by G. Bailey
I snort and run my hand through my blonde hair. Sure...I might not have brushed it a lot, but the unruly waves don’t want to be claimed.
“I won’t go, get a mate and never come back. You know that, right?” I ask him, sliding myself out of my warm bed and into the much colder room. Snowflakes line my bedroom window that is slightly cracked open, and I walk over, pushing it shut before looking back at Jesper. He meets my gaze with his bright blue eyes, but he says nothing.
“Whoever finds out you’re their mate is going to want you to start fresh. Without this place and me following you around. I might be eight, but I’m not stupid,” he replies. Floorboards creak under my feet as I walk over to him and pull him in for a hug, resting my head on top of his. The truth is, I can’t promise him much. The males in mating have control over the females, and to resist that control is painful, so I’m told. That’s why the moon goddess is the only one who can choose a mate for us, because if it went wrong, it would be a disaster for all involved.
“If my mate does, then I will figure out a way to get him to let me see you. The moon goddess will not give me a mate I am going to hate. All mates love each other,” I tell him what I’ve heard.
“I don’t like goodbyes,” he replies, pulling away from me. “So I won’t come with you today. I won’t.”
“I get it, kid,” I say as he walks to the stairs. He never looks back, and I’m proud of him, even if it hurts to watch him make another choice that only adults should have to make. I head back into my small bedroom, which has a single bed with white sheets and a squeaky mattress, and one chest of drawers. I grab my towels and head down the stairs to the only bathroom in the old, very quirky house. The bathroom is through the first door in the corridor, and I shut the door behind me, not bothering to switch the light on as it is bright enough in here from the light pouring through the thin windows at the top of the room. Peeling dolphin-covered wallpaper lines every wall, and the porcelain clawfoot bathtub is right in the middle of the room. A cream toilet and a row of worn white cabinets line the other side, with a sink in the middle of them. Hanging on the back of the door is the dress I have dreaded to see and yet wanted to because it’s the nicest thing I am likely ever going to wear.
The mating dress is a custom-made dress for every woman in the pack, paid for by the alpha to celebrate the joy-filled day, and each is made to worship the moon goddess herself. Mine is no different. My dress is pure silk and softer than I could have imagined as I run my fingers over it. The hem of the dress is lined with sparkling white crystals, and the top part of the dress is tight around the chest and stomach. The bottom half falls like a ballgown, heavier than the top and filled with dozens of silk layers that shimmer as I move them.
As I stare at the dress, the urge to run away fills me. The urge to run to the sea and swim to the wall to see if there is any way to get out. Any way to escape the choices I have been given in life.
Mike was right, I can’t see the light in the pack, because the darkness smothers too much. It takes too much.
I step away until the back of my legs hit the cold bathtub, and I sink down to the floor, wrapping my arms around my legs and resting my head on top of my knees.
One way or another, the mating ceremony is going to change everything for me.
“Do hurry, Irin. We have a four-hour drive, and this is not a day you should be late like every other day of your life!” Mike shouts through the door, banging on it twice.
“On it!” I shout back, crawling to my feet and pushing all thoughts of trying to escape to the back of my mind. It was a stupid idea, anyway. The pack lands are heavily guarded, and they would scent me a mile off. After a quick bath to wipe the dirt off me and wash my hair, I brush my wavy hair until it falls to my waist in bouncy locks, even when I know the wind will whip them up into a storm as soon as I’m outside. The dress is easy to slip on, and I wipe the mirror of the steam to look at myself after pulling my boots on.
My green eyes, the colour of moss mixed with specks of silver, look brighter this morning against my pale skin, framed by blonde, almost golden, hair. I look as terrified as I feel about today, but this is what the moon goddess wants, and she is our ancestor. The first wolf to howl at the moon and receive the power to shift.
She will not let me down today.
