Night and Neera: A Rejected Mate Story

Chapter 11: Alpha Dreams

***Trigger warning: Descriptions of violence and flashbacks to non-con bite***

When I was a young boy, my father began taking me aside and instructing me about being the Alpha -- what it meant, what my responsibilities were to the pack, to my Howl, to myself. He told me about the decrees, the strength I would have, the abilities. Once I was older and could understand the importance of keeping a secret known only by alphas and their Howls, he told me about Alpha Dreams sent to us by the Forces. 

Only alphas received these dreams: they were warnings, they were advice, they were directions on how to act or the decisions to make as Alpha. Whatever their purpose was, one thing was certain...an Alpha Dream must never be ignored.

"Our dreams are given to us by the generosity of the Forces," he told me as we skipped stones on Howl Lake, one of the many lakes on Aibek pack lands. "They are gifts to us, and you must never ignore the gift they have given you, Night. Never. If you are told to act in a dream, you act. If you are told to hold back in a dream from some plans you've been making, you hold back. The dreams are never wrong. I've known some alphas of other packs who thought they knew better and ignored the warnings in a dream and it was always to their detriment."

For the last three years, I hadn't had any Alpha Dreams, and I had just chalked it up to things going well with the pack. Looking back, Lindsay Morgan had been fucking with me somehow -- the same way she'd been fucking with me to make me think I was in love with her, to make me challenge anyone who told me I shouldn't be getting so serious with someone who wasn't my Howl. The same way she'd taken over my body and caused me to reject my Howl in the worst possible way.

Since none of us knew that magic existed, we had no reason to think I was anything but in love with Lindsay Morgan, no reason to suspect I was being enchanted. 

Looking back, every morning when she made me breakfast and my energy shake, she'd stroke my hair and whisper in my ear, You love me, Night, and I love you. And I'd agree.

But as soon as I separated myself from her, stopped eating the food she made me, the fog lifted from my brain, and I felt clearheaded for the first time in years. And immediately realized I had no feelings for Lindsay Morgan whatsoever.

And that was when my dreams began.

It was actually the same dream every night on repeat. I was in our family home, and four brightly wrapped boxes were brought in to me. Surrounded by the boxes, I opened the one that said OPEN ME FIRST. I ripped the paper off the box and, to my horror, inside was my mother's wolf's head, blood matting the fur where it had been ripped and torn from her body. The other boxes held the other parts of her wolf.

That had actually happened. The Luniere pack had sent first my mother and then my father back to me in pieces.

I'd thrown up, crying and shaking at the thought of my loving mother being tortured, then torn to pieces while she was still alive. My brother and I had gone berserk and had rallied our wolves to win the war between the two packs. We had been unstoppable in our fury and grief and pain.

Since then, I'd had to keep the memory pushed down inside me so I could function. The one and only Alpha Dream I'd had before Lindsay Morgan came into my life was a dream warning me not to take revenge on the Luniere pack and to keep the peace we had brokered. Originally, I'd made the pact to buy us time to find out who, specifically, was behind my parent's brutal deaths so I could exact revenge, but the Forces had spoken and I had learned the lessons well from my father. I obeyed. Unwillingly, reluctantly, but I obeyed.

But since the first time Neera had disappeared on me, the day I'd rejected her, I'd been having very vivid dreams of unwrapping my mother's butchered body. I looked into my mother's wolf's face, and her wolf head slowly morphed into Neera's human face. Neera's eyes popped open and her lips moved to whisper, over and over, Save me. Take my blood. Save me. Take my blood.