Chapter 1
Darkness.
That’s often what I experienced when I fell asleep. I could feel the physical darkness— surrounding me—enveloping me—latching onto me. It wouldn’t release me through my strained breaths and weak pulls.
It would never release me.
My unconscious survived through the same nightmare every evening. Only it wasn’t a nightmare, it was a reality. I could feel the lacing of the rope tied around my wrists and ankles as I struggled to release myself from its detention. My mouth was taped shut. The room I lay in was filled with a muddied floor layered with dirt and pools of water.
I took a deep breath and remembered what my father would teach me, he would often reiterate that our senses were the most important qualities of our kind. I tried to open my eyes, which were covered with a cloth barrier concealing any line of sight. There was that familiar echo in my nightmare again: darkness. I tried to use my hearing but I was met with silence. Touch and taste were out of the question because at the moment I lacked mobility of free movement and barely enough ability to breathe. The last sense I had left was smell. It was slowly developing; I was only 12 and at my 13th birthday I would gain my power. I focused on my sense of smell and tuned out the surroundings. A sweet, musky smell began to develop in my nose. I felt his hot breath over me.
He knelt down, just inches away from my face and began to whisper, “Who will save you now? Your daddy won’t, you will be a part of our pack forever. I will be the new alpha, and your daddy will be dead.”
Then I woke up, as I always did. I never made it past this moment since the ending was too painful for my mind to revisit. This time I woke up without screams and without sweat. 8 years passed since that moment, but it felt like it only happened seconds ago. I felt numb within the darkness of the night.
I sat inert, peering out the window into the dark night. I was 20 years old now. I grew to be 5’5 feet in height, with golden blonde hair, and bright blue eyes. I grew to not trust anyone, except one person, whom I would never let go. Often, I was eccentric and wild just as the moon guided me but often I was cold and reserved. No one controlled me; I could not be controlled. No one understood me because you could not understand something as unstable and unpredictable as a girl without emotions. I was powerful, my presence was whispered about and feared. I wanted to run wild, run through the woods, feel the cold wet leaves beneath my feet, smell the crisp autumn air radiating through the Colorado Rockies, I wanted to shift and let my inner-wolf take over, and I wanted a mate.
A mate to normal wolves was a deep connection, which created a bond that would never dull or dissipate. It was everlasting until death do you part. The mate I craved was not my actual mate. I believed the longing for him died along with the old me of ghost’s past. The mate I wanted was the one who saved me, the only one I could trust.
Let’s start from the beginning, of who I was, and how I got to be who I am. I grew up in Colorado, a part of a very powerful pack. Every wolf in Colorado belonged to our pack, except for the drifters as we called them. The drifters are those wolves that are either banished, refused to join the pack, or follow pack law. They never were a problem since they were so few in size and lacked strength. I never met a drifter, nor had our pack banished anyone in almost a decade and we were told they were scattered across the state and country.
My name is Athena Powell. My father was Alpha Victor Powell and my mother was Luna Ophelia Powell. My mother always told me that I had the most beautiful heart and she said that is what matters in life; nothing else but your heart. My father was strong, convicted, and ruthless and my mother said he hid his big heart out of ego to the pack. She always saw the best in him, and he let down his barriers for her. The love they had was something out of fairytales. The type of love that describes a beautiful, sweet and soft princess who fell in love with a strong prince. Not only did I have two loving parents, I had an older brother, and his name was Ares Powell. He was supposed to take over Alpha when my father passed the title down.
Wolves, unlike humans are nearly impossible to kill and live five times as long as humans do. They age, but they age gradually and eventually pass down titles to their youth. The Alpha holds the title as long as a challenger doesn’t win the pack and the battle. As I grew up, I ached for the same-mated love my parents found, for the same yin and yang balance, and for the power of true love.
His name is Gabriel Voez. He was older than me, he was 16 when I was 12 and every girl loved him. His wolf was ginormous, strong, and proud. Everyone thought at 18 that they would become his mate, or at least everyone hoped. I did too. He was best friends with my brother since we were young, so naturally I spent a lot of time with him; running as our wolves, playing games in the field, attending community dances, and writing countless diary entries about him. His father was my father’s Beta; so naturally, Gabriel would be my brother, Ares' beta when he ascended.
Soon after my 12th year, I was kidnapped and imprisoned by a banished pack member from decades ago; Killian Frazier. Killian was determined to kill my father and replace him as Alpha for the Colorado Pack. Little did the pack know, Killian brought together a hundred drifters from throughout the country. I guess my father and his pack banished the highest number of drifters in a hundred years, one being Killian. Killian’s plan was never to release me but force me to become his Luna after he killed my father and took the title of Alpha from him. It was his sick way of ruining my life and my families' life.
Eventually, my father, Gabriel’s father, my brother, Gabriel, as well as 2 other pack members came to rescue me. They were unaware of Killian’s drifter assembly. That night, I watched my father, my brother, the 2 pack members, and Gabriel’s father take their last breaths as they were fighting dozens of wolves each one by one. My father pleaded to Gabriel to escape and take me to safety. Gabriel was reluctant, as he watched the struggle but he still obeyed my father’s last command. I screamed and scratched at Gabriel in between sobs as we were running through the wilderness. By the time we made it back to get help, even with Gabriel’s wolf calls in the woods it was too late. They were all dead. The outcome was horrific, but the drifters were destroyed by their sacrifice.
Eventually, I came into my wolf, my mother survived, and so did Gabriel’s mother and sister. Gabriel taught me how to fight, how to run, and how to shift quickly. Gabriel became Alpha by immediate nomination and I became Beta by immediate nomination. The pack didn’t know two better people to lead us than the wolves who escaped hell.
Gabriel and I became quiet, secluded, but I could read his sadness, as he could read mine. Sometimes at night, I would howl at the moon; the weeping wolf and Gabriel would sit with me in the dark light and we would embrace our numbness together.
I guess you would think I would happy, I’m with the man who every girl wanted to be with. You would think I would be content but our company together was only pain. We shared the same pain and it would never fade. I didn’t care about the one thing that I once hoped for; finding a mate. We had each other and I was convinced we would be mated eventually through second mating. It wasn’t the mating I once dreamed about, that mating could never be reproduced. However, if a wolf’s mate dies before mating can occur there is such a thing called second mating. Second mating explains that a wolf’s heart may be attached and connected to a second wolf’s heart not by the power of traditional love or by the bond of a mate but that wolf is also destined to be a second mate. You will never have a second mate if you have a first one, unless the first one dies. Second mating is more like a romantic friendship as I’ve been told.
Gabriel and I have officially been together since I was 16 and he was 20, four years have passed and I am now 20 and he is 24. We have been waiting for years for the second mating to take place, but nothing has happened. All of our pack says it will, and the Alpha needs to take a Luna soon for children to keep pack strength so we will no longer fear threat. I think they’re just afraid what I will do if I don’t have Gabriel; they know I am unpredictable and strong. I don’t blame them for being fearful of me, I’m fearful of my mind too; I’m fearful he won’t become my second mate, I’m fearful of the mother I will be, I’m fearful of losing him and my children to similar circumstances. I mask my fear with my cold nature and sometimes I allow the anxiety of it all to slip out, where I become wild and eccentric. I don’t think the pack likes either, but they don’t know what to say to a girl whom has nothing left to lose.
