ANMELDENSebastian's pov
"And you said she is a human?" Kael, my beta, looked at me perplexed and I merely hummed in agreement.
I clenched my fists and went back to attacking the punching bag in front of me.
"Battering the punching bag won't offer you a solution." Kael pointed out and as much as I didn't want to agree with him, I knew he was right.
"It would, however, reduce the urge I have to strangle something or someone." I looked at him pointedly but he merely chuckled.
I flexed my fingers as I paused my assault on the punching bag and tried to calm my raging emotions and ragged breath.
"Why would the moon goddess give me a human as a mate?" I frowned.
"Are you sure you weren't merely attracted to this human?" Kael asked and my wolf growled within me.
"I think I would know what attraction feels like Kael. My wolf yearned to mark this human right on the spot. I have never felt so aware of another person neither had my wolf ever lost control like I almost had when she stood mere inches away from me." I revealed annoyed by Kael's insinuation.
One of my men walked into the gym and bowed.
"What is it?" I gritted out, unable to mask my irritation and frustrations.
"I have the report you asked for Alpha." He replied, snagging my attention.
Without another word I took the file from him and walked into my office, slamming the door shut behind me.
I poured myself a glass of whiskey before I settled in my chair and began skimming through the file.
Cassandra...that was my mate's name.
Such a sweet, meek name was befitting for her but behind that meek, calm exterior I sensed a heat, a fire and an uncontrollable passion behind her eyes, waiting to be explored.
The prophecy claimed my mate would be the one to redeem the werewolf world and lift the curse so how could my mate be a human?
I was at a loss for how to handle the situation as I read through the file containing everything seemed important about my little human mate.
I took a slow sip of my whiskey as an idea formed in my mind.
"Kael." I shouted and within seconds he appeared at my doorway.
"For the next few days you are in charge of the pack. I have a quick errand to run." I informed him and I could see the question swirling in his eyes but he merely nodded and left the room.
"I'm coming Cassandra." I muttered as I looked out the window.
****
"I must admit I do not understand." Curtis, Cassandra's father stared at me in confusion.
The man was trying to feign ignorance and I smirked.
"Mr. Peterson, this paper clearly shows how many gambling establishments you owe." I pushed the paper with outrageous figures towards him.
He scanned the paper for a moment before his panicked eyes looked at me.
"How did you get this?" He asked.
"So you do not deny it?" I quirked a brow.
"I made some bad decisions on most of those gambling tables but I promised to pay them back." He confessed.
"And how do you intend to do that?" I pushed.
Curtis grappled for words but came up short.
"I have a proposition for you. One which would benefit us both." I began and the man's eyes looked weary.
"I'm listening." He nodded.
"I would pay off all your debts and set you up on an allowance which would afford you to live comfortably." I looked him dead in the eyes.
"In exchange, I want your daughter Cassandra to follow me back to my pack and stay as my mate." I dropped the other shoe and the man's eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets.
"You are insinuating I sell my child Alpha." The man pointed out.
"It wouldn't be selling because she is my mate and with or without you I'll still claim her." I shrugged.
The man contemplated my words for a moment.
"Cassandra is a free spirit, she would never be forced to do anything she doesn't want to." He warned me.
"Leave her to me, all you have to do is sign these documents and I'll do the rest." I pushed the agreement I had drawn up towards him.
He read it's contents carefully.
"You'll pay for all my debts?" He asked again.
"Every last one of them." I assured him and his eyes roamed around my face, searching.
He either seemed to be pleased with whatever he found or he desperately wanted to clear off his debts. Either ways he signed the papers with determination and pushed them back towards me.
"If this wasn't in my favour, I would applaud you on just how easy it was to hand your daughter over to a stranger just for money." I sneered.
What if it weren't me but another man who had made Cassandra's father such an offer and he hadn't refused.
My wolf growled at the thought.
"You may inform her if you wish and I'll make the necessary arrangements to have her join me in my home." I informed her father and he sucked in a sharp breath.
Without another word I strolled out of the man's office, a satisfied smirk on my lips.
