Chapter No. 4

Ada Steele:-

The packhouse courtyard was shrouded by the night sky, with stars shining above the sea of jubilation. Golden lanterns dangled at long poles, and then flared in warm glances about the muster-pack. All was clothed in magnificence. Silk-draped tables. Flower-laced pillars. And right at the center of it all, the platform, on which the Luna of the future Alpha was to be presented.

That Luna was me.

The dress, of the same deep wine velvet as on the night the first time this had happened to me in my later life, adhered to my body in an agonized reminder. My thumb and fingers were intertwined like a lock of hair, and I could feel myself slipping into the well-woven web of the lie I was entering. I gazed before me, pretending to wonder and amazement, though every disclosure weighed me down.

Alaric stood in the middle of the courtyard, his arms crossed and his face calm and self-assured. He kept his eyes upon me to the end, as if he thought he was getting the best of it at last. The ideal birthday. The ideal time. An ideal bride-to-be. I allowed him to think so.

A whole atmosphere of chatter and joy sounded through the guests. I went into the prepared track, where I was met with great welcomes and hugs. Those close to me were not aware that they were the undead in training. They slapped my shoulders, kissed me on my cheeks, and blessed me to live a long and happy life in the arms of their Alpha. Each word was a knife in the heart of silence.

By this time, I had approached him, and Alaric put his hand into mine and bent to kiss me upon the cheek. I managed a blushing smile, drawing my lashes over my eyes just as though his fingers made me flurried. I could see his eyes gleaming with delight because I was submitting.

I was letting him believe that. I need to keep the mask of a fool naive omega on, especially, so they can't find out about my wolf. They think that I am wolfless, so it is better to let all of them believe that until the proper time arises and I take everything back that belongs to me.

People began to cluster round me as I glamed here and there, feeling that something gigantic was about to take place. I recoiled a step, putting my hand over my chest, as though something was awakening in me. Then I drew breath. I scrunched up my face in rehearsal shock. I grasped at my heart, and looked up at him with big, startled eyes.

“Mate...” I said, loud enough to be heard by all around us.

The audience paused in astounded breath. Rumors spread in the courtyard like waves. The eyes of Alaric glowed. He approached me with his arms wide open and kissed me in the presence of a crowd. I survived, I even reacted to it, with trembling hands and parted lips. He pulled back with the air of the most satisfied man in the world.

"At last, you finally feel it," he chortled in pride. “You found out I was your mate at last. I had been waiting for this day for what felt like centuries."

I nodded breathlessly, saying nothing, but allowing a slight smile to play on my lips. “I… I do.”

There were cheers all about. Cries of joy, whistles, and applause filled the courtyard. I permitted myself to be swept into the arms, and to be fortified with congratulations, and led to the middle where Alaric fell upon his knee. He took a black velvet box out of his coat pocket and opened it to show a ring with a jewel the size of a pearl, large enough to be compared to a moonstone.

''Ada Steele!'' he boomed, clearly and with excitement in his voice, full of theatrical affection, ''will you be my Luna and my future queen, and stand beside me!''

I stood and looked about slowly, letting tears come to my eyes. I could call them up readily by remembering all the things I had lost. My parents, the pack that I had loved, lost, and betrayed by, that innocent girl who had said yes in some other reality, only to be betrayed and burned down to ashes.

However, this time around, I smiled and took the ring with the vow to kill every traitor and reason for mine and my parents' deaths.

"Yes," I said. "Yes...yes...yes, I will marry you. I will be your Luna, your forever."

Placing the ring on my finger, he drew me again into his arms. We forced our bodies against each other in an imitation of sex. All the pack howled in glee around us. Kimberly appeared, squealing, and threw her arms about me, as though we had been bound together by friendship rather than bloodshed.

"Congratulations. We are going to be sisters now!" Kimberly and Alaric's parents congratulated us, while I roamed my gaze around at every face I saw in my previous life, loyal to Alaric before they killed me and my parents in front of my eyes, and mentally wrote down the names of the targets in my kill list.

As I was planning my next move, my heart all of a sudden beat rapidly, my wolf begin to get excited and alert, all of my senses made me turn around, only to lock my eyes with a new and very tall, handsome and dominant figure with ocean blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, that entered the courtyard, making the whole courtyard go silent with his dominant presence.

"It's the Supreme Alpha Evander Knight," the pack member gasped, whispering and murmuring to one another while he kept walking unbothered, dressed in a black tailored suit, his expression so dangerous that any enemy would kill themselves in fear. He screamed nothing but power and a strong aura around him, as everyone got down on their knees and bowed to him.

When his ocean-blue eyes caught mine, the connection went into place so soundly it almost knocked my knees back. It was not soft. It was brutal, savage, and mind-devouring.

"Mate." My wolf, Kitara, was rattling about so loudly in my mind that I gasped aloud.

"Moon above…" Stunned, breathlessly, she whispered. "There he is, Ada—our real mate. The one moon goddess has chosen for us. Oh my God, Ada, the Supreme Alpha is our mate. We are mated to the supreme alpha."

He stepped on, and every step commanded. It was in the set of his jaw, the keenness of his cheek-bones, the composure of the tempest in his eyes. But it was more than that, it was something special that only I could understand.

He had experienced it himself, too. He felt the mate bond snap too, as evidenced by the way his brows came together, not in perplexity, but incredulity, and his eyes shone with a golden flicker, searching for answers to the unasked questions forming in his mind.

Alaric spoke with the pride and welcome in his tone as though he had not just been made insignificant by the man before him, my mate, the Supreme Alpha.

"Ah, I see you finally made it, my dear old friend. I thought you wouldn't come like every other time."

Evander gave him hardly a glance. His eyes never departed mine. I was not able to move. Couldn’t speak. Hardly thought. I had accepted Alaric's proposal. Before the pack. Before this man. And now… now the Goddess had stripped bare the truth in my mind about him being my mate.

Evander stopped but a few feet distant, and the intervening atmosphere became heavy with the fumes of ozone and pine. My wolf whimpered, and longed to be with him, to sink inside that connection, to say a name she somehow already knew by heart. He opened his mouth to speak. But he gritted his teeth instead and drew breath.

"Congratulations, Alpha Alaric,” he said after a long pause, in the same polite tone, but with a sort of coldness. "I hear your Luna has accepted your proposal."

Alaric came forth, proudly, still attaching his hand to the small of my back. “Yes. Ada and I are at last fatally connected.”

I gulped, and I forced a smile on my lips, and I pretended that my whole soul was not ripped apart.

“Thank you for coming," I held my breath, hoping my voice didn't tremble. "It's an honor to have you here, Supreme Alpha."

Evander stared into my eyes a heartbeat longer, unreadably, but with the tension radiating off him unequivocal.

"Oh, I wouldn't have missed it," he said, but the words were from cold flame. "It is, after all, a momentous night." he leaned closer as if to press a kiss on my cheek and whispered in my ear huskily and asked, making my whole body still with his question.

"What fierce game are you playing, my beautiful mate?"