Alpha Queen

Chapter 1

Josie Pov

The sound of the wind racing through the air was heard over my thinking. My thoughts were wild and fast, filled with a panic that I wasn’t used to. Not me. I was the princess of the Snow Moon pack, the next Queen of the witches, and the daughter of Jade and Julien Bane. I scrunched up my eyes, trying to push back the panic as I thought, my mind filled with turmoil, and my thoughts all jumbled together. I always assumed as a small girl that when I was older, I’d have to marry an Alpha wolf. Gender was never really anything that mattered to my parents, though I knew from the stories of the elders that once upon a time the idea of same-s*x relationships used to be taboo in the packs. I knew my standing, I knew my title, and I knew my power. Being a female witch meant my parents could only have one child. If they had given birth to a boy, he would have been a wolf, and they could have tried again for a girl. But because I was a girl, the risk of having another girl was too great for them and they simply stopped having kids. Being a female witch meant I wouldn’t have a wolf.

The night was dark, the moon was full, and the sound of wolves was echoing through the woods as I ran, my teeth clenched together as I tried to make sense of everything. I always knew I wouldn’t have a wolf, because a female witch’s genes were stronger than a wolf’s genes, even with my father being an Alpha. Knowing I wasn’t going to have a wolf meant I wouldn’t be able to rule the pack, not by myself. I had accepted this, knowing that it wasn’t about my gender, but about the fact that I simply wouldn’t have a wolf. Without a wolf, my people wouldn’t be able to submit to me, they wouldn’t be able to mind-link me unless I figured out how to break through the veil like my mother and her twin sister did. While a part of me was annoyed that the only way I could keep the wolf part of the pack would be because I married someone who has Alpha blood, I didn’t mind after a while. It was hard being upset over that when I had enough power to make up for it. My mother didn’t know of her magic until she was twenty, but for me, I learned at a young age as most witches do. Raised since birth to know I was going to be the next Queen of the witches, I was spoiled and pampered by the others as was expected of my title. It wasn’t something I enforced or even really enjoyed, to be honest. Of course, most people would enjoy the attention, and I did, to an extent. I pushed myself to be stronger, to try harder, and do better. I learned different languages, I studied every page of my mother’s grimoire up and down, back and forth, over and over again until I knew it better than anyone. Then, when it came time for me to display my talent, to showcase if I was a pithe or if I was a witch, after all, I did a difficult spell, and I did it perfectly. A genius, I was called a prodigy, and I learned at a young age I quite liked being called those names.

So no, I didn’t exactly love being spoiled or pampered. Honestly, when they went too far, I tended to run off and hide, waiting for them to get tired of searching for me and do something else with their lives. But I still tried harder and harder, enjoying the praise of their words, the way their eyes smiled so brightly as they looked at me, and how much they relied on me. Being called mature and respectful, and being told they knew great things were going to come from me. All of these praises were what I lived for, what I strived for, and I simply wanted more. To be the best, to make the witches proud of me, to make my mother and my father proud of me, that was all I wanted. So no, the idea that I had to marry someone to keep the pack was frustrating, but it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. It wasn’t like I was being forced to marry a specific person, after all, I was allowed to find my own Alpha, of course. There were plenty of them, after all. It wasn’t until they started to get together, that both of the sister packs and giggle. As I got older, they started to see me and the other kids playing together during the meetings, and even as a child I was exceptionally smart. The type of child that read novels when I was in kindergarten, while other kindergarteners struggled to read the words under the pictures. Mature for my age, smart, amazing. I knew from the way they would giggle and look at Tyler and me, that they were hoping. Hoping I’d choose him, hoping we’d fall in love. I wasn’t sure at first, we were simply children, but more and more, as we got older, it became obvious. The other kids would stop coming as much, staying home with siblings and family members during the meetings. Rhys would be there, he was to be the next Shifter king after all, and that left just me, Tyler, and Rhys during the meetings. It became known at a young age that they expected me to choose between either of the boys, both having Alpha blood in their veins, but as we got older I could see the way my mother and her best friend Colt were. The glitter in their eyes as they talked and pointed, and I hated every bit of it. Rhys would be a bear most likely. That’s what I thought back then, anyway. They expected me to be with a wolf, to marry a wolf, and it became more and more obvious exactly who they were imagining me with.

