Extra Chapter 1
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*Eli's POV*
"Paps, are you sure you've got her?" I chuckled when my father narrowed his eyes at me and then just turned back to the little girl in his arms seemingly about to coo at her but he quickly looked back up.
"Eli, did I ever tell you about that time I dropped you when you were little –?" My jaw dropped open as he gave a laugh, "Thank God you healed so fast because, damn, that was –"
"Dad –" I looked over at him and he shook his head to show that his mate was just messing with me before frowning at the man across the room.
"Corey, stop making Eli freak out."
"He deserves it, acting like we didn't spend eighteen years of our lives taking care of him." Paps rolled his eyes before returning to cooing at the baby.
I shook my head and began to head towards the door but not before mumbling under my breath, "Pretty sure Dad did most of the work."
"Eli, what did you say?" I laughed as I jogged away from the house hearing Paps call out from behind me.
Looking back, I smiled feeling somewhat torn that I had to leave because I didn't want to leave her, but it was basically routine. When we started out our combined pack, the people in both former packs decided Karabo and I had to do everything together because they did not completely trust each other yet. Three years later, we still did everything together because we complimented each other so well... when we weren't disagreeing. Our pack seemed happy that we were both always working together as it made communication and decisions faster and I did not mind having so much time with my mate.
Being uncertain about how to approach going about finding a new Alpha, we figured we would try to have a child and see if they were born as Alpha. Karabo's pack seemed to think that if we surrogated with a werewolf, she would automatically be Luna, and a human could be convinced into the position. They did not, however, think a vampire becoming Luna would be appropriate so we opted for experimenting and had a vampire surrogate carry the child born from Karabo. We went with a half-blooded vampire considering that a normal vampire's gestation period was much shorter than a werewolf's.
It turned out well as the pack didn't want her to be Luna and we now had a healthy little baby girl, that part they weren't too happy about but we couldn't have cared less at the moment. Since she was only a quarter vampire, she didn't need to feed on humans, which was great, and would still be able to compel like I could. We had lots of time to figure out the Alpha situation and see if he was born from one of the Galaxy wolves, but for the past eleven months, we had been focused on life with Nyra while managing the pack.
If I thought I didn't get much sleep when I was working in the past, Nyra proved that I was wrong about that by taking away what was left of my downtime. Luckily Karabo's mother and my fathers knew exactly what to do with her and we usually managed to get some hours of sleep before heading to work.
"Hey, Babe," I called out as I peeked into Karabo's office. He waved at me without a word and I could hear Ashton's voice from the phone he held up to his ear. I stepped into the office and leaned against the wall beside the door listening to what sounded like a briefing before Karabo responded to him seriously.
"Alright, just keep us updated for the next few hours."
"Will do."
"How's our Beta?" Karabo's tone completely changed as he grinned and I smiled.
"Restless and very fussy recently," Ashton said, "I think it's because he's almost ready to shift. How's Nyra?" I tilted my head as my mate looked up at me for the answer because he had been at work an hour longer than I had. Ashton's son Alex had been born beta a couple of years ago, since he was close to turning three it was almost time for him to shift for the first time. I had not seen my nephew in months, which sucked but we were always busy and when I saw my sister, Ashton or Richard, it was only for a few hours before they flew to the other half of the pack.
"She's quiet." Nyra was a surprisingly calm baby compared to what I had heard about myself, she definitely took after Karabo; his mother said he didn't cry much at her age either. Our little girl seemed happy most of the time.
"Can't believe I haven't met her yet, Tammy's so upset about that," Ashton sounded like he was frowning and I bit my lip about to offer to visit but my phone buzzed.
I looked at it to see a message from one of our Deltas telling me they needed to see both Karabo and me, he seemed to have received the same message because his smile dropped and he looked a little worried.
"We have to go. Talk to you later," I chuckled after we both spoke at the same time.
"Alright. Talk later," They hung up after Aston spoke.
"What do you think it's about?" Karabo asked standing from his seat, "Why both of us?" Calling both of us did make it seem pretty serious.
"Who knows?" I frowned as he yawned, "You need some sleep?"
"Yup. Let's go," he seemed to just brush off his fatigue and I nodded following him out.
