Chapter 5

Aidan dabbed a napkin on his lips, wiping away the bloody juices from the steak. “Yeah. We can't come back here anymore. Both of you are acting like she’s a Luna. I don’t get it.”

A Luna was the Alpha’s mate, usually the most powerful female werewolf in the pack. Most werewolves couldn’t help themselves around Lunas due to their enchanting strength. However, since the Great War, the number of Lunas decreased from a hundred to only five on the planet. Their Alphas guarded them with their whole pack. Even worse, the number of female werewolves was barely ten.

Finn drank some of his water and set it on the table. “Maybe, this is a good time to have that talk about your rule.”

“Not now.” Maddox shoveled half a steak into his mouth.

“Mate.”

Stop it.

It had already been hard enough to battle with Finn about the rule. For a year, the Beta had been fighting his ban on breeding with humans, hoping that their pack could spread their legacies in alternative ways.

Finn pushed it further. “Why isn’t now a good time to discuss the rule?"

He swallowed down the hunks of meat. “I already told you. We find a place to call home, settle down, build our houses, and then we talk about mating rules.”

Finn gestured at Camille as she took orders from a couple further away from them. “And what if our mates come to us before we finish those goals? The Moon Goddess does as she pleases, blessing us at her will, not ours. Perhaps she wants us to breed with humans.”

He sliced into another steak. “The Moon Goddess has more to do in the sky as she protects us all. The last thing she’s focused on is getting you laid.”

Maddox stuffed the slab of meat into his mouth, chomped it down, and swallowed. “And the last thing that you’ll ever do in this lifetime, while I’m around, is point at Camille and call her your mate.”

Finn's nostrils flared. His blue eyes brightened and shifted to silver. He targeted Maddox with a threatening gaze.

“Calm your beast,” Maddox whispered. “Or I’ll calm him for you.”

Aidan put his fork and knife down. If his Alpha and Beta fought, Aidan would be forced to stop it. And no matter how much he loved Finn, his responsibility was to protect the Alpha—Maddox.

Damian looked at both of them. “Maybe we should just take these steaks to go.”

“No,” Maddox said. “We finish. We tip her high. And then we leave, never coming back. No one else even walks by this place. Get your steaks somewhere else.”

The whole pack nodded. Even Finn, who shoved a bunch of steak in his mouth and tore through them like he was ripping into human's flesh.

A woman walked into the diner. She had long brown braids, high cheekbones, and a caramel complexion. But the most distinctive part of the woman was her grey eyes that shined as bright as the moon. Mystified as well, some of the other customers turned her way.

She was not from around here.

Maddox knew what she was, but he let his nose confirm it. He breathed her in, it was this earthy fragrance, reminding him of blossoming flowers on the first day of spring.

Witch. Ninety years old.

The rest of the pack nodded as if they heard him. They raised their heads and breathed her scent in too.

“Fuck,” Jake muttered. “And I was just going to say we should settle in this town.”

“If we like it here, we’ll stay.” Finn raised part of his lip into a sneer. “What’s a pack to one witch?”

Maddox frowned. “Nothing, if she’s a young one. But this one’s old, her power has blossomed. She could be trouble for us.”

“How can you tell how old they are?” Derrick adjusted the glasses on his face. “Don’t they always look the same?”

Derrick was the Omega—the lowest-ranked in their pack. At forty years old, he was a young werewolf that looked more like a college English professor. Still in that stage where his beast had control more than he did. Omegas got the shit jobs—laundry and cleaning, grocery shopping, and anything else the higher ranks didn’t want to do.

If they had a full pack of mates and cubs. He would be the sitter, monitoring the cubs during hunts and changing diapers to let their parents sleep.

Oliver still didn’t know much about our world. At ten, his parents had been killed in the Wars, leaving him abandoned and forced to fend for himself in the forest. When Maddox found him, he’d been in wolf form for years and struggled with shifting back to human form.

“If you use your eyes, then it won’t be easy to tell how old a witch is,” Maddox said. “They stay beautiful and young most of the time, except on nights of the full moon. That’s when they hide in their homes, fearing others will see their wrinkles and grey hair.”

“Most look disgusting during the full moon,” Gerald added. “If they’re over a hundred, their decaying skin hangs from graying bones, and they can barely move.”

“Those are the witches that we should avoid.” Maddox dove his hand in his pocket and pulled out four hundred-dollar bills. “One of you needs to follow the witch, find out where she lives, and keep your distance. Although she doesn’t have our hearing, I’m sure she can smell us like we can smell her. There’s a decent power source radiating from her. She may attack if we get too close. Keep your distance when you watch her.”

Gerald rubbed his bald head. “Who should do it?”

Jake spoke, “We could do alternating shifts.”

Finn nodded. “I can start now.”

Yeah. Maddox bet Finn would be happy to sit here all day under the guise of watching the witch.

He turned to Aidan. “You stay here and watch her. When she moves, follow her. Call me with updates every fifteen minutes. If you miss one, I’ll know something’s wrong.”

Finn frowned. “Aidan is the Delta. His place is to protect you. It makes more sense for me to do it.”

Jake nodded. “Finn makes a good point. I don’t feel comfortable not being by your side, especially with a witch in town. There could be a whole coven around that we didn’t sniff out.”

“Fine.” He turned and looked at the Pack Enforcer.

“Gerald, you watch her.”

“Really?” Finn rolled his eyes.

Gerald nodded. “Sounds good.”

“We’re done.” He placed the four hundred dollars under the salt shaker. He knew the money was well past what we owed for the meal, but Camille looked exhausted as she rushed around the diner.

“Mate.”

Shut up. We won’t be back.

But deep inside his heart, Maddox knew that declaration was wrong. It was already hard to walk away.