My steps sink atop the wet leaves blanketing the forest trail, the textures and shades of late spring as far as I can see. The hint of new life lines the gradual ascent to the Crescent Stones, ripping me out of the rainy gloom, forcing me to bask in the brisk northern air.
Bow to me, the mountains seem to command the further the pack healer and I venture across the mighty terrain.
I stop as the sacred trail ends at the small cluster of stones. Two long, limestone slabs, white and pocked like the moon, reach out along my sides and curve inward. Beyond the stones, the ground juts into a steep ledge—Arym's Rock.
The hallowed ground of our prima alpha looks bleak against a backdrop of storm gray skies.
I relish the rich scent of moist soil that quickens my blood and makes my hands and feet itch to dig in. The connection to our pack here always hits me in the gut, makes my wolf stir and my soul sing.
Omicron Easton walks past me through the stones onto Arym's Rock, and even he looks small in a place like this. I regard him formally, trying to separate him from the male I've always called Omi and who is my father's—my alpha's—mentor and closest friend.
He beckons me to stand beside him and sticks his nose into the air, a rare showing of dominance, as he delivers the ceremonial words with lofty precision. "This is our pack's land, reaching beyond our borders of the Simik Range and the Bantagion Sea, beyond wolf-made boundaries. We are Satu's most blessed beings. You must always remember our greater connection to each other, to the moon we serve, the goddess Satu we honor, and the earth that provides for us. Your gifts as a born alpha are tied to all of it. And today, we ask that Satu's maidens of fate lay out for us the path of your future reign."
He sighs as if bearing a crushing burden. "As you know, last night we learned of the attack on the Jewel River Pack and the gruesome murder of Alpha Kells." His tired eyes meet mine. "Your role in this life will not be easy. Demeria has never been content in its peace, there has always been the sense of something lurking and the machinations of the vampyre king at work. I fear for what you may have ahead of you as you become our leader."
"I can't think of a better alpha to learn from than my father."
"Agreed," the elder says with a nod of his head, the wispy ends of his white hair blowing around his neck.
Omi steps back to the Crescent Stones, murmuring into the air. Kneeling, he waits, unmoving aside from the rise and fall of his chest. I tune into his breathing, sharing the primal pull and release of air that feels both intimate and grounding.
The threat of distant rain dissipates, as Omi had forecasted, making way to a tumble of golden clouds lit by the setting sun. We sit cross legged in the center of the stones and I clench my hands to keep my nerves at bay.
Between us, Omi sets a burner of multicolored glass outfitted in silver etchings of our pack's origin story.
I watch his hands, the familiar scars from past wolf fights speckled across his knuckles, as he fills each burner with a mix of blue lotus and other dried herbs. My skin prickles and I wonder if my father felt similar awe as he underwent his first alpha rites at this same age, in this same spot, with this same sage.
Plumes of smoke spill out from holes on the necks of the burners and catch in the wind.
Omi wafts it toward us and I inhale deeply, closing my eyes to the burn as it rounds down and settles into my chest.
"Breathe in the spirits of our most glorious prima alpha, Arym. Let him guide you to your destiny and show you the path to becoming a strong and just leader to the Silver Blood Pack."
A tug in my chest alerts me to the rising moon. I look up to it as the sweet, euphoric effect of the smoke bleeds through my limbs.
My surroundings blur.
There's heat swelling my chest as I turn in each direction, orienting to a distorted view from Arym's Rock. A blinding, milky white clouds the clear river water below, taming the rush of the current and settling the wild of the forest. There is calm and silence. And blinding white.
I hear what's coming next before I see it. Feel it stir deep in my marrow. From the east, a colony of bats swoops overhead. Thousands of them dive at the river and fill in the trees, blacking out all but the white water and the bright moon. The piercing shrieks and fluttering wings call to me. Mine, they say, marking me, claiming every inch of my existence.
At the far edge of the forest, the moon flares with a wolf's howl then blows apart into tiny brilliant fragments, showering me. "Yours," it sings. And I think it must be Satu herself.
I kneel.
