King Alpha Gone Rogue

CHAPTER ONE: MUSTY SHE-WOLF

TWO YEARS LATER…

Arella Chesterfield took a deep breath as she stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror right opposite her. To any onlooker, she supposed she would rate herself as beautiful, her light brown blonde hair was lustrous, the bright meshes creating the illusion of golden cascades under the sun beams. Her small oval face was perfectly framed, her aquiline nose cute and her natural pouty lips giving her what men would deem sexy.

Her most striking features were her eyes though – they were somehow teal in color. Well, actually they were chameleon eyes whose hue depended on the amount of sunlight in the sky. In general, the more sunlight that appeared, the lighter would be the blue-green color.

In short, she was pretty precious. On top of that, being the Alpha’s daughter contributed greatly to her fame among the males. Something she supposed she should revel in, but which immensely disgusted her. How was she ever supposed to find someone who liked her for herself instead of her rank and beauty in that pack?

Not that Arella found any man of the Mystic Shadow pack worthy of her attention. They were all too eager to please her – too much of suckers for her taste. Every one of them disgusted her.

That was why she found herself unsettled before going downstairs. Staring at herself was no act of vanity. It was a moment of hesitation before she did the inevitable. Without giving herself time for second thoughts, she sprayed on her perfume and winced at the acrid smell.

Damn! It was pungent. The medic had not been kidding with her when he’d described the smell as unbearable. It was indeed the most repugnant odor she’d ever encountered and being the Alpha’s daughter meant that her smelling sense was higher.

“Ella?” somebody called her, and she turned around to catch sight of her best friend Tiara Kendal, as the latter entered the room wearing a frown on her forehead. “What’s with the smell?” she gagged in disgust.

“Is it very obvious?” Arella queried with her lips pursed in worry. “I was told that it would wear off soon and be ..ahem...more subtle.”

Tiara threw her a measuring look, one which bordered on skepticism and compassion. “What is wrong with you? Can you tell me the reason why you would want to smell like a polecat on your birthday?”

Underneath the mild tolerance, Arella could detect exasperation in Tiara’s tone. Although they’d known each other for more than a decade, Arella disliked the fact that they didn’t see eye to eye sometimes.

With a beleaguered sigh, Arella turned back to her reflection with her lower lips pouting in an attempt at maudlin self-pity. If she was doing a poor job convincing her best friend of her quest, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all?

“I am hiding my own smell under that horrible odor. I visited a chemist and he gave me this solution,” she showed the green liquid to her friend, who wrinkled her nose in distaste when Arella held the bottle close. “It’s supposed to settle within minutes and blend with my natural odor.”

Tiara squinted her eyes suspiciously at her, and Arella could see disapproval written all over her friend’s body which had suddenly gone rigid. “Does this have anything to do with your stupid idea about the mate thing?”

“Uhuh,” Arella responded tentatively, wincing when Tiara hollered as expected.

“Arella! You’re out of your mind! Do you really believe that your silly little tricks will work against the will of the Moon Goddess? Do you even realize that you’re throwing away her gift like a pathetic ill-mannered recalcitrant child?”

Arella did acknowledge that she was in a way rejecting the gift given by the Moon Goddess, but she had no intention of allowing herself to be mated to a stranger. What if her so-called mate turned out to be someone she didn’t fancy, or worse someone she couldn’t stand?

Hiding her smell would mask her wolf scent, and therefore be undiscernible to her supposed mate. Tonight, was her eighteenth birthday, and her wolf hadn’t awoken yet, so she assumed that the latter would be sorely disappointed to be left without a mate. The misleading scent was supposed to be unknown to her wolf as well, since after she took over Arella might be too weak to contest.

She had thought this over, she knew that there were times when the wolf – especially strong wolves could take control and refute her decision. Arella wasn’t sure how she felt about having to co-exist with a partner inside herself – it was going to be tough. She was usually someone who had very strong opinions and having anyone take over was out of question.

“I’ve got this, Tia. I refuse to fall into the stereotypical females swooning over the alpha’s categories. You know me better than that!” Her friend’s arguments were only making her more determined – she was never one to back down from a challenge but opposing her had the tendency to spur her grit.

Knowing when she was defeated, Tia shook her head and raised her hand to signal her capitulation. “I give up. I know how stubborn you can get when you have that look. You’re really going to piss off your father,” she warned as a last attempt to deter her friend’s mind.

Arella was shaking her head resolutely. “The scent has already settled in. Can you smell it?”

