The Alpha's Powerful Daughter

Chapter 2

Hunter’s POV:

It’s been weeks since I have talked to Emily. I have seen her, but every time that I go to talk to her, she either disappears or I am dragged off to do some Alpha thing. It feels like she is avoiding me at all costs and I don’t get why. I had taken her out on dates before and she seemed to be really enjoying herself. I have been giving her space to hang out with Justin, no matter how much it killed me to see her with him, but I didn’t think that would make her disappear from my life. 

At first, it was really weird hanging out with the three of us since I was still not happy about them hiding it from me, but then it became like we were just a few best friends. We all had really fun times, and Emily seemed to be enjoying herself. I know that there wasn’t much time before the k********g of me and Justin that I got to really get to know Emily, but I knew her well enough to know that she was a very upbeat person. It took a few days after the fight with Svetlana for her to really get back into herself. We had to bury all of the people that died in the attack and Hailee, which I could tell really messed with Emily. She moved out of my room since we couldn’t really have all three of us in my room. We could have, but it wouldn’t have felt right. I left it up to Emily, and she chose to move out on her own. 

I missed everything about her. Her scent, her taste when I kissed her, the way her smile lit up the room. Everything. It frustrated me that she was avoiding me. 

I had just finished my morning coffee on the first floor and headed over to the stairs to start climbing up to the fourth floor so I can start my learning for the day. I get up to the third floor and see Justin walking down the hallway towards my room. I decided to run to catch up to him. He turns around and sees me. He smiles and waves at me. 

“Hey, just curious. Have you seen Emily anywhere?” I ask when I get close enough to him. 

After those first few days, I really worked it out with them so I felt like we talked it out. Justin and I both agreed that we would leave it up to Emily. I still feel a little anger towards the fact that Justin went behind my back with Emily and basically made out with her in my room, but I can’t say that I would have done anything differently. When he told me about what happened, I basically threw him through the wall. I mean, at the time that he did it, Emily was my girlfriend and mate. But, he was secretly her mate as well. Besides, I beat the living hell out of him when we were captured, so we called it even. Now we treat it as though we both have a crush on the same girl, and she gets to choose who she ends up with. 

“Uhh, yeah. I saw her this morning when I was leaving training.” He says while flicking his hair to the side. A small pit of jealousy forms in my stomach and I have to swallow a growl.  “First time I had seen her in a while. She seemed… Off. It was kind of like she was avoiding me because I found her behind a bush and when I tried to talk to her, she seemed really distant.”

“Well, at least you got to talk to her.” I raise my eyebrows and shake my head. “I haven’t talked to her in nearly a month.”

“Same, actually. It's almost as if she’s…” 

“Avoiding me.” We both speak at the same time. 

He squinted his eyes. “Hey, I’m moving into my new room here on the third floor today, wanna check it out? It’s right across the hall from yours.” 

“I have to get to the Alpha’s office and do some training today. I can help you move later if you’d like?” I offer. 

“Aight, bet. Imma take a shower and then I will be up there. Alpha asked me to join you guys this morning, so I’ll be up in a bit.” He turns and starts walking down the hall. 

I watched him for a moment. I can’t help but feel kind of happy for my best friend. For the longest time, he lived in the tiny room on the first floor and now, he is going to live right across from me. When I got the offer of becoming the next Alpha, they basically moved me that day without me having any sort of say in it. But they never offered it to Justin, so he just had to stay downstairs. I could always tell that he was upset about it, but now he has his own room, and he is starting to be respected by everyone in the pack. It makes my heart happy for him. 

I turn on my heels and head over to the staircase to start heading up to Alpha John’s office. My steps slow down as I get closer and hear the screams of Luna Kate in the office, with the door slightly opened. Kate just got back from her vacation with the twins after everything happened. The three of them went to Europe for two months and apparently got back this morning.

“You had a stupid DNA test ran, telling me that she wasn’t your daughter. Then some other girl shows up to tell the whole pack that she is your daughter and saying to everyone that she is the first mate of yours, and you are still telling me you love me?” She screams so loud, I feel like I am standing in front of her. 

“Darling, listen…” I hear Alpha John say in a calming voice. 

“Don’t you ‘darling’ me! I was supposed to be the one and only. You told me I was the one and only. I was promised on our wedding day that you would only ever love me.” She aggressively whines. 

I stand beside the door and take a peek inside. Alpha John is standing behind his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Listen, please. There is a lot at hand here that you will never understand. My daughter is special…”

“Yeah, so special she gets to have two mates, just like her father.” Kate spins on her heels and storms over to the door. 

