere. What gives you the right to reject patients?”
Sarah’s face is bright red, but she’s always been stubborn to a fault. Instead of holding her tongue, she grimaces. “She’s not a patient. She’s not one of us. She’s just a waste of space. She doesn’t contribute anything to this pack—”
“And you do?” Edith crosses her arms over her chest, her tone harsh.
Sarah’s eyes widen. “I-I have my wolf spirit! I’m a shifter! I—”
“You contribute nothing to the pack, Sarah,” Edith cuts her off coldly. “Yet, you’re here. Next time you turn a patient away, you’ll be out of a job. Leave your personal feelings at home when you come to work. Am I clear?”
I have to hide my grin.
Edith has always had a no-nonsense attitude. Unlike the other healers who turn up their noses when it comes to healing me, she does the job quickly and efficiently. After Mary, she is my preferred healer. However, she’s a senior healer who usually deals with serious cases. That hasn’t stopped her from taking over if she spots a healer mishandling me, though.
“Come along, Alice,” Edith orders. “I don’t have all day.”
Sarah shoots me a look filled with hatred and tears as I walk past her.
I sneer at her.
Edith’s back is to me, but she snaps, “Stop smirking.”
I immediately put a somber expression on my face.
Each building in the healing center is divided into several rooms where healers treat shifters with a combination of both healing magic and human medication and equipment. Edith takes me down the corridor to the last room and closes the door behind her before asking grimly, “What happened?”
I shrug, and she gives me a stern look.
“That’s not an answer, Alice.”
“What are you going to do if I tell you?” I sit on the edge of the examination table, my voice dry. “Can you make sure it doesn’t happen again? Because I guarantee it will.”
She studies me for a few long moments, and I see the heaviness in her gaze. “Did you piss off Willow?”
It doesn’t surprise me that she has come to that conclusion. Edith is well aware of Willow’s hatred of me. While I have been knocked around by other shifters, these sorts of injuries only come to pass when Willow’s father decides to step in. The last time Thomas brought me into line, I was unconscious for a week. He was actually quite gentle this time, I must say.
I give the healer a humorless smile. “All I have to do is breathe, and it pisses off Willow. Along with half the pack. Do you have any medication for that?”
Edith picks up a tray of cotton swabs and disinfectants and comes to stand in front of me. In an uncharacteristic move, she smooths her hand over my head. “I wish I could tell you that it will get better, but it won’t.”
I lower my gaze, my throat feeling thick with despair that I try my best to keep at bay. “I know.” I try to shrug nonchalantly, but my body doesn’t comply.
“Here.” She reaches into her pocket and hands me a small box. “I know it’s your birthday tomorrow. I got you this.”
My birthday?
I give her a puzzled look before realizing she’s right. I never keep track of my birthdays. I don’t celebrate them. There’s nothing to celebrate about my existence.
As Edith snaps on her gloves, she glances at me. “Well? Aren’t you going to open it?”
I look at her cautiously. “You’ve never given me a gift before.”
“It’s not every day a wolf comes of age.” Edith offers me a small smile. “It’s not much, though, so don’t have any high expectations. My mother gave it to me when I came of age. Tomorrow, you turn twenty-two. This is the most meaningful gift I could give you. I don’t have children of my own, so I thought you might appreciate it.”
I open the box, touched by the fact that she is giving me something that a mother would pass on to her daughter. It’s a silver ring. A plain-looking band. There’s nothing remarkable about it, but as of right now, it is the most precious thing I own. When a female wolf comes of age, she is gifted a piece of jewelry by her mother or some other female elder of the family to signify her entering adulthood.
I don’t have a habit of crying, but I lower my eyes, feeling overwhelmed. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Edith unwraps the binding on my hand, and her lips press together into a thin line when she sees the infection. “Thomas did this?”
I nod. “He stabbed a letter opener into my palm. I don’t know why it got infected—”
“I’ll fix it.” Edith’s voice is strained.
