His Forever Mate

by Jenny Tia

  I struggled to keep my surprise from showing on my face. So Julian had been right. My Supreme Alpha had been keeping something from me. I bit back the annoyance welling up inside me and followed my Alpha as he made his way over to the creepy portrait of Jebediah Hughes hanging on the wall. The usual shudder ran through me as I gazed up at it, and this time, Alpha Hughes seemed to notice. He chuckled and gave me a pat on the back.

  “Your instincts are good.”

  I cocked my head to the side, not catching his meaning.

  “You’ll see. But first—what do you know about shifter and human relations, before they died out?”

  I shrugged. “They were positive, right?”

  “Hm. So-so.” Alpha Hughes tilted his hand back and forth. “Life was peaceful. We interrelated…”

  “There were shifters with human mates. Julian told me he has an uncle who still hasn’t recovered from the loss of his human mate.”

  Alpha Hughes lowered his head and sighed. “The pain from that kind of loss… It’s indescribable.”

  I paused, waiting for him to go on, but he seemed to become preoccupied. I think I understood why. I could easily empathize with those who had lost their mates. If I ever lost Julian… I put a hand on my Alpha’s shoulder and squeezed. He looked up and shook his head.

  “Sorry. I just…” He cleared his throat and nodded in thanks. “Where was I?”

  “The, uh…interrelations.”

  “Right. Not all humans were happy with the procreation occurring between our species. The human governors of state met with the wolf shifter pack Alphas and began debates around outlawing interspecies relationships. At least, between humans and all other mammal shifters who could impregnate a human female.”

  “Female? Why only females?”

  “Humans don’t have alphas, betas, and omegas. They’re just male and female, and only the females could fall pregnant.”

  “Seriously? Wow, that’s…odd.”

  “To us, yes, but for the humans, we were odd. However, the point is, they didn’t want us breeding with them.”

  “Were there issues with those births?” I frowned. I’d never heard of humans breeding with wolf shifters. There was a hell of a lot of stuff missing in our history lessons.

  “No—no issues at all. At least, human and wolf hybrids seemed healthy and strong, from what I remember. I can’t speak for other species. But for whatever reason, these human supremacists in their government insisted it was a weakening of their gene pool, and they called to make it illegal and punishable by extreme measures. Generally speaking, the wolf shifters in power resisted making any such laws.”

  “So it didn’t become law, right?” I felt confused. I’d never heard of that happening. Surely I would have known about that.

  “No, it was still in motion when the humans died out. But what’s important is that there was one high ranking Alpha wolf shifter who also pushed for it. He agreed that our gene pool shouldn’t mix with that of the humans. He believed in a pure race of wolf shifters and spoke of how the humans weakened our genetics and made us impure. He was all for the banning of interspecies procreation. It soon became obvious he hated the human race, he felt shifters were superior and there was no need for humans… That they were ruining the planet.”

  “And then the disease hit.” I frowned as the pieces started to fall into place.

  “Mm-hm. The disease hit, spreading so quickly it seemed manmade. But who could have formulated something so powerful and toxic to take out an entire species?” Alpha Hughes’s voice shook as he spoke. “Of course, there were rumors about who could have done it, and a lot of them came back to that one Alpha.”

  “Who was it? Have I heard of him?”

  Alpha Hughes nodded. “Oh yes.”

  I followed his gaze to the painting of Jebediah Hughes. The eyes felt like they burrowed right inside me, and they sent a wave of nausea through my body. My mind whirred. The years added up. Alpha Hughes had been about fifty years old when the disease had begun to wipe out the humans, and he didn’t ascend to power as Supreme Alpha until after that. So, Jebediah had been in power then, as he had been for decades leading up to the disease.

  My voice came out as a whisper. “Your father?”

  Alpha Hughes sighed. He dug into his pockets and pulled out a set of tiny, antique keys and handed them to me. “Here, hold these.”

