Alpha lost Luna

Echoes and Omens

CHAPTER 4: Echoes And Omens

Stefan’s POV

I shot upright in bed with a gasp tearing from my throat.

Cold sweat coated my chest with my heart pounding continuesly while the fading echo of a scream... mine?... lingered in the silent room.

“What the hell?” I muttered, rubbing a hand over my face.

My head throbbed but the nightmare itself was gone, vanished like smoke. All that remained was a cold hollow dread in my gut.

I threw the bed covers aside and padded naked to the pitcher of water on the dresser. The stone floor was icy under my feet but I barely felt it. I drank deeply with the water doing nothing to quench the strange thirst for something I couldn’t name.

“Alpha Stefan… come back to bed. It’s cold without you.” A sleepy voice purred from the bed.

I ignored her. I didn’t even remember her name. Clara? Corina? It didn’t matter.

I stood at the open window with the winter air doing little to cool the restless energy buzzing under my skin. I’d been feeling like this for weeks.. edgy and agitated ever since I’d returned from that damn feast in the Transylvania pack.

Giving up on the memory of the dream, I turned. The girl in my bed was watching me through heavy-lidded eyes with a seductive smile on her lips and my c**k, ever predictable was already responding hard and eager for a distraction, a way to silence the unease.

I stalked back to the bed in my mood dark. I didn’t kiss her, didn’t whisper sweet nothings. I just took what I needed, losing myself in the pleasure and using her body to chase away the ghosts I couldn’t see.

It was rough, impersonal and over quickly. I rolled off her and was asleep again almost instantly with the unnamed fear temporarily buried.

***

Morning light streamed through the window and I woke feeling surprisingly… good. A small soft hand wound around my waist from behind.

“Good morning, Alpha,” a feminine voice murmured sleepily.

I turned over with a grunt a lazy smile playing on my lips.. and then I almost yelped.

For one heart-stopping terrifying second, it wasn’t the random girl from last night.. it was her.

Wide innocent eyes and that messy hair fanned out on my pillow. It was Ana!

I jolted backward so fast I almost fell off the bed.

“You!”

The girl flinched with her face crumbling in confusion.

“Alpha? What’s wrong?”

I blinked and the illusion shattered. It was just the girl with her expression now one of hurt and fear. My heart was still racing with a cold sweat breaking out anew.

“Get out,” I snarled with my voice low and dangerous.

“But I...”

“I said get out!” I roared.

She scrambled from the bed, grabbing her clothes and fleeing without another word. The door slammed shut behind her.

I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, breathing heavily. What was wrong with me? First the nightmare, now this? Seeing that Omega’s face everywhere?

It had to be her. That girl had done something to me. Put some kind of Omega curse on me.. a disease of the mind. It was the only explanation that made sense.

A sharp rap on the door interrupted my spiraling thoughts.

“What?” I growled, wrapping a sheet around my waist.

My Beta, Dumitru, entered, bowing his head respectfully.

“Alpha. The council is gathered and awaits your presence.”

I groaned.

“For what? It’s barely past dawn.”

Dumitru shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s… concerning Lady Illeana, Alpha. You were supposed to discuss your mating ceremony with the council this morning.”

I scoffed.

“Again? Tell them to stop wasting my time. I’m not mating with that simpering, preening...”

“I know, Alpha,” Dumitru interrupted gently even though he knew it was a risk. “But the council presses. They… they say you must think of the future. Of taking a mate. You need to produce an heir. A next Alpha.”

Hearing those words clicked something in my brain.. it wasn’t a scream I’d heard.. it was a baby’s cry and in my arms, I was holding a small boy with a shock of dark hair and eyes that were my own. Standing beside me with her hand on my arm, was Ana!

I recoiled from the image as if burned.

“Alpha?” Dumitru asked with concern flickering across his face. “Are you alright?”

“Get out,” I whispered hoarsely.

“But the council...”

“I said GET OUT!”

Dumitru left quickly, closing the door quietly behind him and I was alone again with the ghost of a dream now tattooed on the inside of my eyelids!

***

Ana’s POV

The woods were my only escape. In the pack house, the constant judgmental stares, my father’s cold disgust and the constant aching hollow in my chest where the mate bond had been severed… was all too much.

Elena had found me once with a handful of my poisonous berries clutched in my fist but she had cried, begged and finally yelled me out of it.

“We’ll run away, Ana! Just you and me! We’ll go somewhere far, where no one knows us. Where no one cares that you’re an Omega or that you’re carrying… you know.”

But I couldn’t. The thought of the unknown was more terrifying than the misery I knew. And a tiny stubborn part of me... a part I hated... kept whispering his name. What would he do if he knew? The thought made me shudder.. He’d probably order it taken care of.. permanently.

I placed a hand on my still-flat stomach.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the tiny life inside me. “You deserve so much more than me.”

I was so lost in my depressing thoughts that I almost didn’t hear the low voices.

I froze with my senses straining. Who was out here? This was a remote part of our territory.

Crouching low, I crept forward, peering through a thicket of bare bushes.

A young boy, maybe sixteen stood fidgeting nervously.

“…understood, Alpha. I’ve placed it exactly as you said. No one saw me. I’m sure of it.”

A scout perhaps?.. My blood ran cold when I realized the boy was wearimg a distinct crest on the sleeve of his garments.. the roaring bear of the Bucharest Pack..! Stefan’s pack..!

The boy must have sensed me as he spun around with his eyes widening in sheer panic when he saw me.

“You! What are you... You shouldn’t be here!”

My own fear was eclipsed by a sudden fierce protectiveness. A spy from the Bucharest Pack here on our land? What were they planning?

“What have you done?” I demanded with my voice stronger than I felt. “Who were you talking to?”

The boy just stared at me, pale and trembling.

The crunch of snow behind me was my only warning and I turned abruptly with a shriek catching in my throat as I collided with a solid muscular wall of a chest of a rather familiar figure…!