Chapter 01
DARIUS
The parchment hit the desk with a decisive snap.
“It’s not optional,” Zendius, my best friend and second-in-command, told me, eyeing the missive received from the High Council that morning. A scowl twisted his heavy-set masculine features.
“It’s ridiculous,” I snapped. No way the Council could insist on a ruling like that, could they?
All Pack Alphas had to have an Alpha Mate, or the Council would send in administrators to take control of the pack?
I mean, seriously, what kind of fantasy was this?
Had they been dabbling in unusual mushrooms while thinking up their latest edict?
I’d asked Zendius to read the letter, in the faint hope that in my shock and incredulity, I’d misunderstood. But no, the light was definitely on upstairs - I wasn’t mistaken. The rules were clear.
‘Packs without an Alpha Mate on November 15 will be taken over by a Council-appointed temporary administrator. The administrator will determine whether to dissolve the pack and its assets or install a permanent administrator as pack leader.’
It was clearly another power and asset grab by the Council which had been growing more and more greedy in recent years.
The ruling was hard to justify – an alpha mate wasn’t necessary for a pack to flourish or maintain discipline – but since the majority of the Council was made up of previous generation Alphas, long past their prime but certainly not above substituting physical prowess with political scheming, contesting the ruling would be to no avail.
And any Alpha that tried to challenge them, would no doubt be ruthlessly shown their place.
Unless we banded together to confront them.
But that was a challenge for another time.
Achieving unity between all the various pack leaders wasn’t something that could be done overnight with a few phone calls.
But it was something that needed to be done further down the line.
The Council’s demands were becoming wilder and wilder, to the point where some of the packs inevitably couldn’t meet the new requirements and had to hand over large amounts of money, land, or, in some cases, omegas, to their avaricious Council overlords.
I sighed. However ridiculous this latest demand was, I had to satisfy it or lose the pack.
We’d been fortunate in the past, that due to excellent financial management by previous Pack Alphas, we’d held sufficient funds to cover the crazy requests coming from the Council, but once they shifted to non-monetary demands, we were on shaky ground.
I was soon to turn thirty and had been Pack Alpha for the last two years.
I had taken over the leadership when the previous Alpha had died.
At the time, I had been second-in-command, and the pack had voted me in as leader without anyone challenging.
It had been the easiest transfer of leadership of any pack I knew of, and a lot of that was due to the pack culture our previous leader had engendered.
I’d had experience simply by functioning in my role of second, but the reality of being the actual Pack Alpha…
well, let’s just say it had kept me busy.
There were so many extra administrative and diplomatic responsibilities that I’d been run off my feet.
And there had been some problems initially, not stemming from within the pack, but from the Council’s relentless demands.
They’d probably viewed the time of leadership transition as a period when the pack would be weak and had done their utmost to destabilize us.
Ultimately, their strategy hadn’t worked, thank the Goddess, and the pack had come through the experience unscathed.
It wasn’t my birth pack. No, not at all.
I’d left that pack as soon as I completed my majority at 22, and I’d been fortunate to find a place in this one, rapidly rising from walk-in straggler to trusted right-hand man in a short period of time.
I had wondered how the existing second-in-command, Zendius, had felt about moving aside to make room for me, but he’d remained friendly and seemed fine with the new arrangement.
It was possible he hadn’t wanted the responsibility of ultimately becoming pack leader.
I’d naturally chosen him as my second, however. Inexperienced as I was, I needed someone who understood in detail the running of the pack. He’d helped me out enormously and I was grateful for his support and the way he took on some of the tasks I found more onerous.
I’d come to grips with the role now, although it definitely kept me on my toes, but the unrelenting demands of leadership had left us in a difficult position.
I hadn’t had a mate at the time of assuming the leadership, and since then I hadn’t had the time or opportunity to seek one out.
Any omegas I’d come across in the course of my duties hadn’t stirred even an iota of interest in me. Not upstairs, not downstairs.
There was an added complication. I was gay, so I needed a male omega as a partner, and male omegas were not all that common. None of this had been a problem, until the fucking Council came up with its latest stupid edict. Now I had to find a mate, and I had to find them fast.
