The Alpha Twins of Red Moon

Two.

I made a beeline directly for my bedroom, and Beta Jared followed silently behind me.

“Why are you following me?” I growled at him once we finally stopped just outside my door.

“Your Father asked me to make sure you don’t leave your room tonight.” He looked at me with sympathy. I didn’t need his pity; pity didn’t get anyone anywhere.

“Haha, he's afraid I’m going to run, isn’t he?” I snorted. He was smart. I mean, I was seriously thinking about it, and it's not like there was anything keeping me here.

“I am sorry, Ally. I know that this isn’t fair to you.” At least he could look me in the eyes. My father hadn’t been able to. Jared was practically a second dad to me, I am glad he did his bit to calm things down, but he could have done more to defend me back there.

“And yet you said nothing.” I wasn’t about to start pulling my punches just because he claimed that he was sorry. That meant nothing to me.

“I know how much this sucks, Ally. I want to save you from it, really I do, but this will help the whole pack. I think you should, at the very least, consider it.” So he was on my father's side too. Good to know.

“You are still unmated and unmarked. Why don’t you go marry yourself off to this Adam fellow? He is, after all, from a respectable pack.” I made a shooing motion with my hands. I don’t know why they can’t see how wrong this is. I’m sick of hearing about the ‘good of the pack.’ I loved my pack; really, I did. I wanted to see my people live good lives and the pack as a whole prosper. I would give my life for them if need be. The only thing I wanted in return was to wait for my fated mate, just like everybody else.

“It’s not the end of the world, Ally. Give him a chance. You never know. You might get lucky. He may even be your mate.” Jared said hopefully.

That was a very slim chance, and we both knew it, but I didn’t bother to argue. What more was there to say? I didn’t want to do this, and they thought I was selfish for that, so instead of wasting my breath, I slammed the door in his face. I couldn’t make him leave, but I didn’t have to entertain him either.

Both of my sisters, Emily and Aria, were sitting on my bed waiting for me when I walked into my room. My littlest sister Aria was staring at the door, wringing her hands, something she only did when she was extremely nervous. Emily had her back up against the wall, her knees were propped up, and she had her nose in a book. I immediately spotted the headphones in her ears. I don’t know how she listened to music and read simultaneously; my focus would be pulled.

Emily didn't even notice me enter the room. I saw Aria attempt to elbow our middle sister in the side discreetly to get her attention. She dropped her book and immediately pulled her headphones out.

“Oh, my Ally, whatever did you do?” Emily practically squeals in her squeaky voice. She was worried about me. We were only ever called into our father's office when we did something wrong, really wrong. Before today I had only ever been called into his office twice. The first time was when I got suspended from school in the eighth grade for fighting. In my defence, a few of the other kids had been bullying Emily, and I was simply defending my little sister. The second time was when I had been caught sneaking out to a party my Father had explicitly asked me not to go to when I was 16. Neither Emily nor Aria had ever actually been called to my father's office. As the oldest, I had always been held to a higher standard as there was a high chance that I would become Luna of this pack. I guess that would be up to Emily and whoever her mate is now.

“I didn’t do anything.” I rolled my eyes at my sister. She could be dramatic sometimes.

I sunk into my bean bag and tried my hardest not to cry. If my sisters weren’t here right now, I would already be shoving my clothes into a bag and making a run for it. I hated knowing that my only two choices were either becoming a rogue or mating with some stranger. No matter what choice I made, both were for life, the worst part? It had all been dumped on me in a single afternoon.

I hate this Adam already. If he hadn’t agreed to this deal, then I wouldn’t even be in this sucky situation right now. Who did he think he was, deciding both of our fates like that? He didn’t even know me. I swear, men were the worst.

“Then why did you have to go to his office? He didn’t want to see you for nothing.” Aria continued to wring her hands. I hated it when she did that. It was okay to be emotional, scared and weak, but why broadcast it? It just made it easier for others to take advantage of you. She was an Alpha’s daughter. She had a strength that a lot of she wolves don’t have.