Upon my back and neck, glittering flecks of moon melt into my skin and the bats converge on me, pressing on me and stealing my breath as they consume me.
Blood dribbles from my nose. I scream into the emerging night. Scream from the stabbing wounds. Scream as the bats and the light are ripped away from me.
The vision slips away. Beyond my reach.
I crumble to the soft earth and everything goes black.
"Wake, Reeve."
My eyes snap open, absorbing the inky sky and the unnerving lack of sensation. It's like waking in a void after the most filling of dreams, a dream of crippling extremes, wrenching me from bone-deep fear to joyous rapture. Never have I felt so alive and so stripped raw.
I rub over my heart where a sudden clawing emptiness grows and am given no time to linger as Omi throws my arm around his shoulders and hurries us down the trail away from the stones. I have no energy to fight him to let me stay and cling to any trace of what I've seen...to this place that feels suddenly smaller and inexplicably fragile.
"We must get you to your father," he breathes out as we rush over bulging mounds and ankle-twisting dips in the ground.
I search the sky, holding my breath in hope. "There were bats—" I begin, but cut myself off at hearing the sharp spike in his heart rate. The moon amplifies his fear-washed pallor, a sickly color I've rarely seen on him before.
"We must hurry," is all he says, and that's when I understand the magnitude of what's occurred. It's all real. What happened at Arym's Rock was more than some drugged dreamstate, it was an actual vision—an alpha's vision—the rarest of a wolf's divine blessings. My father never had one, nor did his father.
The weight of it is too much as it presses on me, in me, churning my gut and dropping like lead into my feet.
Omi keeps an urgent pace, his strides long and sure through the Moon Field toward the shortcut down to the pack house. The further we get from Arym's Rock, the more the emptiness eats away at me. My body shivers, chills making my teeth chatter. Sweat beads at my hairline then a flash of heat incinerates the cold. I sink to the cool ground like a pile of ash and close my eyes. Hoping for a glimpse from my vision; anything to make me feel that alive again.
I wake, wrapped in a blanket, lying beside a small fire in the wolf pit—the small enclosure attached to the back of the pack house where Omi and my father go to seek guidance from Satu. The two males sit on either side of me, watching each other over the modest flames.
"Did he ingest too much smoke?" I hear my father's steady voice.
"No," Omi shakes his head, "no, the ceremony had hardly begun." His ragged voice drops to a whisper. "It's real, Zane... the vision he had... It was a real alpha's vision. You should have seen his face...."
My father leans to press his hand to my forehead. His smile soothes my nerves and softens the hard-cut line of his jaw. "How do you feel, son?"
I lick my dry lips and take stock of my body, noting little more than a raw throat. "I'm alright," I scratch out.
"Can you tell us about the vision?"
The burning wood pops in the quiet, shooting embers into the air, reminding me of the exploding moon. I check my skin for markings from the bats, but there are none. "There's something coming. Something is calling to my blood."
"What is it, Reeve? What is it that's coming?" my father asks, using the hushed tone of shared secrets. It's not a tone he's used with me before and I can sense that the events of the night have shifted something between us.
I search for the simplest description. "Me," I state, hoping for his understanding. "It's some missing part of me."
My father studies me, his heart-shaped face so much like my own; the same strong nose and jaw, and stormy gray eyes. "Does it frighten you?"
"No. I don't know." I look between them. "All I feel when I think of it is home and pack." I sit up and rub a hand over my face, clearing away the last vestiges of my vision.
"Can you tell how soon it will arrive?" My father swipes strands of my dark blond hair from my eyes with tender fingers.
"Soon... before the full moon."
"That's only three days away," Omi worries. "Perhaps we station extra deltas on the borders to keep watch."
My father nods and, for the first time in my life, looks to me to consent.
With certainty, I say, "You can post your guards, but I have a feeling I'll know when it's near."
With a final assessment, he caresses my cheek and then taps the slight dimple on my chin. "We can't be too careful, with all the attacks happening lately on packs. You should go and get some rest now, son. It sounds like you'll be needing your strength." His loving smile doesn't erase the concern crinkling his eyes as he and Omi lock gazes, communicating through their wolf's bond—a nearly telepathic connection shared among the pack.
