By moonlight's shadow

Chapter 2

From as long as I can remember I had always loved the feeling of the grass blades covered with dew beneath my feet, the songs and the whispers of the leaves rustling above my head. From as long as I can recall they have never spoken to me but now it was bit different.

“Alpha Lukas,” came down the voice of my Beta from above the ledge beneath which I was standing. It was uncanny why only I could come down to this ledge and not the others. But that gave some privacy from my nosy and over-friendly pack.

I breathed out a sigh and climbed up the ledge in three heart-beats.

“Yes Jamie, what is it now?” I asked in a bored voice.

“Credence is missing Alpha…it’s been three hours since his mother last saw him and it is …I don’t know what to call that….” He trailed off. Now my second was not a man who was very good with words but I understood what he was trying to imply.

“Nina has gone hysterical. Let’s go,” I replied as I buttoned up my shirt and jeans.

It has been three years since I had taken the responsibility of my pack, the Blood Moon Pack and yet I was unmated. Never in my whole life had I encountered that any cub would be lost from our pack, and I wonder what father would have done if he was still here but he is not. And I am the one who has to handle this.

When we reached the settlement grounds Nina was still sobbing and her mate was trying to console her but even the vision of a mother pining for her child was heart-breaking. My mother walked towards me when she saw me coming and tried to speak with me but it was more important to talk to Nina at the moment. She needed the Alpha’s touch to re-assure her of her son’s safety.

“Wherever he may be Nina, I promise you I shall bring him back in one piece,” I said as I kneeled down before her and caught hold of her hands which had gone all cold and clammy.”But I need you to tell me what had last happened, so that I can start tracking him.”

Nina could not say anything in midst of her sobs and she kept on crying as I pulled her close in my arms and held her firmly touching her hair, soothing her so that she would calm down sooner and finally reveal what has been happening in the pack. It seemed that everything was going awry from the last few days and I had no idea what was causing it in the first place.

My mother looked at me with Nina and made a face which only exhibited her displeasure at my proximity to a mated wolf of our pack. But what my mother was not aware of was that everyone was so connected to the Alpha in such a manner that their heart-strings could calmed down only with my presence and proximity. Finally her sobs came to an end.

Nina looked up at me and said,”I am so sorry Alpha. But Cred has not been answering my repeated calls and I cannot feel his presence at all anywhere near. It seems that something is trying to keep me away from my child which is making impossible for me to track him.”

“Now what makes you say that Nina? It is probably something else that you are feeling, the bond between a mother and her cub is too strong to be severed and that would not happen unless…” my sentence trailed off as I dared not finish it before the already distraught mother.

“Lukas!!!” admonished his mother from his back when Lukas looked back and saw his mother’s eyes flashing at him. And that was the last straw. His mother or not, he was not going to allow anyone admonish him or berate him before his pack trying to humiliate him under any circumstances. He had been trying to say that and make her understand that since three years back but it seemed that his mother consciously made effort to belittle him every chance she got.

Lukas let go of Nina and stood up and looked at his mother in her eyes and growled from deep inside. He was just mere inches and moments away from shifting and the voice that came out of his throat was almost mid-change.

“Leah Masterson, you are one of the weakest wolves of my pack, the Blood Moon pack!!! Do you wish to challenge me? Your Alpha?” asked Lukas almost screaming. The whole valley had silenced at his sound of voice. It was a moment when the fate of the whole pack hung at a very precarious balance.

The woman who stood before him rose to her full height and then spat on the ground before her. What she said made Lukas feel it would have been best if he had never been born.

“You?? Challenge you? You bloody animal? Why the hell am I going to challenge you ever when I know that I can finish you off with a flick of my fingers?” said Leah Masterson whose hair had started blowing as she levitated from ground and a strange green coloured fire emanated from her finger-tips. Lukas felt that someone had poisoned him as he took in the sight before him.

The woman continued,”You are nothing but an anomaly who should have never come to this earth. I should have given birth to a daughter who would have got my powers and brought my sisters back to life but instead I gave birth to you whom I could not even sacrifice because your damned father gave his life instead of yours making you virtually impossible to destroy. But now I have sacrificed a pure soul instead of you no one can stop me.”