Tiara wrinkled her nose closer, but could not inhale anything pungent, however the distinct odor of her best friend was camouflaged under a subtly unpleasant smell. “No guy will get near you with that musty odor.”

With a cheeky wink, Arella stared at her reflection for one last time. “That’s the idea, honey. You know that I have a greater destiny than mating with one of the alphas and sprouting pups like a breeding Luna.”

“What are you talking about?” Tia stopped right in her tracks when Ella had finished talking, her mouth gaping open at the guilty expression she found in her best friend’s teal eyes. Busted! it read.

“Ella…,” she started in fair warning.

“Let’s go. I thought we were getting late,” Arella hastily scurried out of her room, but she was jerked back to her original position by an enforced grip on her elbows, and she was forced to face an infuriated Tiara.

“Ella, please don’t tell me that you have the intention…”

“Shhhh, not here,” Arella warned vehemently, eyes darting in every direction to check whether they had been overheard. “I’ll tell you later. I promise.”

Without giving her time to continue her way, Arella was forcefully thrust back in her room with the door locked before she even had the time to blink. In her abject fury, Tiara was a sight for sore eyes. Her red hair flamed under the light, brown eyes catching the reflection of the strands, making them look a bloodthirsty crimson color instead of the dark brown ones.

“Arella Hope Chesterfield, please tell me you aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking!”

Arella grinned despite herself at her friend’s poor vocabulary. “Well, I have every intention of going after that bastard! I swear, if I find him…when I find him, I will personally kick his ass and bring him back here. How dare he leave the pack behind at such a delicate moment?”

“Ella, he’s our King Alpha!” Tiara gasped at her audacity. “Besides, if the rumors are true, he might not even be alive anymore. You remember they said they found a smashed body which had the same morphology as our King Alpha?”

Arella lifted her chin in regal arrogance that only the purest bloodlines of werewolves could ever manufacture. “Samael Darhk is not fit to be an alpha, forget about the king part. He’s a coward who’s gone rogue when Mystic Shadow needed him the most. He left my father in charge of the pack while he’s disappeared without even the courtesy of a warning!”

“All I can ask…is think twice before you do anything. It’s dangerous enough without Samael to watch over us…”

“Samael…,” she spat the name with undisguised venom. “…is a coward. Someone who can leave his pack at the mercy of other crawling packs is not worthy to be called a King. I’m going to find him and tell him just that to his sorry face.”

A flash of sexy grin with dimples sprouted inside her mind, and she squashed the image without mercy. Samael Darhk was not worth remembering. Who’s ever heard of King Alpha going rogue?!

“Let’s go downstairs,” she ordered haughtily without waiting to check whether her friend was following her decree.

A sigh of relief raked through her when there were no signs of hybrids at the party – they were not only ugly creatures, but they tended to get out of control whenever provoked. Ella was not so keen on their company for the night, especially when she was nervous about testing that hidden scent theory.

After the attack two years ago, the Mystic Shadow pack lived under the rule of the hybrids, having had no other option to surrender to their supremacy when King Alpha Darius was defeated. No one had heard of the man since the famous tete-a-tete between the Alpha Hybrid Dorian Walker and Darius Darhk.

Thrusting the gloomy thoughts at the back of her mind, Arella approached a group of males who’d just turned eighteen and was instantly gratified when they moved away. Usually, they would suck on to her like leeches, and she would have had to look for excuses to break away.

With a smile pinned, she paraded across the room with confidence, and stopped only when a pair of blue eyes stared down at her in condescension.

“Ella why are you looking so smug?” her father, Alpha Logan queried with a suspicious frown, causing her to instantly drop the smile. Could he smell her? She tried to discretely keep her distance, but her mother stopped her with a touch on her shoulder.

“Happy birthday, honey,” Hayley Chesterfield murmured with a kiss on her cheek. “Has your wolf awakened yet?”

“Nope, not yet,” she admitted.

“More importantly. Has anyone claimed you yet? I was hoping that your mate turns out to be Kyle, son of Alpha Nick Connelly. He seems a decent guy.”

Ella’s plastered smile never left her face as her keen green eyes homed into Kyle Connelly – a fine male specimen averagely handsome with his black lush hair swept away from his face to give him an alluring disposition. Not her type, she sniffled in deeply, but no smell indicated that there was a mate on the horizon.

In fact, there was no designation about her mate yet, but she did feel a part of her awakening inside.

Hello, I’m Selene.

It was her wolf. Ella did the thing she’d promised herself not to do. She disregarded her, pushing her at the back of her mind, celebrating her victory of not being subjected to the typical mating, and watched as everyone blatantly ignored her.