Alpha James: Book 1 of The Alpha Series

4. Midnight Forest

James

A few weeks later, I traveled to the Midnight Forest Pack in Nebraska to visit my uncle Sean, aunt Paris and my younger cousins, Carter and Ezra. Carter was eight years younger than me, but he was a smart and level-headed young man already. He reminded me of Sean in a lot of ways.

Uncle Sean called us to tell us the day after my Alpha Ceremony, that aunt Paris was pregnant with their third pup. Aunt Jamie is able to somehow connect with pups in the womb thanks to her godly powers as the Forest Wolf. She was able to tell them that they were going to have a girl and a little about her.

As I pulled up to the packhouse, I saw that aunt Paris and uncle Sean were standing there on the porch waiting for me. After parking and getting out of my rental car, I walked up to greet them and hug them tightly. Aunt Paris had grown large already with this third pup but she looked so happy. I rubbed my hand over her belly while I still had an arm wrapped around her and smiled.

“How was your trip?” Aunt Paris asked as we walked into the packhouse and down the hall to uncle Sean’s office.

“Trips now are so quiet and they are boring as hell. All I do is work while I travel and I feel like I have turned into my dad overnight,” I told them as I sat down with them.

Sean and Paris both laughed at me while sitting down. I was so used to traveling with my siblings and them always being loud, that now that it was me on my own, it was annoying. I always thought that them being loud was irritating, but in fact, the silence on the plane was defining.

“How is the hunt going for your Beta?” uncle Sean asked.

“Not good. I need to find one soon. I’m afraid poor Freddie will wither away if I don’t.”

He nodded his head while chuckling and said, “I don’t have any other Betas in my pack other than Akila and you can’t have her.”

“That’s fine. I’m too afraid of her to try and take her anyway.”

This earned me more laughter from them. I loved making the people around me think and laugh. It always felt good to make the situations lighter with laughter.

“Well, let's go have lunch in town while the boys are with Paris’s dad,” Sean said as he looked at the time.

“Sounds good,” I said happily.

The three of us got up from our seats and walked into town. As we walked along the street, I saw a large number of she-wolves that kept eyeing me. All of them were beautiful in their own way, but none of them were mine. I wouldn’t mess with any of them. It didn’t feel right.

We stopped and went into aunt Paris’s favorite restaurant here on the Midnight Forest territory to have Italian food. The food was amazing as always and the company was great. I was always close to my dad’s siblings because they helped raise me until they left to start their own families.

I really loved it when they all decided that they would send all of us cousins to spend a week in each pack during the summer together. It was one of the best parts of my childhood though I only got to enjoy it for a handful of years since I was the oldest.

On the way back to the packhouse, aunt Paris told us she would meet back up with us later. She was headed to get my cousins and go to their house. Uncle Sean did things differently here in his pack that he established. He didn’t live in the packhouse with his family like most Alphas did. Instead, he had a house built next door for his family to live in and still have their privacy.

I walked with Sean into the packhouse and down the hall to his office. We both sat down and I found this to be a great opportunity to ask something that was on my mind. It was something that I didn’t want to ask in front of anyone else, but I knew he would understand why I was asking.

“I have some odd questions for you,” I started out with.

“Since when is that anything new?” he asked while looking at me with raised eyebrows and a knowing look on his face.

I laughed and said, “Touche salesman.”

He laughed with me before telling me, “lay it on me, James.”

“How were your s****l experiences with others before you found aunt Paris?”

His eyes bulged in his eye sockets for a moment before he sighed and shook his head. He smiled softly at me before he went to talk.

“Have you even had s*x yet?” Uncle Sean asked.

I shake my head no. I was still a f*****g virgin. I had been holding out on having s*x in the hopes that I would find my mate soon. Though the desire and the urges were getting ridiculous now that I was of age. My body was working against our ways and my wolf. Anytime I wanted someone, Bruno would jump in and tell me no. Especially back at Trinity Forest. Which in reality was probably for the best.

“Like your dad said, be smart about what you do. It will be unfulfilling with anyone until you find the one you were meant for.”

I nodded my head and asked, “so every encounter you had was missing something?”

“Yes”

“So, should I try and keep waiting?” I asked, wanting some type of guidance from someone other than my parents and my wolf.

“You have to do what’s best for you. You never know when your mate will be put in your path. It could be in a few days, months or it could be years from now.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh.

“If you do sleep with someone who isn’t your mate, make sure they know it’s just a one-time thing and that they shouldn’t get attached,” he instructed.

I nodded my head. It was an option to find she-wolves to have one-night stands with that were a part of my pack if the need got that bad. I just needed to figure this out. I wanted some type of experience before I found my Luna. I wanted to know what I should and shouldn’t do before I was with someone that it really mattered with.

“I don’t like the thought of not waiting for our mate,” Bruno says.

“I know you don’t. Believe me, I want her more than ever, but I also want experience so I can make her happy and I have to do something about these hormones.”

“You have been doing something about them.”

“I’m not going to do that forever,” I said in irritation.

“At least wait a little while longer,” he whines.

“I’ll give it a year.”

“Thank you,” he told me with a sigh before falling to the back of my mind.

Sean changed the subject and started talking about the Alpha council meeting that was coming up. This would be my first meeting. Dad had informed me of some of the things that went on and uncle Sean confirmed them.

“Oh, did your dad tell you about going to the pub on Friday nights when we are there?” Sean asked.

“No,” I said in wide-eyed horror.

“Figures. The asshole didn’t even warn me, but I’m going to be nice. All of the Alphas will go for drinks except for Jamie. She never goes. She enjoys hanging out with the Lunas and drinking and playing games with them. Sometimes we join in on their games when we get back from the pup.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said with a smile.

He laughs and says, “Yeah it is. Except, this will be your first meeting so expect to get hazed into drinking entirely too much at the pub and having a hangover the next morning before the meeting starts. Oh, and your aunt Jamie likes to start the meetings early on Saturday mornings.”

“This is going to be a f*****g disaster,” I said while closing my eyes and running my hands over my face.

I hear him laugh a little more before saying, “It happens just this once so you will live. Wait until you get to haze your cousins like this.”

I brightened up a little then said, “That will be fun but I have to wait like four years for the first one to be there to haze.”

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “it will be worth the wait.”

I grinned at him and continued talking about the council meeting. Dad had given me the basics of what would happen at the meetings and why. I was happy to have aunt Jamie heading the council. I’m sure she kept everyone in line and on task.

My time at Midnight Forest didn’t help me in my search, but I did enjoy my time. It was a blissful little getaway where I relaxed, hung out and ate great food from different parts of the world. That was always the best part of going to Midnight Forest, the diversity of the pack meant diversity in the culture, food and language. With several pack members, I would get to speak Spanish. That was something that I got to do from time to time at home, but mostly with mom.

After enjoying the food there, I decided that I needed to go on food adventures and find all the things the world had to offer. This would open up a world of likes and dislikes. It would be a way of finding myself out there in the world while I took care of the pack.