“Oh, shit.” I whisper and run back to the stairs so that it looks like I wasn’t listening to the conversation. I jump down a few steps and duck with the hope that she won’t come down the stairs. Luna Kate slams the door behind her and turns to walk down the hallway. 

“To think of what my father did to get me into this place and I have to deal with crap like this. I never wanted anything like this.” I hear her grumple as she walks away. 

I carefully climbed the steps, checking my surroundings to make sure she was gone. I let out a deep breath and shook my head while I walked up to the Alpha’s office door. I pause for a moment and look over in the direction I hear her talking. 

What on Earth did she mean by what her father did?

I squint my eyes and let go of the door knob before I start to walk after the Luna, but the door opens before I get one step away. 

“Oh, Hunter.” Alpha John seemed shocked to see me. “What are you doing here?” He asks. 

I stand with my hands behind my back and I slightly bow my head before looking him in the eyes. I cleared my throat. “Sir, you requested that I meet up with you today. Said it was important so I figured you had some sort of training for me to do.” 

He lets out a sigh and lets his head fall. “I’m sorry. I had completely forgotten about that. It’s been a morning.” He steps to the side so I can enter his office. Our meetings have become very informal since I basically work here now. 

I walk over to the chair on the other side of his desk and have a look around, seeing all of the papers thrown around and a few of the other chairs in the room have been flipped over. “What happened here?” I ask, fully aware of the fact that Luna Kate most likely did this during their argument earlier. 

“Well, you remember that first day Emily got here, I had that fake DNA test done on her?” He takes a seat in his chair across from me.

“Uh, yes sir.” I sit up straighter in my seat.

He picks up a piece of paper and hands it to me. “Well, the girl that I had picked out to show that Emily was not my daughter, happens to be related to me. My father had an affair, and well. She is my sister.” 

I take the piece of paper and look at it. “Oh dang. Well, this is odd.”

“You’re telling me. I have informed this girl of the situation and she wants it to remain a secret. She said she doesn’t want it to be brought up ever again, and so I was going to let it remain that way.” He puts his face in his hands and pulls his hands down his face. “Now, Kate has found these and thought I had another daughter. So, I had to explain to her the situation, which only made things worse. She now thinks that Emily is going to be the end of her and I.” 

“Sir?” I look up at him really confused. “The end of the two of you? How?”

“I have no idea. I have never truly been able to figure her out.” He leans back in his chair and stairs at the ceiling. “I have no idea why I am even married to her. I have never had the urge to mark her.”

“Wait, you have never marked the Luna?” I ask in shock. “I thought it had to happen in order for her to become the Luna of the pack.” 

“Well, technically yes. She would need to be marked before she could become the Luna of the pack. But, back when we were merging the packs and Elders were merging into one board, we had some vote to ixnay the marking ceremony so the merge of the packs could happen quickly. I never thought anything of it, since it’s not something I wanted to be public anyways. But, I have never wanted to do it. She has tried several times to mark me, but I always move at the last moment, so she just bites me.” 

“Ah.” I say with wide eyes. “Why don’t you leave her then?” I ask before I can bite my tongue.

“Well…” He looks at me for a second, unable to continue with his sentence. He looks confused for a minute and then looks back at me. “I just can’t. It would be too much of a mess and I don’t really want to.”

I look at him really confused and there is a knock on the door. 

“That must be Justin.” Alpha stands and goes to the door. “I had asked him to come, too.”

He opens the door and I stand up to face Justin as he walks in the room. He still bows his head at Alpha and then gives me a slight nod before taking the seat beside me. He bounces his leg uncontrollably as he sits up straight. 

“Dude, you good?” I ask.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Just uhh. Did you not get the text?” He asked me. I take my phone out of my pocket and see that I have a missed call from Emily and about 37 texts from her and Justin. It’s not like her to send all of these texts or make a call. 

“I guess I did.” I say back to him while putting my phone back in my pocket. “I will have to read them later.” I gesture towards Alpha and Justin takes the hint. His leg settles down and he lets out a slow exhale. 

“Alright boys.” Alpha says as he takes his seat. “I have some great news for the two of you.” He reaches into the drawer and pulls out two folders. He hands one to me and one to Justin.

“What are these, sir?” Justin asks, opening the folder. 

“Don’t open it.” Alpha aggressively says and Justin snaps his shut. “These are your contracts with the Elders. I would like for you to review them, and bring them back to me by the end of the week please. No one is allowed to see them but you. Not even each other can see the contract of the other.”

“So, what do we need to do?” I ask, setting the folder on my lap. 

“Review them and make any changes to them that you wish to have changed. I will take them back to the Elders and they will review the changes. This process can take a few months, which is why we are starting this process now.” Alpha clicks a pen on his desk and puts it away in his drawer.

