Chapter 2 - Kiara

The last thing I wanted to do was to sit through yet another boring alpha meeting for another dull brainstorm about how in the world we could possibly get people to mate with each other. However, since my best friend had married my dad, I had to reconcile a lot of things that were, well, not exactly fun to do.

Feelings had gotten hurt and words had been exchanged; in the end, friendship and connection won—family won. I also wanted something like that to happen to me, for once, instead of watching everyone around me find love.

And get laid.

Yeah, no—I wasn’t excited about another hour-long rant from Blake about the importance of mate pairings providing that extra layer of protection while Troy wisely nodded in quiet agreement. That wasn’t my idea of fun, but more to the point, I needed to get through the dull stuff to get to the good stud.

I meant, stuff.

Ugh, I was starting to feel hopeless. Regina didn’t always have time for me when she was with my father. I knew they were just kindling their romance, but I hated the persistent feeling of jealousy that lurked in the back of my mind. They just had something really special, didn’t they? They had this beautiful, unspoken bond that didn’t make sense to me.

And yet, it did make sense to me. Love was familiar in so many ways, so many avenues, that it almost made me sick to think about it. My thoughts were full of those romantic desires, like muscular men lifting me up and sweeping me off into a meadow where we would make love for hours.

If I dared be honest with myself, it was becoming a bit of a distraction. I had already missed about ten minutes of Blake’s ranting about how to make people love each other when his defeated gaze and insistent frown caught my attention. I pulled myself out of my fantasy and jumped back into reality in time to hear him say something that daunted me.

“We can’t hear names anymore.”

The room was awfully quiet, too quiet for my liking, and I almost wanted to blurt something out to make everyone stop being so darn quiet. I gripped the edge of my seat, feeling like a balloon that had been inflated past its breaking point. I had yet to pop, but I knew it would happen soon enough.

This was going to be such a bleak December evening, especially with the sun already setting. I glanced at the clock. Half past four. It feels more like eight.

Regina rested a hand on my shoulder, inviting my gaze. I had almost forgotten that she was sitting to the left of me. Beside her was my father, who was sitting near Isaiah, Fred, and Jermaine. Both Troy and Blake were sitting directly across from us at the fancy conference table. While Troy looked curious, Blake looked like crap. Actually, he looked worse than crap. He looked like crap and dirt, and had a baby together named Garbage. I held on tightly to Regina trying to absorb some comfort from her—neither of our alphas had bothered to follow up on Blake’s concerning announcement.

Dad cleared his throat. The whole room shifted around in their chairs with relief. Finally, someone was about to speak up. But instead of my old man piping up, it was my best friend.

“Sir, what does that mean?”

Blake hung his head. Disappointment seemed to swim around in his usually stern eyes. Our poor alpha was clearly struggling, and it was a show of great strength and support for Troy to touch his shoulder tenderly with an expression that radiated with understanding.

They were fantastic leaders because they displayed integrity and honesty. They were transparent with us and didn’t try to cover things up. I was honored to be part of their pack—I was more than honored, honestly. I was actually very proud.

As confusing as Blake’s statement was, I knew a proper explanation would come once Blake had wrestled with his demons.

Blake cleared his throat. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Jermaine chimed in, and we all agreed with hums and nods.

Blake gave us an appreciative smile. “I don’t mean there’s something wrong with either of us—” He gestured to Troy. “More that we’re unsure of what to do next.”

“When did you stop hearing names?” I asked.

Troy looked at me with his kind eyes. “About a month ago.”

I pursed my lips. “That explains my lack of mate.”

Dad leaned forward to peer around Regina with a fatherly expression. “Kiki, that’s rude.”

“Dad, cut it out.”

Regina calmly twined her fingers with my dad’s and did the same for me. “Kiara is just eager to be paired up, Eric.”

“GG, we’ve talked about this.”

She squeezed my hand. “Sorry. Right. You can speak for yourself.”

“Yes, I can.” I folded my arms over my chest. “I wish you and your mate would stop treating me like a child.”