“Shit!” I swore, wishing my hair were longer.
There was very little comfort to be found from running one’s fingers through short, very tightly wound curls; I did little more than scrape my scalp.
“What am I supposed to do here? Run ads for a mate? What the fuck does it matter if we have an Alpha Mate or not? Our pack runs fine just as it is!”
“Of course,” Zendius agreed, head bobbing solemnly, his beard catching the light with the movement, “but there’s no getting around this, unless you want to lose the pack. You’re going to have to take a mate, any mate really. The pack is depending on you.”
My footsteps rang angrily back and forth across the hard wooden floor.
“How am I supposed to find the time to do that?” I demanded, stopping abruptly and glaring at him.
“I’m visiting the Lilydale pack this coming week to agree on combined boundary patrols, and then I have a trade agreement to negotiate with the Churls Clan pack.
How the hell am I supposed to spend time finding a mate before the 15 th ? ”
“And given your specific tastes…” Zendius’ voice trailed off.
He was well aware I was only interested in male partners.
As we’d been friends for quite a few years now, it was almost impossible for him not to know, because although I’d only dated a couple of times, I’d never hidden my attraction to men.
“You could try the clubs?” he suggested.
Zendius had no gender preference for his partners, and though I knew he often spent the night with an omega – most of whom I was certain he met at the club he frequented - I’d never seen him with the same one twice.
Either he wasn’t into relationships or he just hadn’t found the right person yet, but something told me the clubs were not going to be the right place for me to meet my mate.
“Not the clubs,” I told him.
“Then what are you going to do?” he asked me.
I slumped down into my chair and buried my face in my palms.
“Fuck. I don’t know,” I mumbled through my hands. “Probably I’ll have to cancel these meetings until I’ve sorted this out. But even so, how am I supposed to do this in time? If no-one suitable’s come along in the last eight years, I don’t think they’re going to turn up in the next two weeks!”
Zendius shrugged. “You could go to a dating agency,” he suggested. “Tell them your specifications and let them find someone for you.”
The cascade of wrinkles that appeared along my nose told him exactly what I thought of that! I didn’t like the idea of someone else choosing my mate for me, but… I could veto their choices, right? So maybe that would at least get some candidates in front of me. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, shoulders sagging in defeat. “Maybe I’ll do that. Shit! What a fucking waste of time!”
It annoyed me immensely that I was going to have to divert energy into this when I had important pack matters to attend to, things that would actually make a difference to the functioning of the pack, not simply check little boxes for a greedy Council that was lasciviously eyeing off our assets.
Still, when I looked at it that way, this was an important task, a necessary one to keep the pack safe from those greedy elders.
“I can find an agency and set up your profile for you,” offered Zendius, “and schedule any meetups for in between your meetings, if you like?”
“Thanks. I’d appreciate it,” I told him. He knew me well enough to know what sort of person I was looking for.
“And I’ll ask around my contacts. See if anyone knows of any unmated male omegas.”
“Ugh. That’s humiliating,” I complained. “It sounds so desperate.”
“It’s not. We both know you weren’t even looking to get mated yet. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure it’s clear you’re only trying to meet Council requirements and they’ve put us on a timeline.”
“It’s still embarrassing. And I’d much rather choose my own mate than be saddled with one because I’m forced to act now.”
Zendius shrugged. “Responsibilities of being Pack Alpha, I guess. You have to make sacrifices for the good of the pack.”
He was right, of course. The Alpha had to put the welfare of the pack before themselves, but it shouldn’t have applied to something like this.
A mate. Someone you spent the rest of your life with.
Someone you’d be intimate with. I should not be being pushed into this.
I should have been able to take my time and find my actual mate, someone I wanted to share my life with, maybe even my fated mate, if I had one.
But no. My choices were being taken away here.
With the scarcity of male omegas, I’d be lucky if I had any choice at all.
“Okay, go ahead and do it.” A gob of spittle hit the desk as I angrily snapped out the words. “I’m going to discuss the boundary situation with Xeres.”
I just barely avoided slamming the door behind me as I stomped away to find our mage.