The Mate's Curse

Chapter 2

(Cassie POV age 24)

I shot up in bed, shaking. In a panic, I looked around  and realised I was safe in my bedroom at home. With a sigh, I flopped back down onto the bed and pulled the covers over my head. That nightmare again! This had to be the third time this week. I closed my eyes only to see the one image that has consistently haunted my dreams for the last 18 years. The moment of David’s death, the fear, the realisation and then nothing, just his dead, lifeless eyes staring at me. 

The familiar dread filled  my stomach. I had blamed myself for his death ever since that night, no matter how many times I was told by my parents, or his parents even, it doesn’t matter that I was only six years old. He had still died protecting me. Our heir and future Alpha of the Silver Lake Pack lost his life for a Gamma's daughter. And the fact that I couldn’t even shift added insult to injury. 

Not that we were much of a pack anymore. That night our beautiful home was destroyed and our pack of almost 250 was reduced to 15 in a senseless, unprovoked attack from a rival pack. And our Alpha family not only lost their son but also Alpha James’ sister Sarah, who had died trying to get me to safety too. Sarah was also Beta Thomas’s mate. Nowadays we don’t even have a packland,  we live in a human town. I know other packs have thriving lands but we couldn’t even fill one packhouse especially since more than half of our family were human. 

I sighed again. It was clear I  wasn’t getting any more sleep, so I got out of bed and headed to the house bathroom and took a shower. I turned the water on super hot, maybe half hoping that the heat would wash away the horrible images from my nightmare. 

After my shower I heard voices downstairs and went to say good morning to my parents. My mother and father were in the kitchen chatting as my mother made breakfast and my father got in the way as he often did. They both turned and greeted me as I walked in. I sat at the table and watched as my mum started dishing up breakfast. I had inherited her slender frame and her strawberry blonde hair although the rest of me seemed to come from my dad. He was a stocky guy and looked good for his 47 years, but then as wolves we tended to age slowly, I still got carded at 24. My father walked over to the table and kissed my head before sitting down.

“How’s tricks, kid?” he asked as he started tucking into the bacon that my mum had started piling on his plate.

“Hmm, not bad,” I said. “I just finished another client and sent it off last night.”  I was a freelance graphic and web designer and did pretty well. Well enough to  afford my own place, but my parents were pretty protective and any conversation  about me moving out was  normally shut down pretty quickly. They had both grown up in pack life and packs always ran together. If you moved, it was normally to another pack when you mate bonded with another wolf there, but you always stayed in a pack. 

Unless you wanted to become a rogue, and rogues were considered the lowest of the low. They were normally criminals that had been exiled from a pack and according to Pack law they had less rights than an Omega and could be killed on sight if found in a pack’s territory. 

But I was over Pack life. It was a pack that massacred my whole home and family, it wasn’t rogues. I was ready to move away and live like a human, f**k the packs, f**k the mate bond, f**k my wolf who abandoned me just like every other wolf did. 

Most werewolves got their wolf around 17, but for me, that birthday came and went and nothing happened, not even a whisper. I really thought I had been well and truly cursed in this life until one evening when I was 18, I was on my way home from a friend’s house and some d**k had grabbed me. I was dealing with it ok as I made a point of training because I never wanted to be defenceless again. But the bastard had a knife and stabbed me in the stomach when I was fighting him off. 

What followed was the most excruciating pain I had ever felt. My wolf, feeling threatened, had finally made an appearance and I had shifted for the first time. Since then she had been quiet though, a whisper in the back of my mind, like a bad connection. I didn’t even know her name. Everyone else talked to their wolf, and I had to admit I was jealous of the close relationship they had with their wolves. 

I started to feel the familiar anger set in at the thought of my wolf and slammed the cup I was holding down on the table without even thinking about it. I stood up from the table ready to storm off, well, anywhere but here when my mum stopped me.

“Cassie,” she said with her voice full of concern.

I turned and looked at her. “I’m ok, mum,” I said, reassuring her and she smiled a sad smile. My parents knew I really struggled, with both the nightmares and my lack of wolf. I knew my wolf was there, but I felt so incomplete, like there was something blocking me from being who I was meant to be. 

“I’m going to do some work,” I said as I started to head off to my room.

“Remember, honey,” my dad said as I was walking away. “The funeral is in three hours.” 

I stopped again, a wave of sadness washing over me. Of course, today was the day we buried James, my uncle  and the Alpha of the Silver Lake Pack. A car accident a week ago had taken his life leaving behind our human Luna Layla and their two surviving human children. If David was alive he would have taken over the Alpha position, if he hadn’t died protecting me. But instead we were now Alphaless, and a pack without an Alpha or heir wasn’t really a pack at all. 

A single tear escaped my eye and rolled down my cheek and in my most stable voice I replied to my dad, “I’ll be ready,” before rushing up to my room, slamming the door before collapsing against it and letting all the tears finally fall.