“Sir?” I ask and tilt my head. 

“Oh, right. We are setting the date for you to become Alpha.” He looks me in the eyes as he speaks.

“Oh.” My eyes widen and I can feel all the color drain from my face. 

He takes a deep breath and looks around his desk for a moment. “Now, I was thinking it would be about a year from now. This should give you plenty of time to have a few more times of practice and other things like that before it all gets handed over to you. We will also be trading off some of the duties of the Alpha until then. All based on your comfort level, of course, but by the time that your ceremony comes along, you will have been acting Alpha for about a month or so.” He explains as he picks up a red pen and marks something on a sticky note. “No pressure or anything like that, but will need to decide on this soon so we can start getting the word out.”

“Sir, with all due respect to everything. Are we sure that I am ready for this?” I can start to feel a slight bit of panic. 

“Hunter, you were ready for this long ago. No need to freak out now. It’s what we have been working on since the day we told you.” Alpha assures me. 

“But, I can’t even keep a 1,000 year old witch out of my head when she uses a little blood. What’s to say she won’t do that again?” I blurt out. “I mean, I could easily be put under a stronger spell than something like that, and it could be the end of everything.” 

“Hunter, listen to me…” Alpha starts but I can’t stop the panic from rising from within me. 

“I could hurt everyone. I can’t do that to everyone.” I sit forward in my chair and put my hands on my head. 

“Hunter, calm down.” Justin says to me, but I can’t really hear him over the beating of my chest. 

My breath starts to quicken and I can’t stop it. I can’t slow down my thoughts of everything that could go wrong. I stand up from the chair and start walking around. I put my hands on my ears and push to try to make it go away. I can feel my body shaking so hard that I fall to my knees. I faintly hear someone yell Hunter, but can’t make out who it was. The sound of my own heart pounding in my chest takes over my ear drums. 

Then, sparks fly as I feel someone touching my shoulder. I don’t even have to look at who it is to know that it’s Emily. 

My heart starts beating in a more normal rhythm but still hard. I can feel the panic in my stomach be replaced by butterflies. I turn to face her and my whole body seems to light up. It was like the first time I had seen her. Her skin glowed and I was absolutely taken back by her beauty. 

“Umm… Hello.” I say shyly to Emily.

I can feel blood rushing to my cheeks. I can’t believe that I am acting this way. Just the way her eyes sparkle in the lights is enough to make my nerves go on edge. I am just in awe of her. 

“Hi? She looks at me confused. “What happened?” 

“I just told him that we are setting up the date for him to become Alpha, and he went into a panic attack. Saying stuff about how he wasn’t able to keep Svetlana out of his head.” Alpha explains to Emily as she helps me to my feet. 

I stand there awkwardly and look at the ground with my hand on the back of my neck. “Yeah. I uhh... Yeah.” I put my hands in my pockets as I continue to look at the ground. 

“Hunter, it is completely normal for someone to have PTSD from something that you went through.” Alpha says to try and make me feel better. 

I rock back and forth on the balls of my feet before looking up at him. “Sir, all due respect, but I am not ready to discuss something like this yet. What happened when I was kidn*pped has really affected me in a way that I can’t explain. I haven't even been able to go through fight training with the guards.” 

“That is perfectly fine. Please, just. Start to think about it, alright? Be sure to keep it in your mind.” Alpha walks back over to his desk. “Go on with your day. Take the rest of the week off and take some time to recover. I don’t think you gave yourself any time off when you got back.”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t. When we all got back from being kidn*pped, Justin took some time off but I thought I was fine. I dove right into work, and even tried to double my usual load. Everytime that I wasn’t working, I was hanging out with Emily. But when she stopped talking to me, I don’t think that I even went to my room, except to sleep. Even then, I slept in my small office in the library more often than in my own bed.

“Sir, I am fine.” I lied.

“Hunter, please. Take the rest of this week and just relax. I don’t want you to do any sort of work. You either, Justin.” Alpha sits in his chair and looks between the two of us. “The only work I want the two of you to do is look over the contracts. Got it?” 

“Sir, I…” I start but Alpha shoots me a glare so I shut up. 

“This is an order.” He says with his eyes locked on mine. “Don’t make me use my Alpha tone on you.”

I bow my head in submission to him to let him know that I understand. I don’t really know what to do with my time, but I guess I will have to figure it out. 

“Now, everyone is dismissed. I think the three of you have some stuff to talk about.” Alpha leaned back in his chair and squinted at his daughter. “Be easy on them.”

“I’ll do my best, John.” Emily turned and walked out. 

Not sure what the tension is there, but I pick up my folder and quickly follow her out the door. Justin follows close behind me, and we follow Emily down to her room.