Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty–Seven: “What about the woman in my dreams?” I asked Harper.
After we made out in the classroom till we were panting like dogs, Harper suggested we skip the rest of school. And what did I say? I said why the hell not
Harper told me that he had it all covered and that my parents would never know about it. What can I say I was feeling adventurous?!
Low–key, though, this is what a bad influence looks like..
But I was too pumped up to care.
So, we got into Harper’s car and drove straight to a diner half an hour away from school. We had pretty much the whole day to look forward to because we had got out of school right after the second period.
We had just settled in one of the booths, which could offer us privacy so that we could easily talk about him being a wolf and everything else that came with it.
“So, wolves–dive in packs.”
Harper nodded in response to my statement.
“Wolves are social animals, just like humans. Our human side can live alone but it’s our wolf side that needs other wolves to keep it sane. It may sound weird, but that’s just how it is. Harper casually shrugged his shoulders and gave me a small smile.
I nodded my head to show him that I understood. It felt surreal that this boy sitting in front of me was talking about a whole other species altogether. It seemed unbelievable and I wondered if something was wrong with me. How the hell was I taking it all so well?! I would never get tired of asking myself this question.
“So, how do these packs function? Do you have, like, a pack leader or something?”
Harper nodded. “We do. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. The pack’s leader is called an alpha and his mate is called a Luna. The alpha’s second in command is called the beta and his mate is called the beta female. Then there is the third in command, also called the gamma. Some packs have a fourth in command too, also called a Delta.”
I nodded to show him I understood. Alpha, beta, gamma, deltà? It sounded like some algebra class to me and I was never particularly good at maths. So I was pretty much screwed here.
“So, how does one become an alpha?”
Harper chuckled. “You can’t just become an alpha, you are born into the position. You can only be an alpha if your father
was one.
“So, who is the alpha of this pack? Do you have a name for this pack or something?” I scrunched my nose at the notion of calling a pack “the pack“.
“Our pack is called The Red Lakes Pack.” Harper looked intently it me.
“And who is the alpha of the pack?”
“My father is
Fgaped at him. His father was the alpha of the pack? That would mean he was the future alpha of the pack in the city. That
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would mean, as his mate, I–would be his Luna. I gulped nervously.
“I don’t think I could lead a pack of wolves.” As soon as the words flew out of my mouth, I regretted saying them. Harper had just asked me to be his girlfriend, he hadn’t asked me to be his future Luna. What if he believed that I wouldn’t be able to lead the pack and had already decided to not let me be the future Lana? I was too hasty in being presumptuous.
Harper smiled, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together on the table. “You’re going to be an amazing Luna, even if you don’t exactly know how my world works. Moreover, I will be by your side, helping you lead the pack for the rest of my
life.”
Was he always this good with his words?
I smiled genuinely at him but then my eyebrows furrowed as a question popped into my mind. “If you believed that I would be a good Luna, why did you reject me?”
Harper sighed and leaned back in the booth, his back hitting the cushions. “I do believe that you will be a good Luna, Zara. If you didn’t have the characters and will of a good leader, the moon goddess wouldn’t have paired you with me.”
I nodded but waited for him to continue because I knew what he was going to say next was going to hurt me. How did I even get to read his facial expressions in such a short amount of timel
father didn’t believe it though: A human takes a lot of time to get used to our ways and that why alphas never have
“My human mates”
I gulped nervously while putting my hands on the table. “Except you.” My voice came out small and unsure.
Harper nodded, a grim expression on his face, “Except me. My father was mad at first, but then he realized he couldn’t fight fate. Against the will of the goddess. He convinced me that a human Luna would be unfit for our pack. I’m not boasting but our pack is one of the largest in the world, we have a lot of wolves registered in our pack and he had his doubts.”
Harper broke eye contact with me and looked down at his hands. I had no plans to reject you. A mate is the most important thing to a werewolf. I wouldn’t have rejected you. You have to believe me. I planned to introduce you to my parents as my mate during my birthday party.” I remembered the part very well, where he had made out with some girl on the balcony and then took me to the same place and kissed me, without my consent.