We headed to the hall we were meeting in, both of us ignoring how tired we were while mumbling about other things we had to do and he caught me up on what I had missed from Ashton's briefing. It seemed they were having some forest troubles, and then during our meeting, we learnt that yet another pack wanted a fight. When everyone was caught up on the threat, they left leaving Karabo and I alone in the meeting hall and I sighed leaning back in my seat. Somehow there was another problem every hour to focus on.
"I knew we shouldn't have merged. If I'd stayed home, I could be dealing with simple agricultural problems but no, one fight after another," Karabo mumbled. I shot him a glare.
"Go home then, but I'm keeping Nyra," I said.
"We know she'd choose me," he smiled.
"As if," I replied before frowning, "I miss her." It had only been an hour and a half since I had seen her. She smelled so soft and comforting and I just wanted to play with her chubby little fingers, hear her laugh, see those big brown eyes that had clearly come from Karabo stare up at me all curiously when I was talking and she did not understand a word.
"Me too," he mumbled.
"We don't have anything that important to do right now... we can always catch up on work later," I said. He looked at me silently asking if I was sure about just skipping the rest of our errands and I nodded, it immediately made him grin.
"Yeah, let's go h –"
"Alphas! I –" Someone walked in and I immediately stood up slamming my hands on the table a little loudly to cut them off.
"Anyway, I'll get to calling Alpha Garrison about that thing we were discussing," I spoke as I backed out of the room hoping to get some time with Nyra before I was called to something else, effectively throwing Karabo under the bus of whatever work was about to be allocated.
"Eli –" I was gone before Karabo could finish his sentence.
'I will get revenge for this,' I heard him in my mind as I jogged further away from the room while hearing her begin to explain why she was looking for us. I was about to exit the building and head towards our home when my phone rang again.
"Damn it," I groaned seeing that it was another Delta asking for help and felt my wolf become restless because of my utter disappointment. I just wanted more than an hour with my daughter when she was awake and I wasn't basically a zombie that would fall asleep less than ten minutes into being with her. Was that too much to ask? Apparently. I sighed shoving my phone into my pocket and changing direction to head to the elder's homes instead.
The next few days played out the same way as always, with us barely having time at home and Karabo's mom or my parents basically raising Nyra while we ran around the pack and visited other packs. It was incredibly frustrating and draining, but it had been for months and we were just dealing with it. We thought we could continue just dealing with it, that was until Nyra suddenly became a screaming ball of rage that refused to quiet down even when Karabo's mother tried to help us.
She'd woken us all from sleep – since Karabo's mother currently lived with us because she was visiting to see her granddaughter – only to cry non-stop for hours no matter what we did. I'd even called my parents to get suggestions and ended up with nothing. It was worrying so we called one of the pack doctors but they couldn't seem to find anything physically wrong with her.
To make matters worse, there was a compulsory meeting the Deltas and both of us had to attend because of the growing tension between us and the pair of packs nearby that swore they owned the land we had purchased because it wasn't the person's to sell.
After trying for a while to get Nyra to accept Karabo's mother's arms and her clinging to my shirt I just gave up and decided to head to the meeting with her. At that point, we were too worried to leave her anyway. So, I currently sat in the meeting room with Nyra on my lap as I unsuccessfully tried to talk to her and get her to fall asleep. I planned to just let the other Alpha know that I was present and then leave the room because the crying would be too disruptive. Karabo had left for a moment a while ago to answer his phone when Richard called.
"Why is Nyra here?" my father spoke up as soon as he walked into the room.
"She wasn't sleeping," I replied, not looking up at him because I was trying to get her to latch onto the pacifier that she seemed to swear by all hell she was not going to keep in her mouth while screaming like the world was ending.
"She still isn't sleeping," he said leaning down to greet the shrieking little girl.
"I know, Paps. But this is a meeting both Karabo and I have to attend and she doesn't want to be left with anyone. I don't know what to do." I looked around. Where the hell was Karabo? Still on call? How much did Richard have to tell him? His attempts at calming her had not worked either, but I felt better with screaming Nyra when he was nearby. It felt overwhelming trying to handle her on my own, which seemed ridiculous because she was so small.
