I had always believed in love…at least for an Alpha. I believed an Alpha was only as strong as his Luna beside him. Without her…he was lost.
I had seen packs torn apart by Alphas who had lost their true mate and refused to heal their heart and find their second mate. The Alpha would be driven to insanity and would turn on everyone they once loved, only seeing them as the enemy.
I had experienced this myself. My father lost my mother and refused to look for his second mate. He refused to heal, and it turned him cold. He no longer wanted anything to do with anyone that reminded him of my mother. And, unfortunately for me, I looked almost exactly like her.
My mother was an amazing Luna, and I learned everything from her. My mother believed that a Luna needed to be as strong as her Alpha, but also kind and compassionate. A strong Luna had to be many things: She had to be a fighter so that she could fight right alongside her Alpha, but she also needed to know when she should stay back and help others. A Luna needed to know how to manage herself in stressful situations.
My mother wanted me to become one of those strong Lunas, so my training started at the age of six, when my mother put me in tumbling/gymnastics class to help me learn flexibility. When I was ten, I started to learn Karate and mixed martial arts to help with hand-to-hand combat. When I turned thirteen, I learned how to cook and clean and manage most of the chores in the house. I was not their maid; my mother was simply teaching me how to be indispensable. Also, when I turned thirteen, I met my wolf, Freya, for the first time. She was an amazing and powerful wolf.
When a pup turned sixteen, they started helping with pack chores. We had no Omegas working beneath us; everyone started at the bottom and worked their way to the top, including the future Alpha, Beta, and Luna. This was also the time we started our defense training and we gained the ability to transform into our wolf forms.
I lost my mother when I was eighteen in a rogue attack. She died protecting my father. He was never able to forgive himself for that.
After my mother died, my grandmother, who was the spiritual healer of our pack, begged my father to allow himself to be healed so that he could go find his second-chance mate, but he thought he was stronger than that. He felt it would betray my mother’s spirit.
Each day became harder and harder.
I ended up moving out with my grandmother to make it easier on my father. I continued my training and learned that I, too, carried the healing gene, only I was a different type of healer, one that I would learn more about when I got older. I also learned that I had premonitions. I still did not understand how they were triggered or how far into the future each vision was, but they could be helpful or harmful depending on the situation.
As long as I stayed out of my father’s way, I lived a pretty happy life.
Shortly after I turned twenty-one, my true mate found me. In the beginning, my true mate was like any other wolf who had found their true mate. I thought I was leaving for a better life. My father could not get rid of me fast enough.
One night, while getting intimate with my true mate, I had my first harmful premonition, unaware that my true mate was able to see what I was seeing just because he was touching me.
It was a vision of my mate killing my father and taking over his pack. I begged and pleaded with my mate to not kill my father, but he refused to listen to me. My mate was power hungry and saw this as his golden opportunity to get more. We ended up fighting that night. He defeated me and tied me up so that I could not warn anyone about what was about to happen.
The next day, he challenged my father to a duel, and just like my premonition, he proceeded to kill my father and gain the title of Alpha of our pack.
I was devastated. How could my true mate do this to me? I thought he had loved me. But instead I learned that he loved power and tormenting anyone who was weaker than him.
Over the next year, my true mate tried many inventive ways to force premonitions out of me, using them to build his power over other packs. He became fearless and practically invincible.
Finally, I built up the strength to do the one thing that I thought would weaken him:
I rejected him.