Page 5 of Shadowed Bond

Never wanted everyone looking to me.

Never wanted the weight of an entire pack pressing against my chest.

But the Blue Moon Pack answers to me now.

And whether I like it or not, I answer to them.

An Inconvenient Mission

Ares

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER…

Being Alpha is fucking boring, and what do you know? No one tells you that part.

They talk about power, respect, loyalty, legacy, and all that poetic shit people use when they want to make responsibility sound less like unpaid labour. They don’t mention the meetings. Or the reports. Or the complaints about patrol schedules, training rota changes, border issues, damaged equipment, and stupid arguments between grown adults who apparently need their Alpha to decide who has the right to use a particular stretch of woodland to grow fucking vegetables. Like who the fuck cares?

Me, apparently.

I am the Alpha who has to solve the stupidest shit known to man.

Months have passed, and not one person has decided to try to challenge me yet. I’m starting to take that personally. Not because I want to lose the title, but because beating someone into submission would at least break up the paperwork. But I think going up against Poseidon’s favoured isn’t as appealing as I hoped it sounded.

Today, I’m standing outside one of the briefing rooms at Midnight Academy because Leo ordered me to wait here.

Because this must be so fucking important. Has he forgotten I have to attend the Academy and run a pack?

However, when the King tells you to be somewhere, it is usually because something has either gone wrong or is about to, and unfortunately, I’m not stupid enough to pretend that doesn’t matter.

Still pisses me off, though.

I lean against the wall, arms crossed, as I watch students move through the corridor, some in small groups and others alone, each with a destination in mind. Then there’s me; I don’t even fucking know what I’m doing after this meeting.

I’m still enrolled here, but like Sienna, I don’t live here anymore. With a pack to run, and luckily or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, Sienna and I live close, so we go back and forth together. I hate it; she seems to enjoy it.

There’s a bunch of us – Carter, Renji, Heaven, Alessandra, Sienna and me – who often miss so much of the training here, and the Academy keeps pretending we’re not basically dropouts with divine trauma and a talent for surviving things that should have killed us.

Jayce doesn’t attend anymore. He has enough going on with being the Deimos King, the Blood Moon Pack Alpha, Sienna, and now Stephen Corvin Westwood, who is apparently the new centre of the universe. The pup is only a month old and already has the entire family acting like he personally hung the moon in the sky.

Jayce looks like he hasn’t slept properly since the day Stephen was born, but every time someone mentions his son, he gets that smug, soft look on his face that makes me want to throw something at him.

He’s settled, though.

Alpha.

Mate.

Father.

All the shit he was clearly meant to be, even when he was too much of an idiot to accept half of it.

Good for him.

Annoying, but good.

I look at the time; Leo’s late…

Fucking prick.