"Let me try –" As soon as he tried to tug her from me, my daughter's screams intensified as she grabbed a hold of my shirt. I shut my eyes devastated by the reaction, "Oh, wow. Never mind. What's wrong with her?"
"I don't know," I groaned completely frustrated. "We've tried everything, she's full and clean - doesn't seem constipated, but she doesn't want to sleep and I've been rocking her for over an hour." I was incredibly worried because she had not stopped crying for hours, it even sounded like her voice was beginning to become hoarse and it was way too much to be her teething. If she didn't stop screaming, I was certain that my head would blow soon.
"Wow, I thought there was a murder in here," I turned my head to glare at Jacob.
"You were pretty noisy too when you were little, Eli. Tammy was easier to deal with," Paps said.
"I remember that! You barely got any sleep back then! How time flies!" Jacob laughed.
"Use magic, Eli," Sean said.
"You're telling me to knock my daughter out?" I frowned.
"You say that like he asked you to punch her. I used it on you."
"Didn't that result in a panic attack?" I raised my brows at my father when Jacob asked that.
"Well..." he drifted, "Sometimes you just have to... see what happens with kids... and deal with the consequences..."
I sighed as I held my breath lifting a hand to Nyra's little head and mumbling the spell under my breath. It was supposed to force her into being calm, it would leave an adult feeling incredibly confused and worried that they were not supposed to be feeling calm. It instantly made her crying stop and I watched cautiously as she sniffled. She didn't seem to be panicking. Though, that only lasted for a couple of seconds before I saw her face twist as she suddenly took a sharp breath before another scream erupted from her body. My mouth gaped in surprise before I clenched my jaw feeling my eyes burn with frustrated and fearful tears because she seemed so upset and I couldn't figure out what it was and hearing her cry so much was painful. How had my magic not worked? I couldn't wait until she was old enough to talk and try to convey to me what was wrong.
"Holy shit, the spell didn't work," Sean said, his face matched everyone else's as they seemed to become genuinely concerned.
"Still?" I heard Karabo as he walked back in. "Let's just postpone and call another doctor, maybe they'll see something Quinton didn't."
"Fine." I agreed even though we had had a doctor look at her just an hour earlier and he couldn't point out what was upsetting her, he said she was perfectly healthy.
"I'll get him," Paps said and began to turn to leave but Karabo spoke.
"Wait, is... is that fur?"
Fur? I followed his eyes as he leaned closer to her and narrowed my own seeing what he was talking about as he tugged the fabric away from her back slightly. There was hair sprouting just below the neckline of her onesie.
"It is. Is... but... She's... Is-is she shifting?" Karabo whispered.
"No. No. It's way too early, she's not even a year old," Sean replied before he gasped as I drew back her collar further and there was more hair. "It can't be, it's too early; she's not old enough yet," he repeated. I stopped breathing seeing some glossy red-stained hair. Blood?
"Eli," Karabo's panicked voice made me stand up straight as I nodded at him. "Just discuss things with Ashton and Richard, explain that we had an emergency to Jonas. We'll catch up." No one argued so I set off sprinting out of the room with Karabo beside me.
We ran straight to the hospital where I explained what we thought was happening to a doctor that stared at Nyra in utter shock, clearly having no idea how to deal with what was happening either. He said he would try to ease the pain though and maybe that would stop her screaming while they figured out what to do.
We let the doctor and nurses take her as we stood in the waiting room trying to process what was happening. I could still hear her shrieking in my ears despite the room being silent. Usually we could only shift at three years old, when our bodies were strong enough to accommodate the change and our wolves. Was it because she was part vampire? There was no problem when a werewolf and human had a baby. It could get a little complicated when a human had a vampire's baby because it grew a little quicker. Vampire kids grew faster than normal, but up until that point, Nyra had shown no signs of that.
"Maybe it just affects her wolf side for some reason," Karabo must have been reading my mind. He sounded as terrified as I felt so I turned to him.
"Maybe..." I whispered, "But..." I drifted feeling my throat close up slightly. There was no way her little body would handle that shift, and who knew what a 7-month-old shift looked like. She seemed to have fur already, maybe she would be fine. 'Maybe' wasn't okay though, we couldn't just wait and see what happened, it seemed incredibly painful for her and shifting never resulted in bleeding, not even the first time.
