Alpha Grant: Book 3 of The Alpha Series

20. Egypt

Grant

~

The flight from China to Ismailia, Egypt took the longest. We spent more than a day traveling on planes and sitting in airports. We rented a Nissan Qashqai after getting the proper clothing from the airport store. I had been told about the proper attire here and this was the only place we needed to buy clothes at. It was in the sixties here and there was sand everywhere. Hardly any trees were seen and I was a little sad about that.

I drove for about an hour through the sandy desert when I finally saw trees in the middle of nowhere. They were thin and tall and gave off very little shade. We drove on a path through the trees and looked for the village I knew I would find out here. A clearing soon came into view and there sat the small village that housed the wolf pack here. The buildings were made of red stones and white or tan brick. Some of the buildings reminded me of adobes from Golden Meadows and the Gray Moon pack. I looked over at Otto and he was smiling as he saw the buildings. Nostalgia.

I stopped my vehicle close to some others that were here and we got out. We were quickly approached by two male warriors.

“Hi. I'm Alpha Grant. I’m here to see Alpha Mena,” I said.

“Right this way. He said you would be arriving today. We will show you to his house,” one of the warriors said.

We followed the two warriors through the village to a house and were led inside. Once we were in the building, I was amazed at how it looked. I was expecting dirt floors, but instead, it was stone covered in red and white rugs. There was furniture everywhere but everything looked nice.

As I looked around, a man approached us with a big smile. He was a little shorter than me and a little thinner. He had on a white long sleeve tunic with white baggy cloth pants. His skin was copper-colored with curly black hair that was mid-length. His dark brown eyes were inviting and friendly.

I smiled back at him and offered him my hand. He took it without hesitation and shook my hand as the guards left the house.

“Alpha Grant, it is good to meet you. You look so much like your father,” he told me.

I laughed and said, “I get told that a lot, or that I look identical to my older brother, Eric.”

He chuckled and said, “Eric still needs to make it here to visit the temple.”

“Yes. I'm actually surprised he hasn’t done that yet or made it out here to meet with me while I’m here.”

“Maybe he will come while you are here.”

“It’s possible,” I said with a shrug.

He smiled and I introduced him to the others.

“Come, we must go eat dinner, then I will show you to the guest house,” Mena said as he motioned us to follow him outside.

We followed him to a building and went inside with some of his pack members. We walked straight into the dining hall and sat at a long wooden table facing the door. The dining hall was filling up with pack members quickly. While people filled the seats at the other tables, I noticed that the women in the pack had face tattoos. They were on their foreheads, cheeks and chins.

A she-wolf came and sat beside Alpha Mena. She smiled sweetly at us before offering me her hand. I reached out and took it and we shook.

“Alpha Grant, I am Luna Ain,” she said.

“It’s great to meet you,” I told her, then introduced everyone else.

As we looked at her, I was blown away by how pretty she was with her chin and cheek tattoos. Another couple joined the table along with two pups and we were introduced to Mena’s Beta, Pilis, and his mate, Mesi. Mesi had the same tattoos on her face as the Luna did. What did the tattoos represent in their culture?

The pups were the Alpha’s son, Nakia, and the Beta’s son, Cairo. They both looked to be about the same age as Jade and Josie.

“The women are beautiful with the face tattoos. What do they represent in your culture?” Otto asked.

“The chin tattoo represents a marriage. Even though we wear our claiming marks on our necks, we still get tattoos. The cheek tattoos show that we are mothers and the forehead tattoos show that we are grandmothers,” Luna Ain explained.

We sat there and talked for a while. I then noticed there was someone standing in the doorway blocking the sunlight. I looked up and saw a she-wolf just standing there. I looked back at Mena since he was speaking to me, then realized that the she-wolf was staring at me and my heart almost dropped to my stomach thinking that she was looking at me as if I were her mate.

I looked up apprehensively, then realized she wasn’t looking at me and she wasn’t my mate. I looked beside me and saw Krew staring back at the she-wolf. Oh!

He slowly stood up from his seat and walked toward her. The she-wolf began to cry as she turned and ran from the building. Krew was left standing there stunned and hurt. I wonder why she did that?

I looked at Mena and he had been watching along with me. Mena turned to look at me while Krew still stood there. I could feel his heaviness from where I sat.

“Some of our she-wolves have found their mates from other packs and left recently. One of which was beaten horribly before she fled and came back to us. That was her little sister,” Mena told me.

I nodded my head while feeling horrible for the she-wolf and the girl that was Krew’s mate. He came and sat beside me while not saying a word. His head was hanging low in disappointment, which was understandable. I explained things to him and told him that he had a month to talk with her, so he had time.