Sebastian's POV"She is in the training yard," River said, from the doorway of my study where he had appeared without knocking, which was his established pattern and which I had stopped commenting on years ago."I know," I said. "I can feel it through the bond.""She has been out there with Cael for two hours," he said."I know that too," I said.River came fully into the room and stood across the desk from me with the expression he used when he had something to say that was not strictly his business and he was going to say it anyway. "She is pushing the ability further than she has before," he said. "I watched for a few minutes. Cael is running her through something new, combinations I do not have a reference point for.""She told me last night," I said. "Her mother shared something about the original form's development and Cael adapted the training." I set down the border report I had been reading. "She is not in danger.""I know," River said. "That is not what I am saying."I looke
Cassandra's POV"You are smiling," my mother said, appearing in the doorway of the library where I had been reading for the past hour with a cup of tea and the specific quiet satisfaction of someone whose morning had gone better than expected."I smile," I said."Not like that," she said. She came in and sat across from me and looked at me with her eyes that were shaped like mine and an expression that was both maternal and deeply amused. "What happened?""Nothing specific," I said."Cassandra," she said.I put the book down. "Sebastian and I are doing well," I said. "Specifically and consistently well. That is what you are reading."She looked at me for a moment. "You love him," she said."I have told him so," I said. "Plainly.""And?" she said."He said he loves me and intends to spend considerable time showing rather than telling," I said. "He has been following through on that with some thoroughness." I picked the book back up. "That is all you are getting."She made the sound tha
Sebastian's POV"She is already gone," River said, appearing in the study doorway before I had finished standing up from the desk where Cassandra had just finished telling me everything she had pieced together from the messages. "Her rooms are clear. She left sometime in the night."I looked at him. "How did she leave without being seen?""The private entrance at the south boundary," he said. "The same one Sera used when she arrived." He paused. "She has clearly had knowledge of this house's structure for some time."Of course she had. Fifty years of network. Decades of contacts and access and the specific knowledge of a woman who made it her business to know everything about every significant pack structure in the eastern territories. I looked at Cassandra across the desk and she was already composing her expression into something focused, which was what she did when she moved from understanding something to acting on it."She is not running," Cassandra said. "She left before she cou
Cassandra's POV"I am going to open them now," I said to my reflection in the bathroom mirror at seven in the morning, two days after the ridge, because the day had ended and then another day had ended and the messages had stayed unread and I had run out of good reasons to keep them that way.My mother had said wait until you are ready. Cael had said information withheld is rarely better withheld. Sebastian had said he would sit with me. I had not yet told Sebastian this was the morning, which meant I either went and found him now or I opened them alone, and I stood in the bathroom and looked at my own face and decided that alone was not the right answer today.I found him in the kitchen, which was where he was most mornings before the day made demands of him, and he looked up when I came in and read my face immediately."Today," he said. Not a question."Today," I said.He stood up from the table without hesitation and filled a second mug with tea and set it across from his own and s
Sebastian's POV"You are going to have to teach me eventually," she said from her position on the blanket where she had been lying on her back with her eyes closed for the past half hour while the afternoon light came across the ridge. "How to do the Alpha thing."I looked at her. "What Alpha thing.""The room thing," she said, without opening her eyes. "Where you walk in and everything reorganises around you without you doing anything visible. I watched you do it at the summit and I have been trying to work out the mechanism." She opened one eye. "Is it intentional?""Partially," I said."Teach me the intentional part," she said."You already do it," I said.She opened both eyes and looked at me. "I do not do the room thing," she said."You walked into the summit hall and twenty Alpha wolves recalibrated," I said. "What do you think that was?"She considered that with the genuine consideration she gave everything. "That was the Aethar," she said. "They could feel the bloodline.""Som
Cassandra's POV"This is not a day," I said, looking at the picnic that had been laid out on the ridge where we had stood together the first time I had seen the full territory below, with the morning light coming through the clouds and the wind moving through the long grass. "A blanket and food does not constitute a structured day off.""It constitutes the beginning of one," Sebastian said from behind me, where he was setting something down that Mira had apparently packed without telling me, which meant Mira had been in on this, which meant I was the only person in the house who had not known what today looked like. "Sit down.""I am looking at the view," I said."You have seen the view," he said. "Sit down."I turned and sat down on the blanket because the alternative was continuing to stand and pretend I was not extraordinarily pleased by this, which would have been unconvincing anyway since the mate bond was carrying it clearly. Sebastian sat beside me and opened the basket Mira ha
Cassandra’s POVSebastian cleared his throat, looking everywhere but at me. I looked up at him, cheeks still warm from the lingering chocolate on my lips.He then looked at me for a short while before finally opening his mouth to speak.“Tell me a little about you.” he did and my eye brows almost j
SEVENCassandra's POV The next day felt like j was floating on air. Everything felt great. I had classes and although the lecturers were as ahellish as ever, I felt free. I had lunch with Jessa and now, I was heading to the bleachers t watch a football competition go on.I took my seat with my chi
Let's Make a dealCassandra's POVThe bang I heard earlier made sense the second I stepped into the living room.Sebastian stood there, chest heaving, fist still clenched. And right in front of him was Theo, stumbling back with blood at the corner of his mouth. My eyes widened, my feet glued to the
You slept well.Cassandra 's POV His hand touched my shoulder and on instinct, I pushed forward, grabbed the door knob and fled, with Jessa right by my side.I didn't stop as I pushed through the crowd, Liz and Theo the last thing on my mind as I ran away from him.How had he found me? Damn it. Th