I expect her to apply some ointment, but to my surprise, she uses her healing ability. I close my eyes as the warm, comfortable wave of healing energy passes through me.
Some of the pain begins to diminish. As Edith uses her ability to reverse the damage, I wonder if I should celebrate my coming-of-age birthday. When a female wolf comes of age, she is no longer bound to the wolf pack she is associated with. She’s old enough to leave if she wants, and she’s also old enough to take a mate. I have never had anything to celebrate before, but now…?
I could leave the Moonlight Pack. I could go live in a human territory.
It’s not like I can shift, after all. I could start a different job, a new life. No wolf will ever accept me as their mate, and after the tumultuous life I have experienced, the idea of somebody loving me and wanting me is nothing short of a fantasy. I’ve been told my whole life how unwanted and undesirable I am. Why would that ever change?
It won’t.
Shifters usually have fated mates, but I’ve always been told that fated mates are connected through their wolf spirit. I don’t have a wolf spirit, which means I don’t have a fated mate.
As a little girl, I used to dream about having my own mate. The child I was desperately wanted someone to love her and protect her, her very own prince charming. But as I grew older, I began to realize that nobody would ever protect me and that a fated mate was not in the cards for me. So, that was just another dream I tucked away in a corner of my mind to gather dust.
But what I can do is get away from here and all these people. I want to go someplace where nobody knows me, where nobody will look at me and judge me. Where nobody will care whether I have a wolf spirit or not.
“Why are you smiling?” Edith asks, and I realize that I can no longer feel her healing warmth. I look down at my hand and see a scar in the middle of my palm.
I frown. “Why is there a scar?”
Edith is silent, an uncomfortable expression crossing her face.
“Edith?”
She is spared the task of answering me when the door of the examination room is pulled open and another wolf shifter rushes in. Unlike me with my red hair and blue eyes that make me stand out from other shifters, Mary has short, dark hair that playfully touches the edge of her shoulders and beautiful brown eyes. Willow may be a blonde beauty, but Mary is just as pretty, her features exquisite.
“Alice!” The young healer throws herself at me, and Edith grabs her by the back of her coat.
“Stop right there.”
Mary gives her a sheepish smile. “Sorry, I got carried away. I just checked my phone, Alice. I was in the middle of a session. Are you hurt? Wait, of course you are! You look terrible! I mean, not terrible like that, but—”
Edith clears throat. “Take a breath, Mary. I’ve done most of the healing. You can take over now. And think before you speak. You’re not making sense again.”
Mary flushes. “Thanks for healing her, Edith.”
The older woman gives her a stern look. “Don’t thank me for doing my job.”
She walks out of the room without so much as a goodbye, but it doesn’t bother me. The senior healer is a little abrupt, but she’s kind to me, which is what matters.
Once the door closes behind her, Mary gives me a hug. “What happened? Who did this?”
“Thomas,” I tell her before diving into what happened at Benny’s yesterday and the resulting meeting in the beta’s office.
Mary doesn’t look shocked, but there is pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Alice.”
“It’s okay.” I watch her pick up a cotton swab and dowse it in saline before cleaning the blood from my face. “It is what it is.”
My friend leans back and says regretfully, “I wish you didn’t sound so matter of fact about it.”
I just give her a tight smile, saying nothing further.
Mary and I became friends when she moved into my apartment building a couple of years ago. She would often come home late from her training sessions at the healing center, and one night, I offered to share my dinner with her. I had been eating a burrito on the staircase by myself, and I had an extra one in the plastic bag next to me. I had fully expected her to turn me down and insult me. But instead, she dropped her backpack, sat down next to me, and held out her hand.
From then on, we would have dinner together most nights. I’d found a friend.
I show Mary my palm. “Edith healed me, but there’s a scar left.”
I expected her to look surprised, but her eyes turn dark. She drops the cotton swab, grabbing my hand to take a closer look. “What did he do here?”