Behind Lukas Nina let out a heart-wrenching scream which could have torn the chords of anyone’s heart. Before Lukas could do anything to stop her Nina changed into wolf and jumped over Lukas’s head lunging at the woman who was hovering mid-air and tried to strike her but she was thrown away just by a swish of Leah’s hand. Nina’s body flew and crashed into a tree which was quite a distance from where they were standing. Nina’s wolf whimpered and crashed to the ground.

“You are not my mother,” said Lukas very calmly as he gestured someone to take care of Nina.

Leah laughed and kept on laughing until Lukas growled once more and then said,” You Leah Masterson who has fooled us for all these years are hereby cast out of my pack, the Blood Moon pack and are now a rogue wolf and have no claim over anything which is under our territory. Your crimes are of murder and being an imposter and hurting a subservient at the time of her pain, caused by you. If you are seen anywhere near our territory after today you will be killed at sight.”

“Who said I want any claim over these tainted lines and lives anyway? I was kidnapped and raped by your father who made me a wolf despite of knowing that I was a sorceress…He wanted to create the perfect specimen of their race who would not be defeated by anything or anyone. And now I am cast out of the pack which I have so detested in the first place,” said Leah Masterson as she gradually dissipated in thin air.

But then she materialized again and said,” I, the mother of the Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack, curse you and your pack by the claim of blood on this pack that you will be doomed unless you bring back your greatest enemy to life and she will be your disaster and your salvation.”

As Lukas tried to grab hold of her the woman vanished into nothing, not even leaving a trace of her presence or existence where she was standing.

Jamie came forward and touched Lukas who was looking at the spot blankly and said,” Alpha? Are you alright?”

Lukas nodded slightly and said,” As alright it is to be possible after coming to know that your mother has hated you your entire life and is not what she seemed to be at all.”

“You are still the Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack Lukas Masterson. We have not said anything or will not do anything that will ever make you feel responsible for the circumstances of your birth. Because that is something which was not in your control. But we know this that from when you have taken the responsibility of the pack you have never failed us,” said Jamie.

“Until now,” said Lukas quietly as he started walking back to his cabin. A child had lost his life today, sacrificed by his own mother and he could do nothing to stop it at all. He felt like a failure but he could not close the door of his cabin as a young girl barged in. She was a fireball who had been adopted by her father when she was found abandoned in the woods. She was not a full werewolf, but a half-wolf with a mortal mother who had probably abandoned her. She was named Rhea.

“ You cannot do this to yourself Lukas. I am not going to allow that at all,” said the girl her hands on her hips and a fierce look on her face.

“Rhea I have not done anything yet. You see, I have just found out that my mother is a sorceress and she just sacrificed a child to get her magic back. What do you think I am going to do?” asked Lukas as he turned back at his sister.

“You have to stop feeling so damned sorry for yourself Lukas. So what if our mother was a witch? That only makes you more powerful. You have an ancestry and a lineage in which men do not come to existence so what does that make you?” prompted Rhea.

“An anomaly,” said Lukas with a sigh.

“Oh god damned Lukas…that makes you f*****g unique,” said Rhea almost shouting at her brother.

“Language Rhea,” warned Lukas once more but to no avail.

“Listen Brother, you are not the only one who came to know that their mother is a sorceress. I fall in that category as well although I was not born to her but still you understand my emotions,” said Rhea coming closer to Lukas who was contemplating which vase was he going to break from their mother’s prized collection. As he picked one vase up Rhea ran towards him and said,”Don’t even think about what you want to do at this moment. You have no idea what kinds of spells and curses might be lying hidden here. You have been already cursed once, do you want to suffer that part more?”

Lukas looked at his sister and thought that there was valid point in what she was saying.

“What do you want me to do Rhea? Exactly what do you want me to do?” asked Lukas who sat down on the nearest arm-chair with his head in his hands.

“What you need to do is go ahead and call the pack out for a run. Then you take them and ask them if anyone wants to challenge you as Alpha because of the failure that you have earned today and also because your mother has been responsible for it. If anyone does, fight them and defeat them and if no one dos then you are good to go and study about the effects of the curse and how are they going to manifest themselves and who is this person who can help you get over it,” said Rhea as she knelt down before her brother.

Lukas looked up and said,”Are you sure that you are not Alpha material Rhea? Because from what I can see you are going to be one hell of Alpha!!”