1. Remy

Chapter one

Remy

Alump formed in her throat as Remy stared at the large log cabin home, the Great Plains Pack House. A rollercoaster of emotions flowed through her, not knowing which one she felt more strongly. Seeing it before her after being away for so long was a relief. There were often days she missed hearing her mom’s laughter and having playful arguments with her dad. Joy spread through her at the idea of being able to do those things again once she crossed that threshold. Then there was the knowledge that returning home meant she would one day have to take over for her father as the pack’s Alpha. There were days when the job sounded like the one thing she was meant to do in her life and couldn’t wait until she could do so. There were changes she wanted to make, and she couldn’t do that just being the Alpha’s daughter, but that also came with taking care of the business, everyone’s lives inside the pack, and eventually having to take on a mate.

And that was the last thing Remy wanted to do.

She had forgotten how the natural wood from the forest around them forged the home; its golden-brown hue made it feel inviting. The scent of the warm wind mixed with the fresh, earthy aroma of the grasslands, the sweet smell of flowers and fresh plants starting to grow from their crops on their land blowing into her nose, one smell standing out more than the others: the wildness of the Lycan musk.

Home. It smelled like home.

It was difficult for her to stand in front of this house after being away for so long. Remy worked hard to build a life on the island, knowing she would be stuck there for the rest of her days. There was no chance her mate would return to get her. Even if he did, she wouldn’t recognize him without a memory of who he was. A pit in her stomach always told her she was rejected for being a Meta Wolf paired with being the daughter of an Alpha. The Lycans on the island didn’t care for her because of the power she wielded, so why would her mate want that? If they started their pack or ascended to being Alpha and Luna in her home pack, the bonds would show who was more powerful. Dominant Lycans didn’t like when women had more power than them. Somehow, it emasculated them.

The sounds of casual conversation inside the walls and the members’ laughter inside dared her to walk in like she hadn’t spent the last year and a half on Reject Island. The gut-wrenching thought of her family not accepting her back inside the pack crossed her mind as she stared at the front door. She couldn’t remember much about the rejection from her mate, but she could remember her father being outraged. As she tried to recall the event, Remy’s head began to pound with pain before a bright white light flashed before her eyes. A groan escaped her lips, and then she sucked air in between her teeth as she rode out the pain. At least this time, she was still standing on her two feet after trying to remember.

The laughter and voices inside the house died down. Remy heard footsteps of a familiar gait walking toward the door. She straightened herself, and the lump in her throat returned. Remy sucked in a breath as the front door swung open and rattled against the wood. A woman not much shorter than Remy stood in the doorway, with the same silver hair she used to have before she dyed it pink and the same muscular build as her. The only difference between them was their eyes. Her mother had green eyes instead of pale blue.

"Hi, Mom," Remy choked.

"Remy?" Tala Howell said breathily as she grabbed onto the doorway to keep herself steady. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, Mama. It’s me."

Tala leaped off the porch and ran toward Remy. Remy opened her arms to catch her mother as she did the same, colliding together before falling to their knees. Remy buried her nose in the crook of her mother’s neck, breathing in the calming scent that surrounded her of jasmine and orange. It had been too long since she felt the constricting hug that always made her feel safe.

While Tala pushed Remy’s hair from her face, her mother looked at her as if she expected her to break. Once satisfied, she looked back into Remy’s pale blue eyes. Remy felt Tala’s thumbs brush under her eyes and smiled at her. "I can’t believe you’re home. Did your mate come back for you?" Tala looked around to find the non-existent person before settling back to look at her. "What’s going on?"

Remy sniffled and took a deep breath. "That is a difficult question to answer without unpacking the whole story."

"Then come inside and tell us everything." Tala got to her feet and pulled Remy up. "I know I am not the only one who is going to be happy to see you."

The thumping of her heart was in her ears as she climbed the stairs to her childhood home. Breathing came rapidly as Remy stepped through the threshold. Five Lycan males were sitting in the living room, and all their eyes landed on Remy’s body as she stood in the doorway. They leered at her before they widened with recognition. She scanned the room first, as she was trained to do growing up, and recognized each Lycan as someone in the pack. The second through the fifth in the pack were sitting in the lounge chairs and on the couch. All had various colors of brown hair and had the Lycan look of rugged, muscular, and domineering.

But they weren’t the ones she wanted to see.

When her eyes locked with the dominant male sitting in the perfectly positioned chair against the wall, she stared into a pair of pale blue eyes like hers. The male’s power filled the room, and Remy felt it brush against her skin. The power pressed into her, and Remy stood where she was, keeping her Lycan’s power under lock. This was a game they always played, and she wasn’t a kid anymore. The Lycan inside her sat calmly as the Alpha assessed Remy and dared her to let her power loose. If she won, the Alpha would realize she was the person he thought she was. As a Lycan, staring into an Alpha’s eyes was never a good idea. That was interpreted as a challenge. Remy dared the Alpha by gazing into his, showing him exactly who she was, and there wasn’t a chance of her backing down. The edges of the Alpha’s lips turned up, and he dropped his power. She was the only one who could get away with the dominance game they just played because he was her father, and his Lycan loved having a good challenge now and then.

