The Alpha and Her Match

o n e

A distant pair of footsteps woke me and my eyes automatically snapped open, alert and guarded. I looked around, blinking away the darkness and sleepiness. It takes a while for my eyes to finally adjust to my surroundings— snow and more snow, snow for miles and miles. I watch them fall from the sky, each snowflake dancing in the air before dropping to my skin.

Dead. I think.

I would be dead if I took this long to gather myself in a place of danger. But since I am not, at least not yet, I take my time lying down on my little bed of broken twigs and leaves, trying to recall my dream. It’s all very fuzzy, the dream already slipping away from me, though I do remember the shouting and cries of pain with tears dripping on the snowy ground.

It has been the same dream for a while now. For weeks. Though I’ve been reassured that it’s normal with my preparation for the tournament, a tournament that has been looming over everyone’s heads with how this one event would name the next Alpha for our pack. It’s still quite troubling to hear my mother’s screams in my head whenever I close my eyes.

My hands rub my face as I shake the last remains of sleep away. I sat up and immediately took notice of Dax staring at me intently from last night's fire, his arms crossed and his eyes looking me over.

It was his steps that woke me.

“Dead.” He says, his tone serious. “I already scuffled my feet for you this time.”

I smiled to hide away the lingering unease that I felt in my dreams. “I knew it was you all along.”

He still notices it, as he always does. “Nightmares again?”

I debated about lying but knowing my best friend, he would catch my lie easily. “Yeah.”

His expression falls. “Are you sure it’s the Alpha you hear crying in your dreams?”

I stretched my tired limbs, yawning a little as I reached for the gloomy sky. “I think I would know my own mother’s screams and cries.”

Dax makes a face. “I just can’t imagine her having… emotions other than anger.”

If I was being honest, I also can’t imagine any other emotion in my mother’s face, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I stood up then, dusting away some of the snow that had piled on me. “Remember what your father said? She used to laugh.”

“A myth.” He scoffed before helping me brush away some of the twigs and snow from my hair.

“Teapot wouldn’t lie to us.” I told him, giving my best friend a once over. Like his father, Teapot, Dax is a beefy guy made of pure muscle and facial hair. He's decent looking, not the classically handsome type but the rough and tough man that parents wouldn't want for their daughters.

Dax was still in disbelief. “My father says a lot of things.”

“Not about my mother.” I reminded him, kicking away the bedding I had made for the night. We’ve been living in the forest for weeks now, challenging ourselves to the limits in preparation for the tournament that will happen soon.

“It just seems far fetched is all.” And it was. My mother has a heartless reputation and anything outside of that is, as he said… a myth.

“Everything with her is far fetched.” I said under my breath as we walked through the frozen wasteland where we had called our home. It is horribly cold here, the closest forest to the one where the actual tournament will be held. Each step we took, our boots sank under the powdery snow, making each step heavy and tiring.

“Not you though.” Dax reaches for my shirt and I already knew what he’s about to say.

“Yes, I wear my heart on my sleeve.” I said with a roll of my eyes.

He wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to him until I feel his body warmth on my side. “It’s a good thing.”

“An Alpha that everyone can read?” The Alpha before my mother was her father, Alek Volkov, and he is strong, leading just as powerfully as my mother does.

“An Alpha that openly cares.” Dax corrects with a rare smile. “Showing emotion isn’t a flaw, Anna.”

“Showing weakness,” I also corrected with a slight bite in my tone. “Will be my downfall.”

“You don’t have to be exactly like your mother, you know.” He says almost insistantly. Dax had always been convinced that I was some kind of special breed of brilliance and it wasn’t the name.

Volkov or Basco.

He believes it’s me. Not the name.

I wasn’t quite convinced.

“I just want to be good enough,” I pointed out, feeling slightly defensive.

The same look of trust— utter trust towards me comes and sieves through his bearded face. “You have always been good enough and more.”

“How so?” I challenged with a quirk of my eyebrows, knowing he wouldn’t elaborate more because we were already late.

Dax surprised me by stopping, our feet sinking deeper into the snow.

He looks at me, really looks at me and I fight to keep my heartbeat from rising.

“You are… short.” He gets smacked on the head, my hand flying out. “But you overcompensate with your loudness.”

Another smack as I matched it with a scowl on my face. “I have changed my mind. I don’t want to know anymore.”

Despite my words, he forges ahead, pulling me close even if I’m pushing him away. “You are considerate, often helping others even when you already have too much on your plate. You are extremely, and I mean that when I say it, extremely determined. You look at everything and everyone with a gleam in your eyes because everything is competition and thus you must win it. You are caring and humble, wanting only the best for our people. There’s a vulnerability in you too, but in the best way.”

Taken completely by surprise, I am frozen in place for a few milliseconds. “You sound like you know me.”

“I do know you.” The sudden seriousness in his voice captured me. “I have known you my whole life, through the days we used to curiously look at each other from our bedroom windows and to our first shifts, to all the injuries and all the tears, from homework we never do and to the shouts we receive right after.”

“That one about the homework is far too true for my liking. I can still hear the ringing of Teapot’s combined shouts with my mother,” I say with a shudder.

“Not the best melody in the world.” He agrees, nearly smirking.

Truth be told, I don’t remember the exact memories of those times together, but I feel that same rush of warmth whenever I think about Dax. Our time together has been fun— the happiest, messy and all things good and bad rolled into one. There’s a different level of comfort with having him… someone I can depend on and trust unconditionally close by.

“Are you two done flirting with each other?” Teapot’s raspy voice called out from somewhere ahead of us. “You are already so late! This is not a vacation, you know? ”

Dax flushes a deep red color and gasps out a protest. “Dad, Anna and I are not—”

I wasn’t easily embarrassed though, as I gave my best and brightest smile, even going as far as fluttering my eyelashes. “Sorry, we’re done flirting now. It's just so hard to stop.”

“Don’t respond to that.” Dax held up his hands towards his father and I.

“Today is your last day in this beautiful,” Teapot gestures proudly to the frozen desolate wasteland that was basically the farthest description from the dictionary’s meaning of beautiful. “Forest.”

“What are we doing today? Hunt? Eat tree bark? Run around naked until we lose a finger or toe?” It’s been a rough few weeks to the point that I feel as though I will never be able to taste with my tongue ever again.

“All of the above?” Dax added monotonously, already chomping on a tree bark that he pulled from somewhere. It was extra frozen just the way our tongues liked to be turned purple.

Teapot answers our questions by throwing jugs and jugs of fermented vodka our way. “Today, you are testing your limits.”

“By drinking?” Dax questioned in disbelief. “Anna will win that for sure.”

I shove him but still can’t help but grin. Too many times he has carried me home after countless liver killing nights.

“If you two are to be successful in the tournament, you must see each other in every circumstance, including being completely wasted.” Teapot not so patiently explains to us.

I let out a laugh. “Not that I would ever question getting drunk, but what will that achieve? There’s no booze inside the tournament.”

Teapot merely shrugs. “The truth of your friendship. You two will be tested like no other in that tournament. When you are hungry, freezing to death and slowly dying, everything will be harder to decipher and friendships will mean nothing unless they have a strong foundation.”

My eyes glance towards Dax, my best friend, and he’s looking at me too. I can’t imagine a life where he wasn’t by my side, as I’m sure he can’t imagine a life without me too.

Would we break inside the tournament? Will our friendship mean nothing when we’re in there?

I suppose there’s only one way to find out. “I guess we’re drinking.”

“I guess we are.” Dax agreed with a nod.