CHAPTER FOUR

MIKHAIL'S P.O.V.

I woke up early today because my wolf Caleb was acting restless and excited for some unknown reason.

I asked why he was so happy, but he only told me that I would find out soon. When I tried to ask more questions, he didn't reply.

Deciding to ignore him, I took a bath, ate breakfast, and went to my office to do some paperwork.

After going through some documents, I started pondering the rogue issue we'd been having for about a month now.

We had been randomly sensing rogues around the territory. They weren't attacking or anything, but it was very suspicious. The part that baffled me most was that whenever we tracked their scents to a specific part in the forest surrounding our pack, we wouldn't find anyone there. It was like they just disappeared or something, and that bothered me a lot.

I had given orders to the guards to double the patrols around the forest and increase pack training. I had to make sure we were ready should there be an attack on the pack.

We had to maintain our status as one of the strongest packs in America, and I had to prove to our enemies that I was a brutal Alpha so they would think twice before attacking my pack.

I rubbed my forehead as I felt a headache coming on. The paperwork had been stressing me out for the past few days.

I remembered when my parents were still alive and I used to watch my father do paperwork. Back then, I didn't really understand much of what he was doing, but I didn't attempt to learn more about pack work.

I thought I still had a long way to go before becoming Alpha of the pack, but I didn't anticipate that my parents would be killed in a rogue attack and that I would have to become Alpha when I wasn't even ready.

I clenched my fists when I remembered the day my parents died. It was a few months before my eighteenth birthday party when a rogue group had attacked. We could have overpowered them, but my mother got hurt in the process of getting the pups out of harm's way.

One of the rogues snuck up on her and managed to injure her leg. My father felt the pain through their mate bond and got distracted from his fight with the leader of the rogues.

That man wasn't an ordinary rogue. I'd never seen such skill and intelligence in a normal rogue. He wasn't just some mindless, crazed rogue who was attacking for supplies. There was purpose behind every move—it was well calculated.

That little moment of distraction was enough for the man. He ripped out my father's throat in one sharp movement, and my father fell to the ground, bleeding out on the forest floor.

I was also fighting against some rogues when I heard my mother's scream of agony. I looked at her and saw her running toward my father's lifeless body on the floor.

She reached him in seconds and started crying. I saw one of the rogues approaching her from behind. She was too distracted to notice. I tried to run to her, but I was too late.

He ripped her head right off her neck. I remember freezing in place for a few seconds because I couldn't believe what I saw.

I felt a rage so dangerous that it threatened to destroy me whole. I rushed at the rogue immediately, ripping him to shreds. I started tearing into the rogues, and in a few minutes, my black fur was coated in the coppery liquid that was the rogues' blood.

After tearing apart several rogues, I realized that the man who murdered my father was no longer in the forest. We couldn't find him—he was gone.

I spent months loathing every rogue in existence after that incident. The heartache of telling my little sister Daphne, who was just twelve years old, that she wouldn't see our parents anymore... We had both grieved for months after that before finally getting our lives together. We knew we had to move on for our parents—it's what they would have wanted.

I still think about that man from time to time. I wonder if he's still alive and what his aim was for that attack. They didn't steal any supplies or anything. It was as if their aim was to eliminate my father, and they succeeded. If he is alive and we ever cross paths again, I'll be sure to make him pay for what he did to my family and pack.

Ever since then, I became the Alpha and took care of the pack. I had everything under control, but I didn't have a mate.

Others found their mates when they were eighteen, but I was twenty-four already and still mateless. To be honest, I had already given up on ever having a mate.

I was planning to pick a girl from my pack and mate her so that the pack could have their Luna, but my younger sister Daphne doesn't agree with me on that. She thinks it's disrespectful to my mate to get with someone else.

She hasn't found her mate either, but she still has a chance since she's just eighteen.

Later that evening, while I was working, I heard a knock on the door as my beta and best friend Jace came in with my delta Mark.

I looked at them. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Look, we sensed someone in the forest surrounding the area. We think it's a human, but we're not sure," Jace said, which annoyed me.

Could it be the rogues we'd been sensing for a while now? And if it was them, what did they want now? We definitely needed to investigate, but if it was just a human and they saw us in wolf form, that could cause problems too.

"Okay, you and Mark go check it out, but make sure you shift back to your human forms before showing yourselves to the person. We wouldn't want you scaring a human since you're not sure who it is."

They agreed and left after telling me they would mind-link me when they got there. After about ten minutes, I heard Mark's voice in my head: "Hey, bro, it's just a human girl."

"Okay, what's she doing there?" I asked, surprised. It wasn't every day that we found humans in the forest. The pack was located here to keep away from humans, and now I found out one was in the forest.

"She says she's just passing by, and she seems pretty harmless," Mark replied. Mark is always like this—he sees the good in everyone and can vouch for anyone.

"No! Bring her to the pack house so I can question her. We don't know if she saw any of the pack members shifting or if she's a spy," I told Mark, getting annoyed that he was planning on letting her go.

"But how do we convince her to come with us? She might think we want to do something bad to her and run," Mark asked.

"Convince her that this land belongs to a group of people and that the leader wants to talk to her to make sure she's not a threat to the safety of the people."

I needed to question her to make sure she wasn't sent here to spy on the pack by other packs—or even worse, by rogues. If she was truly innocent, then she wouldn't have any problem with letting us clarify things for ourselves.

"She agreed to come with us. We're headed for the pack house now," Mark said.

After a while, I heard a knock on the door, and I knew they were here. I told them to come in and looked up to see the girl.

I was surprised when my eyes landed on her. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen before. She had blonde hair and brown eyes—eyes that seemed to be calling out to me. She smelled like vanilla ice cream.

I was still lost staring at her when I heard Caleb, my wolf, yelling in my head: "Mate! Mate! She's our mate!" He yipped excitedly, and I couldn't stop myself from saying it out loud.

She looked confused about what I said, but Jace and Mark gasped, knowing what I meant by that.

I had found my mate.