The Kings Mate

Chapter One

When I was ten, I had to watch my parents die. I saw their bodies torn into shreds by our rival pack. They destroyed my pack and took over their lands. Those who survived had to either be rogues or join a different pack. I was taken to my mother’s old pack where my grandmother lived and where I began to pick up the pieces slowly healing from their deaths.

When I was twelve, they came back again and this time it was my grandmother who died. They took me with them, and they spared the kids. We were forced to join the Red Hallow Pack, somewhere fortunate enough to get adopted by the pack members who didn’t have children like Cassidy. My friend and the rest of us were put to work cleaning, mending, fixing. There was so much to do in a pack of eight hundred members and only fourteen children.

As we grew older, some of us made it out. One by one they left, others trained to be warriors. Henry, the boy who I fancied when I was about fifteen years of age, became the Alphas' son's close companion. As a result, he had become the next in line to be the next Beta of the pack. I was happy for him, but then we drifted apart. Now it’s like I do not exist anymore, like a haunting memory he needed to lock up in a safe with chains and throw into the deepest parts of the ocean.

Stop bringing up the past. They're dead! The past is the past Genesis… I’ve changed.

That was what he said to me when I asked him why he had been so distant, why he wouldn’t look me in the eye, why he would pretend that I wasn’t there. I have to admit it did hurt. It felt like my heart and lungs were cut open and all the oxygen and life had been drained out into a jar and then shattered before my eyes.

I got over it, eventually, but now I’m twenty years old. Time had passed by so fast, yet it felt like I hadn’t moved a muscle. I was still stuck. The rest of them had left, found their mates, some became official pack members. They even had a pack initiation ceremony that I had catered for with the other females.

I was the last man standing. I sat by the fire at night as I sipped the hot chocolate I had made, my black hair tied neatly behind my nape. I have become a nocturnal creature over the past years. I slept during the day and worked during the night. The packhouse was large. Eighteen rooms in total and only just a little old for me to take care of it all. I was thankful that I was not allowed inside the other pack member’s rooms. Wolves can be territorial. I mostly clean the common areas and, with eight years of experience, I could do it with my hand behind my back.

It was winter, and the packhouse was almost empty. The packhouse could get quite chilly around this time. It is also when most of the pack members leave the packhouse to visit close family.

I stared at the fire as it crackled, bright yellow ambers occasionally dancing alongside the warm flame. With a rugged old plaid quilt to keep me cozy. I sat there in silence. I’ve always thought about my mate. When I was sixteen, Cassidy found out she had a mate and she left the pack. She didn’t say goodbye, but then again we had drifted apart over the years. I still considered her a friend. At sixteen I was hopeful, but by nineteen I knew that I didn’t have a mate. Not finding your mate by the time you are nineteen means that your mate has died, or they have chosen another. I desperately wanted to believe that mine had died. Perhaps that would mean that I am not entirely unwanted. It was just that death had decided to take him earlier and that my ill-fortune had struck once again.

I sat there until the fire began to die down, until the morning cold began to seep through the cracks of the house, until the windows were decorated with morning frost, until the sky turned a bright fusion of pinks, oranges, and peaceful lilacs, and the distant sounds of forest creatures waking to start their day while I was ending mine.

I stood up, becoming all too aware of my aching bones. The pack must be coming back from the ball at any moment. I had to disappear into the attic as quickly as possible if I didn’t want to meet them. I had worked tirelessly to make sure the end year's ball was a success.

Don’t disappoint me or I’ll have you flogged.

Luna Sarah, the Alpha’s mate, had scolded me. I had been in charge of making sure that everything would be perfect. The king was coming and he and his entourage would be staying temporarily at the packhouse. As I made my way up the stairs and through the wide, long, dimly lit hallway towards my room I smelt it, a strong smell of the forest and something else, something floral, my wolf stirred within me. It was a smell that had been tormenting me all night while I was cleaning. It was faint in the corridor, but it was strongest in the Alpha’s study.

I did not have the time to find out where that smell came from. I needed to get myself to my room and out of sight before they came back, and so reluctantly I put one step forward and forced my body to move.

I had just made it to my room when I heard the sound of cars in the driveway. They were back, and I was in my bedroom, success.

It wasn’t big. My bedroom, that is, was simple, a bed next to the small round window, a wardrobe to my right and a makeshift bookcase that I had made, the old pink and white floral paper on the walls was old and in some places torn up, the floors were not the vibrant brown like they are in the rest of the house but a dull brown yet clean, to me it was perfect.

I had a routine. I would walk to the shelf and pick up the book I’m currently reading, then I’d go to my wardrobe and pick out my sleepwear, which is always the same, a large oversized shirt, and then I’d jump onto my bed and read while gazing at the view of the pack house’s backyard that bordered the forest.

They had been noisy coming in, loud footsteps echoed throughout the packhouse, some I knew a few I didn’t, I heard the Alpha’s voice as well as the Luna’s and the guests were talking downstairs. I found it hard to concentrate and so I decided to watch the snowfall and that’s when I saw him. He was tall and unbearably handsome, with only a button-up shirt and pants, standing in the middle of the yard, he stood out like a beacon in the white snow with his all-black attire, his hair long and tied roughly in the back.

I could not stop staring. Couldn’t he feel the cold? Perhaps he was one of the king’s men. That’s why he couldn’t feel the cold. Lycans don’t feel the cold like the rest of them, and they have longer lives than them too. I think that’s the only comfort I have in this reality, that I would live on and this pack over time will be just another name in the footnotes of history while I live in this world, aging slowly and with a hundred more years to live out.

Luna Sarah once said that the king was over a thousand years old. I believe her. But the mystery man in the snow could not possibly be him. The king was older; he was young and in his prime.

Fifteen minutes passed as he stood there. I started to count the seconds after the first minute waiting for him to leave but he was still there. He occasionally walked about. I could only see the side of his face, his perfectly perfect face, and I tried to memorize it, his sharp nose, the new stubble on his face, his frown.

After eighteen minutes, something happened. Another man came out. This one wasn’t like Mr. Snowman, the name I had given to my mystery man. This one was shorter, with shorter hair and softer features. He bowed to him, which was odd. Perhaps my mystery man was his superior. He talked to Mr. Snowman for a while, then made his way back to the packhouse. Mr. Snowman followed, but hesitated and looked up at my small window, and our eyes met, and my heart stopped. He stared at me and I felt like I was in a head-on collision with the moon and the stars, his mouth curved a bit, and walked away. It was then that I came back to reality.

What just happened?