Chapter 3 - Damian
“I really wish you could be there tonight,” I murmur, staring at my interlaced fingers as I wring them on my lap, listening to the sound of the beeping machine instead of my beta’s voice.
I look up to see him slurping in breaths through a tube, most of his body covered in bandages as if he’s been mummified.
Taking a deep breath, my resolve is strengthened, as if coming to visit him in the secluded clinic was what I needed to confirm that I’m doing the right thing by going through with this fated mate bond thing.
While the others are wary and mistrusting that this could be the answer to our troubles, I am slightly hopeful, even if it’s just for James’s sake.
While he lies in this cabin, receiving only as much treatment as available to us since we can’t take him to a human hospital, his slow-progressing healing is just another reminder that the valley wolves are failing, falling, at risk of being wiped out if we’re not careful.
Red Moon alone has lost eight soldiers, and the attack James survived was a close call, narrowly escaping death and avoiding adding to the tally to make it nine.
But he’s still here, lying comatose in this bed, and he’ll probably only wake up with a miracle.
A miracle I’m hoping happens tonight. It has to. I’m done losing my friends, my people, watching the rest shivering with fear at every meeting when I'm the bearer of bad news, or when I'm carrying another casket at a funeral.
***
With determination to save my people fueling my every step, I head to the Red Moon Pack's sacred site near the edge of the Bitterroot River, a holy place nestled between the mountains, where the ashes of the first alpha of the pack were scattered more than a century ago. The Valley Wolf Council members are waiting there for me, forming a circle around an already burning fire beneath the glowing silver full moon. I slow down my steps, gulping as I feel the intensity in the air, like invisible talons reaching out toward me, chains that speak of binding me to a fated mate bond with someone I don’t know.
Maybe I’m escaping again. That’s the only personal reason I’d have for going through with this.
I’m escaping from the memories of Sophie, determined to put the past behind me because there’s nothing I can do to salvage it.
There’s no going back after what I did to her, how I hurt her when we’d been on the brink of… more.
The weight of it is still heavy in my pocket, as if I’m still carrying the ring I once did while I was with Sophie. It was my mother’s ring, and I had every intention of giving it to her with the promise of a happily-ever-after that wasn’t mine to give her at all.
How could there be a future for us—for a werewolf and a human woman—when I can hardly keep my own pack members safe?
That day when I broke up with her, on a Sunday two years ago, I’d just lost my first soldier to a demon attack.
A few months after the first attack that sent us to the Bitterroot Health-Daly Hospital, we weren’t even sure about what we were facing, and the next attack came unexpectedly, taking a life with it.
I was spooked and knew that I needed to walk away before I put her life in danger.
Goddess knows it killed me inside, but I knew I was doing the right thing. Intuitively.
Just as my intuition is guiding me toward doing this.
I bow once to the council elders, all dressed in scarlet cloaks, before turning to Amos. He offers me my cloak, and I step into it while he announces that the healer from Silver Stone will be conducting the ritual since Red Moon lost our pack healer a few months ago.
She’d been out hunting with her mate when a demon struck and took her life. Her mate, Tomas, hasn’t recovered from the shock of watching his mate die in front of his eyes and living to tell the tale.
I see the emptiness in his eyes as he tends to her garden in her absence, and it’s a reminder that I did the right thing by walking away from Sophie.
“Damian!” a cheery voice rings out like an echo through the valley, prompting me to turn just in time to see my sister, Dianna, skipping over with speed. “Don’t start without me!”
Seeing Dianna racing forward brings a smile to my face, even in the midst of what I’m about to do.
I’m doing this for the pack. I’m doing this for my beta. And I’m doing this for my sister, who can’t bear seeing my best friend lying comatose in a clinic bed.
Dianna is in love with James, and while she hasn’t admitted it, I see the way she looks at the beta as if he hung the moon.
If there’s even an ounce of hope that doing this will bring him back somehow, speeding up his healing abilities through my strengthened powers, I have to give this a fighting chance.
Dianna rushes into my arms and hugs me tightly before rambling on with an excuse about being late. She’d probably been to see James first, even if she doesn’t admit it now.