I nod at myself, like a total loser, and walk out of the bathroom to find Mike and my other foster brother waiting for me. Mike huffs and walks away, mumbling something about a lamb to the slaughter under his breath, and I look at Daniel instead. His brown eyes are wide as he looks at me from head to toe, likely realising for the first time the best friend he has is actually a girl. He is used to me in jeans or baggy clothes, following him through the muddy forest and not giving a crap if every single one of my nails is broken by the end.
And I never wear dresses. Not like this. Daniel runs his hand through his muddy-brown hair that needs a cut before he smiles.
“Shit, you look different, Irin,” he comments with a thick voice. Daniel is one year older than me, and when he was tested for his power last year, he was found to be an extremely powerful wolf. He is next in line to be a beta if anyone dies, which would be a big thing for a foster kid to be a beta. Either way, he is free of this place, and who knows, he might even be my mate. A small part of me hopes so because Daniel is my best friend, and it would be so easy to spend my life with him. I don’t know about romance, as I have never seen him like that. He is good-looking in a rugged way, so I guess we could figure it out.
“Nervous about today?” I ask him, as this is his second mating ceremony, and it’s likely he might find a mate. It’s usually the second or third ceremony where males find their mates, but for females, it’s always the first.
He clears his throat and meets my eyes. “Yeah, but who wouldn’t be?”
“Me. I’m totally cool with it,” I sarcastically reply. He laughs and walks over, pulling me into a tight hug like he always does. This time, I hear his wolf rumble in his chest, the vibrations shaking down my arms.
“If you’re mated to a tool, I’ll help you kill him and hide the body. Got it?” he tells me, and I laugh at his joke until he leans back, placing his hands on my shoulder. He moves one of his hands and tips my chin up so I’m looking at him. “I’m not joking, Irin. I don’t care who it is, they aren’t fucking around with you.”
“Mates are always a perfect match,” I reply, twitching my nose. “Why would you think—”
He lowers his voice as he cuts me off. “You don’t live in the city like I do, and I can tell you now, mates are not a perfect match. Not even close. The moon goddess...well, I don’t know what she is doing, but you need to be cautious. Very cautious because of your background.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I demand.
He shrugs. “Guess I didn’t want you to overthink it and try to run. I can’t save you from what they’d do if you ran, but I can protect you from a shitty mate. I.e., threaten to break every bone in his body if he hurts you.”
“Daniel—” I’m cut off as Mike comes back into the corridor and clears his throat.
“Get in the car, now. It looks bad on me when we are late!” he huffs, holding the front door open. Daniel uses his charming smile to make Mike’s lips twitch in laughter as I hurry to the front door and step out into the freezing cold snow. It sinks into my dress and shoes, but I welcome the icy stillness to the air, forcing me to stop over worrying for a second.
“Always daydreaming, this one,” Mike mutters as he passes me, talking to Daniel at his side. “Her eyes are going to get stuck looking up in the clouds one day.”
“At least I’d be seeing a pretty view for the rest of my life,” I call after Mike as I hurry after them down the path to the old car waiting by the road. We don’t use cars often, only today and travelling to funerals is permitted, mostly because the cars are old junk that make a lot of noise and take up fuel. Daniel pulls the yellow rusty door to the car open, and I slide insi
de to the opposite seat before doing up my seatbelt as Daniel and Mike get in the car. Mike drives and Daniel sits next to me rather than shotgun.
About ten minutes into the drive, I realise why Daniel sits next to me as my hands shake and he covers my hand with his.
Please, moon goddess, choose Daniel or someone decent. I don’t want to become a mate murderer in my first year as a wolf.
Flickering, multicoloured lights drift across my eyes as I wake up, finding my head lying on Daniel’s broad shoulder, his arm wrapped around my waist, and it’s so unexpected, I jolt up, almost hitting my head against Daniel’s chin. He moves super fast, with reflexes his wolf gives him, and just misses my head. I slide out of Daniel’s arm, and he clears his throat, straightening up on his seat and running a hand through his thick hair. Rather than talk about that awkward moment, I turn and look out the window, frost stuck to its edges, to see we are driving down by a cliff that overlooks the glittering sea between Wales and Ireland. I’ve been to this place once when I was fifteen on a school trip to see where a mating ceremony is held and what we should expect for our future.
