Alpha's Winter Promise

Episode 5: Romance - Atticus POV

I have a headache.

The first of several Alpha meetings during the festival just ended and it went about how I expected it to. Stick a bunch of us in a room and it becomes a giant pissing contest with a thin layer of politeness to keep brawls from breaking out.

There's just so much history there - good, bad and ugly - that its important to follow the traditions.

A line of cars is waiting to take the Alphas back to their lodging for the evening. I start to get into one and then change my mind. The walk back to the estate house would give me some time to organize my thoughts.

I’d had enough hand shaking and forced smiles for the day.

The sun had gone down and the warmth had transitioned into a cool evening breeze. I’m just about at the rose garden when I hear footsteps crunching on the gravel, catching up with me.

“Atticus! Atti, hey wait for me!’ My brother is waving and smiling at me.

To some…no, make that many… that smile could be seen as threatening given the sheer size of him. He’s built like a professional wrestler and has made a regular hobby out of getting tattoos. This works in my favor since he’s also the Beta of my pack.

“Why Beta Benedictus Steele, I do declare you are cutting a mighty fine form this evening” I say with an over exaggerated southern drawl and jesting about the fact that both of us are in suits. I receive a light punch on my arm for my efforts.

“This evening? Try every evening…..at least that's what Miranda tells me…” He pauses to take a super hero stance, hands on hips. I could almost see the cape billowing behind him. “Evening, morning, lunch time, twice before afternoon tea….”

I groan. “Oh my God, Benni…. Not an image I needed in my head” He and Miranda have been mated for 6 years and there has been no cooling off for them yet.

We fall into step as we entered the Rose Garden. I should be staying at the Lodge with the rest of the unmated Alphas but given our close friendship with Simon, we were given rooms at the main house.

“Dude, I cannot believe Alpha von Stuffypants actually brought up the idea of women being allowed to be alphas. He’s older than Methuselah and probably wrote the original pack rules himself. Just tap-tap-tap into a stone tablet.” He pantomimes hoding a hammer and chisel.

I have to agree with him, except I saw something that maybe he missed. The good Alpha Edwin Grimsleigh and the elderly Alpha Albert Weiss (aka von Stuffypants) having an intense sidebar conversation prior to the meeting starting.

“We should discreetly look into any ties between Grimsleigh and Weiss”

“Uh, left field much? Why?”

“Just trust me, I have a feeling”

“You got it, Boss” And gives me a crisp salute in jest. “I’m gonna go on ahead. Miranda and the pup have been waiting on me to have dinner. Plus she’s talking about going into town tomorrow to shop, which might mean I need an advance on my paycheck. I just can’t say no to those two.”

We’ve reached the center of the garden - a huge trellis of white roses creates a canopy overhead. The space practically glows in the moonlight. Benni jogs ahead but pauses as he’s about to leave the cover of the trellis.

“Oh, did you see her?” His voice more sombre than usual.

“Yeah”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No”

He shrugs. “Probably for the best anyway” He studies me. “You okay?”

“Yep”

“Probably for the best you didn’t talk to her anyway” he states as he disappears around the corner.

My headache is only getting worse as I mull through my own personal existential crisis: Olivia Grimsleigh. I think to myself maybe its just best if i leave the past in the past.

But for some reason i just can’t.

I reach inward to my wolf, Jericho. “I should just trust what Simon and Benni have to say about her, shouldn’t I?”

“What you shouldn’t do is make decisions on an empty stomach.”

I swear I was paired up with one grouchy old man of a wolf. Had he been human, he would be known for telling kids to get off his lawn.

“I saw that thought, pup”

I hold my hands up in the air in faux shock “Oh no, you caught me!”

“But to answer your question, we should have patience - good hunters have patience”

“Hard to have patience when your entire pack is waiting for you to take a mate, Jer”

I recall seeing Olivia arrive with her family from my vantage point in the reading nook earlier. She was the epitome of gracefulness. Her hair like the setting sun, and she was a willow, strong and supple…

“Hate to break it to you pal, but you should lay off the romance books. Your descriptions would not win you any literary awards” I get the sense that he’s amused.

“Frankly I think i missed my calling in life.” I quip back at him.

As I step forward my foot comes into contact with something and punts it halfway across the square. I reach down and my fingers brush across something that shouldn’t be there.

I pick up a book with a familiar floral cover.

Why on earth is the book I was reading earlier out here in the middle of the garden?

I flip through it and find the page I'd marked still dog-eared, but now there’s a second one on a different page. And even though the scent of roses in bloom is almost overpowering, I catch just a whisper of peppermint on the pages.

Well, too bad. Their loss. I tuck the book under my arm to take it back with me.

I continue my line of thought as I make my way through the rest of the garden. “Jericho, I think we should see the match-maker while we are here.” I get the feeling that he’s not happy with that statement.

“If we … if I… trust what my best friend and my brother have to say, then this might legitimately be my last real chance of being paired up with a mate, chosen or not. I shouldn’t let a childhood crush, that i might remind you was fated to my best friend and not me, get in the way of that.”

I look up as I go into the house through a side door. I know which window is hers and I see a light flick on. I feel a sense of relief that she’s hopefully getting settled in for bed and not out wandering about. I had asked Simon to give assign her to the Rose Room when I'd found out she was going to be here.

I think I went a little crazy back when Simon had told me his fated mate with Olivia, and then that he rejected her. I wanted to challenge him first because fate had paired them, but then because rejection is practically unheard of in our circles. Everyone knows that a fated mate makes you stronger, completes you. Sure, you can get some of the same benefits from a chosen mate but it just isn’t the same.

Not to mention supposedly it causes unimaginable physical pain to both parties involved in the rejection.

Jericho remains silent but I sense his presence still with me.

I’m clear on the far opposite end of the house and three floors up from Olivia and her family. I snag a couple pieces of fruit on my way through the kitchen to the servant stairs.

I pass by the suite that Benni’s family was given nextdoor to mine and I can hear his booming laugh followed by the muffled voices of his mate and child.

Warmth and joy just radiates through the walls.

I feel a sharp pain in my chest. There’s no one waiting for me in my room. No mate to share my burdens with or build up happy memories with.

Just cold, dark, loneliness.

Maybe that’s why I like these silly romance novels. There’s a part of me that still has fairytale hope that something miraculous will happen. But obligation is closing in on me at this point.

I throw myself into the overstuffed chair and prop my feet up. There will be plenty of things to occupy myself with this week other than Olivia Grimsleigh.

I’m barely a chapter in when the fatigue hits and my eyes start to close. Off in the distant corner of my mind, I hear Jericho one last time.

“Patience, pup, we will be okay”