  I did as he asked and fiddled with the cool, round metal as I watched him lift the painting of Jebediah off the wall. I gasped when I saw a small, antique safe set into the wall.

  “Go ahead,” Alpha Hughes said as he set the painting down on the ground.

  I stepped forward and gingerly inserted a key into the old, green-tinged metal lock. It snapped open with a satisfying click, and I pulled the door open to find a dusty, leather-bound book. It was so thick even Alpha Hughes grunted as he lifted it out of the safe.

  He met my eyes and raised his eyebrows as he unraveled the leather tie around its middle, and then, with shaky hands, passed the book to me.

  It felt unnaturally cold, and a shiver passed through me. I looked from Hughes to the book, and back again. His hands still shook as he reached out and flicked the book open to a random page.

  Immediately, I felt ill. Illustrations of decapitated humans filled the page, along with passages of ramblings about unclean and worthless life. I swallowed and flipped to another page. Again, writings of hate, and comic illustrations showing human women in depraved sexual acts, scrawled across with thick writing that screamed unclean.

  Along the sides of the pages at the front of the journal were numbers and symbols I didn’t recognize. As I flipped further through the book, they began to take up more space on the pages until the last third of the book was predominantly those symbols with just a few drawings of humans dying in gruesome ways.

  I looked at Alpha Hughes and saw the pained look on his face. “This was my father’s journal. I remember him writing in it while he sat at that very desk, every single day. Late into the night.” He motioned behind him to where he now took office as the Supreme Alpha. My chest hurt at the thought of the legacy we were stepping into.

  “He must have been crazy. But surely he couldn’t have…”

  Hughes thumped his forefinger against the page, right in the middle of the symbols I didn’t understand. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No. It looks like math but way beyond my comprehension.”

  Hughes poked the page again. “These are chemical formulas. Toxic formulas.”

  The gravity of his words sat heavy in the air. He clasped his hands and left me holding the book. I looked down and felt the cold of it spreading through my hands.

  “Is this…what I think it is?” My voice was low but strong. I needed an answer.

  Hughes nodded. “I believe that Jebediah… My father, may have been responsible for creating the pathogen that wiped out the human race.”

  I slammed the book shut and let out a grave sigh. “If that’s true…”

  “Yes, if. I still don’t know for sure. We don’t know much about the airborne toxin or pathogen that caused the lethal disease. But I have a team looking into it and matching anything they find with the formulas in there.” He motioned to the book. It felt so heavy, like it had become a lead weight. “If they find anything even remotely resembling what my father wrote, then we can assume he was responsible.”

  “How long have you had this book?” I asked. The words came out faster and harsher than I’d expected, and I wondered if it was Julian’s lingering energy that forced them out like that. Frankly, I liked it.

  “Years. I’d flicked through it. I’d already resigned to the fact my father was a madman, so the species supremacy in the book didn’t come as much of a shock, and I just assumed the numbers and formulas were chaotic nonsense from his deranged mind. I had no reason to look further into it, until now. As soon as the humans resurfaced and started talking about revenge…”

  I held up the book. “
So as it turns out, they have a good reason to want revenge. We did hurt them. We almost killed them—all of them.”

  Alpha Hughes nodded somberly.

  “Imagine if it had been the other way around,” he mumbled, taking the book from my hands and placing it back in the safe. “If they’d wiped us out and we were the only shifters left. What would you do to avenge the deaths of your loved ones? Your mate?”

  I stepped back and watched as Alpha Hughes locked the safe, and then hoisted the huge portrait of the evil man back onto the wall. I didn’t answer his question, but I knew what my answer was.

  I would have done whatever it took.

  18

  Julian

  “I’m itchy!” Stef scratched at his arms as his eyes flicked all over the café, glancing everywhere but me.

  “What’s wrong? Do you have a rash or something?” I looked him over as he rolled up the sleeves of his dark blue hospital scrubs and ran his palms over his forearms. His skin was prickling with goosebumps, but there was no redness. Even though it was only mid-May, hot wind blew in from the street, bringing in the scent of spices from the market stalls outside, and a heat that made my own skin prick.

