His Unidentified & Untouchable Mate

What Challenge? (1)

Zahraa POV

I was there early, to get a good vantage point. Part of me hoped I would see them before the fight and offer one last plea to stop this foolishness – but my hope was squandered as I stared into the red dirt of the training ring, where challenges most often took place. There were fresh chalk lines dropped just for this, and I could tell everything had been cleaned, prepped and – possibly most importantly – reinforced.

The minutes ticked by, and before I knew it, an hour had passed. The sky was growing dark – dusk was mere minutes away, but no one else had come.

I only entertained the idea that maybe no one wanted to see the fight for a moment. Then, I decided, I must have gotten the location wrong.

Each training ground had a 24 hour gym area that was never locked. That made it easy for me to open a Door, walk out, assess the surroundings. But the other pack training rings looked faded, as if they hadn’t been prepared for anything more than simple sparring. There were no barriers erected, no people gathering, no fresh chalk.

Except for at the central ring, where I’d expected it to take place.

When I returned to the central ring, the sun had already set. There was one wolf in the gym working out – a female who was on the treadmill with a large set of headphones over her ears. I walked in and waved at her, and she took the headset off. “Yeah?” she asked, looking thoroughly confused.

I wouldn’t blame her – I was covered head to toe; I wasn’t exactly wearing workout clothes. “Sorry to bother you, but did you hear anything about the challenge tonight?” A small spark of hope ignited in my chest. I hadn’t heard from Ingrid (which was kind of weird in itself), so I hadn’t considered that the challenge might’ve been dropped. But maybe I got through to them – one of them at least.

“What challenge?” she asked, “I mean, I haven’t heard of any on the schedule today.”

“Between Alpha Rowan and his brother Jacob?” I pressed. “It was supposed to be today at dusk.”

She shook her head, more confident when she answered, “Oh no. No, I would’ve heard if an alpha was taking up a challenge. You must be confused – there’s no challenge like that.”

She was horribly misinformed, but I merely agreed and left her to her ceaseless jogging. I found myself heading to Jacob’s office, almost mechanically. I wasn’t sure why – maybe I’d left something in there I didn’t want to forget about before never coming back here?

I was surprised to see his light still on. I was about to turn and sneak away, when the door opened, and Jacob appeared, a file under his arm, looking as though he were leaving for the day. “Oh. Zahraa,” he swallowed, “I didn’t – sorry. Did you want to talk again?”

“No,” I said, too quickly, “Why aren’t you at your challenge? Did you call it off?”

His expression turned from apprehension to confusion. “What challenge?”

My stomach lurched. “You can’t be serious right now. You challenged Alpha Rowan. You two are supposed to be fighting now, what happened?”

He shook his head slowly. “No? I might’ve yelled at him yesterday, but I didn’t challenge him. Are you feeling okay?” He stepped forward thoughtlessly, reaching out like he wanted to feel my forehead.

I redirected his arm with a light touch from my glove. “I’m fine. But you definitely…” When his face grew steadily more confused, I took something off the secretary’s desk – a hair tie or something mundane that certainly wasn’t mine, but made it look like I had a reason to be here. “Never mind. Bye.”

I tried to pretend I didn’t hear him calling after me as I walked quickly away and into the first unlocked door I could find. I opened it, willing it to lead to my bedroom and stepping through while pulling my phone out of my pocket.

Ingrid was first in my call log, and I dialed her.

“Hey, Z. Is everything okay?” she answered on the first ring.

My heart swelled – I really did love her. “Um, I don’t know yet,” I started playing with the potted plant on my windowsill. “Ingrid… did you get the date right on that challenge?”

“What challenge?” she asked.

I tried not to panic. “Between Rowan and Jacob. The challenge. You remember – the challenge.” The hysteria was seeping into my voice, and of course it was. This was… I didn’t know how to handle this. Had I imagined the whole thing? Did the stress of my mate cheating send me off the deep end?

Ingrid hesitated, as if she weren’t sure how to approach this subject. “Zahraa, I don’t remember any challenge. I would’ve been notified – it would’ve been on my phone.”

She was right – we just needed to check her phone! Concrete evidence didn’t just disappear. “Check for me,” I insisted. “Please.”

Another long pause, then a sigh. “Sure. Of course.” I could hear her shuffling around on the phone as she put me on speaker. The silence was deafening, the anticipation crushing. Then, “No, sorry hun. Nothing in there about any challenges, especially not about our Alpha. Why don’t you go home and take a bath? You should get some rest.”

I moved my mouth, fighting back arguments that I couldn’t back up – that would only make me look crazier. “Yeah,” I finally settled on. “Yeah, sure. I’ll do that.”

I hung up and stared at my phone a moment.

There was one more person I could ask, but I was hesitant to reach out to him. I didn’t know what I’d achieve, either – Rowan wasn’t able to make everyone forget about events that happened. He wasn’t able to plant a false memory in my mind. What was happening here was something more – and I had a feeling it was related to the factory incident.

I didn’t know what, but something was happening at the Wild Fang’s pack, and even if Rowan couldn’t fix it, maybe he deserved to know.

Maybe he would believe me.