Chapter 1.
Dexter.
My pack community grounds looked nothing like they did when I was a child. The once soft grass was gone, worn down to dirt. The area, central to our town, was littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts, the playground equipment long since hauled off into the woods.
The sun was only just rising, but we were all up, ready to start a long day’s work. The heavy scent of testosterone filled in the air. My all-male pack, consisting of Taylor and Jay, bonded with the men with whom we grew up. They’d all been placed into small all-male families of their own now.
A sigh ripped through my throat as I glanced at the rock-strewn dirt at my feet. The pack before me was a powerful, depressing sight I’d grown tired of. For a whole generation now, the Woodlands pack had not born a single female.
Not one.
For almost sixty years, the elders of my pack have questioned what happened to our breed. And what would happen to our genetic lines if there were no female mates to carry our children for future generations.
My mother and her sisters were some of the last pack-born women and each had produced at least three sons each.
What went wrong? No one knows.
What we do know is that there will be no more children born to our purebred wolf-shifting women.
It’s impossible now. The last of our fertile females matured past breeding age almost twenty years ago, so there’s no longer any hope of a saviour being born for our pack.
Something must be done. If we don’t find women to breed with soon, our pack will become extinct.
There was obviously only one option. To bring human women into the pack.
We needed to venture into the cities and acquire human females for breeding.
But no one knows if that will actually work, as it’s never been attempted before.
We have something called a Fated mate in our world. Wolf shifters in my pack only breed with their true mate, the one chosen for them by Fate.
I was told that I would recognise my mate by her scent. There would be an instant attraction, an undeniable bond from the moment we touch. I won’t actually know, as I’ve never experienced it before. No one my age has.
We must rely on the stories our parents tell us, which seem to change with time, like fairy tales.
So, what should we believe? It’s tough to discern between fact and fiction that has grown over the years. And if there were no wolf-born women, would that bond still exist outside of the community?
Probably not.
We were in uncharted territory and no one in the pack knew, not even the elders. And everyone was afraid of what would become of us if the bond failed.
“Dex! Come quickly. It’s your dad.” Taylor, my Beta, came running at me at break-neck speed and grabbed my arm.
My dad?
“Where is he? What’s happened?”
“Come on.” Taylor turned and ran towards my parents’ home. I followed behind, not thinking twice.
My father had been feeling unwell for months, and as one of the elders in our pack, that was a bad omen for everyone.
They’re meant to be the strongest of us.
He can’t die. Not yet. Not until we’ve secured of the continuation of our bloodline.