Chapter 7: Female Alpha

:Rhys:

Mate.

She was my potential mate. The first that my wolf had chosen after my transformation 10 years ago, after my first shift.

When a shifter first turns 18, they shift into their respective animal halves. As soon as the animal part comes to surface it starts searching for a partner. It happens because even though our human urges can be controlled, our animal side longs for contact. Contact of the most intimate kind with someone like its own. Hence, it starts searching for potential mates. But mine never had. As alpha, I had much more control than any other wolf. But now...now it seems to have found the one.

The first thought I had after realizing she was a potential mate was that, she didn't belong here. With hair as white as snow and eyes as endless as the ocean, she looked very much the fairy tale princess in pink gowns that my mother had told me about when I was just a babe. Instead, here she was in a navy full sleeve sweater and black jeans with knee high snow boots, standing in the middle of a dungeon, looking very much in control.

"Mat-"

"Why did you come here?" though her voice was a snarl, it's rough yet feminine sound felt like music to my ears. God I sounded like a sap.

It seemed to register a bit later in my love-fried brain that she had just cut me off. No one has ever dared to do that, except for my father. Mate or not, who the hell did she think she was? " How dare you speak to me like that? I'm the most powerful Alpha in ALL of Asia!" I roared, my Alpha wolf seeping into my voice.

"You will not speak to me that way". Spoken in the calmest of voices, but the power in it made my wolf wine and bow its head. I was beyond astonished. My wolf had never bowed down to anyone. Why did it bow to her? Who was she?

" You killed eight wolves send by our allies to negotiate peace. How do you explain that? And we don't let women do the talking, call your Alpha." Zyane seemed to have broken out of his mate-inflicted stupor but his brain hadn't yet registered who he was speaking to.

"Oh! Those trackers you mean? Mind telling us what they were doing in our lands?" the village girl (God, I need to find out her name), grit out sarcastically, then her expression turned to anger. " And you were just speaking to the Alpha. This is our land. So you better start respecting our Alpha."

" What were you doing here? Are you here for the same reason they were? To find the females?" she spoke to me directly, ignoring the bickering going on just behind her back.

"No", I answered truthfully, "We heard from our allies in China that their trackers were killed by a single white wolf and we wanted to know who had that much strength to have taken down eight highly trained wolves. That's why we came. To see if you had any intention of attacking us."

"I see", she said thoughtfully, brows wrinkling in concentration. Even that gesture looked good on her.

She finally seemed to have noticed the other couple in the vicinity, one glaring and the other looked lovesick. A few days ago, I would have thrown Zyane off a cliff back in Zever but now I knew exactly how he felt.

"Aya", she warned the girl (finally I had a name to her), "let's go. We have work to do".

"But jiji, it was his fault!" Aya wined childishly, stomping her foot. So the brat was her little sister.

" I don't care. Out. Now!" Aya glared at Zyane one last time and then stormed away in a fit of rage. She looked me dead in the eyes. "The crime for trespassing into our lands is death. But since you are an Alpha, we have no intention of starting a war. But a crime is a crime. You and your beta", she glared at Zyane, "will stay in this dungeon for two more days without any food or water".

"You can't do that! I'm an Alpha, I demand respect! "No matter what happens, I would never beg her to release me on the basis of us being potential mates, it was as pathetic as being a little girl scared of the big bad wolf. She must feel it too, the pull is strong. She must be hiding it well. She can't be that strong that she feels nothing...could she?

"Well too damn bad. I'm an Alpha too", with that, she turned and left the dungeon, her white hair felt like cloud behind her.