The Savior of the Wolves

The Alpha's Son (part 3)

~ Aiden's POV~

By the time that the scourge war reached us, it had already destroyed the smaller packs across half of the world. We began to send word to our neighbors of what little we knew, so it saved many. Smaller packs joined one another to protect themselves. But not before most of the female nobles were slaughtered. 

It was the most destructive and strategic plan ever implemented by the scourges. Their focus was only on the young female nobles. The future Luna’s. It took a while before the packs figured it out. Then the pieces began to fall together.

Little to no packs were attacked that didn’t have a female noble amongst them and this made it all seem sporadic at first, like a loner passing by that attacked a random pack. Perhaps provoked by a detail on patrol. Perhaps a curse on the scourge caused it to behave this way. A disease? All the guesses back then were wrong.

Then it all began to make sense. The scourges’ plan all along was to destroy the noble lines. Without a Luna, the Alpha’s line is weakened. Sure, the Alpha can take a beta or delta female as his mate and even have a family with her. And sadly, over the last ten years, many had no choice but to do just that. This made their offspring weaker though...because there was no Luna. The Alpha was the protector. But the Luna…she was the heart of the entire pack.

Any female who wasn’t a noble and married a noble became his mate. The pack protected her like a Luna, but their offspring could only be future beta or delta wolves. Not a noble.

The goddesses long ago established that nobles could only imprint on nobles. All offspring from an imprinted union were nobles. Only they could be future Alphas and Lunas. They were superior in the species of wolves because they were enhanced in strength, speed, wisdom, passion, kindness...most everything. The nobles could also link to packs outside of their own pack, but most importantly they had a unique power that no other regular wolves had. Some...even more than one.

Just like my mom and dad. Dad can siphon power and mom can read minds. 

And as with most of nature...there’s always a catch. The nobles would never come into these unique powers...unless they imprinted with their destined mate. Another noble. 

Beta and delta wolves had the strength and speed, but the nobles’ unique powers gave them the edge. The scourges feared these powers, and no one knows how long they had planned these attacks to eliminate the strongest of their biggest threat. The wolves.

And it had worked. The female nobles were nearly extinct. 

Any female nobles born since the attacks were hardly ten years old now. They would still have eight years, or more, before turning and imprinting with their mate...to come into the powers that made us so stronger. So there was no foreseeable relief to the threat. 

In the elders' meetings with my father, they were convinced that there had to be other female nobles close to maturity, like my sister, Sophie, who were being hidden. 

We never spoke about Sophie outside of our pack. We took several steps to hide her. That told me that other packs could be doing the same with their fems. That’s what I could tell my mother needed to believe...every time she looked at me.

I flipped a few more pages into the journal, “The scourges studied our kind. They knew that we were peaceful.” They would soon find out that we’re also obsessively vengeful if you harmed the innocent. Especially our kind. 

But we had to be careful with our numbers this low. We couldn’t hit them now. More would perish. It’s been years of nobles not imprinting. Years of these powers missing. We were weaker than ever before in our history. 

Witches were most vulnerable and sought our help. Refuge. Keeping witches secretly near the compounds made the alliance strong...but rebuilding wasn’t complete. We had a long way to go.

A lot of packs rebuilt. Some young Alphas waited a long time before finally taking a mate outside of the pure bloodline.

I was often preoccupied with wondering if that would be me eventually.

This meant that the next generation of that Alpha’s bloodline would either be betas or deltas. Our lifespan is long and there’s been no reason to think ahead that far, but it had to be discussed. Josh and I would be Alpha’s one day. But if we mated with a beta or delta female, our children would not be.

That also meant that for the safety of a pack, an Alpha who married a regular wolf may have to step down as Alpha one day. If a pack needed to join another pack, the true Alpha would always be the one who imprinted with his Luna.  

And that could change everything that we do now.  

It’s already changed how we live. Distance and privacy were scarce.

Most wolves lived within their Alpha’s compound or just on the outskirts. This was for the protection of everyone. They stayed within range of their link. They performed with their pack as if they were one body. Everyone had a job to do. Much like any other species. We developed small cities within our own compounds. Everyone’s talent was utilized for the good of the pack.

The strongest deltas were our protection detail. They took patrols in shifts. All wolves patrolled, to stay familiar with surroundings or changing nearby human neighborhoods. Everyone had to know our area. Our safety depended on it. We had to know if anyone didn’t belong. But the protection detail...this was every day for them. It was their full-time responsibility.

The rest of the pack was like any other city. There were teachers, maintenance, communications, technology, councilmen, yard crew, housekeepers, kitchen, etc. Then there were the elders.

The elders may look fragile in their human form, but their wolf was as young as any newly transitioned wolf. Because in wolf form, we heal completely. But in human form, the elders’ age earned the distinction at the age of seventy. They were catered to. They no longer had a full-time job, but every single one of them took on a new “unspoken” job. Supervision. They walked the compound. Slow maybe in human form. But they were quick and the most observant in the wolf form. They knew what everyone was up to...especially the young ones. So, they were even more needed in this new capacity. 

It seemed that everyone in the pack was fated to their life’s purpose…except for me and my siblings.

I shook my head again, subconsciously reminding my wolf to settle down.

Desperation seemed to build up in me often. Logically I knew that we couldn’t be the only Alpha children left. There were others suffering the same ill-fated existence as we were, but perhaps they were too young. I reminded myself daily that my mate could easily be coming of age anytime. She could be a few years younger than me. Just because I was alone didn’t mean she had been killed by the scourges.

My wolf howled within me. He was also tortured by the thought. My fate had been tampered with by a murderous species and the life I should be living felt completely on hold. My wolf could feel it. And no matter how antsy I was in my human form, to my wolf it was maddening. I felt his hunger for his true self. The power we were supposed to receive once we imprint. It felt as though my wolf were being held down by ropes. He was feeling primal...less controlled than months ago…he felt desperate lately.

This kept me distracted. That was my disconnect with the pack. But I couldn’t stop it no matter how much I wanted to. There were no books or stories to offer advice to me on how to deal with this. It had never happened before.

I slammed the journal closed with a soft thud as I looked over towards the heavily draped windows. “Okay, okay.” I agreed with my wolf. I was sick too of being inside.