Dinner was served moments later. We got to eat Egyptian Fatteh. It's a dish of chicken with rice, garlic, and layers of dry bread soaked in broth. It was served with yogurt and nuts. This was amazing. I wanted to take all the food back to the US that I enjoyed so I could still have them after we settled and built our pack buildings.

After dinner, we were shown to the guest house. Krew paced back and forth in the living area while I messaged everyone back home. We were seven hours ahead of them again. I messaged Madison while I sat on a very hard couch.

“Krew found his mate here in Egypt,” I told her.

I talked to her so much that she knew each of the guys and every Alpha couple that I interacted with. She knew everything.

“Oh my gosh! Is she pretty?”

I couldn’t really answer that. I barely got a look at her face and I wonder if Madison honestly wanted me to look at others. We didn’t know if we belonged to each other ,but to be honest, I don’t want her looking at others and I don't want anyone looking at her.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t get a good look at her before she ran off.”

“Why would she run off?”

“Her older sister found her mate with a different pack. He took her and beat her. Her sister is now back here, but Krew’s mate now fears that he will be like that too.”

“Oh! That’s horrible.”

“I know.”

I texted Madison for a little while longer before I needed to lay down to sleep.

~

All of us listened as Krew had issues sleeping overnight. At one point, I heard his wolf whine for their mate and it was heartbreaking. I had faith that he would be able to show her that he would be good to her over the next month.

When it was time to get up, Krew looked like hell. We were all getting ready to go eat breakfast and train with the members. I put my hand on Krew’s shoulder and drew his attention to me.

“Eat breakfast then go look for her,” I told him.

He nodded his head and said, “thank you, Alpha.”

I nodded my head and we went to have breakfast with the pack. We sat down at a table and were served a dish that Luna Ain told us was Beid Bel Basturma. It's a breakfast dish made of beef with eggs. The beef was dried with a paste of cumin, garlic, fenugreek and paprika. The smell alone was enough to make my mouth and my eyes water. When I took my first bite, I hummed happily. It was like Egyptian eggs and bacon!

When we were done eating, I went to train with the others while Krew went to search for his mate. I hope he had better luck with her today than he did yesterday. I trained hard with Alpha Mena while his son Nakia watched us. When we were done, we rested on a bench while drinking water and talked.

“There has never before been a Lycan as strong as yours. At least that I know of,” Mena informed me.

“I’ve heard that from everyone. I’m looking to see where my strength comes from, but haven’t had much luck. All I know is that someone altered my prophecy while my mother was pregnant with me. I was told that it was magic that did it.”

“I don't have strong ties to witches here in Africa, but if you go visit Brazil, Alpha Rodrigo might be able to get you into contact with one. I've heard that the witches there are very powerful and all seeing,” Mena told me.

I nodded my head and said, “Brazil is on my list of places to go.”

“Good,” he said before he paused, then asked, “This all happened before your mother came here to release my Lycan?”

“Yeah.”

He sat there for a moment to think, then said, “I don't think I will be able to find your answers as to why you have this strength, but you should still go see the temple.”

“Oh, I planned on it. Dad told all five of us about this place while we were growing up. The things he said made me want to come out here even as a young pup.”

Mena smiled and nodded his head happily. I looked around at the people of his pack and saw Krew walking over with his head hanging in disappointment again. I stood up and walked towards him. Sure, he was my pack member and my responsibility, but he was also my friend.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“I found her home but she won't speak with me,” he told me, his voice full of emotion.

“Take a breath. I’ll train with you if you would like and I'll help you in any way I can. We have time to make her see how good of a person you are. Her fear is driven from something someone did to someone she loves. I’m positive that she will see who you are and why she needs you,” I said, trying to convince him.

He looked at me with hopeful eyes and nodded his head. I trained with Krew and let him do what he could. I took it easy on him, but I wasn’t going to let him beat me.

After we trained, I gathered all my guys together and Mena walked up. I watched as his dark brown eyes went gray, indicating that I was interacting with his Lycan.

“I am Horus, Lycan of war. Shift with me brother. You will now learn about the Lycan kind.”

I let Skoll forward and he said, “I am Skoll. Lycan of the Sun. I would love to shift with you.”

Both of our Lycans took over and shifted, tearing our clothes apart. Once the shift was completed, I saw the difference between Horus and Skoll. Skoll had thick fur that was copper and silver where Horus had thin gray and white fur. I remember mom and dad saying it had to do with climate and culture. Our Lycan’s have evolved from what he looks like.

Horus started to walk off before he started to trot. The others shifted and ran after us into the trees. We ran through the trees until we reached a temple that had a picture of a Lycan that looked just like Horus on it. We stopped running and stepped inside, staying in Lycan and wolf form.