If anywhere in this world made me believe in magic, it was this place. A place that has been in my dreams for so many years. For most wolves, this is the place they will meet their wolves and start their new life. For me, it’s a way of escaping my past and finally finding out what the moon goddess wants for me. It can’t be this life I have, the torture at the hands of pack leaders, the pain of being an outcast with no family.
I catch Mike’s eyes in the middle mirror and see a little sadness in them like always, because he has heard and seen all the horrors the pack has forced on me throughout the years. Protecting me was something he has struggled to do, because, at the end of the day, he couldn’t be everywhere.
“Nearly here, aren’t we?” Daniel interrupts my thoughts, and I’m thankful for it. That’s a dark memory lane to go down. “They should let you wear a coat over the dress, it’s freezing.”
“I’ve never cared about the cold,” I remind him, gazing back out of the window as we pull up in the gravelled area by the cliff. Several groups of people are standing around or walking down the stone cliff pathway to the beach that is marked with fire lanterns on wooden poles every few metres, making the walk look eerie and frightening.
“You can do this, Irin. You’ve been brave ever since you were found in the woods, half-starved, dirty and alone. Look at you now,” Mike tells me as he turns the car off, meeting my line of sight through the mirror. “You are a woman this pack will be honoured to have. Now hold your head high, put the past away and show them. Show them who you are, Irin.”
My cheeks feel red and hot as I wipe a few tears away and force my hands to stop shaking as I grab the handle of the door. I can’t tell him, not without my voice catching, that I will miss Mike and his words of wisdom. His kindness and general attitude towards life, the ways he has shown me how to be strong even at my lowest points. Pulling the door handle open, I step out onto the lightly snow-covered ground, and the cold, brittle sea air slams into me, making me shiver from head to toe. I can taste the salt in the air and smell the water of the sea and hear it crashing against the sand below us. The wind whips my hair around my face as Daniel walks past me, looking back once before he walks down the path to join the other men at the beach where they have to stand. Mike moves to my side, and we simply wait as all the men leave for the path down to the beach, while the women, us, wait at the top for our time to descend.
Some parents linger for a while before they walk to the edge of the cliff in the distance where there’s a massive crowd of spectators waiting to watch the magic of the mating ceremony. Mike leaves eventually to join them, never glancing back at me. The girls all gather, pretending I don’t exist like they always have done since I turned up at their school. A small, tiny part of me hurts that not a single one of the forty-two girls in my class who have known me six years even looks my way.
I’m invisible to them, to my pack, to everyone.
Rubbing my chest, I gulp when the bell rings. A single, beautiful bell ring fills the air to start the beginning of the mating ceremony, and tension rings through the air as everyone goes silent. Like ducks in a row, the women all line up, and of course I move right to the back, behind Lacey Ravensword, someone who has never even looked my way, even though she is considered a low potential mate because of her father trying to run away from the pack, and he was killed when she was a toddler. Even she, with her family basically betrayers to the alpha himself, is higher ranked than I am. She flicks her dark brown hair over her shoulder, glancing back at me and sneering once with her beautiful face before turning away.
The cold seeps into my bones by the time the line moves enough for me to walk, and my legs feel stiff with every step, the nerves making me feel so close to passing out right here and now. Every single step off the cliff and down the path feels torturous until I see the beach.
Then everything fades into nothing but pure magic. In the centre of the sandy yellow beach is a massive archway, sculpted into two wolves with their noses touching where they meet in the middle. The wolves are so high the tips of their ears touch the heavy clouds above us, and icicles line the grooves of the fur on their snow-tipped backs. In the centre of the archway, one of the first females steps into the pool of water under the archway, sinking all the way under completely before rising and swimming slowly through the archway. The water suddenly glows green, lit up with magic from the moon goddess herself.
