Chapter 2: AN UNEXPECTED AWAKENING
1936 Words
What?
No answer.
Just that faint, impossible stirring, and a pull I don't recognize, directed at something behind me.
I look up.
A man stands in the doorway of the café.
Tall
Very tall, broad through the shoulders in the way that comes from actual use rather than deliberate cultivation. Dark hair, slightly disheveled like he's been driving for hours, tanned skin. He's wearing traveling clothes, and there's a tiredness around his eyes that he carries well. When he steps further into the café and his gaze moves across the room, there's something about the way he carries himself.
He's an alpha. I know it before I consciously decide I know it, the authority in the way he moves, the unconscious ease of someone who has always understood what kind of presence they carry.
His eyes find mine.
And the world does something I cannot explain.
It tilts
Like the floor has shifted a degree beneath my feet.
He goes very still.
Stormy presses forward again
Like she's been asleep and something has just called her name.
The man's nostrils flare almost imperceptibly.
His eyes stay on mine.
He starts walking toward my table.
I tell myself.
Stand up. Leave. Do anything except sit here like you've forgotten how to move.
I do none of those things.
He reaches the table and stops. When he speaks, his voice is low and unhurried, with the particular texture of someone who knows they don't need to raise it to be heard.
Is this seat taken?
I stare at him.
And even though every rational part of my mind is screaming at me to say yes, to protect myself, to not let a stranger sit down across from me in the café where I come to breathe
No
I hear myself say.
He sits down.
And, I somehow know, nothing is going to be the same again.
He doesn't speak immediately.
That's the first thing I noticed.
The way, he settles into the chair across from me without filling the silence right away.
He sits like he has nowhere more important to be and nothing to prove about it.
Then, after some minutes, he noticed that I was somehow uncomfortable.
I'll only stay for a few minutes, he said.
I'm new in town. I figured I'd grab some food before my meeting.
His presence was overwhelming, not threatening, but everything.
I could smell him now.
Pine and winter air, and something unique about him that made my pulse quicken in a way I hadn't felt in years.
I wrapped my hands tighter around my coffee mug.
Good to know, I said.
He realized I wasn’t giving him the audience he needed.
I have a meeting with the Silvermoon Alpha
He said, just to get my attention.
Meeting? I managed to say.
With the Silvermoon Alpha. Derek Howlstorm. You know him?
My stomach dropped somewhere around my knees. Of course, he was here to meet my father. This stranger who made my wolf stir after three years of silence was the alpha suitor I was supposed to be impressing at lunch.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
You could say that, I said carefully, not ready to reveal my identity yet.
Business acquaintance? He leaned back slightly, giving me space, but his eyes never left my face.
Something like that. I took a sip of coffee.
Are you from Moonthorne Pack?
I could smell it on him, the distinct scent markers that identified pack territory, but I wanted to hear him say it.
He tilts his head slightly, watching me with an expression that's attentive without being intrusive. His eyes are blue, a particular shade of blue that I notice despite myself, sharp and present, the kind of eyes that make you feel like actually being looked at.
Fair enough, he says.
Sarah arrives with his coffee unprompted, gives me a look I carefully don't acknowledge, and retreats.
We sit in silence, which should feel strange and somehow doesn't.
You drove all this way alone? I ask.
My partner was meant to come with me, but he had things to handle first. He'll follow when he's done. My car gave out yesterday, actually. About three hours from here. Had to stay the night in — I don't know the town's name, to be honest. Small place.
That sounds frustrating.
Could have been worse.
He takes his coffee and wraps both hands around the cup — an unexpectedly familiar gesture, and I realize I'm sitting in almost the same position.
I was supposed to arrive yesterday.
I know, I say, before I can think better of it.
His eyes sharpen slightly.
Do you.
The quiet between us shifts.
I should deflect. Should move past it, change the subject, give nothing away.
I've become excellent at giving nothing away.
Instead, I look at him across the table, and I feel it again, that faint, impossible pull. Stormy, moving in the direction of this man like water finding a slope.
It frightens me more than I know how to explain.
But before I could come up with an excuse… he speaks.
I’m Vendrick Nightclaw, he finally said, extending his hand across the table.
He says his name plainly without waiting for the reaction that his family name usually draws.
He's the Alpha.
You should extend your hand, he says quietly.
Why?
So we can be introduced properly.
It's a strange thing to say.
The formality of it, in this small café, over coffee, before either of us has acknowledged what we both seem to already know.
