[TRISTAN]

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

A low rumbling growl left my throat, and I dragged a pillow from beside my head, covering my face in hopes of blocking out that god-awful sound but it only seemed to get louder.

Beep! Beep! Bee-!

Lashing out my forearm, I aimed to slam it down on the annoying thing but missed my mark and the incessant beeping continued.

After a few torturous seconds, I finally flung my arm out, sweeping it across the bedside table in a blind rage and sending a flower vase, along with the stupid alarm clock, flying into the opposite wall and shattering to pieces.

I tried going back to sleep after that but with all the commotion I was now wide awake.

It had also dawned on me that today I would meet my father's new wife.

Supposedly, his mate.

My wolf guide, Zain, paced restlessly inside me to express his discomfort.

He's always on high alert, and especially now with tensions rising between the neighboring rogue pack and our own, but I chose to ignore the warning, flinging off the covers and dragging my lethargic body out of bed and straight into the adjoining bathroom.

I was exhausted and with good reason too. I would typically limit my morning border patrol to one round, but with Alpha away, more duties fell on my shoulders and I had to share in his responsibilities.

Ever since he'd phoned me to give the good news of finally finding his mate and that they'd tied the knot on some tropical cruise, a sense of unease had taken root, a strange apprehension festering inside me.

There were so many things wrong with his announcement that I couldn't quite wrap my head around—questions I had no answers to.

Alpha Jackson is in his mid-forties and now he randomly finds his Luna?

After all this time?

A human at that?

Now, I have nothing against humans, but could you blame me for being wary when mate bonds with humans were so exceptionally rare that only a handful have been seen in centuries?

There were hardly any humans left in Lyrcania after the last great war, which meant Alpha Jackson had wandered beyond the barrier again and found her in the human world.

The shifter population is small compared to humans and we tend to keep to ourselves, abiding by the treaties that separate their world from our own, and we are always mated to members of our own pack or a neighboring one, not random humans in an entirely different part of the world.

The part that doesn't even believe in our existence.

It only added insult to injury that he met her on a cruise.

How on earth could such an important meeting between soulmates take place on an impromptu vacation with a mate who didn't have any knowledge of our existence as she'd grown up on the continents outside of our borders?

Call me overprotective or call me a cynic, but I know my father better than anyone and I'd seen how women have waltzed into his life before, dug into his pockets, and waltzed out without so much of a goodbye. He was just a fool so in love with the idea of love that he doesn't think twice about the women he takes home.

I had to be sure this was the real deal.

He might be a good Alpha, but he was bad at picking the right women.

I know how frustrating it is that the pack is weak—that he is weak without a Luna, but sometimes these things happen.

Most packs don't have to worry about having a Luna to bless them, as Alphas are destined to meet their mate on their eighteenth. Even lower ranked shifters are almost guaranteed to meet their mate in their lifetime, but our pack had been struggling without a Luna for quite some time now.

Alpha Jackson might not be the strongest in our world, but he was as strong as an unmated Alpha could get without the Goddess's blessing, and he wasn't alone.

I was prepared to help lead the pack despite all the naysayers who accused him of putting us at risk by not taking an unmarked female and making her Luna instead of waiting for 'the one'.

Everyone knows how sacred the mate bond is.

There isn't a single shifter alive who doesn't dream of meeting their soul mate, so why would my father be any different? He is a powerful Alpha, but he still had a soft heart that yearned to nurture.

Though, after what happened five years ago, you'd think he would have learned his lesson, but no, he still believed his mate was out there waiting for him. If he took another female, their bond would disappear forever, and he would never get to experience the person he was meant for in this life.

He could never do that.

Not someone like him.

I would have done it for the pack in a heartbeat if it came to the test. The rogues were steadily growing their numbers and making their moves and soon, we would need all the help we could get.

When I left the house, there was a splash of sunlight throwing gold streaks across the sky and I took my usual path through the garden, heading into the woods. Once I was a good distance in, surrounded by thick foliage on all sides, I peeled out of my clothes and let the shift take its full effect.