“I’m glad you’re here now, sis. We’re about to begin.” I nod at Amos as Dianna steps back and joins our Uncle Joel on a flat rock. Amos signals for the Silver Stone healer, Anastasia, to step forward and take command of the ritual.
“Alpha Damian,” she greets and bows her head gently, the scroll between her hands.
She pulls it open, then places it on the stone ledge in front of the fire.
Next, she takes out a vial of murky green liquid from underneath the layers of her cloak, then nods at Uncle Joel, who brings forward the skull of Caius—the only part of our ancestor that wasn’t burnt to ashes, and remains a holy relic for the Red Moon Pack.
The healer turns to me then. “The ritual is as follows,” she begins, holding out the vial in front of my face.
“You will shift into wolf form, and I will use this dagger to draw blood from your forelimb.” She pulls out a wooden-handled serrated dagger from beneath the layers of her cloak.
“Your blood will be offered to the relic of Caius, returned to the fire to invoke the energy of the Red Moon ancestor, and your cut will be bound with poison so the truth may surface.”
I nod once, no hesitation left in me. Stepping forward, I unfasten the cloak and let it fall to the ground behind me.
The night air kisses the skin of my exposed back, sharp and cold, but my wolf is already close to the surface, restless beneath my bones as if he’s waiting with bated breath, prepared for what’s to come.
I’m not sure if he’s eager to find his fated mate, or if he’s just neutral about it, but I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and let go of any lingering inhibitions.
This is it. There’s no going back.
Goodbye, Sophie… is my last thought before the shift rips through me in a rush of snapping bone and surging muscle, a familiar pain that grounds me instead of frightening me.
Fur ripples across my skin, my spine elongates, and my senses sharpen until the world fractures into scent and sound and instinct.
I land on all fours on the packed earth, my wolf towering above the healer, creamy white fur bristling beneath the moonlight.
The fire crackles louder as if beckoning toward the blood it’s about to taste.
Anastasia steps closer, unflinching as she stands tiny in front of me.
She nods, I hold up my foreleg, and she grips it firmly, reverently, and presses the serrated blade into my flesh.
Hot, sharp pain blooms from the cut, but I don’t flinch.
Blood wells immediately, thick and dark, dripping onto the skull placed carefully before the fire as Anastasia holds my foreleg over it.
The moment my blood touches the ivory bone, the air shifts.
The fire flares higher, hungry, red and orange flames licking greedily at the skull, and Anastasia presses my wounded limb briefly into the flame.
The smoke of the blood being consumed from the skull surrounds the wound, entering me as if Caius’s spirit is seeping in.
The burn is immediate and vicious, searing straight through fur and muscle and into something deeper than bone.
Before I can react, before my wolf can pull away, she smears the green-black waxy paste from the vial over the burn using the bloodied dagger.
Kambo.
My wolf instantly recognizes the poison when it hits my bloodstream like lightning, a foul, bitter taste on my wolf-tongue, an electric shock tearing through my bones.
A raw, violent howl tears out of me, ripping straight from my chest, and it echoes across the valley, bouncing off the mountains, shaking the river itself as the water responds to me as if I’m trying to wield it.
I don’t hear the elders anymore. I don’t feel the ground beneath my paws.
The world collapses inward as my vision tunnels, and I feel myself moving.
I’m running. Not in the valley. Not anywhere I recognize.
Thick, suffocating mist surrounds me, swallowing sound and sight alike.
My paws churn through unseen ground as panic coils tight around my ribs.
I don’t know what I’m chasing, or what’s chasing me, but every instinct screams that I cannot stop.
I burst through the fog suddenly and skid to a halt, and that’s when the world opens up.
A cliff stretches before me, jagged and sharp, dropping away into endless darkness. Wind howls upward from below, carrying the scent of ozone and fire and something achingly familiar.
A scent I recognize. A sweet one. Like jasmine flowers and honey dripping from every corner of the earth.
She’s standing there, her silhouette unmistakably elegant as a white gown sways around her, dancing with the wind.
But she’s at the edge, her back turned to me, her wavy dark hair blowing in the same direction as her dress.
She’s human. Small compared to the vastness around her, yet impossibly solid, her luscious curves attesting to Earth’s natural beauty. She hasn’t turned yet, but I already know. Every cell in my body recognizes her before my mind does.