"M-maybe if we incubate her for a while?" he sounded more terrified than I had ever heard him as his voice quivered slightly, "She'd pro-probably need more blood. There... there has to be a way we can slow it down, magic? Could you?"
"I..." I drifted with a sudden chuckle that made Karabo look at me dumbfounded, "Ash – No, he's not here – Izabella!"
"What?"
"We could – if-if Izabella gives Nyra some blood, she might be strong enough to shift, won't she? We just need to make her stronger." I hope. I was pulling my phone out with my trembling hands before he had any time to answer and dialled Ashton's mother's number. The couple of rings before she answered felt like an eternity as Karabo stared at me waiting for the same thing.
"Alpha? Aren't you in a meeting?"
"Um – I... No, Ny-Nyra's shifting –"
"Shifting? Forms?" she sounded confused.
"Yeah, but-but –" I stopped myself, talking a breath. I needed to calm down to communicate properly. I was always calm when dealing with pack issues. This wasn't a pack issue though, this was my little girl. It was impossible to calm down, I just felt more choked up and panicked with every second. It reminded me of the time Karabo got stabbed.
"She's too young." I heard Izabella.
"I know, I don't know h-how. I-I'd never ask this, but –"
"I'm on my way," she cut me off.
I nodded despite her being unable to see me as I hung up and gave up on calming down, instead I shut my eyes feeling pained as Karabo's face leaned into my shoulder and his hands clutched onto my shirt while his arms hugged my waist tightly. I lifted my arms to lock them around him as well.
"Hey, it's okay," I mumbled trying to reassure both of us despite the contrast my words and voice held. I felt him shake his head against me as he let out a trembling, choked breath that sounded like he was crying.
"I hate this," he muttered. I nodded leaning my head against his while trying to hold my tears back because one of us crying was enough and I wanted to be able to see clearly when the doctor returned. "Why does everything always have to be so complicated? Why do I feel like our lives are experiments?" It did feel like that. It seemed like everything that happened with us wasn't supposed to, it was supposed to be impossible and yet here we were again.
"We'll get by this, we're pretty good at dealing with impossible surprises. I'm sure this will only make her stronger."
"I'm sorry," he mumbled making me chuckle.
"It's okay, I feel like I'm being helpful. I like feeling stronger than you," I teased. I just liked the distraction of having to focus on him instead of the situation at hand.
"Why are you always so annoying?" he replied. I chuckled tightening my arms around him but laughing made me choke which effectively made the tears I had been holding back break out. "Eli," Karabo looked up, immediately squeezing me into his hug. "You're right, I think. She's got this," he mumbled, "I mean, she's our daughter. If anyone can handle a premature shift, it's her."
"Right," I smiled lifting my hand to wipe my eyes.
It took a few more hours after Izabella arrived at the hospital before a few of the doctors figured out what to do. They decided to keep Nyra under a sleeping spell to prevent her from screaming and lessen some of the pain as she went through her shifting process, which seemed to be dragging out much slower than usual and the first shift was always quite slow. Luckily, she wasn't bleeding anymore because Izabella's blood helped her heal as she shifted. They weren't sure how long it would take to complete her shift... and then there was shifting back once she woke up...
It was a nightmare that ended up lasting a couple of weeks, but luckily those two weeks gave me time to run through every single spell creation book in the library and, with the help of one of my parent's friends and the strongest witch there was, we managed to create a spell that would prevent her from shifting again until the spell was lifted. We would do that in a couple of years when she was at the normal shifting age.
I wondered if letting her shift would be beneficial to her strength, but Karabo and I came to the conclusion that Izabella's blood had already made her much stronger and we were not willing to risk another shift until she turned three.
The only upside of my being completely absent from Alpha duty for a week followed by Karabo doing the same was both our packs really realising that they could trust just one of us to take care of the pack like we had our own before we merged so when Nyra was finally out of the hospital, I got to take a couple of days off and catch up on sleep before swapping with Karabo again. Luckily Nyra seemed to have gone back to her happy self and there was more giggling than crying when we were at home.
