Fated To the Alpha by Jessica Hall
Chapter 97
Ezra POV:
We had been short on patrol runs for days now. Meeting Alex at the border, I fell in line with him as he scouted.
We hadn’t seen or heard anything in days, which was making me anxious. What was Jackson planning, and why was Andrei helping him. Andrei and Jackson never got along so I knew there had to be something going on with them to suddenly band together.
“Anything out of the ordinary?” I ask Alex through the link. Maddox was anxious he needed something to tame the fire inside him. Something to take the edge off.
“Nothing, Jackson’s Pack has been locked down, no one has stepped in or out of the territory, “Alex tells
me which makes me worry more, knowing he was biding his time and also planning for something, we step over the border and declare war, we could be walking into a trap.
“What about Andrei’s?”
“Same thing, they have gone silent, usually Andrei’s men along the border banter with ours but we haven’t seen them at all”
“Yeah well he was caught helping Jackson, the alliance broke the moment he went against us. Just tell our men to remain alert” I tell him running ahead of him. Maddox needed out, needed to be let loose. I give him the reigns he desperately wanted.
Maddox felt supercharged as he tackled a moose, taking it down effortlessly, he wasn’t even hungry he just wanted to K*ll something, and some sick part of me actually enjoyed watching him do it while he hunted for his next target. Something felt off with him, he was becoming angrier and angrier as he kept on K*lling animals in the forest.
‘What’s got into you?’ I ask him trying to figure out why he was so off.
‘Nothing, I just can’t feel Kora anymore, like she is masking herself from me’ he tells me as he keeps hunting but finding nothing to satisfy the hunger inside him. He goes back to the moose deciding to maul it to pieces.
Tearing its flesh from the bone, his fur drenched in blood and I dreaded having to go into town like this, though it wouldn’t be the first time I have walked into town drenched in blood but It made my pack anxious, they knew what sort of beast resided in me, know what sort of monster resided in my father.
He may be gone but that doesn’t mean they don’t remember especially the elders of the pack.
By the time he was done, blood was dripping off our fur, but his words earlier had me thinking, I couldn’t sense Kora either when Mateo and I were with her, couldn’t sense her at all.
The bond was complete, I could feel everything Kat felt, yet something was different. Kat felt stronger within herself and I never noticed how incomplete she was
until she bonded with us both, but Maddox was right. I couldn’t sense Kora either, making me wonder if Kat noticed her presence was gone. A whine escapes Maddox’s lips and he starts running. I wondered if Kat could feel her or if Kora was hiding from her.
‘You can see her tonight at the pack run’ I told Maddox as he started heading for town. It took us a while because Maddox kept hunting on the way, his hunger for death untameable. Finally stopping at the funeral home, Maddox handed me back control and I shifted, not a speck of skin showed under all the blood and I cursed at the sight of my body. I walk to the back door, gripping the door handle and walk in.
Good thing Mrs Crump dealt with dead bod*ies for a living but still she shrieks at the sight of me as I walk into the morgue at the back of the building. She was embalming a body and turned white as a sheet before recognising my scent. She flicks her long silver hair over her shoulder.
“Alpha” She gasps clutching her chest. She rips a white sheet off the rack, tossing it at me. Before pushing her glasses up her nose. She covers the dead body of one of our warriors with a sheet and I wrap the sheet around my waist she gave me.
“Thought you were one of the dead coming back for me ” She chuckles, she always had a dark sense of humour. I suppose you would or you wouldn’t choose this for a job.
“How is my Luna?” She asks, washing her hands, she leaves the tap running and I quickly wash mine and she squirts some soap on my hands. She was in her 6o’s and I had known her all my life. She was a good woman.
“Fine Ester, she will be okay, she is dealing with it rather well” I tell her before following her into the funeral palor, coffins lining the walls and urns, my feet leaving marks on the dark floorboards..
“Everyone deals with death differently, but she has you and Mateo ” She says, eyeing my neck with a smile on her lips. My face heats at her gaze.
“Was hard to contain my excitement when I recognised you, I could smell him all over you, fills my heart with joy knowing you have let him in” She says, making me look at her.
“Ah yes, Alpha I have known for a long time, most of us older ones have, that boy has loved you since he was child himself, about time Maddox calmed enough to let him in, I have waited for this day. I am just glad I was alive to see it” She says walking behind her desk.
“So you think the pack will accept it?” I ask her and she nods ducking down behind her desk.
“Of course we are all family Ezra, always have been, that is what packs are” She says retrieving a box from the drawer. She places it on the desk before removing the lid to reveal a silver urn containing Shirley’s ashes. She grabs a smaller box from beside the urn holding it out to me but I shake my head, my arms were coated in blood I didn’t want to risk touching anything.
Ester realises that and opens it to show me. Inside the smaller box was Kat’s pumpkin necklace but Mateo organised some of her mothers ashes to be made into a gemstone pendant. She lifts the sapphire heart up to show me that it sat beside the pumpkin.
I give her nod knowing Kat would love it before letting her wrap everything back up in the protective wrap it was in before placing it in the box with the urn.
“Can you find something to place it in, I don’t want to touch anything” I tell her though I walked bloody footprints through the place, Ester never mentioned it. This woman was one in a million; she buried and cremated nearly every member of my family and Mateo’s.
There was nothing left of my father to bury by the time I was done with him, but my mother both of Mateo’s and his father, I didn’t know how she did it, she had one of the hardest jobs, not only did she bury her own husband and one of her sons she never ever closed and worked 7 days a week and never closed her doors.
She hands me a plastic bag before putting her arms out. “Come on, I am already covered in fluids, blood doesn’t faze me” She says and I lean down letting
her wrap her arms around me. She pats my back gently and I kiss her cheek before standing up right.
“Congratulations Alpha on finding your mates, I wish you all the happiness, you too Maddox” She says bowing slightly before walking back out the back towards the back door. She holds it open for m e and I hold the bag tighter before handing her the sheet I borrowed.
She takes it before I dart off for the trees. I ran straight home before walking out the back and grabbing the hose. I placed the bag on the table so it wouldn’t get w*et before turning the tap on. Mateo, hearing me return, walks outside before taking the hose from me.
“Turn around” He says and I flinch as the cold water sprays on me. Mateo rinses all the blood off from me.
“Where is Kat?” I ask him as he turns the tap off.
“Asleep still, wait here I will grab you a towel” He says ducking inside before returning with a grey towel. He tosses it to me before going and grabbing
the box out of the bag. He checks the contents before tucking Shirley’s ashes under his arm and hanging onto the necklace.
“She will love it” I tell him kissing his neck when I come up behind him, he shivers before nodding his head.
“Go wake her, I need to shower” I tell him and he nods before heading inside. I follow him inside and back through the packhouse. He heads upstairs with me following behind him. I watch as he opens the box with her necklace before brushing her hair aside while she sleeps, she stirs waking up, she smiles sleepily up at him and he leans down and kisses her lips. My c**k twitched at the sight of them when Alex’s voice flitted through my head.
“Ah Alpha?” He says.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Um I think I just saw Luna’s father head toward the border, should I grab him?” He tells me.
“Which border?”
“Looks like he is trying to get into Andrei’s Pack, he is on no mans land at the moment” “Grab him don’t let him cross, drag him back here if you have to” I tell him before refocusing on the room. Now what would Derrick want with Andrei? I thought to myself.