“Egypt was the place where the Moon Goddess created the first Lycan. She drew inspiration from the deity Anubis. The first Lycan was Wepwawet, a Lycan of war. He protected our kind from hunters and other humans that wanted us dead,” Horus began to tell us.

We all looked at the walls and the pictures that had been drawn on them hundreds of years ago. We all noticed some spots where the temple had been abused and damaged and it was frustrating. Skoll ran his paw over the walls and looked at everything.

“Eventually, over the course of fifty years, the Moon Goddess selected other packs to house Lycan warriors. They were created by her to help protect us from the humans and to spread the packs out more. The Forest Wolf was first created here in Egypt also. The first Lycan and the first Forest Wolf were twin brothers. It’s only fitting that the witches that locked the Lycans away made the Forest Wolf the key to bringing us back,” Horus said.

“Growing up we always knew that mother was the key. As young pups, we watched her power grow to what it is today. For years, we could sense that father was terrified of it, but he has grown more comfortable with it over the years. Though he still doesn’t support her using massive amounts of it at once,” Skoll said.

We fell quiet as I looked at the temple. After hours of studying the temple walls, we headed back to the village. When we got back, we shifted back to our human forms and pulled new clothes on before we went back to our guest house and Mena went about his day.

I got my phone out after looking at the time. It was two in the afternoon here, so I knew Madison was awake now.

I texted her right away, "Good morning."

"Good morning. What have you been up to today?"

"Training and I went to the temple of Lycans!"

"Oh! How was that?" she asked.

"Amazing. I'll send you pictures tomorrow when I go back."

"I would love that."

We texted for the rest of the day since it was the weekend and she didn't have school. It was always nice when I got to talk to her this much.

~

Over the course of the past few days, Krew has been trying to speak with his mate. She kept avoiding him though. We all felt awful for him but we had no idea how to help. She was someone none of us knew. Poor Krew doesn't even know her name yet.

After eating breakfast, Krew had been trying to get the she-wolf to talk to him but she wouldn't, so he stopped pushing. He decided that he would train with us and then see about talking with her afterward. We were all training in a heated match with the guys when I felt someone watching us. The guys felt it too and suddenly, Krew moved to look around in the middle of the match. Aksel ended up punching him right in the jaw. Krew fell to the ground with a thud and groaned before he moved to sit up.

"Sorry man," Aksel said with a sour look on his face.

"No worries. I shouldn't have gotten distracted."

We looked in the direction he was trying to look. There we found a she-wolf watching us. She had light tan skin, big golden brown eyes, thick wavy brown hair and plump lips. She was really pretty.

I watched her and noticed she was staring at Krew while he looked up at her while he sat on the ground. It was his mate. I was finally getting a good look at her but I wasn’t about to tell Maduison how pretty she was.

I leaned down and told Krew, "see if she'll talk with you."

He nodded his head and got up. He slowly approached her while watching her closely. You could tell he was afraid that she would run off again. All of us stood by and watched and listened to what was about to happen.

"Hi," Krew said as he stopped in front of her.

"Hello," she greeted him.

"My name is Krew. What's your name?"

She looked at him funny and said, "Mona. What type of name is Krew?"

All of us tried not to laugh at her question. His name was odd, but that’s what his parents had named him. He was stuck with it.

He gave her a light smile then said, "an odd one."

~

Our month had flown by while we learned about the Lycan and Forest Wolf history, trained with Mena and Krew got to know his mate, Mona. We were getting ready to leave for our next stop in a few days, so I was getting everything lined up for our transportation.

We were all in the guest house packing things up and getting our clothes cleaned. I was on my phone looking at flights and talking with my uncle Sean.

As I was getting the plane tickets,I asked Krew, "Will you be coming with us or will you want to stay with her here?"

He opened his mouth while thinking of an answer. There was a knock on the door and Otto opened it. Mona was standing there waiting to be let inside. Otto motioned for her to step through the door and she did with a small smile on her face.

Krew walked up to her and gently took her hand in his. Watching them together made me happy. He was good to her and she had slowly come around and started to show us her personality.

“Hi, sweety,” Krew said.

“Hey,” she said with a gentle smile.

“Alpha Grant was just asking me if I would be leaving with them in a few days or if I would be staying here. I need to give him an answer.”

I cut into their conversation to let her know what would be going on, “We will be heading to Western Australia next, then to Brazil and Canada before we head back to the US to settle finally. You are welcome to join us and if, for any reason, you want to be sent back here, I will help you.”

“I don't think I will need to come back and I'm ready to leave,” she said with a smile.

We all smiled at her answer and I bought tickets for the five of us. My pack was growing steadily and that made me happy. I wonder just how many more I would pick up along the way as I worked to establish my pack.