Dad fumed, “I wish you would stop acting like a child.”

Troy coughed once. It was a distinct sound that gently commanded silence. At once, I stopped bickering with my father and focused on my alphas. Right now, there were more important things to discuss—like the fact that our alphas couldn’t announce anymore mates.

Once Troy had our attention, everyone fell silent. He raised his eyebrows with a fierce command that I recognized from his early alpha days with our combined pack arrangement.

“Listen,” he said, “We”re at our wit”s end here trying to figure out how to do this properly because we can”t hear mate pairing names anymore. That’s the unfortunate truth. We”re going to have to come up with a different idea for what to do.”

Jermaine lifted a folder heavy with papers that had been printed about an hour before the meeting. I remembered when he did that; I heard it from down the hallway, the persistent whine and strange buzzing that came from that particular printer that Blake seemed so fond of keeping. This was funny enough on its own without the added detail of his extreme wealth.

I didn”t understand why he didn”t just replace it with a newer model. We were sitting inside a huge mansion, and he had enough money to buy out the pack ten times over. Surely, he could afford a new printers—maybe even a whole office of them. But that printer had once belonged to his mother, and I thought he might have kept it out of sentiment. Us wolves were such sentimental creatures, after all.

The folder made a loud thwack noise as it dropped on the table. Nobody seemed surprised by the amount of time and attention that Jermaine must have put into the report. But Isaiah, Troy’s cousin, appeared disheartened as he had been particularly proud of the small folder that he cradled in his lap.

On Jermaine’s giant folder was a rudimentary label with the name of our pack, Grimpaw, in large black letters. He opened the folder and pulled out the first page, revealing a series of reports from the area about missing persons, vandalism, and random wolf attacks. Sheesh, he was really into graphs, wasn’t he?

It wasn”t like me to be so judgmental of the people in my pack. I just had become fed up with the constant meetings, the issues of mate pairings, and all of the other stressful things happening. Instead of experiencing any kind of love and romance in my life, I had an overbearing father breathing down my neck, a best friend trying to soothe my father, and the strangest little family imaginable.

I was just about ready to pack my bags and move to another pack entirely. Of course, I would never actually do that kind of thing. I didn”t want to leave my best friend behind, I didn”t want to ditch my alphas, and I certainly didn’t want to abandon my father. But sometimes, a girl could only take so much.

Jermaine unfolded a large sheet of paper, a map that he had created and marked with red ink. “We have reports of a pack in the area that lives somewhere along this coastline.” He paused for a second as his finger sagged. “We’ve confirmed that they’re possessed by demons.”

A series of gasps circulated the room, and because of the nature of the report, it felt like we were all forced to face a reality that was apt considering the name of our pack—although it was much grimmer than we would have imagined. Troy, of course, didn”t seem particularly shocked by the information. He seemed less surprised and more curious. I assumed that he and Blake had already gotten together with Jermaine and Isaiah to research this pack.

Jermaine swallowed hard, looking like he was struggling with something inside his throat. “They typically come out at night. Although they only fish in the sea and utilize resources from the surrounding land, many of them have been spotted in town and we have reports from many people who have seen them in the underground supernatural markets.”

Fred perked up from his spot across the room. He was our inside connection to the supernatural black market. It was weird seeing him there in the light of day, looking so much more like a ghost than anybody else. The way he raised his inked fingers and waved toward Isaiah told me that he had also contributed to the research.

Isaiah held up his little folder and pulled out a few papers inside. “We”ve compiled a list of people in the pack that we were able to identify. Fred has contributed names, backgrounds, and relationships. But ultimately, we don”t exactly know a whole lot about the pack in terms of its structure other than the fact that the wolves are possessed and from Virginia.”

I drummed my fingers on the table in front of me. “Does anyone know why they moved here?”

Blake and Troy exchanged a curious expression. For a moment, it didn’t seem like either of them was going to respond, almost appearing as though they wanted to avoid this part of the conversation entirely. I understood that; it was a difficult topic, but one that needed to be discussed.