Harper seemed to have the same thoughts because his head dropped in shame and he didn’t speak for some time. “I never got around to apologizing for that night. So, I’m sorry.”
His apology was genuine, I could feel it in the seriousness of his voice and the air around us, which was buzzing with some. kind of tension. I nodded in response, not knowing what else to say. I had promised that I would give him a chance and that was exactly what I was doing right now.
Harper took a deep breath before speaking again. “After you left, I told my parents some bullshit story that you left early and then I told them that my mate was a human. Long story short, they asked me to reject you as my mate.”
He looked up to meet my eyes. He looked pained as if the memory of him saying those words pained him even after all these werks. “I denied them straight away. I didn’t care if my mate was a human and neither did my wolf. We just wanted to be with you.
“He gave me an ultimatum. He told me if I would accept you as my mate, he would never give me the alpha position in this pack. It’s in an alpha’s power to pass the position to someone else if he thinks that his apprentice is undir to lead. He would just pass it on to the future beta, Aiden.”
1 looked at him and I don’t know how, but I could feel his pain. I could see his pain in his eyes and his voice. Are eighteen- year–old boys even supposed to make such big decisions?!
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I suppose eighteen–year–old alphas make such big decisions!
“Then why did you reject me?”
“Then why did y
Harper sighed. At this moment, he looked like a small boy who had way too much weight on his shoulders. “A mate is at wolf’s other half and is genetically the most fit person with which we can, um, procreate.”
Harper’s cheeks tinged red and I laughed internally at his cute expression. How was I not freaking out?
Π
“There are only six white wolves in the world, Zara, one in each hospitable continent. The white wolves are supposed to be direct descendants of the moon goddess which clearly explains the color of our coat. All other packs on the continent answer to the pack controlled by the white wolf because they respect us a lot. White wolves settle disputes between packs and hold meetings with various alphas from time to time.”
I nodded to show him that I understood everything he was saying, what I didn’t understand was what that had to do with him rejecting me.
“For generations now, we white wolves have faced a lot of problems in having children with our mates. If a white wolf mates with his mate, only then can another white wolf be born. If a white wolf chooses another random wolf as a mate, then the pups were weaker and unfit to lead a pack as an alpha.”
I nodded. I was right after all, I did not like where he was going with this.
Harper gulped nervously and I was entranced by the movement of his Adam’s apple.
“A werewolf fetus is quite powerful and needs more nourishment than a human fetus. The higher the rank of the wolf in the pack, the stronger the fetus. That’s why human females are often mated with lower–rank wolves, even then they often experience problems with pregnancies”
“Now, imagine how many problems we would have if we ever got pregnant
Pregnant? He was talking about being pregnant? I gaped at him. Was he out of his mind? I wasn’t even out of high school and he was talking about knocking me up.
Just then, a waitress came by our table to take our orders and that was when we realized that we didn’t even have a look at the menu. We smiled apologetically at the old woman who just nodded at us and asked us to take our time.
As soon as the waitress left, I turned my gaze towards Harper and asked him, “So, are you serious? You rejected me because you thought we would have trouble getting pregnant?”
He nodded. “I know what you’re thinking right now. How you’re just in high school and you’re not even planning to get pregnant right away or even in another 5-7 years. But think about it, you do want children in the future, don’t you?!”
I nodded meekly at his question. He was right. Even if I wasn’t planning on being pregnant in the immediate future, I would want children, maybe ten years from now. I would want my own family.
“I just didn’t want you to go through miscarriages and the pain of knowing that, us being together is the only reason you’re not able to have any children, Harper added weakly.
So, he rejected me, not because he didn’t want me, but because he didn’t want me to go through a lot of failed pregnancies which would ultimately cause a deep wedge in our relationship?
I weakly smiled at him and hesitantly, I pur both of my hands on top of his and looked at him. He seemed to relax under my touch because his shoulders sagged and he released a deep breath which must have been lodged in his chest.
What made you change your mind?” I asked him.