I shed the woolen blanket and stand, rolling my neck and stretching my arms out, and as I pass my father, he says, "Have Coly make you something to eat when you go in. His food always helps."
I squeeze his firm shoulder in reassurance. "Yes, Alpha."
"And, Reeve...let's keep this between us for now. I'll inform any of our guards and elite forces who need to know, but I'd like not to cause hysteria in the pack, especially before we know what it is we're dealing with."
"Yes, Alpha." I bow first to my father, then to Omi, and step outside of the warm pit and trudge toward the front porch.
Light shines from the lower-level windows of our plantation-style pack house. Seeing the only home I've ever known douses me in safety and comfort. There's an innate warmth here that's able to chase out even the harshest chill from my bones, providing a sense of normalcy after such an ominous night.
Coly, our rho—the rank of wolves who typically serve as house managers—holds the door open as I climb the main steps. The lean male shows no hint of his usual lightheartedness. "You're back early," he says, hesitantly. "What can I get for you tonight, Young Alpha?"
"Do you have anything that might help my blood sugar?"
The rho's sea-green eyes gleam and a subtle smirk emerges. There's the Coly I know. "It just so happens that I made your favorite dessert in honor of your first rites." He shuts the screen door and trails me into the large, open kitchen. I sit on my usual stool at the counter, my mouth watering as he opens a cake tin, revealing dark frosting and sprinkle-covered sides. "You're lucky that your mother and I held your brother off. He acts rabid anytime he gets a whiff of me baking."
I grin and lean forward, elbows on the counter, and take what feels like my first full breath in days. "Rainer doesn't even like chocolate. He's a peanut butter guy."
Coly rolls his eyes and slices into the moist cake, placing a chunk of it onto one of our glass dessert plates—the ones reserved for special occasions. "Oh, you don't have to tell me."
He offers me the first piece then fixes a plate for himself, half the size of mine.
"Thank you for this," I say, already feeling more like myself.
He shrugs and takes a bite, grinning as he savors it. "Tonight is a big deal for an alpha; your first rite of passage. How did it go?"
"I think that it went better than expected, though only time will tell what it all really means."
"Oh," he beams, "how brilliantly vague of you." He taps his fork toward the end of my nose. "Already speaking like a seasoned alpha."
I grin and relax onto my stool. "I've been practicing being more pompous in the hopes that it will drive Rainer crazy."
Coly's laugh is like music, bursting my lingering stress like a pinprick to a balloon. "Yes, well it's the least your brother deserves. He's spent more than twenty years driving everyone else crazy. And to think, I've only known him for five of them. It feels like I've endured a lifetime since being hired by your mother."
I turn at the sound of my older brother's familiar footsteps coming from the stairway behind me and grin as he says, "Oh Coly, you should be so lucky as to have me around for a lifetime." He strolls up to the stool beside me and takes a seat, eyeing my cake like an owl hunting a field mouse.
Coly cuts him a slice before he can pounce on mine, and I meet my brother's close assessment. His light blue eyes pin me in place as he probes my feelings through our wolf's bond. "You seem at peace." He sighs then flashes a grin. "Did everything go well or am I going to have to listen to stories about you humping trees like dad did when he had his ceremony?"
Coly coughs on his cake and pounds his chest, reaching for a glass of water—probably hoping it can drown out the image Rainer invoked. "What?"
Rainer's grin grows, stretching from ear to ear. "You don't know the story of when Alpha got lit during his ceremony and humped half the forest?"
"No." The rho coughs, trying to clear his throat. "And I kind of wish I still didn't."
Rainer elbows me then rubs a hand over my head, marking me with his scent—claiming, protective.
"Mine wasn't quite...that."
"So, how was it?"
I smirk and shrug. "I got high for the first time and am down here eating cake. It was good."
Rainer belts out a laugh. "It was good," he repeats and nods, his classic good looks brightening as he says, "You're sleeping in my room tonight, pup. I want to hear everything. And maybe it will keep me from having another nightmare about Alpha Kells' murder and the nagging feeling that something out there is heading this way."