Ever since my first shift, Zain has been taking charge in wolf form as it was more natural for him, though, now that he was almost a fully mature wolf, the time would come when we would need to become one and assume an Alpha's Lycan form.

He was far too volatile for that now, however.

Once I was completely immersed within Zain, I could sense a lot more, picking up on sights and sounds my human self would almost never notice. The world was more vibrant and held a new set of possible outcomes.

In a way, I was two, one who could plan and direct and another who could act when necessary.

It was a balance I now enjoyed as the first few months after my shift, Zain taking control was nothing short of confusing, but it was comforting to know that he wouldn't do anything without my command, though there have been a few times when I found it difficult to rein him in.

Once I started to get used to the shift and began to accept the more animalistic part of me, we reached a new balance.

At seventeen I was already 6'7" and still, I knew that wasn't my full potential as the next Alpha of Seacrest.

People say you can tell a powerful Alpha from the size of their wolf alone and Zain was already as large as Xerxes, Alpha Jackson's own jet black wolf, who towered over most of Seacrest's population whenever he shifted, but Zain wasn't done growing either, so it was clear where the favor of the Goddess resided.

The average shifter wolf stands only around 5'0" on all fours while Zain was steadily catching up to Alpha's 6'0" wolf.

It was no great mystery why either, as our bloodline hailed from Theon, the first of all great wolves.

Zain's paws pressed into the soft earth, digging up moist dirt as he loped across the terrain, tail whipping back and forth with excitement, ears perked and senses on high alert.

It felt good to let go and give him the reins for a little while, enjoying the feel of wind in his fur and cold earth under his paw-pads as he trekked through the undergrowth.

I could clear my head then and enjoy the simple pleasures of a wolf.

An hour later, I had finished patrolling the border and phoned Alpha Jackson to find that he was on his way home with the humans.

Ending the call with a grimace, I headed inside.

I ignored the buzz of activity around me, grabbing a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and chugging from it while I took a freshly baked muffin from the pastry basket they'd been piled in.

Our house was almost never this active, and especially so early in the morning.

The maids had schedules that kept them out of our hair most of the time, but they were now scrambling all over, hanging up garlands and putting out food—tidying every square inch of the house like they were preparing for the arrival of some Godlike deities and not two insignificant human women.

I watched two Omegas struggle to bring a vanity dresser upstairs and steadied the one closest to me, a large grin on his face when he realized he'd been saved from taking a tumble.

My lips turned down at the corners as I watched them go.

Apparently, Alpha Jackson's mate had a daughter around my age, and she would be taking the room two doors down from mine.

I wondered who made that moronic decision when our house was big enough for her to choose a number of rooms that didn't even need to be on the same floor as mine.

And then, I wondered what she would be like.

Probably a gold digger like her mother, no doubt.

At the thought, a wave of anger surfaced inside me, a show that Zain was already not very fond of the incoming humans.

It just didn't make sense that—

"Good morning, Mr. Payne."

I turned to look down at the person who spoke, her smell wafting over to me.

Althea, the female Omega who usually takes care of my little sister Candice when Alpha Jackson and I were not around, is nineteen but had the look of someone who was much younger with her round face and doe eyes, as well as her 5'4" stature that was dwarfed by my own height.

She was looking up at me with those innocent green eyes, a look she always reserved for whenever she was around me. A look I can only decipher as admiration and lust.

I'd gotten accustomed to her worship though. Her praises that made me giddy in the beginning meant nothing lately, as Zain has started anticipating the day we would meet our mate.

Still, even though Althea wasn't our mate, she was a good distraction for us, a way to release the pent up aggression.

She flashed a playful smile at me, her eyes wandering over my shirtless torso and the crotch of my jeans before trailing back up to my face.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" She asked, and with a subtle gesture, she swiped the hair away from her neck, offering herself.

Alpha Jackson himself said an unmated omega is the biggest threat for any wolf and he wasn't wrong.