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Harper flipped my hand in his and started drawing slow circles in my palm with his thumb. The simple action caused heat to travel up my arm and I stifled the sudden urge to gasp. His eyebrows furrowed and his lips puckered in concentration as he looked at our hands joined together.
He then looked at me, his eyes shining with joy, at having me close to himself.
“After I rejected you, my wolf didn’t talk to me for weeks. He understood the whole situation, but he still wanted to be with you. I was trying my best to stay away from you, but I could still feel the bond working against me. I just wanted to keep looking at you all day long. I even convinced my friends to accompany me to the bakery you work at.” Harper smiled at the end and I did too.
“I knew what I had to do, then. The only way to completely sever the mate bond was to mark someone else. All I needed to do was find a compatible she–wolf who was mate–less, mark her, and make her my future Luna. That’s where Amanda corres in. She had already found her mate who was going to die soon, which would leave her without a mate.”
Harper looked nervously at me as if he was unsure how I would take the news. “I could feel the bond strain between us the more I spent time with Amanda. My father approved of our union and gave me the go–ahead to mark her. I needed a Luna anyway before I could take over the pack from my father.”
The night I decided I would finally mark Amanda and sever the bond between us, I walked into the bakery you worked in. That day, you told me not to mark the girl I had decided to, and that the goddess asked you to say it.”
and over
I remembered that day too. That was the day that he got too violent on me and said those hurtful words to me over a again. I shified uncomfortably on my seat and looked at his ashamed face.
“When you mentioned that the goddess asked you to tell me that, I snapped. I thought you knew about the existence of werewolves and you were convincing me to take you back, for whatever reason. I thought you were making up stories and telling me to work on our bond. My wolf whined inside my head and I was struggling to accept the fact that everything I had been going through would go to waste. All the pain and longing I felt for you. He shook his gently, his eyes cast down.
“All I could see was red. I just wanted vengeance upon the person who told you about the existence of werewolves and us being mates. I had noticed that you were friends with Natalie and Samantha and so I thought that they had told you the truth.”
The picture was becoming clear now. Everything was starting to make sense.
“I didn’t mean anything I said that day, honestly. I just wanted you to tell me who told you about wolves. In my rage, I didn’t realize I was holding your elbow in my hand and how hard I was holding it.”
“It wasn’t till you cried out in pain did I came back to my senses. When I looked at your elbow and found the imprints of my hand on it, I felt like shit.” Harper darkly chuckled. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and sighed. “My wolf couldn’t believe that we had unknowingly hurt our mate and made her cry. I wanted to apologize then and there but then realized that I had no right to. I could see tears streaming down your face and the only thing I could think of was to run away, and so I did exactly that.”
Harper gulped and nervously looked at me. He held both of my small hands into his much larger ones. His gaze was intent and it was clear that he wanted me to say something.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said finally. This was too much to process for me.
Harper nodded his head, understanding what I meant and I was grateful for that. After leaving the bakery, I went straight to Nat’s house and asked Samantha to be there by the time I got there. I asked them if they had anything to do with you knowing about the existence of werewolves. They denied the allegation completely
“How do you know they were telling the truth?”
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“I’m the future alpha and their wolves submit to me. When I ask any lower ranking wolf, using my power as their alpha, their wolves are bound to speak only the truth.”
I nodded in understanding.
Then I asked Natalie to bring you over to her house so I could question you myself. I promised myself that I would control myself and asked you patiently.”
“And then I told you about my dream.” Everything was beginning to click now. It all made perfect sense.
Harper nodded. “I was going to mark Amanda that night and then you come out and tell me about your dream. About the white woman in your dream, specifically”
Harper met my gaze then and my eyebrows furrowed in confusion. What about the woman in my dreams? It had been some time since I had any dream involving her and I was glad. I was doing fine without the headaches and waking up in the middle of the night, thank you very much.
“What about the woman in my dreams?” I asked Harper, casually shrugging my shoulders.
The description you gave me about the woman, matches the description of the moon goddess, Zara, Harper said and I gaped. It couldn’t bel
“Zara, the woman you see in your dreams is the moon goddess. Harper looked down at our hands and interlaced our fingers together.
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