After a sigh, Blake turned his attention back to us. “We think maybe they”re trying to hide, or trying to get away with something.”

Troy nodded in agreement. “Usually, packs like this tend to participate in illegal circles, pushing firearms across borders or carrying illicit drugs. Considering the nature of the reports from town, we think that they might be attempting to run a…”

He trailed off into himself for a second, and it was weird seeing my alpha do that. I didn”t think that he was capable of something like that. So, as we all leaned in and Fred motioned for the alpha to respond, I had the strangest feeling in my gut that what he was going to say wasn”t going to be good.

Troy licked his lips and nodded again. “We suspect they might be running a smuggling ring. For human trafficking.”

I would have expected the people in the room to gasp, but this wasn”t exactly anything new to us. We had heard many rumors of these kinds of things happening in our supernatural world.—especially because of the way that all of us had to hide away from humans. It was much easier to get away with illegal things when we didn”t have to follow human laws or deal with human law enforcement breathing down our necks. Then again, our own councils were frustrated with the way that our people were breaking our own laws. How were we supposed to control this kind of movement when we could hardly avoid going to war against another of our species?

Only time would be able to tell, and we had to pray that we had enough time.

“That”s why we need your help.” The statement was directed at my best friend, Regina, but she just looked like a deer in headlights.

My goddess, I had never seen that look on her face before. The dread was something that I could relate to, because I also had a hard time being put on the spot. I knew what our alpha was about to ask her. Regina’s expression changed slightly, and she had an expectant look on her face as she waited for Troy to continue speaking.

“We just need a way forward,” Troy explained. “Do you have any ideas, Regina?”

A reddish hue glowed on her cheeks as she turned to Eric, almost like she was asking permission to speak. It wasn”t like her to act that way, but maybe it was the respectful thing to do. I wasn”t sure how this kind of thing worked in other packs, but I didn’t think it was too complicated. Were we a complicated pack?

After a moment of silence, Regina focused her attention back on the alphas. “We can do a ritual.”

My heart leaped at the suggestion. Blake looked highly interested and leaned forward, encouraging Regina to continue.

She gave a quick nod. “We can do a ritual to reveal the next set of names. It”s a little complicated, but it should be doable as long as we do it at midnight.”

Troy raised his hands in the air in a victorious manner. “Midnight it is, then.”

***

Something was watching me. I could feel it.

As I watched Regina work with Troy and Blake to set up the four points that they were going to honor in the circle, I turned to gaze at the rest of the gardens behind the mansion. It really did feel like something was watching me, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. My wolf senses were being set off. Maybe it was just the fact that this particular ritual involved a great skill set of magic that I wasn”t familiar with. I”d known Regina for such a long time, but I’d never seen her accomplish anything like this.

Regina walked to each quarter of the circle and set down a white candle. She lit each candle in turn, and then she started to set out four separate containers as offerings for the elements: salt for earth, water for water, a single candle for fire, and a stick of incense for air.

The smoke from the incense coiled into the air, rapidly spiraling up toward the sky and then disappearing. It was so hypnotic that I lost myself watching it and completely zoned out from what Regina was doing next. Everything around me became a blur as my heart started to race.

That feeling came again, a prickling at the back of my neck that made my hair stand up. It felt like long nails were dragging up and down my spine, trying to make me turn around. Yet, the more I wanted to turn around, the less control I had over my legs.

It was then that I realized I was stunned. I also realized that the talking had ceased. It felt like I was moving. Was I running toward something? I glanced down. No, my legs were planted on the ground. I hadn”t moved an inch except for the way that my thumb twitched. My earlobe felt like it had an itch and my throat felt like it had something scratching at it, like a scream had curled up in my throat and I was getting ready to let it loose upon the ritual.

I couldn”t do something like that. It would ruin what Regina was doing. My adrenaline heightened as fear and arousal clashed together. Yes, arousal—it was the strangest thing to realize that’s what I was feeling in that moment. My thighs were throbbing like I was straddling something and trying to ride toward the horizon. I felt like I was looking through a tunnel at everything that was happening. The circle seemed to grow smaller, but that didn”t make sense because Regina wasn”t trying to make anything grow or shrink. She was just trying to get a pair of names.