The screams of those who hadn’t shifted yet filled the air, but from a distance from how far I had run by now. A staggered shifting, those who presented themselves to the moon, the ritual every month for those who turned twenty. To simply be twenty meant you got your wolf, but you didn’t get to shift until the first full moon, exactly at midnight. I had been standing by my parents, watching the ritual with everyone else. Watched them come out with their ceremonial white clothes, their skin fresh and clean as they stripped and fell to their knees before the moon, offering their bodies to the rays as they started to slowly one by one shift. I was standing on the platform not too long ago, standing beside my parents, watching. Why would I have thought to be with the others? Why would I have cared to be with them? I was a witch, and I knew that despite when it became midnight I’d be technically twenty years old, that it didn’t matter for me, not this night. Why would the full moon matter to a witch? We didn’t get wolves, we didn’t shift. At least…that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I shook my head, feeling frustrated as I thought about my parents, thought about the Blood Moon pack, and thought about Tyler. I could understand their thought process, from a stranger’s perspective. To unite the two packs together, something they’ve been trying to do all along from the beginning of the new era. It made sense that the two packs that were hours away but filled with family and friends in both packs should be put together. It also made sense that the way to link them together was- very easily- solved if Tyler and I wed. However, that was never going to happen. Despite my upbringing, I wasn’t a spoiled girl. Well, it was hard not to be somewhat spoiled growing up being called princess and prodigy, but I didn’t argue back and I didn’t cause problems. However, when it came to Tyler, I refused everything. I had always hated Tyler, ever since the beginning. Maybe it was because when we were kids he called me a know-it-all and shoved my face in the mud, or maybe it was because he’s always pulled my hair and picked on me growing up. Maybe it was simply because all through school he was always so cocky and lazy, barely passing his classes and acting out constantly. Possibly it was because of all of that, and honestly, I shouldn’t have to deal with such horrific behavior. The idea of being married to a man who could barely pass classes? The idea of marrying a man who would rather fall asleep in class instead of listening? How could I trust such a man to run a pack? Though to be honest, that infuriated me more than anything, because while Tyler was probably the laziest man I’d ever met, he was smart, too; when he wanted to be, that is. When it came to school, all he cared about was basketball, but when he was at home at his pack, he was efficient and sure of himself. More than once, Colt had stepped back, letting his son take control since he turned eighteen. Sure, we didn’t get our wolves until we were twenty, but everything worked differently for an Alpha. They started training young, and depending on the pack and the rituals they used, their Gamma and Beta were picked early. When they all turned eighteen, they started their training with the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. They would be replaced once the current Alpha stepped down for their heir to take over. Getting them field battle experience, and making sure they were ready for anything. In the Snow Moon Pack, we waited until the new Alpha was accepted and the old one stepped down, then the new Alpha would throw a tournament. Everyone who wanted to compete to be Beta or Gamma was welcome, no matter what their current status was. The one who won was the next Beta, and the second was the next Gamma.

It was different for the Blood Moon Pack. Their young Alpha was allowed to choose whoever he wanted as his Beta and Gamma, expecting him to grow up with them fighting and training by his side. The idea with that is so they feel like family, like they’ll always want to protect him, no matter what. I never did like to say anything good about Tyler or anything about him for that matter, but I did appreciate the pack itself and their tradition better than ours. Tyler chose Eliot as his Beta and Aaron as his Gamma when they were all in middle school together, and the three grew up not only as best friends but as a unit all on their own. Though Aaron stepped down not too long ago. I never knew why, never asked, to be honest, it wasn’t my pack after all. I know Tyler replaced Aaron with Isaac, or Zack as he goes by.

So there were parts of the Blood Moon pack that I accepted, parts that I agreed with, but Tyler himself? There was no way I would have anything to do with him. Whoever my future husband was would be the one to deal with Tyler when it came time for talks of the packs and the alliance, and I had been fine with that because I knew I would be too busy being the Queen of the witches. It probably disappointed my parents that I wouldn’t even consider marrying Tyler, but I simply couldn’t force myself to do something with someone I despised. Honestly, as I grew older, I started to look at all of my candidates. Ever since the last battle happened, our packs have been growing bigger and bigger. Elementals from all over were starting to come, and while they were mostly all human elementals, they were still welcome. Rogues that either decided they wanted to join our packs came and begged for admission, or they were stubborn and stupid and decided to try and fight us. More than once, we had groups of witches as well, witches that wanted to fight my mother for the title, even though their blood wasn’t royalty. So all in all, despite the last battle coming to pass, it was far from peaceful. Everything was just starting to shift, starting to grow, and while we all had to worry about problems on our borders of groups of witches and rogues or new members coming from everywhere begging for admission, we also had to worry about how large we were getting. The plots of land that the Blood Moon pack and the Snow Moon pack owned were only so large, and the bigger we got and the more houses we built, the less room we had. Not to mention the Snow Moon pack simply had witches and wolves, but the Blood Moon pack had Shifters, wolves, elementals, and vampires. Plus Dragons, once the dragons started to get older and came to seek out Sage and Rune.

