My rebound is an Alpha?!

The Situation

Marks POV

As soon as I dropped Lana off in town and started driving away, everything felt wrong. Having spent the last few days in the company of my mate, everything in my body was screaming against leaving her again, unmated and unmarked. This situation would be the death of me.

Nonetheless, I turned the car around and headed to an old castle-turned-hotel at the northern edge of the black forest. Or at least so it seemed. Most wolf packs had needed to adapt over the years as humans had started traveling more widely. They were experts at hiding in plain sight. So, other than occasionally renting out a few guest rooms restricted to one specific wing of the old castle, the main buildings and conference rooms of this supposed 'hotel' were permanently 'booked out' - because it secretly functioned as the pack house.

Even those rooms which WERE rented were rarely rented to humans. Visiting wolves from other packs stayed there often enough, and all the wolves across the world were well used to leaving each other 'guest reviews' at the end of political visits. It was a marvelous ruse that functioned flawlessly and kept the humans clueless.

"Markus, you're back."

Several wolves I passed as he entered the pack house nodded greetings to me, but I headed straight to the main meeting room. My father, Alpha Werner, and his Beta, Stefan, were already there waiting for me.

"Markus, what took you so long?

"Apologies, father. I had... a situation."

Stefan, tight-lipped as always, had probably not said anything to my father about the fact I had found my mate, even though it seemed like he had guessed what was going on.

"But speaking of situations, what's happening here?" Pushing thoughts of Lana aside for a moment, I picked a comfortable chair and was ready to get down to business. It be something serious given the abrupt summons I received.

Alpha Werner sighed, suddenly looking a lot older than I remembered from my last visit home. Maybe I had been away for too much of the last few years, neglecting my duties as the next Alpha... I felt a little guilty, but finding my mate was important to strengthen the pack. And at least I'd finally achieved that, so there was nothing stopping me from staying home now.

"There have been disturbing rumors lately spreading throughout Europe. The vampires seem to have... changed their feeding habits."

"What?" I felt my body instinctively snap bolt upright in my chair. Whatever I had been expecting them to say, that certainly wasn't it. Vampire and werewolf territories had been forced to overlap as human territories expanded, but they had always had an unspoken agreement - to try to ignore and avoid each other as much as possible.

Stefan broke in, his voice serious.

"As you know, it's become riskier for all magical creatures as human populations and technology have advanced. It seems like the strain of staying hidden, hunting and dumping became too much."

He used the term which referred to vampires' habit of dumping humans before they were completely drained of blood, leaving them with a wiped memory and a killer headache which they would assume was the result of drinking too much the night before.

"But as you know, memory wipe doesn't work on other creatures, so to try and cover their steps, they've been going for the full kill..."

This time, I practically bolted out of his seat.

"How many packs have been affected?"

"We don't know," answered my father, "but it seems like a worldwide phenomenon. At first, there were just one or two missing here and there... because creature blood can sustain them for much longer than human blood, so they haven't needed to hunt often, but there's something even more worrying. Since it's so much harder to capture a creature than a human... they've also started hunting in packs."

Vampires were usually solitary creatures, so this complete change in their behavior was worrying. There hadn't been vampire packs since the bloody disasters of Eastern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. At that time, wolves, witches, and even other vampires had formed temporary alliances to bring down those vampire packs and keep all creatures undercover and hidden from humans.

"Anyone from the black forest region?"

Werner shook his head "Not yet, no, but we need to be alert."

I nodded back, thinking through my next moves. "I'll take over training the warriors again from next week."

At this, my father perked up, looking excited. "You're moving home already? Does that mean...?"

"Yes" I couldn't stop myself from practically beaming when I thought of Lana's beautiful green eyes "I finally found her."

I was suddenly wrapped in the warm embrace of my fathers big arms. An Alpha finding his mate was an important event, and one which was coming far too late in my case.

"Well? Where is she?"

His confusion was well founded. For any werewolf, much less an Alpha, to be apart from a newly found mate was extremely unusual. The mate bond usually saw to it that the couple were virtually inseparable, whether in or out of (but mostly in) the bedroom.

I cleared my throat as it suddenly felt tight. I realized I was a little scared to face up to the next part.

"Thus.. the situation I mentioned. I left her somewhere else for a few days because... I haven't quite explained everything to her yet, you see... she's. Well, she's human."

He looked from his father to Stefan, but between the three of them in that room, a heavy silence fell.