His Unidentified & Untouchable Mate

Reality Check

Rowan POV

I hadn’t expected to wake up to a message from Zahraa, but it put me in a far better mood than I’d been in the day prior. I had more interrogations to go, more investigating, more doubting my own brother. So, when I saw her text asking, Could I stop by your office today? I sent an immediate response.

Yes. I’m free at 1pm.

My morning routine was the same as always, but ever since the wolves returned, it felt like a Twilight Zone episode.

Wake up, protein shake, training. Shower, breakfast, go over any messages I’d received in the night, take care of anything new or pressing that had arisen, then get onto the daily schedule. Todays had been cleared to make room for Jared.

Now, I didn’t hate Jacob. Jacob annoyed me in that way younger brothers do, and being so close to him, perhaps I saw his flaws a little more clearly than others might.

But Jared… I hated Jared.

His mate had been the kindest woman. From an allied pack up north, her father was powerful. Influential. She was important. And since Jared was such a damned fool, and a monster to boot, that ally had been lost. Her life had been lost.

I never forgave him for that, and the pack certainly hadn’t forgotten it. Jada had been a fool in killing her mate, but she’d been practical in the way she’d gone about it – a public challenge. A formal, sacred rite in the eyes of wolves. If he hadn’t been strong enough to withstand her, well. His loss was his life. It became hers to take, and she’d collected swiftly and without mercy.

Jared had locked his mate away in the pack house, letting her wither and die like a decorative flower. I’d seen the body before it was burned. She was a shell of her former self – gaunt, pale – and not in the way that corpses all are. In a way that said, ‘my last days on earth were living hell.’

Long story short, I couldn’t wait for this to be over so I could go back to pretending he didn’t exist.

The first few interviews went about the same as all the others. Don’t remember. Came there with Ashley (whom has no recollection of even seeing you that night, or in that chamber). Don’t know.

Useless, useless, useless.

When lunch rolled around, I was feeling like this was all pretty futile. We were spinning our wheels in the muck while whoever had organized this whole thing was getting away with it. “Perhaps we should bring in the coven,” I remarked, interrupting Jared’s thoughts. If he had any. “Magic is clearly at play.”

“Clearly,” he huffed a sarcastic laugh. “I hate to spend the thousands of dollars those crystal-snorting wrist flickers ask for just to come look at a problem.”

“I think this time it’s a good use of the money,” I replied, shuffling my notes into a file. I’d upload them into the database, as I always did. Interviews should be concluded tomorrow by sundown, and then I’d be expected to write a full report for father.

Which meant I needed a witch here before that – an extra fee.

“Lunch plans?” Jared asked, following me from the room.

“Mmhm,” I hummed in response. I didn’t offer an explanation, simply split from his side and got into my black 2020 corvette, slamming the door and speeding away from the central pack house, where we were conducting the investigation.

Charles met me at the front door, as if he instinctually knew I’d be here. “Alpha,” he greeted with a nod, falling into step beside me. “Zahraa is in your office, as instructed.”

“Good,” I replied. Usually, a beta would be an alpha’s best friend, closest confidante – someone they trusted with every bit of information, every aspect of their lives. Charles wasn’t that for me.

Charles’s father had been the North Pack’s beta, which meant I hadn’t met him until I started my apprenticeship, and I already had someone in mind for my beta. When I was older, and about to take over, he learned that I was about to declare someone else beta. He challenged my friend for the title, defeated him, and took over the position the brute way. It had taken me years to adjust, but I managed.

But it left me feeling surrounded by people I trusted well enough, but had no real connection to. No real bonds.

I opened the door to my office and saw her sitting there. She stood when I entered, and offered me a smile; I had worked hard to make her able to smile again, and it was a reward in itself. “Alpha. Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon, Zahraa. Have a seat,” I replied, sitting down at my desk and plopping the file atop the others. “I was surprised to get your message. What can I do for you?”

She shifted in her seat almost uncomfortably. She did that every time she had a request – though she didn’t request much of me often. “I was hoping we could talk about my file.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Your file?” I repeated. “What about it?”

“Well, Jacob had printed off what was uploaded, and we went through it, it’s just…” she was wringing her hands under the desk, all her muscles taut. “There’s so little. Is there anything that maybe wasn’t uploaded?”

A hard question to answer. I folded my hands on my stomach and leaned back in my chair, rocking only slightly back and forth as I pondered how to phrase my answer. After only a moment, I replied, “Every document we have on you is uploaded.”

She looked so disappointed. “So, there’s nothing else?”

That wasn’t necessarily true. There was something I was holding out on – something I wanted her to be 18 before considering. I’d been biding my time to bring it up at the perfect moment. First, it had been after she graduates. Now it was after this investigation.

Which meant I had to phrase my words very carefully here.

“No other files,” I replied, simply. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not much. You have the smallest file of all the wards, because there’s simply no information to find. It’s like you appeared out of thin air.”

I hated the way she deflated. How she looked so sad. She caught my eye and forced a smile, sitting a little straighter in her seat. “Sorry to waste your time, alpha. Jacob and I were just hoping there would be a lead in there.”

“We followed every lead we possibly could for you, Zahraa,” I reminded her. “Every test we could subject you to, every place that might have an answer for who or what you are. Every gamble or risk we could take at the time, we took. And that is all that remains.”

Her smile didn’t falter – and of course it didn’t. It was why I felt so strongly for her. She was an impenetrable fortress, able to withstand a hundred heartaches without flinching. An alpha needs strength, support and affection from his luna – I saw all of that in her.

I turned my chair and looked out the window, reminding myself that she wasn’t mine to lust after anymore. Technically, she never had been at all. “Maybe after all this, I’ll reevaluate,” I lied. A hint that I’d give her something later. Hopefully, she would be satisfied with that.

“Thank you, alpha,” she said, pushing out of her chair. “Jacob and I will keep looking in the meantime. He said he wanted to check some things out.”

Jacob, Jacob, Jacob.

I didn’t hate him, but I could sure be jealous of him.

“Zahraa,” I called after her, just before she got to the door. “Remember what I said back at the factory. There’s a reason Jacob was under suspicion in the first place. He’ll do anything to get what he wants.”

There was so much trust in her eyes when they met mine, that I almost felt bad for adding another emphasized, “Anything.”