  “Huh? What? No, I’m just so restless. Don’t you feel it?” He frowned at me like I was insane.

  I knew exactly what he meant and in truth, I felt it too. Alpha Truitt had put a ban on pack runs or any running in the woods. The whole town was on edge with heightened instincts and pure wolf energy pulsing through us. I’d been dealing with it by taking stress-supportive mushrooms that kept my wolf calm.

  Stef, on the other hand, was guzzling down caffeine. “I just don’t get it. Why would Truitt just ban runs like this? Why isn’t he telling us why?”

  I shrugged and sipped my iced hibiscus tea, grateful for the cool drink as the hot breeze blew around us. “I heard he’s opening up a section of the forest for short runs soon.”

  “Oh yeah, I heard that. Guarded land. He’s posting a bunch of Goldleaf and Everglow protectors there to keep an eye on us while we run. Truitt seems very freaked out about something. And the whole town is overrun with Everglow protectors.” Stef rubbed his arms again and took a gulp of his coffee. Caffeine was the last thing he needed, but I wasn’t about to tell him that when he was so on edge. “And I heard they’re doing the same thing in Glendale too. Have you been talking to Casius?”

  “Mm-hm. Almost every day.” I clenched my toes and literally bit my tongue to stop myself from spilling what I knew. Admittedly, that wasn’t much. Casius had been stressed and clearly wanted to tell me what was going on but hadn’t said a word about the human thing since I’d left Everglow. Still, it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. We were being guarded because they perceived the threat from the humans to be real.

  “Well?” Stef leaned forward and looked at me with desperation all over his face. “Does he know anything? Please, Julian. I’m going crazy not knowing what is going on!”

  “He hasn’t been telling me what’s going on up there, but he seems really, really stressed out. So…something is happening.”

  “Something, huh?” Stef squinted and pursed his lips. “And you’re not wondering what that something might be?”

  “Of course I am.” I tried to wave him off, but he knew me too well.

  He pointed at me. “You have theories.”

  The words were right on the tip of my tongue. I hated holding anything back from my friend, especially when I knew that giving him even just a little bit of information would help him deal with the restrictions on the runs.

  Everything felt like a pressure cooker; missing Casius, the restrictions, my wolf clawing right at the surface of my skin, the pleading eyes of my best friend drilling into me… It was too much. I said a silent apology to Casius for betraying his trust and opened my mouth to tell Stefan about the humans.

  But I didn’t have to.

  I jumped in my seat when a siren sounded through the speakers of the café. And then a voice boomed loud and clear.

  “All flesh is not the same flesh. There is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts!”

  A gasp ran through the café and the people in the street looked up, as though the sound were coming from the sky.

  “What the fuck?” Stefan whispered, looking at me with a deeply furrowed brow.

  My wolf cowered as the café filled with the rumble of motorcycles revving nearby. The voice shouted through the speakers again.

  “We were once seen as the damned and wrongly condemned! But now it is time for redemption. It is time to rid the world of beasts!”

  My stomach dropped. The rumble of motorcycles became deafening, and our cups rattled on the surface of the table.

  “Get down!” I cried to Stefan, grabbing him by the shoulders and hauling him to the ground with me as I slid under the table just as a crack of thunder broke above us. But it wasn’t from storm clouds—it was the sound of a barrage of bullets breaking the glass of the window and shooting through the café. Shards of glass rained down around us and cries of fear pierced our ears.

  Stefan lay on his side, facing me with wide, startled eyes. He looked like a scared deer. Which was exactly how I felt. Shocked. Stunned. Fucking terrified.

  As the grumble of the motorcycles passed by, everything became still. Almost. It felt like the ground was still shaking, until I realized it was my body trembling in fear.

  The voice boomed through the speaker again, but this time it sounded like it was in an echo chamber. “This is just a taste of what is to come. Your days are numbered. We will rise!”