"Hi, Dad."

He jumped, cleared the room in three strides, and pulled her against his chest. His scent of mahogany and teakwood filled her nose as he squeezed her against him. Remy held back her tears as she wrapped her arms around her father. He held her there for only a minute before pulling her back and giving her a once-over like her mother did.

"How-"

Tala cut him off. "I already asked. She said it’s a long story, so I think we should ask everyone to go home so we can talk."

Lykos Howell looked at the four Lycans in the room and leaned his head toward the door. All four got to their feet, nodded at him, and left. Remy recognized them as her father’s top four in the pack. Bryan, his second, stopped momentarily and put his hand on her shoulder. The Beta was older than Lykos and was too happy in his position to want to branch off to make his own pack or challenge her father for Alpha. His deep brown hair had some gray hair, showing his age at over a century old. The brown eyes looking down at her were such a deep brown that it was difficult to differentiate between his pupils and iris.

"It’s good to see you home, Remy."

"Thank you, Sir." She told him as he walked out the door.

Once the front screen door closed, Lykos pulled Remy back for another hug. It’s hard for Alphas to show their softer side for too long. It could give the wrong impression to the other Lycans, and they would believe their Alpha had grown too soft and couldn’t keep the pack safe. Lycans were the breed of paranormal that thought, if they weren’t touched every second of every day, they wouldn’t be seen as challenging. Remy hated the Lycan way and often voiced her opinion to anyone willing to listen. Sometimes, she just talked anyway, so people knew their beliefs were terrible.

Lykos dropped his arms again and cleared his throat. Remy rolled her eyes at him. "You are still the toughest Alpha around, Dad. You don’t need to pretend that emotions are a weakness."

He growled at her, but Remy kept her gaze on him with her annoyed expression attached. Lykos smirked when he noticed this wouldn’t be an argument he would win. Remy could hear Tala chuckling while walking to the next room where a large table stood.

"Get to the table before my beast takes your attitude as a challenge."

"You’d think he would know by now that it kind of is, but not for the title," Remy muttered, fully understanding that she would be heard regardless of her calm tone.

Once they sat down, Remy launched into her story about what had happened. At first, she just wanted to tell them about the last several weeks since Kaida came to the island. She quickly realized that it wouldn’t be that easy, and she had to start after she met the rest of the girls and explain how it led up to Kaida and the Dark Dimension. By the time her story got to when Kaida broke the barrier, her throat had run so dry that Tala got her a cup of ice water.

"You are friends with a Witch, a Faerie, a Vampyre, and a Plasma Dragon?" Lykos asked in disbelief.

Remy smiled as the picture of her girls laughing around the table came to mind, "Yeah. I am. I would die for those girls, but then again, they would die for me, too."

Remy didn’t care that it wasn’t common for any species to be friends with the others. Lycans mainly lived by that rule. They weren’t the friendliest species and didn’t play well with others. That was something else Remy didn’t care for about Lycans.

Lykos shook his head. "Of course, you would be friends with the others. You never did like to play by the rules."

Tala smirked at her husband, and Remy hid her own smile since she knew what was coming. "We do not live by the Old Ways anymore, Lykos. Maybe you should take a page out of your daughter’s playbook."

"That would only cause a riot, which we don’t need right now," Lykos argued. "What happened after the barrier? I’m still struggling with your friend being able to break that if I am being honest. All the magic of each species created the barrier. It was blood magic, which from what I hear, is fucking hard to break. So, how was she able to manage it?"

"Good question, I don’t know. We suspect that the barrier was not forged in the way that was told. The Dragon King has become a problem for the dragons. I would lean more toward him being behind it. Maybe he contracted a Witch to help him."

"He would need more than a Witch to break it. He would need someone powerful from each kingdom to break the barrier and then reconstruct it. From what I understand, the King, Queen, Alpha or whatever is the leader of each kingdom put their magic into the barrier to construct it. Gemar would have needed those people to undo it." Lykos pointed out.

Remy nodded, "Something we thought of after Kaida destroyed it. It’s why we came home. Well, part of the reason. But we wanted to find out what was happening in each of our kingdoms. If Gemar was in on it and made the barrier weaker, we wanted to find out why."

Tala looked at Remy and tilted her head to the side. Remy could feel her mother assessing every word she was saying. Tala was very good at being a Luna and could read people just by looking at them. It was like she could see into their soul and read their mind.

"What is the other reason you came home?" Tala questioned her.