And it’s as if that recognition prompts her to turn.
Dark curls whisper about her face, brown eyes meeting mine with a softness I’ve missed for so long.
Sophie.
My heart slams so hard it feels like it might tear free from my chest. The fear jolts me into human form, my arm reaching out toward her. “Sophie!” I call out, but no sound comes out.
When she looks at me, she’s not afraid, not surprised. Instead, a wistful smile lifts her lips, and something soft flickers in her chocolate-brown eyes. Acceptance. Resolve. And something else that shreds me from the inside out.
Faith.
Then she steps backward.
“No!” I surge forward, terror detonating through me as she falls.
Without thinking, without making a conscious choice, I leap after her.
There’s no questioning it. A leap of faith, after the woman who appeared to me like a Goddess in human form.
The fall is endless, and Sophie is still ahead of me.
Wind screams past me, tearing at my body, my mind fracturing as gravity drags me down into nothingness.
And then, I slam back into my body.
I gasp violently, sucking in air as pain explodes through my veins. My wolf snaps back, bones cracking as I shift violently into human form, collapsing onto the earth beside the dying fire. Hands grab my shoulders, and voices shout my name.
I barely hear them, still reeling from the discovery I just made. I know with a certainty that’s so brutal, it steals my breath away.
My fated mate isn’t in the valley.
She isn’t a wolf.
She’s human.
From Hamilton.
I push myself up onto my elbows, chest heaving, vision still swimming as the poison burns out of my system. Amos is kneeling in front of me, awe and fear battling in his expression.
“Alpha Damian…” he whispers. “Did you see her? Do you have a name?”
I lift my head, giving him a gentle nod. “Yes.” The word is hoarse. Final.
“Who is she?” Elder Bernard demands from behind, and I lift my hand to stop them from their impatience. Silence presses down on the clearing, heavy and suffocating, and I swallow, my throat raw, my heart splintering open as I speak the truth aloud for the first time.
“Sophie Torres.”
The reaction is immediate. Shock. Gasps flow through the members of the pack that had gathered here tonight to watch the ritual take place, joining with the surprise of the council members.
“This is good,” Amos nods as he helps me to my feet. “You have her name. Did you see her face?”
I nod slowly as we turn to the elders, and Elder Bernard remains skeptical, his brow raised.
“So, the ritual worked…” he says thoughtfully. “How did you hear her name? Was it whispered?”
I shake my head, to which Bernard frowns. “It wasn’t whispered to me. I just knew.”
“Interesting. So now that we have a name and a face, we can track her pack,” Amos says, but I stop him with a raised hand.
“That won’t be necessary, Amos. There’s a reason I didn’t hear her name being whispered. There’s a reason I knew her name.” I take a deep breath, still reeling from what I saw, what my inner wolf now knows to be true, and what this means for the pack.
“How, Damian?” Uncle Joel steps forward, placing his hand on my shoulder as if he can sense my own shock. I look up and meet his eyes, and there’s something in his eyes that’s warm and familiar, and allows me to say what is most startling, even to me.
“I know the woman I saw because I’ve met her. I know where she lives.” I pause to take another breath before going on, “She’s from Hamilton. She’s not a werewolf. She’s human.”
The air shifts again, and a heaviness sets in.
“A human?” someone snarls.
“This is impossible,” another voice spits.
“A mistake—”
“A failure of the ritual—”
Their voices blur together, skepticism and fear crashing over one another, but I barely hear them.
Because suddenly, everything makes sense.
I felt the pull the moment I opened my eyes and saw her standing beside the hospital bed.
The way my wolf calmed in her presence. The way my body reacted every time she touched me, or every time I touched her.
The pain of walking away from her two years ago, pain that never dulled, never truly healed.
It wasn’t merely a coincidence.
It was fate.
I wasn’t protecting her by leaving. I was rejecting my mate.
My hands curl into fists against my sides as realization settles like a blade between my ribs. The valley may doubt. The council may resist.
But Sophie Torres is my fated mate, and this time, I can’t run. This time, I won’t let fear make the choice for me. This time, I will have to claim her.
There’s no escaping fate, even if none of us know what this means for the greater threat that lies ahead.