I tell her about the letter opener, and when Mary looks up at me, her eyes are filled with horror. “There is only one thing that leaves scars on the body of a wolf shifter. That letter opener must have been coated with wolfsbane, Alice. I don’t know how you survived all the way here. From your hand, the wolfsbane would have reached your heart within half an hour.”
My whole body goes cold. Thomas tried to kill me? The beta of my pack actually wanted to murder me?
My head is spinning again, and I clutch Mary’s arm. “You must be wrong. I mean, I know he was angry with me, but trying to kill me—”
Mary’s face is white as a sheet. “There’s no mistaking it. Even I can’t heal wolfsbane completely. It’s very toxic to our kind. You’re lucky Edith was around. Any other senior healer wouldn’t have healed you. They would have refused.”
Not simply because it’s dangerous but because they wouldn’t have cared enough. I can read between the lines of what Mary is saying.
I stare down at my palm, and my heart shrivels. Is my life really that worthless to these people? I grew up around them. Just because I don’t have a wolf spirit, they would have let me die? Just because Willow voluntarily went to the human police station, her father tried to kill me?
When I look up, Mary’s eyes are wet, and her lips are trembling. “I should’ve checked my messages. I’m so sorry, Alice. When I think about what could have happened—”
I try to smile at her and fail. “It’s fine. I’m alive, right? Nothing bad happened.”
She hugs me tightly. “I don’t understand this pack sometimes. You’re the nicest person there is. You don’t deserve this.”
Slowly, I wrap my arms around her waist, holding on to her. I need to hold on to somebody. I always try to stay upbeat and positive, but at times like this, the deepest, darkest thoughts within me rear their ugly heads.
When Mary pulls back, she looks at my palm once more. “How did—I’m still surprised you managed to get here in time. Did anything happen on the way?”
I’m about to shake my head when I remember the man in the woods. It was such a brief meeting, though, on account of me running away with my tail between my legs.
“I ran into somebody,” I murmur, tracing the scar in the center of my palm. “He was a shifter, but he wasn’t from our pack. I’m sure of it. He didn’t know that I don’t have a wolf spirit. He was—” I wet my lips, remembering how my body reacted to him. “He was kind to me. He was very handsome, too. I’ve never met anybody like him.”
As soon as I mention that part, I feel the heat crawl down my neck. I don’t know why I mentioned it. Mary studies me, her brows raised now. “What was his name?”
I avoid her gaze, shrugging. “No idea. But he wrapped something around my hand. It’s in the garbage there.”
To my shock, Mary digs out the piece of cloth from the trash can. She studies it for a minute, and then her eyes widen. “No wonder. It’s a healing bandage.”
“A what?”
She glances at me. “It’s a piece of cloth enchanted by witches. White witches. Healing bandages are rare. They’re usually used in battles, by soldiers—and not just any soldier. We learned about them during our training sessions, and I know how to identify them.”
“So, it’s a healing bandage,” I say hesitantly. “But my wound wasn’t healed.”
“No, it wouldn’t heal you,” Mary agrees. “The only way I can explain how this works is that it stops the flow of poison, or it stops the wound from getting further infected. It’s witch magic mixed with our healing magic. Like I said, these are very rare. I’ve never seen one in person.”
“Shouldn’t Edith have been able to identify it?” I ask, mystified.
Mary shakes her head. “She must not have been paying attention. She probably just took it off and threw it away. The magic in it is very faint, but I can sense it. You’re a lucky woman, Alice. Meeting that shifter was fate.”
“What kind of shifter would be able to get his hands on such a thing?”
“A dangerous one,” Mary replies heavily. “If I were you, I would stay away from him. He must be someone from the Wolf Kingdom. They’re the only ones who have contracts with white witches. You must have met a royal soldier.”
Her words render me speechless. The Wolf Kingdom is ruled by the royal family. The fighters who serve them are referred to as royal soldiers, and they are known for their brutal nature. From the way the man I met was creeping around, he clearly hadn’t wanted to be discovered. If he had been in a different sort of mood, would he have killed me?
