Chapter 2 - Drake
My jaw clenched as I stared down at the notes, glancing between them and the pages on my laptop.
On the wall, the map of Silver Falls and the desert surrounding it had several pushpins jabbed into it, each one marking where the wraith or one of the imps and other lesser demons helping it had attacked.
Most stayed clustered in the northwest, but the more recent ones had shown a migration south.
The wraith was cooking something up. The problem was, we had no idea what it might be.
The only current solace we had was that Rachel and Emma had managed to create wards surrounding the town that stopped the wraith from invading the town the way it had done previously.
So long as the pack remained inside the wards, they were more or less safe.
It gave us a bit of breathing room and eased the fear of the town, but it was a bandage, not a solution.
We needed to end the wraith once and for all.
We had gotten close twice before, but it had always managed to elude death at the last minute.
So far, we had gotten lucky. But if we didn’t manage to kill the wraith soon, then there was no telling what sort of problems lay in store for us down the road. We needed to end this once and for all.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come on in,” I said, expecting Oz or Sam, maybe Elias.
Instead, when the door creaked open, a small woman with graying hair and a cane strolled in. She gave me a small smile that seemed to indicate centuries of wisdom.
It took me a moment to register who was in front of me. It wasn’t as though I had much cause to interact directly with the Oracle. If she had anything to discuss regarding the pack, she typically went directly to Elias.
“Oracle.” I dipped my head in deference.
“Hello, Drake,” she said. “How are you doing?”
“Well enough,” I grunted. “Yourself?”
“Just fine.”
I glanced out at the sky. Twilight had begun to descend, and I had no intention of leaving anytime soon. It raised the question of why the Oracle had come by at this time of night.
“If you’re looking for Elias, I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. I can see if—”
The Oracle raised her hand, cutting me off. “He’s not who I’m looking for,” she said. “I’m actually here to talk to you.”
I let that sink in for a moment, mulling over that sentence for a long moment, giving it far more consideration than it merited on the surface.
“Right,” I said the word slowly, drawing it out, running through the list of reasons the Oracle would want to talk to me instead of the pack alpha.
There weren’t many of them, and none of them particularly appealed to me.
Still, if the Oracle showed up at your office unannounced, requesting an audience, you didn’t turn her away.
“How can I help you, then?” I asked.
She gestured at the map. “As you know, the wraith is still causing trouble for our pack,” she began.
There was a protective anger there that startled me.
The Oracle was normally a placid woman, warm and peaceful.
Seeing this level of rage spreading across her features made me falter for just a moment.
“We’re doing everything we can, I assure you,” I said.
She held up a hand, silencing me. “I have been trying to glean insight into the future,” she continued. “Something else is coming. Something as bad as the wraith, if not worse.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled in warning, the papers in front of me forgotten.
If there was a new danger coming our way, then we needed as much information as possible.
I wasn’t certain if the town would be able to properly recover if we had to deal with two threats from different angles.
We were already stretched far enough without having to add whatever the Oracle had seen.
“What is it?” I asked, but the Oracle shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Only that we are still in danger.”
“Even with the wards?”
“The wards can only protect from so much,” she said cryptically. “I tell you this not only as a warning—though you and the others must be vigilant—but to also give you an explanation for what else I am about to tell you.”
The words felt almost more ominous than her premonition. My jaw tensed for a second as I waited for whatever she was about to say. She paused, as if waiting for me to prod her. When I didn’t, she gave a short nod and continued.
“The time has come for you to join with your fated mate.”
I didn’t react at first, my face stoic as I processed the declaration.
I didn’t believe in fated mates. I never had.
The concept seemed too romantic and frivolous to have any merit.
Elias and Sam both seemed happy enough, but that didn’t mean fated mates were a real thing.
It just meant they had found mates they liked.
If I had any say in the matter, I would tell the Oracle no. I didn’t have any interest in picking a mate, let alone being told who that person would be. I was happy on my own and would rather remain that way for as long as possible.