Althea kept herself ready and she knew I didn't have the heart to say no.

"Follow me," I ordered, heading up to my room.

Althea and I had... history.

I'd known her for most of my life since Seacrest is such a close knit pack, and we went to the same schools for many of those years. She is Cedric's daughter, our Beta's right hand (and one of, if not the best tracker on the continent).

In the begging, he would take her to meetings; later on, she would come all on her own.

Although I never took interest in her or anyone else before I came of age, when I turned sixteen and shifted for the first time, I became a lot more perceptive of how she really felt about me.

And not just her.

Every unmated wolf in this pack goes into a fucking frenzy whenever I'm around, likely because of my status.

Zain was still a pup, though. And I didn't know what to do with all that power. So in the beginning, I took advantage of it.

My senses had been heightened and all my primal instincts unlocked.

When it came to sex, I was immature at first as expected, and unsure due to the mate bond, but then again, Candice and I would have never been brought into this world if Alpha had waited himself.

And so, Althea became my awakening.

It was a long time before either of us acted on our feelings but when she became Candice's babysitter a few months ago, everything changed between us.

With Alpha Jackson away, mingling with humans as he usually did around this time of year, and with Zain now fully mature, he was almost feral whenever Althea would come around.

Naturally, one thing led to another.

A handful of girls followed after that.

I knew that if I ended up like Alpha Jackson, unmated for countless years, I would need to choose someone myself. I'll be turning eighteen soon and I couldn't help but wonder what the Goddess had in store for me.

Looking down at Althea as she fumbled with the buckle of my belt to get my pants off, I frowned before the sound of honking suddenly took my focus. I left her to strip out of her clothes while I went to the large open windows to watch the convoy roll into view.

The sun shimmered off the roof of the car as it came to a stop and I couldn't help but snarl at its glare, eyes narrowing as the driver held the door open.

The first woman stepped out of the vehicle, and I almost mistook her for a small child at first.

So this is our Luna.

She had deep brown skin and wore a flowery yellow dress with colorful clips in her dark curly hair and after she stepped out, her daughter followed, much taller and with curves to kill, filling out the similar dress she was wearing, though it could hardly contain her oversized chest.

My gaze trailed over her small, heart shaped face and the mean mug she was sporting before my gaze raked over her body again, my throat going dry in that instant.

Her warm skin tone only seemed to glow under the afternoon sun and she looked so soft, so—I was suddenly unbearably excited, a reaction even Althea couldn't get from me so easily, even though she was now fully naked and waiting on my bed.

"Get dressed," I grumbled, "We have guests."

She pouted and hurried to gather her clothes while my gaze was drawn to the girl once more.

My new step-sister, a term for which I hated but kept to respect Alpha's wishes.

I left the room, Althea following behind with the most irritated look on her face.

I felt bad for her but I couldn't take her mood too seriously.

She would just have to wait.

I bounded down the stairs and went to stand on the front porch, shoving my hands into my pockets as my gaze roved over the humans, lingering on the younger one again as she looked up at the house.

Jackson handed Candice over to the little woman, the warmth in their smiles palpable, and they seemed genuinely happy, so much so that I couldn't help but feel a slight sense of hope.

Alpha's hand rested on the small of her back as she looked up at him with adoration while he was introducing her.

"This is my beautiful m- wife Ellie," He stammered and I clenched my jaw at that "and her equally charming daughter, Alexandria."

I caught the subtle smell of something sweet on the air, looking over at the source.

"Alex," She corrected, and her voice held a husky timbre that was causing a strange feeling of familiarity to grow in my chest, but Alpha was already moving towards me, arms extended for a hug.

"Good to have you back," My eyes, however, never strayed from her direction, her posture mirroring my own, a subtle irritation that matched my wariness.

She wasn't thrilled about this new arrangement either, if the scowl she sported was anything to go by, not that I cared.

If they thought they would make a fool out of us though, they had another thing coming.

Prologue- THE HUMANS

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