How did I say this? I took a deep breath in and let a loaded heavy sigh out.

“Father is trying to force me to take a chosen mate.” I tell them, I don't usually refer to our dad as the father, but it somehow helped me distance myself from him, and right now I needed to feel as far away from that monster as possible.

Both of my sisters gasp at my revaluation; their hands fly to their mouths almost in sync. At least they didn’t know about it. If they knew before I did, that would make this even worse for me. I wonder how much of it my mother was in on. She genuinely believes in the mate bond and the moon goddess, and I can’t imagine that she’s on my father's side; however, I knew she wouldn’t go against him. She would rather keep my father happy than worry about me and my future.

I hope I’m never that weak. I guess I’ll never know if I have the power to stay strong under the mate bond. After all, I’ll never experience it. Earlier, Jared’s words had planted a seed of hope, maybe this Adam would be my mate, but I didn’t dare water it. It would only be worse for me when he wasn’t.

“What? No. He can't do that, can he? Why? You can’t be serious, can you? I don't understand why he would do that.” Emily fumbled clearly not sure what to say.

I hate to admit it, but at this moment, I can feel the stirrings of resentment that it’s me and not her in this situation. Not that I wouldn't fight for her as hard as I'm going to fight for myself, it just feels very unfair. My father just expected me to be this gift that kept on giving but expected nothing from my sisters. At least if it were Emily, she would have me in her corner backing her up. I had no one.

“Father wants Black Forrest to ally with the red moon pack. So he plans to marry me off to their Beta Adam something, my mating will be the basis of this treaty. I don’t know all the details as I wasn't invited to the discussion. No, I was just told I would do it after all the males agreed it would be best.” I rolled my eyes.

I didn’t even know my supposed chosen mate's last name, or his age for that matter. The Alpha Twins only took over a year ago, so I can’t imagine he is that old, but still. That's not the point, the point is they want me to spend my life with a man that I don't know.

“Oh Ally, what are you going to do?” Aria sobs. I knew she would take my leaving the hardest. She was six years younger than I was, and with my parents so busy with their Alpha and Luna duties, I had basically raised her even though I was only six years old at the time.

“It's simple, I’m going to run.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but we all knew it was. Going rogue meant I had a good chance of dying within months unless I could get another pack to take me in. I had no interest in being without a pack. I would try my hardest to find a place for myself, but rogues weren’t to be trusted, and I wasn’t naive enough to believe others would be so trusting as to just let me in with open arms. It was a long shot at best.

“Oh, no, Ally, you simply can’t.” both my sisters begged me. It was easy for them. It wasn’t their future on the line. It was mine.

“Oh no? And why is that?” I snap at them. I couldn’t help it; I was on edge, and my wolf hadn’t stopped growling since my father's office. She hasn’t tried to reach out to me yet, and I wasn’t interested in dealing with her anger, so I was shutting her out as much as I could without completely cutting contact.

“If you go rogue, Dad will hunt you down and kill you himself.” Aria sobbed.

My father was a fantastic Alpha. He treated all members of his pack equally. The omegas were treated no differently than my mother, the Luna. We were only a small pack of two hundred wolves, and almost all of us lived in a six-story packhouse. The alpha, beta and gamma families all shared the top floor. The following four floors all housed the rest of the pack and the bottom floor was a shared area for everyone. There was a large dining hall, a massive kitchen, a games room and a small cinema. Outside we had an Olympic size pool that was open to everyone. Only a few families chose to build houses of their own, and my father, right down to the manual labour, had helped each of them build their own homes.

Everyone, in the pack worked, except for the elderly and the pups, of course. Women mostly tended to the care of the packhouse, running the daycare, the small school, the kitchen, general house cleaning, etc. and the men handled all the manual labour like raising the cows that we ate, tending to the farm, or training to be warriors.

Very few wolves had ever left the pack, but for the few that had left, my father and his trackers had gone out and had killed them. It may sound controlling and cruel, live here by our rules or die, but that wasn’t the case.