Still, I knew the drill, and I knew that arguing wasn’t going to do anything.
If the Oracle had decreed I had to mate someone, then that was what would happen.
To her, it didn’t matter that fated mates didn’t exist. All that mattered was that, to her, somehow making these pairings was important to protecting the pack against these nebulous dangers.
It didn’t matter if there was any truth to it.
Once she said it, it was going to happen.
As reluctant as I might be about the entire situation, I would always do my duty to the pack.
If that meant taking a mate, that’s what I would do.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Liv Fielding.”
At first, I could only stare. I must have misheard her, because there was no way she could have said Liv.
“Liv Fielding?” I repeated. The image of a round-faced woman with light brown hair that fell to her shoulders, brown eyes, a perpetual grin, and generous curves floated to the front of my mind.
The Oracle nodded. “I’m sure you remember her.”
Of course, I remembered her. For a brief moment, I was a teenager again, standing over her, telling her that there was no way we were mates and that she should leave me alone.
That was the last time I had ever spoken with her in private.
I saw her around town and at gatherings, but anytime I caught sight of her, it was always as part of a large cluster.
If she saw me, she would typically vanish into the crowd before I could get close enough to even say hello.
The Oracle was still standing in front of me, and I realized I had been trying to figure out what to say for entirely too long.
“Does she know?” I asked.
“I told her before I came to talk to you,” she said.
I wondered how Liv had taken that news. Had she expected it? Had it validated that certainty she’d had when we were kids? Had it dredged up unpleasant memories she hadn’t thought about in years?
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that Liv hated me. I knew that I had broken her heart, regardless of whether fated mates existed. That day had stayed with me always, and I hated that I had hurt her. It was hard to blame her for constantly avoiding me.
That hadn’t stopped me from keeping an eye on her from afar. Even if I had messed things up with her, I had watched as she turned from the shy, insecure teenager who told me we were mates to the beautiful, confident, bubbly woman that she had become.
I didn’t like the way things had ended between us, and I knew that was my fault and my fault only. I had messed up. Even if I didn’t believe in fated mates, I could have let her down more gently than I did.
If we had to be mates, though, then maybe I would actually have the chance to make things up to her after all.
I had the chance to make amends. I had never stopped thinking about her, had never stopped wondering what might have happened between us if I hadn’t told her I had no interest in her, which hadn’t been strictly true in the first place.
This was the chance I had been looking for—a chance to make amends. Might as well start now.
***
Liv had a small apartment on the outskirts of town. I got there a little after dark, when I guessed she would be home. I got out of my car and stared up at the window I knew was hers. Light streamed out, and I thought I saw the flicker of shadows inside.
My stomach twisted into a knot, a sensation I wasn’t accustomed to.
I took a deep breath. I shouldn’t have been nervous about this, but after everything that happened, I didn’t know how this was going to go.
Still, it needed to be done, both because we were going to have to live with one another from now on and having that hanging over our heads would be a nightmare, and because I wanted to clear the air for the sake of it.
It had been almost ten years at this point.
As if by unspoken agreement, neither of us had ever broached the subject again, but it was time, considering everything.
I paused at her door. Music spilled out from behind the door, something bright and pop-y, the exact kind of thing that I would expect Liv to enjoy, and the type of thing that normally drove me up the wall.
I only hesitated for a brief moment, then gritted my teeth and knocked.
The music cut off. A second later, the door cracked open, revealing half a face. One large brown eye widened in shock, and the half of her mouth that I could see tightened for just a moment before turning into a tight smile.
“Drake, hi,” she said.
“Hey,” I said.
A long pause filled the air between us as her door remained just cracked.
“What are you doing here?” she finally asked.
I raised an eyebrow. “The Oracle paid me a visit earlier today. She told me she had already told you.”
“Right, right.” Liv glanced away, chewing the inside of her cheek.