  Screams from outside faded. Everything was eerily silent. I felt like I was underwater. I didn’t even want to breathe. Stefan and I stared at each other, unsure what to do, but eventually, the tapping of shoes rushing across the stone floor of the café, the clink of crockery being picked up, and the sobs of our packmates broke us from our fear-induced disorientation.

  We helped each other up and embraced in a tight hug until our trembling eased. When we pulled apart, I noticed specks of red dotting his arms. Tiny pieces of glass had cut him.

  “Are you okay?” Fear rushed back, and I looked him over, turning him around to make sure he wasn’t injured anywhere else.

  “I’m okay. I think I’m okay. Are you?” He did the same for me, patting me down, tutting when he found the same tiny cuts on my arms and legs.

  He shook pieces of glass out of his quiff and glanced around at the rest of the café. No one was bleeding, but everyone was shaken up and tending to each other.

  “Is anybody injured? Does anybody need medical attention?” Stefan asked the patrons.

  Nobody spoke, just mumbled and shook their heads or continued sobbing, all while huddled together in comfort.

  Stefan glanced outside. “I need to get to the hospital. If there have been any casualties, they’ll need all nurses on staff—”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Of course.” Stefan took my hand and we crunched over the fallen glass, out toward the street. We squeezed through the frame of the café door, careful not to scrape ourselves on the shards sticking out from the wood.

  We got all of three feet down the street before two, huge alphas blocked our path. Their silver uniforms sent a strange feeling of comfort through me. Where the appearance of alpha Everglow protectors would have made me cringe and scowl in the past, now they just reminded me of the sense of safety Casius gave me. Stefan probably didn’t feel the same. I felt him tighten his grip on my hand, and he let out a low, quiet growl.

  “Everybody to the Den,” one of the alpha’s announced.

  “On whose orders?” Stefan asked.

  “Alpha Truitt’s.”

  “Julian?” I spun around at the sound of a familiar voice, and I squinted to find it belonged to Mikel, the alpha who had escorted me back to Goldleaf.

  “Mikel?”

  “Thank god I found you! Are you okay? Have you spoken to Casius?” His voice sounded stressed, to say the
least.

  “What? No. Why?”

  “Get to the Den. Call Casius to tell him what happened and that you’re safe.”

  I wet my lips and nodded. “Okay. Alright. Come on, Stef.”

  “I need to get to the hospital, I’m staff—”

  The alphas pointed in the opposite direction. “The hospital has been evacuated to the Den. You want to help? That’s where the patients are.”

  “C’mon.” I wrapped my arm around Stef’s shoulder and urged him to turn around and follow the crowd hurrying to the Den. He relented. He leaned into me as we dashed down the street. Once we were out of view of the alphas, I reached into my pocket for my phone.

  “Casius?” Stef asked as I dialed.

  “Yeah.” My voice shook as I listened to the ringing.

  “Good idea.”

  It rang out. I tried again as we turned onto the main street and joined the throng of people heading to the Den. It rang out again. My stomach sank. One more time… And still no answer.

  “He’s probably busy with all of this,” Stef said.

  “Mm.”

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  The Den was a huge, domed, stone structure in the center of town, surrounded by a tall fortress wall. It was one of the oldest buildings in Goldleaf and had been used as a Moon Worship temple in ancient times but had just been used as a community center for town hall meetings for as long as I’d been alive.

  “I’ve never seen so many people here,” I mumbled as I took in the shaken crowd piling into the building. The air was practically vibrating. I could smell the terror on all of us. Even the protectors who were posted every few feet had a hint of fear in their scent. There was an equal number of silver and gold uniforms in the crowd—as many Everglow protectors as local Goldleaf protectors chaperoning people into the Den.

  “This way, please.” An Everglow alpha motioned for Stef and me to hurry through the main doors.

  “Obviously,” Stef grumbled. “Where else are we going to go? Around the back for a cheeky cigarette?”