Soulmate

Chapter 2

ALISON

I awoke from the dream, tangled in the mass of my long strawberry blonde hair, wavy and matted all around me and my sheets tonight. I let out a slight groan and heard the ticking of the huge grandfather clock ticking beside the wall across my four-poster bed. I looked at the time. It was one thirty-five a.m.

I yawned and settled into the atmosphere of my bedroom. Readjusting from that fantasy of a dream into my quite large bedroom, with its pink paisley patterned walls and ceiling chandelier squeaking slightly, was almost extreme. Lined along the walls of my room were lit candelabra cased in glasses and portraits of myself in frames too. The room glowed a dull yellow from the lamps, candles and chandelier, and I yawned again.

Then I heard a clattering downstairs and a scattered raise of male voices. I realised that was be what must have pulled me up from my sleep tonight; the disturbances from my half-brothers. I looked at the time again, and realised that they must have just come back from hunting.

I gathered the skirts of my nightgown and climbed off my bed, landing barefoot. I started to head out of my room, catching a reflection of myself in my ornate dressing mirror before I left; my slender features and small breasts. Pale porcelain skin, slight freckles and hair the colour of rosegold; my half-brothers would always tease that I was too quite dainty to be a werewolf.

But just like them, and the rest of the members of my bloodline, I was a full-blooded werewolf.

I stepped out of my bedroom and headed downstairs, carefully walking down the narrow wooden staircase with its architecturally carved balustrade. From the mid-section of the stairs, I could see the parlour of the mansion, and I could see the boys were already gathered there, fresh off the night’s hunt.

The house was large, built like a standard resort lodge than more of a home; it was all wooden and stone, interior decorated with animal skin rugs on the wooden floors and wallpapered walls. There was more taxidermy, an elk head crowning a section of the chimney above the fireplace, and hunting guns laid side by side in décor in an alcove. The fireplace was lit, and a family portrait sat upon the mantelpiece.

As I made it down the stairs, the boys all looked up at me. They were all naked as they had just transformed back from wolf form into human.

My father was already covering up with a coarse blanket and he had a gruff look upon his face. Dad was middle-aged, tan skinned and tightly muscled with ginger hair. He was a build even at such his age, with salt and pepper hair lining his torso.

He stood right next to my eldest sibling Mason, who had bright auburn hair and quite the build like dad. Mason’s face was always a frown but tonight was more of a scowl. He practically glared at me as I stood half-way down the stairs. His brothers Brandon and Uriah were standing naked next to him, and Brandon had a huge gash across his torso which was already quickly healing due to his werewolf abilities.

I took it that hunting tonight had not gone well. I still dared ask “Uh…how was hunting?”

“Alison, you should be in bed” my father strictly spoke.

“I couldn’t sleep” I said defensively, coming fully down the stairs. My father always treated me like a trophy and I was quite tired of the life. He always preferred I was cozied up in the house, head propped down into a book rather than having me speak or hunt with them. They all treated me like a princess and not a werewolf and I was sick of the differential. I could hunt, I could kill. I was the embodiment of a proper, full-blooded werewolf yet they confined my abilities because I was a girl. Well, my brothers did. Dad had other reasons for being overprotective of me.

My mother had died birthing me. She was his true love, his true mate. They had fallen in love since they were young and had planned to build a life together forever. My father was the pack leader of the Timberline werewolf pack, a leading pack here in our little ghost town of Cilantro Falls, Alaska. The Timberline pack consisted of my family, the Montana family, along with other bloodlines of fellow founding families of Cilantro Falls. All these families come together, made up a pack and my father, being the head of the strongest bloodline, led this pack named the Timberline pack. Dad had always known duty and strength and family all his life. All he ever wanted was to live a life with his mate, fulfilling this duty and building a family for himself, strengthening a bloodline that would lead the Timberline pack for generations.

He planned to build this life with my late mother, but after they married, she couldn’t conceive. They tried for offspring for years but it never worked out, until my mother and father agreed that dad remarried, which was perquisite of a pack leader; he after all, needed a mate to continue the bloodline. He remarried another werewolf Brenda and within a year, she already conceived Mason, then Brandon, two strong sons. The pack was fulfilled with this but even with Brenda, my father still loved my mother. And soon after, I was born out of their love, but she died conceiving me. A year after I was born, Brenda conceived my last half-brother, Uriah.

I was my father’s only daughter and he protected me as the last gift his one true love had given to him before her tragic passing. There was a guilt to my existence, one I was still trying to live past, and my father would not stop overprotecting and pampering me like a child. They would not let me hunt with them.

As the skin cells of Brandon’s gash closed up in a quick heal, I heard him grumble “…those Southern tribe pack bastards…on our territory again…we need to take them all out…”

My father was sighing, now gesturing with his fingers at me “Alison, get back to bed”

“Okay, okay fine” I scoffed.

I met my brother Uriah’s eyes, and he looked at me sympathetically, like he pitied my condition of being locked up like a damsel in distress. Among them all, Uriah was the one I had a great relationship with. Brandon was hot-tempered and Mason was the worst; he treated me like an object, even more strictly than my father. Mason was controlling and obsessively superior over everything in his surroundings. Tonight, he had not uttered a word and I could see him seething inwardly, boiling with rage at how the hunt had gone; about this Southern tribe werewolf pack Brandon had talked about. He would not look me in the eye; did not deem me worthy of his gaze. Mason was a quick tempered megalomaniac. I did not know how somehow, my father had raised a bunch of grumpy sons. He was grumpy himself, dad. But Mason just seemed to get all his worst traits, doubled even. And I feared that he would someday lead this pack and this bloodline. He was far too tempered for a leader; too impatient, too power obsessed.

I sighed and carried on back upstairs to my bedroom.