Leighton

Chapter 1 A Task

Flashback.

A beautiful girl, sat on a golden throne, a crown of gold roses sat upon her long blonde hair. Thorny wines twisted their way up her arms and legs, the dark thorns contrasting against the luminescence of her skin. Her eyes were and at the base of her gold silk dress, a pool of crimson blood collected.

A strangled sob escaped and the vision was gone.

End of flashback

Please Leighton?” Piper was begging me now. “They are all coming, it will be so sickening, it’s not fair you get to escape.”

Pipers voice pulled me back to the present. I took me a moment but then I knew what she was taking about, all our friends and their mates were coming up this weekend. While there were other unmated wolves at elite training with us, Piper and I were the oldest and neither of us had met our mates.

It was not through my lack of trying. While I was technically my brother Ashton’s beta but I actually split my time between our pack Opal Lake, Elite training and visiting other packs on behalf of my close friend Jackson, the alpha of one of the most powerful packs around, Silver Oak.

This meant I spend a lot of time away from home visiting packs around the country and more recently further afield. It turned out that we had been pretty ignorant and there was whole werewolf kingdoms that we knew nothing about. As a result of my travels I had met more shewolfs than one could imagine without finding my mate.

Today I was meant was going to New Dawn, a pack nearby that was having a problem with rogues. Rogues attacks has stopped for a long time after we defeated the witches and they signed an alliance with us, but more recently attacks had been happening again.

Alpha Luke was the nearest neighbour but, for reasons yet unknown to me Luke refused to go see him so Jackson was sending me instead. Cue another grumpy phone call from my brother that I would not be seeing him when they came to elite training for the awards ceremony.

This last cohort had just completed, a warrior from our pack was top warrior this year and Ashton was coming to the ceremony, he wanted to talk after. I was happy not to be here for that, I didn’t need the neglecting the beta duties chat.

The truth was I wasn’t, I had training so well step up at home that it almost ran itself and Antony would be taking back over when he returned with Ashton after the awards ceremony. He had won the warrior award this year, trained by yours truly.

The rest of the duties I could do in my sleep, it just bugged that, in private, Ashton said he was trapped there and I was off exploring. He just wouldn’t admit that in front of his mate. I would swap in an instant, and be happily trapped there if it meant I finally had my mate beside me .

It annoyed the hell out of me that my hell raising brother found his mate so quickly and me, the well behaved brother was still waiting.

I loved Ashton and Felicity, I really did, even if we did bicker all the time, I loved my nephew too I was just jealous of them all the time so I tried to keep away and keep busy so I didn’t brood on my lack of mate and lack of purpose.

I signed, looking at her pleading eyes. There wasn’t really any reason Piper couldn’t come with me, I supposed. She was good company and easy on the eye. She had been waiting on her mate even longer than me, so it probably wasn’t a bad idea for her to come to a new pack.

“Okay, fine you can tag along, you can miss the ceremony seen as none of your warriors made it to final selection.”

“Kick me while I’m down why don’t you?”

“You’ll do better next year.” I told her optimistically.

Piper had decided to stay on at elite training and this term had her own team for the first time, but it had been a bit much for her. She was a gifted silver wolf but because she hadn’t her mate yet and couldn’t quite get a handle on her powers, and it annoyed her no end. If I was honest I didn’t know why she had stayed here because I’m not sure warrior training really was her thing.

She was so keen to come with me that she was already waiting by my car when I came down ready to leave. I raised my eyes at her outfit. She had made an effort, wearing a smart dress that showed a lot more leg than I was used to seeing.

She smirked when she caught me staring.

“What, I haven’t been there before, I might meet my mate.”

I hoped she did, I knew she was down about it. I knew how she felt and I wasn’t battling with powers that were temperamental.

The pack wasn’t far away, and we hadn’t traveled far when my wolf, Titan started to get agitated.

“What’s wrong ?” I asked him, it wasn’t like him he wasn’t normally unpredictable not your typical alpha wolf, I guess. I was technically a beta anyway.

“I don’t know, I want to get there. Faster.”

Looking over at Piper she didn’t seem rattled, I had no idea what was up with my wolf.

“Calm down, you will give me a headache. We will be there soon.”

He didn’t bother to reply. I’m not going to say we had a great relationship. We did, but more recently he had been grumpy, and he was still insanely protective of Greer, Jackson’s mate and wife. Greer probably was my best friend, and I had stupidly fallen in love with her, instantly upon meeting her because she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. That was before I realised that she was in love with Jackson and turned out to be his mate. Strangely, I had been genuinely happy for them when they finally sorted their s*** out.

Greer had never considered me anything more then a friend and I had accepted that straight away, it was a line I would never cross. Titan loved her too, but we were both in agreement she was one hundred percent off limits and placed firmly in the friend zone. To be honest now she was Jackson were married with pups she didn’t really need me anymore. That didn’t stop us being there for her but it did just made me want to meet my mate even more.

Greer was a royal gold wolf, and it turns out that there was a small number of these wolves ruling other parts of the world. While trying to trace their packs we hadn’t found any related to Greer so far but Jackson had recently been contacted by The King of Britannia, a Kingdom on the other side of the world. He wanted to send some wolves to our elite training facility. It had been gathering quite a reputation for producing not only great warriors but leaders as well.

What has started as simply a training programmes had grown arms and legs and now wolves came from all over the world to stay and train here.

Ever since he had seen the vision of Greer, lying in a pool of blood, sat on a throne Jackson had been trying to trace the rest of the royal wolves. He thought that he could prevent anything happening to her if he knew what he was up against.

We knew that none knew about Greer’s royal status, so Jackson wanted to know more about them, but discretely.

The King wanted to send his daughter to us to train. Jackson wanted me to go and meet the King, then I was meant to be going to England to collect her from school.

Like I wanted to babysit some teenagers. We had had the pleasure of a prince from some foreign country last year, and he was an a*****. This crown prince was set to rule over a huge kingdom soon, but meeting him once had been shown me he didn’t have any of the required skills to lead, how his alphas would ever defer to him was beyond me. It made me glad we didn’t have royals in this country anymore, the council was bad enough.

My thoughts wandering had been enough to block out Titan, because now he had arrived he was rushing me out the car.

“Calm down we are here.” I didn’t know what his problem was, No one was waiting for us but there was a sweet smell in the air. Sniffing the air I looked at Piper and she didn’t seem as distracted as I was.