I stared at his hand like it was a trap.
Touching him felt like it would be
But refusing would be rude and suspicious.
I reached out and placed my hand in his, across the table anyway, and when his hand closed around mine…..
It's like being struck by something that has no name.
Not painful
Not dramatic
Not the way things like this are described in old pack stories that I always half-believed were exaggerated.
It's more like recognition. Like every cell in my body, turning its head toward something it has been waiting for without knowing it was waiting.
Stormy surges, a warmth flooding through me from the point of contact between our palms, spreading up my arm and through my chest.
His hand tightens almost imperceptibly around mine. His breath changes.
He feels it.
Of course, he feels it. I can see it in the way he's gone, very still, in the careful control moving across his face.
He's containing it
We are both containing it.
I pull my hand back
Vendrick, I repeat, keeping my voice neutral. I'm Karine.
Just Karine?
For now, Just Karine….I say
I tuck my hands under the table where he can't see them trembling, and I press my palm flat against my thigh as I breathe.
Karine, he says, and my name in his mouth sounds different from anyone else saying it. Lower. Like it means something specific.
Karine Howlstorm, by any chance?
I meet his eyes
By every chance
And I realized my Father would have given the Alpha some information about me
….The reason for the recognition
The silence is different now.
Charged
He looks at me with an expression that includes several things at once — surprise, and something that might be relief, and something underneath both of those that I can't quite name.
He was expecting to meet me at the pack house. At a formal lunch arranged by our fathers. With all the architecture of expectation and pack politics around the introduction, cushioning whatever this moment might have been.
Instead, it happened here. In a café, over coffee, before either of us was ready.
Well, he says finally.
Yes, I agree.
He picks up his coffee. Take a measured sip, then set it down.
I should tell you, he says, his voice very level, that I came to Silvermoon to discuss an alliance.
Not to pressure you into anything
My mother mentioned the purpose of the visit
Then you know the marriage component is
Expected, I say. Yes.
I was going to say flexible.
He holds my gaze.
I want to make sure you know that before we get to the pack house, I am not here to pressure you into marrying me.
I stare at him.
I have sat across eight other alphas over three years, and not one of them said anything like that in the first five minutes of knowing me. Not one of them acknowledged the possibility that I might want to be something other than a political solution.
They were polite, most of them. Some of them were genuinely kind, but they came with an agenda, and the agenda was shaped around the assumption that I would eventually fulfill my function, which was to be a luna who consolidated a pack alliance.
This man has just told me, in a small neutral-ground café, before we've been formally introduced, that what just happened between us doesn't obligate me to anything.
Something cracks, almost imperceptibly, in the wall I keep between myself and the world.
I don't let him see it. But it happens.
That's….. I stop. Start again. You should probably go to the pack house
My father will be expecting you
It's about two miles north on the main road
I know where it is, he says. I was given directions.
Then you're all set
I start gathering my things.
I need to get out of here.
I need to get back to the pack house before him so I can collect myself, rebuild whatever just got dismantled, stand at the door to greet him the way a proper alpha's daughter stands to greet a visiting alpha, composed and controlled and giving nothing away.
Karine
I pause
Whatever we just felt doesn't obligate you to anything, he says quietly
My blood turns to ice.
I don't know what you mean, I say carefully.
I think you do
He's not being cruel about it. His voice is the same — level, unhurried, giving me space. I'm not going to ask you about it here, but I noticed it, and I wanted you to know that I noticed it before we walk into your father's house and start performing for everyone.
I can't speak for a moment.
He felt the connection, and he was also aware that I felt it.
I should go, I say.
My voice is impressively steady. I'll see you at the house.
I leave before he can say anything else. The café bell chimes behind me, and I step out into the cold autumn air. I press the back of my hand against my mouth, and I breathe.
This is, I think, the beginning of something I am not ready for.
I walk back to the pack house faster than necessary.
By the time I hear his car in the drive, I'm standing in the entrance hall next to my mother, hands folded, expression composed.
When he comes through the door, he's carrying a single flower, a pale winter bloom, the kind that grows in the colder territories.
He holds it out to me when our eyes meet.
I missed your birthday, he says simply
I'm sorry for that
I take the flower
My mother makes a soft sound beside me that she tries to disguise as a cough.
Thank you, I say
It comes out quieter than I intended.
He nods and turns to greet my father, and I stand there holding a single pale flower and trying to remember how to walk.
- Writer