I let out a shuddering breath. It seems I escaped death twice today.
“Don’t think too much about it,” my friend reassures me. “What’s done is done. You are alive and well. Let me patch you up here, and I’ll take a quick break. We can go for a walk.”
Mary is a gifted healer, and I am sure that once she comes of age, she will be promoted to a senior position. She’s a year younger than me, so probably next year.
Once she’s done with me, she walks me out, asking, “It’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“Seems to be the case.” I fiddle with the small box in my pocket.
“Let’s do something together. Do you have to work?”
“No, it’s my day off.”
Mary latches onto my arm. “Let’s get you a dress for the mating gathering.”
“I’m sorry, the what?” I feel confused.
Mary smiles. “You’re going to be twenty-two! Next week is the mating gathering at the royal palace. All eligible females are supposed to attend. You just have to be of age.”
I stare at her. “You’re kidding me, right? I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
Mary stops and faces me. “You don’t have a choice, Alice. Attending the mating gathering is mandatory. All eligible male and female shifters from each pack have to attend so that they can find their fated mate. It’s not that big a deal. The party only lasts a day. You get to stay at the palace. It’s really nice.”
“How do you know?” I ask her suspiciously.
Mary gives me a secretive grin. “My sister attended hers two years ago. I was allowed to go with her. I had to stay on the sidelines, but I saw her find her fated mate. It was so fascinating. My now brother-in-law stepped forward, and this red thread formed around his finger. It snaked its way around the ballroom floor till it found my sister, and then it formed a ring around her finger.”
I feel uneasy. “But I don’t have a wolf spirit, so I’m sure I don’t have to go. There’s no way I would be invited.”
“You can check the list sent by the palace,” Mary tells me. “If your name isn’t on it, then you don’t have to go. But it will be. The list is already up. Willow is also going.” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “She’s been going for the past couple of years and hasn’t found her fated mate. Rumor is she’s eyeing the prince, but he has never made an appearance.”
The glee in Mary’s voice is infectious, and I smile. “You’re ignoring the part where I can’t possibly be eligible, Mary.”
My friend scowls. “So what if you don’t have a wolf spirit? Just go, have a good time, stuff yourself with all the fancy food, and then come back. It’s a party. So, go party!”
The idea of being surrounded by so many shifters looking down on me is terrifying.
“What if I don’t go?”
Mary pauses, her voice serious. “Don’t do that. You might get in trouble. The palace doesn’t like its orders being ignored.” She loops her arm through mine and begins walking. “We’ll get you a dress. A nice one. And shoes. They’ll be my birthday gift to you.”
There’s no point in arguing with her. I never thought much about fated mates as I was growing up, once I realized it was never going to happen for me. But now, I’m wondering, “What happens if the two fated mates don’t like each other?”
Mary moves her shoulders in a quick shrug. “It has happened before. The whole idea of fated mates is that the two individuals are best suited for each other and complement each other, but there are times that the mates don’t like something about the other, so they reject the bond. There’s nothing stopping someone from choosing another mate.”
“What if they choose somebody else’s fated mate?” I ask curiously.
Mary glances at me. “Again, it has happened. My mother told me about it once. When she attended the mating gathering, one of her friends rejected her fated mate for another male. That wolf shifter also had a fated mate, but he decided to go with my mother’s friend instead. They’ve been together for over forty years now. It’s more common than you’d think.”
My lips curve in a sardonic smile. I guess the only thing I’ll be doing at the party is eating. Although I doubt my name will be on that list.
However, just ten minutes later, as Mary and I stand in front of Alpha Black’s office where the notice board has the list pinned to it, I feel my heart sink. My name is indeed on the list. And so is another name.
Cyrus Black.
Alpha Patrick Black’s only son, and one of my worst bullies.
This is not going to be a fun party.