Within those two weeks, Karabo had managed to talk the other Alphas down and resolve the dispute they had with us so we finally got a real day off as there was no current threat to the pack, and we decided to spend it at home.
We were in the living room, all of us on the carpet as Nyra played with one of her teddies between attempts at crawling while Karabo and I sat on either side of her, watching her and ignoring the movie we had decided to watch.
"So... no vampire surrogate next time?" he looked at me.
"I don't know, we know how to handle it now."
"There could be more complications."
"And we'll figure it out as they come," I said. He sighed looking back at our daughter and I knew what he was thinking. Neither of us wanted to go through that ever again or see one of our kids in that much pain again. I leaned forward to lift Nyra onto my lap and tickled her a little resulting in a scream and some giggles that made Karabo chuckle.
"Isn't an Alpha in your pack supposed to be born around the same year or two as the Beta?"
"Yup," which was why it was odd that there had not been one born yet, considering that Alex was almost three.
"Should we try again?" he asked. We had discussed it and agreed that, based on my family, three looked kind of good so that's what we were hoping for eventually. Three kids.
"She's not even a year old." I chuckled.
"Well, it'll be nice if they're close to the same age," he said.
"You just want to see if we'll have an Alpha," I replied.
"That too." We chuckled before he bit his lip, "What if two are born?"
"I don't know... maybe they'll choose to demerge the pack and just be really strong allies, we'll see what happens when it happens. They'll figure it out." Seeing as everything just seemed pretty unpredictable lately.
"Right," he nodded.
Our heads turned to the TV when we heard a horrific scream.
"What are we watching?" I lifted my hand to prevent Nyra from seeing the screen even though it was unnecessary because she was still focused on the bear as we saw a bunch of gore. I was certain we had not chosen a horror movie.
"No idea, let's watch something else." Karabo laughed.
****Six years later****
A second child from me resulted in another girl a year after Nyra's shift and five years later, there was still no alpha born which was beginning to worry both halves of our pack. There had not been anyone born with the familiar marks Lunas in either of our packs had had previously so it didn't seem like we were getting an Alpha from outside the pack. Still, everyone worried that that was the case. Karabo and I assured them it would happen eventually, maybe he was just taking a while. Though we weren't exactly sure of it either... Just hoping. There was the slight worry in the back of my mind that we might not have an Alpha at all. But, in that case, Alex would lead and we'd have to train him a little harder to make up for the absence of natural strength that every Alpha-from-birth had.
Nyra and her sister Aslinn had grown to be quite close, despite appearing to have different interests. Aslinn seemed to be more interested in finding ways to avoid ever participating in her training sessions with the other kids despite them just starting out. Nyra loved training and sports and was usually the first to want to head to the gym while Aslinn opted to play around more and figure out ways to hide from her babysitter and trainers. She was getting incredibly good at it very quickly, but I could always track her whereabouts. Not that I needed to, Nyra was great at finding her sister even without magic because they spent practically every second together. As they grew, Nyra seemed more like me while Aslinn reminded me of Karabo – save for the adamant avoidance of training.
Karabo and I had planned to have one more child, and due to mounting pressure from both our packs because he was more likely to have an Alpha, we went with his sperm. It seemed that each month of pregnancy made us more anxious because the pack became more hopeful despite us not immediately telling them it was a boy when we found out, in case he wasn't an alpha. I was dreading the disappointment that would come from them in that case because I knew I wouldn't be able to get angry at the pack for that but would be so pissed about having them react to our son that way.
But it turned out they had reason to be so hopeful because our little boy was born Alpha. We named him Neo. Even Karabo's pack found it weird to have an Alpha eight years younger than the Beta, but everyone was just glad our Alpha came from within our pack.
Nyra and Aslinn took an instant liking to their little brother, which was great because we didn't have to worry about more fighting than necessary as they grew. Though they still fought a lot, mostly the girls with each other because they had soft spots for their brother who could do nothing wrong. That sentiment seemed to grow among the pack as he became older and very quiet and timid, but his personality also resulted in doubts that he was going to be a good leader.
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Thank you for reading! Neo in this case is pronounced N-eh-eo. Next chapter is a little more about the kids.
There will be 3-4 chapters about Karabo and Eli and then a chapter or two about Richard meeting his mate :D