The young lady with long black hair climbs out of the pool on the other side, her entire body glowing green with magic, and the magic slowly slips from her skin, turning itself into a swirling ball of energy and shooting away from her. It flies into the crowd of wolf shifter men waiting on the other side, all of them too hard to really see from here, and there are cheers when the mate or mates are no doubt found. I can’t see who the female goes to as the cliff winds around, but I hope she is happy with her new mates. Daniel’s warnings about mates not always being happy fills my mind, making me more nervous than ever before, because what if he is right? What if I end up with a mate who I hate and he hates me?
I trip on a small rock, slamming down onto the path and hissing as my hand is cut. I look up as Lacey turns back, and then she just laughs, leaving me on my knees on the path as she carries on behind the queue. Tears fill my eyes that I refuse to let fall, and I stand up, seeing my dress is now dirty with sand and mud, and I lift my hand to see blood dripping down my palm to my wrist from a long cut. Sighing, I close my palm and let my blood drop against the wet sand as I know I have to carry on down this path.
What feels like forever later, I get to the beach and look across to see Lacey waiting behind three other classmates, just as one of them steps into the water. Four left before my fate is decided. I’m tempted to slip my shoes off, to enjoy the feel of the cold sand under my bare feet, but I keep my boots on. I don’t want to lose them. I walk over the beach, feeling so many eyes watching and judging me. I refuse to look at the men on the other side, knowing the new alpha will be there, and seeing him brings up so many dark memories. He was just the alpha’s son back then, back when we were fifteen and he tricked me by pretending to be my friend.
Now he is the alpha, at only eighteen, after he ripped his father to pieces four months ago. The pack is scared of him, but me?
He terrifies me.
Keeping my eyes down, I only look up to see Lacey step into the water with perfect poise and elegance I could never master in my wildest dreams. She sinks under the water, and it glows bright green, and this close, I can feel the magic like it’s pulling me towards it. The water is enchanting, and I can’t take my eyes off it until the glow fades, and I glance up to see the magic surrounding Lacey as she stands on the other side of the pool. The magic leaves her body and gathers in a ball, before slamming left and straight into the chest of one of the men near the front.
Not just any man.
Daniel.<
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He stands in pure shock, looking at the green magic bouncing around his skin before he looks up at Lacey, and then he turns to me. Our eyes meet, and silently I try to tell him it’s okay.
Even when it feels like a storm has just started in my chest and that storm is going to take every bit of hope from me.
Daniel doesn’t move for a long time, and Lacey follows his gaze back to me, her eyes narrowing as I quickly look away and back to the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lacey walk to Daniel, and he places his hand on her back, leading her away from the crowd and towards the pathway to the crowds of people waiting at the top of the cliff to celebrate with them. To cheer about their mating.
And now it’s my turn.
Everything is silent, even the violent sea and snow-filled sky seem to still for this moment as I take a step forward and my foot sinks into the warm water. It instantly glows green, so bright it hurts my eyes, and pulls me in, my body almost betraying my fear-filled mind as I sink into the water until my head falls under. The green light becomes blinding as I float in the water, seeing nothing but light, until a voice fills my mind.
“You are my chosen, Irin. My chosen.”
Something appears in my hand as I’m pushed up to the surface, and I gasp as I rise out of the water on the other side, almost stumbling to my feet on the sand, seeing the green magic swirling around my body in thick waves. It bounces, almost violently, in swirls and waves before pulling away from me into a giant ball of green magic, much bigger than anyone else’s.
Why the hell do I have to stand out in this of all things? With so many people watching? I can’t bear to look or hear anyone as I watch the sphere of magic spin in the air before shooting across the sand right into the man in the middle of the pack.
A man of my nightmares.
