Chapter 26: A long time and a lot of things

*Three years later*

**Nat**

I was excited about my graduation. God knows how hard it was to get there. I hadn't seen him in three years. Life separated us, but I felt his absence every day. I no longer thought about him and the promises we made, one after the other, were broken.

Today I remembered him with gratitude, if it weren't for him, I might never have gotten here. But that was all. A week before the championship in Russia, he sent me a message confirming his participation. I couldn't go. Three days before, my mother was hospitalized. She was very sick. I was her only relative. I received a call from a friend of hers. I canceled the ticket and went to Tokyo.

Despite everything, I took care of her until the end. Mat was very upset at the time, but he said he understood. I found out online that his team had won. I was very happy. I sent him a message, but I didn't get a reply. He must have been celebrating with his friends.

In the winter, I received a message that he would be in Japan. I had been alone for a long time. Haruto was very good to me. He knew I wasn't in love with him, but maybe, with time, we could have been happy. I didn't want to let my life be conditioned to a date every six months. I wanted someone by my side every day.

I didn't want to hurt Mat, but I certainly couldn't have him. So, I really thought about starting a relationship with Haruto. Yuki insisted on this idea. He said we would be a family, that was what I wanted: a real family. I wasn't part of Mat's world.

Maybe it was part of Haruto's world. Until the unexpected happened, I was cursed, certainly. I didn't deserve it or maybe I did. My life was turned upside down. Mat tried to contact me several times last year, but I didn't answer and, desperate and embarrassed, I deleted his number. I wanted her to remember me, in a positive and beautiful way, as we were for each other, the first love. I would receive my diploma and, unfortunately, I knew it would stay on the wall as a reminder of a good time. After graduation, I would move to Russia and finish the rest of my life, fulfilling what destiny had in store for me, hidden in a small town with only the memory that it really must have been love, but it's all over now. I was very ashamed of what happened. I would never want Haruto, Yuki or Mat to know about it. I would let them think that I went to work in Russia, was the victim of an accident and died. I had prepared letters for my friends and Dmitry would post them.

When I activated my playlist, I went straight to the song I chose to remember him by: It Must Have Been Love. Goodbye, love. This diploma is also yours.

**Mateo**

I could have had the best three years of my youth. My ice hockey team won two state championships and a national championship. I even managed to get other wolves in the pack to like hockey and we formed an international league of werewolves with the help of my cousins ​​in Canada.

That was what saved me from madness. The lack of her, her scent, making love to her. That passion consumed me.

First, facing my father was absolutely one of the worst things in my life. Our relationship was never the same after I came back from Kyoto. I was punished a lot for lying to the alpha and my father. If it weren't for my mother, I think we would have fought like wolves.

John and Liam helped me a lot by having someone to talk to. I wanted her in Russia and the fact that she didn't go weakened my wolf in such a way that I got sick. I had fevers that no one knew how to treat and I was unconscious for months. I knew it was because she wasn't by my side. I had to talk to my mother about it, I wanted to change her, I told her about the possibility that she had some wolf ancestor, that her mother had said that she had slept with a werewolf, that my wolf wanted her... My father just ridiculed everything and I hated him a lot.

My mother said that it was all just speculation that I was trying to get close to other girls to see if one of them would be my mate. There were dinners and forced parties in an attempt to find me a mate. I simply didn't want anyone. I was devastated because she never answered my messages anymore, it was as if she had blocked me. So, I understood this as her having found someone and decided to forget about me. I closed myself off and to get out of it, I went to alpha training.

It was six months of fighting, strategy and history classes. Also a lot of ancient knowledge about the goddess of the moon, predestined mates and second chances. And that's when I began to understand that the goddess often united alphas with humans. That many packs accepted lunas who didn't necessarily have nobility or were daughters of alphas. But that some packs created wrong interpretations of what the goddess taught.

And, more and more, I realized that the connection I had with Natsuke could have been that of mates. I blamed myself for pushing my wolf away when I was with her, because he would have helped me figure it out. But now, surely, she must be another man's. And that was torture for me. If my father and mother had guided me or helped me, I could have figured it out. Now I was 22 years old, I was ready to take over my pack and I would need a luna by the time I turned 25, but I wouldn't give in so easily. If I needed to rule alone, I would do it. My wolf wanted his destined mate or, perhaps, when I was older, a second chance mate, and no one else. I was ready to go back home and impose that on my parents. Now I had become a hard, inflexible and inhuman alpha: I was a copy of my father, I hoped he would be happy with that.