King

Chapter. 1

"Mate."

Liam calls out watching Ashley walk-in,

She runs towards him and I feel like it's in slow motion.

She jumps into his arms and begins passionately kissing him. Everyone looks at them with either a form of awe or nostalgia from the moment they had met their own mate.

I, however, roll my eyes to the point where I feel like they may just fall out, drop my fry back into my plate and dust my hands off.

"Oh come on," I grumbled,

Grabbing my things, I walk out of the cafeteria.

Everyone else claps and starts to congratulate the new oh so lovely couple.

No one really minds or cares for my behaviour because well it's expected of the packs' mateless old hag.

Alright, maybe I was that old. I'm only eighteen but I was born in January, so that made me older than most seniors.

I swear it seemed as if every other day was somebody's eighteenth birthday and they would find their mate just like clockwork.

I walk into class five times way too early and the teacher gives me a sympathetic look, obviously hearing the news of his future Alpha finding his Luna through the mind link, as I pull out my book to read.

I'm not jealous of Liam finding his mate, well maybe I was, but just of the fact that he actually had a mate. And it didn't help that Ashley was kind of a bitch.

I, Seraphina Melrose, was one of the only mateless wolves.

Honestly? I probably was the first and only.

According to the packs' elders, I would never have a mate because of something that happened in my past life. However, there was no real way to tell if that was the real reason or even if their prediction was correct. Until, of course, my eighteenth birthday. I had held onto hope until that very day when my hopes were finally completely crushed. They say when you turn 18 you feel a pull. It doesn't matter where your mate is, you feel that pull and it guides you to them. I didn't feel this pull.

Denial was my only way of coping with the fact that I was born to live with no mate for the rest of my miserable life. Without this oh-so-helpful skill, to be blunt, I might have committed suicide.

Mates were a really big thing.

That one person would be your soul mate until, well, actually that's who you're with forever!

You'd be reborn again and again and spend your life searching for your other half until you had to start over after dying,

It was quite literally the only purpose for living and it was already tougher for me to keep going now that my weak illusion was broken. Now, I hoped there was some greater purpose for my life which would justify the whole mateless thing.

But even waking up is so much harder, especially since now Liam my best friend who had accepted me, mateless and everything, protected me from bullies even if I could physically defend myself, and had been my only friend since kindergarten, had gotten a mate. He would, and without a doubt, not care about me anymore.

That's just what mates did.

For a short period of time, you only focus on them and you really couldn't even think let alone care about anyone else. You just fell and you fell deep. It was kind of like the honeymoon phase humans had but increased by like one thousand.

I shake my head and for the umpteenth time telling myself to be grateful, I had been working on becoming more accepting and yes even grateful for this curse, well, the blessing in disguise.

I found mates were the slightest bit toxic and honestly, kind of suffocating. This may just be another form of denial but, look at it this way,

From the moment you are born, you are forced into certain roles depending on your gender to suit the needs of your mate. More so for women, we went to school, but in this pack, we have to have a lower status job than our male mates. Why? because they feel threatened if their mate makes more money or in our case holds their own more than the male. What I mean is we have pack duties and if you have higher-ranked duties than your male counterpart it's frowned upon as well.

It's stupid because of the fact that it shouldn't matter if you truly love that person, and well, having a mate literally forces you to love them.

We also become intoxicated in a sense when we find our mates because we literally in every sense of the word are ignorant to everyone and everything but our mate for a certain period of time. Even after that initial phase ended, you are consumed by your love for your mate and sometimes that could be a very good thing but usually, in most situations, it's pretty bad.

Also if that wasn't horrible enough if your mate—goddess forbid—passes away you are going to die as well within months and it's a heartbreaking process.

You gradually become more and more lifeless as time passes and most wolves commit suicide immediately or during that time to relieve themselves of the grief.

That's what happened with my parents. My mom was one of the packs' warriors and was working on equal rights for our packs' women but she died in battle and my dad passed soon after. My mom was of Alpha blood but her other pack wouldn't let her rule and instead chose her little brother because around that time the elders spoke and said they had made a mistake and her mate was in this pack and she had to relocate to this pack instead of becoming a female alpha. I remember my mom thinking it was absurd but she grew to love my dad and decided to make the best of her situation by changing the rules around here.

I was only three and I don't remember much of them just little nips and pieces. I was proud of my parents though, my dad supported my mom and they protested the way things ran around here. I admired their efforts and I wanted to follow in their footsteps and that's why I am training to be a pack warrior, the head warrior to be precise. Technically, I already am.