Chapter 9

Rhett

Was I stalking my mate?

Definitely not. I was giving him space, no matter how much my wolf kept whining and growling at me.

Was I maybe keeping track of what my mate was doing?

For sure.

In my defense, I didn't even really have to do much. Every single pack member was more than happy to report back to me.

My phone buzzed for probably the fiftieth time today, and it took me every ounce of strength I had to not turn it around and check the messages.

My mate was out and about.

Visit , my wolf urged me, my pulse immediately speeding up, my muscles tensing, ready to go off at my command. Search. Find. Mate.

We're working , I firmly told my wolf, clenching my teeth, my hands balling into fists. Besides, we promised to give him space.

We did.

My wolf didn't understand that a week and a half probably wasn't enough time for our mate to work through everything I'd thrown at him, especially if today was the first day he actually left his room. Mave had told me he'd stayed in bed for a week until he'd even ventured down into the Inn's small dining hall.

Today, he appeared to be exploring the town.

There was an itch in my fingers, a desire to be the one showing him the town, introducing him to all my favorite places. To show him how beautiful Balwood truly was. How charming. How it was an amazing home for so many people, and that it could become a home for him, too.

Instead, I forced myself to stay put here, in the packhouse.

I can't go out there. If we meet up in town, he'll know it's not a coincidence.

Telling myself that was one thing, actually keeping my ass rooted to the chair I was sitting in, was a whole different topic.

"Has the fork insulted you in any way?" Gray asked, an amused smile on his lips.

"Huh?"

He nodded towards the piece of cutlery in my hand and… oh. Whoops.

I let go of the completely crumpled and misshapen fork, which hits the table with a resounding clank, making people around us turn their heads.

"Soo… what did the fork do to meet such a cruel end?" Gray winked, then plopped down opposite of me, throwing his long hair over his shoulder.

"Nothing," I mumbled, looking at the steak salad in front of me. Dammit, I'd need to get new cutlery if I wanted to keep eating.

"Okay, fine. If it's not a problem with your fork, what else happened?"

My phone started buzzing again.

Gray raised his eyebrow. "Is there some kind of emergency happening I don't know about?"

"Nope." I shook my head. I didn't want to explain what was going on. Hell, I didn't want to think about my mate being just a couple of miles away, talking to people, laughing with them, but not with me.

My chest tightened, and my wolf whined. Yeah, it fucking hurt to not be the one he turned to for information, but I got it. Well, at least the human part of me got it. The human part of me that was still thinking rationally.

I hadn't expected Levi to just drop everything and proclaim his everlasting love to me the second I told him about shifters. That didn't mean I didn't wish for that exact scenario to have happened. Who didn't? One perk of being a shifter was knowing you'd find your perfect match, the one person fate herself had chosen for you.

Shifter couples tended to jump into things with both feet, often not waiting for even a full day until claiming each other, if there were no outside reasons not to.

My eyes shifted to Quentin, a mountain lion shifter, and Cathy, his wolf shifter mate. The scars covering part of his face were a stark reminder that not every pack was like ours, and that sometimes, the outside reasons were stupid but incredibly dangerous.

The phone buzzed again, and this time, Gray simply grabbed it, unlocked the screen with a swish of his hand, and started reading the messages.

"Looks like your mate is out and about," he said and chuckled, a font smile on his lips. "And he appears to leave a very good impression."

"I don't want to hear it," I bit out, even though that couldn't possibly be further from the truth. In reality, I longed to hear what my packmates were saying. I longed to absorb every little piece of information about my mate. Like the fact that he loved our honey and maple syrup.

A warm feeling spread through my body, my wolf puffing up with pride because we were providing for our mate. We were the ones who had suggested keeping bees, collecting the honey as a side business for our pack.

"I think you do want to hear it," Gray taunted, winking at me. "I think you're desperate to hear from your mate. I think if I told you he'd been asking questions about…"

"Let it go," I snarled, shaking my head. My wolf demanded I keep quiet so our Alpha could talk, but he didn't really care about the Alpha part of it. He just wanted to hear every little piece of information about our mate. The one person he was longing for, maybe even more so than I did.

"Okay, okay." Gray held up his hands. "Damn, you've got it bad, brother. Anything I can do to help?"

I shook my head. There wasn't. There was only one person in the whole universe who was able to put me out of my misery—and that person still needed space.

Maybe I needed a bit of space, too.

Space from being cooped up in my office, space from people texting me about Levi, space from constantly waiting for Mave to report back to me, space from… everything.

"You know what?" I said, nodding towards my phone. "Maybe there is something you can help me with after all."