I couldn’t understand why I was reacting this way to the magic. I”d never reacted this way before. Even with the strange way my body was reacting to the ritual, there was a feeling of hope that laced through me—a sort of encouragement for me to speak out loud, but again, it was like I was glued in place, forced to watch.

Let it be me, I thought. Let me be the next name to be called. I just want to have somebody in my life. I just want to be happy.

Desire seemed to sting me right in a place that I didn”t want to think about right now. But it was definitely a place I wanted to think about with a mate. I just wasn”t sure what was going to happen. Did anyone notice me? Did anyone see what the ritual was doing? Why wasn”t Regina talking anymore? What was she doing?

The wind blew, suddenly whipping around us like a fierce hurricane. We were consumed by nature, and in its consumption of us, we were at the very precipice of something new. Regina raised her arms in the air and shouted three words, “Kiara and Harvey!”

The wind quit its incessant circular motion immediately and flew toward me like a specter, like something that was about to haunt me.

That was when I saw him. He had dirty blond hair, a thick barreled chest with pronounced pecks, and olive skin that reminded me of sandy dunes. His sturdy torso made his core look impenetrable, and he was also tall—so much taller than me that I had to tilt my head back to look up at him, to look up at his glistening honey-walnut eyes and square jaw. He wore a pair of ruddy blue jeans and a tattered plaid shirt that was unbuttoned. Despite the detail of his appearance, I could tell that he was translucent because I could see Regina and my father”s shocked faces staring at me right through this ghostly vision.

Was it a projection? Was this person supposed to be my mate? I reached out for him, feeling a sense of familiarity, arousal, and fear coursing through me. Once again, I felt the adrenaline flowing through my body; again, the incessant beat drummed and the thrumming returned between my thighs. Right then, the honey of his eyes turned to black, and he looked directly at me.

That was the sign of a demon. Panic took over as I recoiled and stumbled back, and then fell. My bottom hurt from where I hit the ground. I grabbed the grass around me, trying to scramble back even more, but his eyes appeared to follow me. It seemed like this ghost was ready to attach himself to me and follow me right to my grave.

Or maybe he would drive me there. Was this guy really supposed to be my mate?

A large fist came through the vision and broke it apart. The smoke swirled around the fist, making it look like a cloud of incense disappearing into the night.

Then, I saw my father standing above me with his arm outstretched. “You okay down there, sport?”

I reached for his hand instinctively and let him pull me up from the ground. I was shaking. I was shuddering. I was doing a lot of things. I was so disoriented that I couldn’t get my limbs to function properly. It felt like I had been running for miles and miles without my wolf legs, using my weaker human legs instead, and I was exhausted from the sensation of it. Regina ran up to us and grabbed my shoulders; she shook me and forced me to look at her before raising a cup to my lips.

I hoped it was water. Yes, it was water. Everything around me was clear as day, and yet it was night, well past midnight at this point. I wasn”t sure how long I had been hypnotized or how long I had been staring at my alleged mate.

My ghostly, demonic-eyed mate.

Dad was fuming right beside me. He looked at Blake. “You can”t be serious. She can”t be mated to something like that.”

Something like that. He meant my mate, the man with the black eyes. I agreed with him.

Although I felt an attraction, I also felt a feeling of repulsion. It was wrong, perhaps even shameful. Blake and Troy approached us wearing equally serious expressions. They stood there for a moment, looking at each other as if they were speaking silently—as if they had their own little language between them.

Blake turned to my father. “What”s done is done. The ritual just didn”t work.” Troy nodded in agreement.

I stood there, feeling stunned all over again. Yet, my legs were working this time. My feet were moving me forward as Regina guided me by the hand back into the mansion, back to the large kitchen with a cushioned chair near a window overlooking the garden. The same garden that held the ritual that had mated me to a demon wolf.

Did the ritual truly not work, or had Blake not wanted it to work?