We had wolves who had left without severing their ties to live in the human world or to be with their mates in other packs. It was only wolves that went rogue that he would go after, and that was because of the rogue problem. Rogues always went crazy.

My dad feared that once a wolf went rogue that they would eventually attack us for revenge or, in their sick minds, justice. Rogues hated what we had, and they wanted to destroy it. It was rare for an Alpha to exile a wolf. They couldn’t as it was against our laws unless the wolf in question had broken the law themselves.

My father has only ever exiled three wolves.

“I’m his daughter. He wouldn’t.” I argued, but I wasn’t so sure. If I left, would he still love me? Would he kill me for betraying him? I guess only time will tell for sure.

“Please, Ally, please don’t run. Mate, this Adam, or at least give it a try. if you don’t like him, I’m sure that Dad will let you come home.” Aria begged me.

She was being incredibly naive. It wasn’t that simple. You can’t just back out of a mate bond, fated or chosen. Once it was established, it was there for life.

“Aria, if I mate Adam, if I let him mark me as his, and he will want to, then there is no leaving. Our souls would literally be bound. Breaking the connection could very well kill us both, or worse, it wouldn’t, and we would be these half living, half dead, pathetically weak creatures barely capable of anything.”

In history, only eight mated couples on record had ever rejected each other after already being mated. All eight mated pairs had been chosen, mates. Of those 8, 6 of the couples had died once the connection was severed, the other two went crazy and eventually, they had to be put down by their own packs because of how dangerous they had become to those around them. There may be more cases out there, but if there were, they hadn’t been reported. Either way, it was a death sentence.

“And what happens if I mate Adam and then I meet my mate, or worse, he meets his? How do I know that he will reject her? How do I know I’m not going to spend my life suffering mating pains when he takes his mistress to bed every night?” I feel like I was the only one thinking about these things. Nothing ever worked out in best case scenario.

In an ideal situation, I would meet Adam, he would be my Mate, and we could live happily ever after. But that was the absolute best-case scenario. What if I met my mate and couldn’t bring myself to reject him? What happens to this alliance, then? Why did my mate deserve to suffer through the pain of rejection, or Adam for that matter? There are a lot of things that no one was considering here. They are just throwing us together and hoping we will just suffer in silence, all for my dad's sake. There are better ways to protect the pack. He’s just taking the easy way out.

“I mean, can you believe he had the gall to tell me that this was some big sacrifice for him? He was the one who sought it out, who proposed this deal and arranged it.” I ranted. I wanted to hit something.

“Please, Ally, please just stay. Maybe mom can talk him out of it.” Emily was such an optimist. I wish I could put my faith in my mother, she was a good woman, and I loved her, but she wouldn’t go against my Father. She would have known about the arranged mating. She avoided me today on purpose, I’m sure of it.

“Yeah, maybe.” I said, because I could see arguing my point with them wasn't getting me anywhere. Why didn’t anyone else see what a big deal this was? I just felt deflated. No one was listening to me. I bet they would feel the way that I did if they were the ones in my shoes, but they weren’t, so I should just suck it up. Dirty hypocrites, the lot of them.

“Do you want us to stay with you for the night?” Aria offered.

Really it was terribly sweet of her, but if they were to stay in here, I’d never make it out. I planned to leave as soon as my family went to sleep. If I could sneak out soon, then I would have a few good hours' head start on the trackers. I knew how to mask my scent almost entirely. It was my best chance.

“No, I will be okay, Aria, I promise.” I plastered my best fake smile on and prayed to the moon goddess, they would buy it and leave.

“I promise, Ally. We are going to talk to Dad for you.” Emily wrapped me up in a tight hug. I hugged her back with as much effort as I could despite my negative feelings right now. This very well could be the last time I saw my sisters again. I don’t want to regret the way I said goodbye to them.

“He can’t do this.” Aria pulled me in once Emily stepped aside. I hugged her just as hard. I would miss her most of all.

“Thank you both. I love you.” I said as I let them out and closed the door behind them.