I gasped, feeling water falling, and looked up at the sky. We had known it was going to rain at some point tonight, but to feel it like this was not what I had expected. When I was standing next to my parents, I had an umbrella, but now that I wasn’t near them, I wondered if it was still there, still lying on the ground, surrounded by the remains of my clothes.

I gritted my teeth, frustrated, trying to think. Think of a way out of all of this, to think of how to fix this, whatever this was, but my panic was making me unable to grasp what was happening, unable to comprehend this was happening to me, and all I could think about was the packs and the problems I had moments before it became midnight. Maybe it was because I was gripping onto the reality that I had before it became midnight because…this wasn’t something I was quite able to deal with, not yet.

With all of the new additions to the packs, there were a lot of Alpha wolves I could choose from. However, while I did let them take me on dates, it never went much further than that. I refused to give myself away until I was sure that I wasn’t going to have a fated mate or not, since I was a witch and the only way a witch could get a fated mate was if we were mated to a wolf, or maybe it was just because I didn’t feel like it was the right time for me yet. Maybe it’s stupid, being twenty and still a virgin, but I didn’t care about that, I had more important things to worry about than the immature rolled eyes of people who thought I was a prude. However, with all that was going on, marriage and mates weren’t the most important thing on my mind right now. I was still in college, after all. Pretty much everyone went to college after high school, otherwise, how would our pack have teachers? How would they have cooks or architects? How would they have secretaries or therapists? We soon realized over the years that Rhys was the last true healer to be born, and more and more wolves started to go to medical school as well. The different colleges weren’t far from our packs, but it did help that the town we all went to for high school had a local college next to it. It seemed like the closer I got to turning twenty, the less I looked forward to it. My best friends, Isobel and Tessa, tended to make fun of me sometimes because of how much I’d grumble and change the subject. It wasn’t a birthday I was looking forward to, and while they thought I was crazy, they just assumed it was a witch trait. We did get our powers when we turned seven unless we were pithes, and they thought I didn’t care about my twentieth birthday simply because I wasn’t getting a wolf or having anything happen to me, so why care? But witches do get an extra boost to their powers when they turn twenty, and we also get our fated mate as well, if we were the mate to a wolf. While I was worried I would find my fated mate and they weren’t an Alpha, I was mostly worried I wouldn’t have a fated mate at all, and I’d have to find an Alpha wolf to marry.

‘You’re stalling, you know,’ a sweet feminine voice filled my mind, distracting me. I stopped, a soft whimper filled the crisp night air around me as I pressed my paws against the muddy ground. ‘You can’t deny this is happening, little one.’ She said.

I turned back around to look the way I came, watching the wolves that had shifted tonight spill through the woods around me, excited over their first shift, and a few of them rolling around together in the mud, finding their fated mates in each other already. ‘This can’t be happening, you can’t be real, I’m a witch,’ I said softly, fear ripping through me.

‘Turn around, Josie, look forward.’ She ordered. I did as she said, looking at the dark woods in front of me. ‘Run, little one, just run. Forget about everything else, and simply feel the wind. Worry about this later, but for now, it’s time for us to be free,’ she said with a smile. So I did as she said, I forgot about all of my worries, pushed them out of my mind, and ran.

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Because of reasons I can't explain on here, I'm giving a warning of removal. I will be continuing to update this book daily right here until Friday. Friday, this book will be taken down. I'll be leaving the first five chapters on here so the book itself won't be getting deleted.

There is a very big, very important reason for this. If you haven't already followed me on my Fac.ebo.ok group, then I hope you take a minute to do so. The newest pinned post will explain everything you need to know about this book, why I'm taking it down, and what I'm doing after that. I'm putting this message on the end of all of these chapters to warn everyone, since I don't know where they are at reading the book. I really hope you take a minute to follow my group and allow me to explain what's going on.

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Mallory Grant-DImages Writer

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