"Sure, just tell me."

"Can you watch my phone? I think I need to run a little. In theory, it's not my day to patrol our territory, but I think… I think running would do me good."

The wind whipped around my head, the salt in the air growing heavier and heavier with every step I made. My paws steadily hit the soft forest floor at a rapid pace, carrying me along the border of our territory.

Something was different today.

The air felt charged, as if there was a storm coming, even though the weather was calm, and there wasn't even rain on the forecast—I'd checked. Yet, there was something in the air. A crackling, an electric spark that wasn't normally there.

My wolf felt it, too. The relief of running got tangled with curiosity.

Smiling internally, I tried focusing on the weird feeling. It wasn't a bad sensation, not a foreboding feeling of something horrible happening, not at all. It felt… positive. As if the forest was perking up, as if the barrier had suddenly…

My thoughts halted so abruptly, my paws lost their rhythm. Tumbling, I hit a root, then hit the soft forest floor with a dull thud. Lying on the soft, moist leaves and bed of moss, I inhaled deeply, trying to check for something I didn't even know how to check for. My eyes searched for the barrier, even though I was well aware there was nothing to see. The barrier ran along our borderline, an invisible magic wall designed to protect our pack from outside threats.

Legend said that it used to be strong enough to keep enemies out, repelling them if they tried to cross the barrier while harbouring ill intentions. Other stories said the barrier used to keep every other paranormal being out if they weren't given permission to enter packlands by the Alpha.

It was all hearsay.

Bedtime stories we told our young ones.

Truth was, we had no idea what the barrier was like a century or two ago. We knew it'd been built with magic, but the witches and wizards were keeping their cards close to their chests, and we, as a pack, had lost too much information about them in the past few decades.

However, if the stories were true, the barrier we had nowadays was a poor imitation of what it used to be. While it told the pack when strange paranormals crossed the barrier, that was all it did. It didn't distinguish between friend and foe, and it sure as shit couldn't keep anyone out.

Closing my eyes, I willed myself to calm my breath, to focus on what I was feeling rather than what I was seeing. If it concerned the barrier, I couldn't see it. I was no witch; I couldn't see magic.

But I could feel the barrier. As the pack's Beta and the one responsible for defending our pack, I had a stronger connection to the barrier than most others, maybe even stronger than Gray. I had no idea how it worked, exactly, but I'd learned from my predecessor like he'd learned from his.

Deep breaths. Salt in the air. Moist moss beneath me, a crispy, cold breeze stroking our fur.

Feel, I encouraged my wolf.

My heart calmed, my pulse getting slower, but stronger, until it aligned with my breaths.

Warmth hit me, a ray of sunshine breaking through the cloud cover.

Rustling leaves, the faint pitter-patter of a small animal.

A bird chirping.

Calm, quiet energy.

The forest was alive; everything surrounding me was alive. The trees, the ground, the wind… and then I finally got it. The barrier.

Keeping my eyes closed, I mentally extended my senses, trying to feel it, expecting the quiet humming sensation that always caused goosebumps on my skin, but getting… woah.

My body flinched, but my wolf and I were on the same page, trying to keep the connection going, trying to feel, to get a response from the barrier we protected with everything we had while it did its best to protect us.

The humming, buzzing sensation washing over me made my fur stand up, an electric charge surging through my body with more energy than I'd felt in years.

Maybe ever.

The barrier felt… alive.

Which, I guess, it was. It'd always been alive, but comparing what I usually felt to what feelings I was receiving now… It was like the barrier had woken from a long, deep slumber, ready to seize a new day.

Exhilaration flooded my veins. I hadn't known connecting with the barrier could feel so good.

At the same time, there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, a thought trying to weasel itself to the forefront to remind me of something important, while all I wanted was to bask in the barrier's energy for a while.

‘ Barriers are created by magic users .' I could practically hear Solomon's deep voice inside my head, saw his wrinkly, dark skin in front of my inner eye, the way his dark eyes sparkled with mischief and wisdom. ‘ They're alive, feeding off of the land they're protecting, but they need magic users to maintain them, feed them energy, nurse them back to their full potential. The better the land they're protecting is maintained, the slower the decay of the barrier happens, but you can never stop it. Only magic users can. '

I opened my eyes, blinking against the bright afternoon sun, my heart hammering in my chest, a thread of unease settling in my chest.

The barrier felt more alive than ever, but, according to Solomon, it shouldn't. It shouldn't be possible.

Jumping to my paws, my wolf and I came to the same conclusion in the exact same second: Gray needed to know.

And we needed to get to the bottom of this.