It would be moronic to hold the information back from her parents. Remy needed them to find out what was happening with the barrier and in the kingdom.

"The Dark Dimension may be open."

Both of her parents sucked air through their teeth and looked at each other. Remy lifted her eyebrows at them. Part of her explanation was the Dark Dimension affecting the island.

Did they miss that part or something?

Remy looked at Lykos. The Alpha stared at the wall, more stoic than she ever remembered him being. Remy noticed his jaw clench every few seconds and then it would relax. She heard his pulse quicken and then slow, and he wouldn’t meet either of their eyes.

"Did your friend have something to do with that, too?"

Remy growled at her father. "Kaida stopped it from spreading. She would never be a reason why evil is let loose into the world, but she damn sure will be the reason it’s gone."

No one would be allowed to talk poorly about Kaida or her friends in front of Remy. None of those girls deserved a bad word to be spoken about them. If there was ever a chance that the world would be rid of evil, she knew her friends would be the ones behind it. Kaida and her dragon were the reason the opening didn’t reach its full potential, and she saved thousands of lives. While fighting the dimension off, Kaida did what she could to close it.

Lykos put up his hands in surrender. "Fine if you say so."

Remy ignored him. She didn’t need to start an argument right now. "We were concerned that it would spread to the other kingdoms regardless of her closing the portal that opened on the island. Kaida noticed that the dragon kingdom looked a little dark with the sky. It led us to think it was only a matter of time before it would come for our kingdoms, too."

Tala remained silent, usually breaking down information in her head to resolve the situation. Lykos was more up-front than that.

"What should we expect? We must know what to look for to prevent this from spreading or causing panic."

Remy wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Things on the island were hectic, and the varied species seemed to be affected differently. "I just know that it can make people go berserk. The dragons lost control of their beast’s half and attacked people unprovoked. I would assume that it would be the same for us. We also have a beast inside of us that we need to keep under control."

"Lycans weren’t affected while you were there?" Tala asked her.

Remy shrugged her shoulders, "Everyone was going crazy. The dragons made the most noise. There weren’t many Lycans on the island for me to know."

Remy could see the Omega inside of her mother, who wanted to calm her father down as his power swelled within the room. If it weren’t for her power matching Lykos’, Remy would want to cower at his feet. Lykos was angry. At what? She wasn’t sure. She only hoped it was toward the person he suspects is part of the Dark Dimension being opened.

The power dimmed away as her mother’s influence reached Lykos. Remy waited for him to calm down thoroughly before continuing their discussion. Remy’s parents took over, explaining anything that had happened while she was away. There hadn’t been much of a change since she left. The packs continued to live on their land and do their best to prosper with what they had. However, the packs were becoming disgruntled over the last few weeks and more complicated to manage. Many did not like that her family ruled the largest territory, rich in fertile grounds and perfect conditions to raise livestock. With this territory, her family created a grocery store chain throughout the kingdom. Throughout the conversation, her parents told her how the neighboring packs were starting to demand a territory line redraw. They wanted access to their territory to make their pack richer and prosper better than they were currently.

The Great Plains Pack was the largest in the kingdom. Lykos would have been the Alpha King, but that job was taken. The ruler of Lycans had each Lycan connected to them through pack bonds. An Alpha grew in power from the number of wolves connected to him in their pack. With the large territory they commanded, Lykos had fifty wolves under him. The average regular Alpha was around thirty. There wasn’t another Alpha around that could challenge her father outright for their territory. It made sense to Remy that they were trying to negotiate the pack’s territory lines instead of just challenging her father. That would end badly.

While her parents were filling her in, Remy pondered that the Dark Dimension was already here, but no one knew. It coincided with the opening of when the other packs started their negotiations. It may have made the dragons go berserk, but some took longer than others for the effects to show fully. In Lycan’s, their fuses were pretty short. If the Dark Dimension didn’t have a strong influence here yet, this could be a way to show who may already have the dimension inside them. The packs have been living in harmony for a long time until now.

When Tala started to wave in front of Remy’s face, she realized her mind had drifted off, and she was no longer paying attention to what her parents were saying. Remy contemplated telling her parents her thoughts, but that became a moot point when her mother asked her a question.

"That sounds like a good idea, right?"

Remy nodded, knowing that if she told her parents that she wasn’t paying attention, it would lead to an argument. They hated it when her mind wandered during a conversation.

That isn’t what Alphas do! You are to take over someday. You need to pay attention to discussions like this to know how to respond.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

"Wonderful! I’ll start putting the word out! I’m so excited to throw you a welcome home party!"

Remy opened her mouth to tell her mother she did not want a welcome home party but quickly closed it. She would have admitted to not paying attention to what they discussed with her if she had realized that was what was said. That was the opposite of what she wanted to do.

Instead, Remy gave her mother a little smile. "Can’t wait."

Kill me now.