Part Eighty-Five

The night that Adrian Peters and Robert Jones were waiting in the kitchen when Adara and I arrived home had ended pretty interestingly. Malachi had heard them talking as soon as we walked into the garage. We had driven to the hotel instead, walked through reception and out of the back door. We used one of the hotel cars and drove to the den.

We had spent a few hours cleaning the basement, we scooped up all the ashes that were in the fire pit and scattered them as we drove back to the hotel. We walked out the front door again and into our car and headed home.

I pretended not to see them as we drove past them where they had tried to hide their car behind some bushes. They followed us back home and they watched the house for an hour before leaving.

After that night I had noticed Adrian Peters a lot more on my daily routines. He would sit on a bench reading a newspaper as I jogged past him. He would be in the next aisle when Adara and I went into a shop. He had even waited outside the hotel a few times. Other than that Adrian Peters was not a threat to us and I simply chose to ignore him.

Our lives went back to normal, our normal, and Adara and I finished high school and we both graduated with honors. I had qualified for early enrollment to study Business Management through the University of Alaska from home. I wasn’t ready to leave here, and my instincts told me to stay close to home. I decided to trust it.

Adara had decided to take a year off as she had finally discovered her powers. She was a Healer; she had a lot to learn and worked constantly on improving her healing powers. We know now that is how she survived in the woods for a week. She had plans of enrolling in medical school.

James had graduated as Valedictorian of our class and we were all surprised. I had never seen him study when we were at home. Shoran had done extremely well in her music class and she had also graduated with honors from Kenai High School.

James and Shoran were moving to Fairbanks as he had received a full scholarship from the Department of Veterinary Sciences at the University of Alaska. He had a special connection with animals, and I would miss him all the time that he was gone. He seemed to have matured overnight but I guess we all had.

Shoran was accepted into the music program at the University of Alaska. She could passively play the guitar and piano, but her true passion lies with the violin. When you heard her play, time stood still. Shoran never mentioned the baby although I sensed her sadness every time she saw a pregnant woman.

Adara finally moved into my room, the day we graduated actually. She had refused to do so before we finished school, although she had slept in my bed every night since her transformation. She and Karani spent a lot of time behind closed doors to enhance her abilities.

I also finally took her to go authenticate her identity and claim the contents of her parents’ will. I think some days she might still be in shock over it. She now has a net worth of approximately two million dollars in her name.

Garrick and Stephanie still worked at the Hospital and Stephanie cried every time you mentioned Fairbanks, James, or Shoran, which makes it quite difficult to have any kind of conversation with her at this stage. James reckoned that she’d be fine. I knew that we all would, eventually.

Malachi and Karani were both ecstatic at my decision to study from home, I don’t think that Karani would have accepted me leaving so easily. I spend a lot of time with Malachi at the den, fighting, practicing, and receiving my Alpha lessons.

I had started reading them when I realized that James would no longer be there to feed me all the interesting bits. One of the first pieces I read about was about imprinting.

As quickly as imprinting takes place, it can also disappear between wolves. Just like our human counterparts, you get wolves that are unnaturally aggressive, prone to violence and crime. These wolves usually end up being cast out by their pack, but we never talk about what happens to their mates.

When a wolf is cast out, the partner is usually cast out with them, along with their children, unless that partner has cut the imprinting cord. This can happen as a wilful decision as the imprinting that took place would appear as a false imprinting. That can happen, think of humans falling in love and thinking everything is perfect and all of a sudden, it ends in violence and divorce or death. The same thing can happen with wolves, you can imprint on each other but that cord can be severed.

We have wolf tribunals that are equal to your human courtrooms. Powers among wolves are rare and the ones that are gifted like Malachi are especially prized among the hierarchy of wolf leaders, especially as an Alpha, Malachi had a stronger foothold in the wolf world. He was respected, admired, and revered.

Malachi would often be called to witness these wolf tribunals as he can read minds. His presence is never revealed until the moment of judgment arises. The accused is given time to prepare his defense and through all that, Malachi would sit in the next room and just listen and give his account to a truth seeker.

A truth seeker is a wolf with the ability to tell if what you are saying is the truth or a lie. Between those two witnesses, the accused gets judged and that ensures that a fair trial is held. Malachi has started asking me to assist him in these wolf tribunals as my gift can also aid them in their process.

I can see their emotions change and I learnt how to establish a baseline of honesty within the wolf’s emotions and the lying base line. In that manner I could also distinguish if the wolf is telling the truth or not. Malachi was quite impressed with my progress as my findings rarely differed from his.

Those last three months went by too fast and we were hosting a small party at our house to say goodbye to James and Shoran. I was happy for him but saddened by the loss of my best friend. I was working part-time at the hotel and the days never seemed to have enough hours. They promised to come home as much as they could and I looked forward to that.

I patted the box in my jacket pocket to make sure it was still there. We were all in the kitchen area and I pulled Adara to the windows. It was by these same windows where I had first developed feelings for her, and I felt it was only fitting.

“Adara,” I said and went down on one knee. Her hand flew to her mouth as I knew it would.

Everyone had stopped talking and were watching us. Karani was crying and Malachi looked proud.

“You are the moon that rises in my nights and the sun that sets on my days. My universe without you would be the world without the sun. Will you marry me?” I asked her.

Adara went down on her knees, crying freely now. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” she shouted and I put my grandmother’s ring on her finger.

Malachi had given it to me the night of her ceremony. Karani was wiping the tears from her cheeks and Shoran and Adara were hugging.

Everybody congratulated us. James walked over to me with a big smile and we hugged. I held my breath as I felt that prickly feeling again, the hairs on the back of my neck were raised. I looked out of the window and that brown wolf was standing in the same spot, watching us.