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"Lycan's? Yes. We are the Liderii or the leaders of our people." Ralph turned sweeping his hand across the table waiting behind him. "If your pack followed tradition, we should have met when you were a child." He indicated the only woman at the table. "Cerese should have been your tutor in all things Lycan. Please join us." Stepping back to stand by his seat, Ralph introduced me to the others.
Standing by me, Dale placed his hand in the middle of my back. Then, when we sat, he set my hand on his thigh under the table and covered it with his hand.
It turned out, Dale was one of the Liderii. When Cameron told him I was an unmated female Lycan, Dale contacted the Liderii to report finding me. They decided Dale should let me move in, befriend me, and find out why the how and why of me.
Of course, when Dale met me himself, Alpha had been in control, so that hadn't been the best start. Everything Dale learned about my abuse and issues he'd passed on too. When Dale realized I was his mate, he'd notified the Liderii immediately.
"You couldn't have found a better alpha as your mate, Vera," Cerese assured me. All the other alphas at the table bristled, especially Ralph, who was Cerese's mate. "Oh, shush. We all know Dale is the sweetheart of the Liderii." Squeezing Ralph's hand, Cerese winked at Dale.
"You're full-blood, like me?"
"Yes. The only other. Though, now that we know what happened to you, we are wondering if there are any others?"
"Considering we make our packs implode, it shouldn't be hard to find any others."
Everyone sort of went into slow motion, as if any sudden movements might set me off. It was Cerese who cleared her throat. "A good starting point indeed, Vera, but one that is already years beyond when a girl should meet her mate. Your mother wasn't human, yet we have no record of who she was, so like with you, we weren't notified of her existence."
"Unless, of course, my mother had never known she was anything but human?"
Everyone at the table frowned. "Was that the case?" Ralph enquired.
"I have no idea. I don't remember anything about her. She wasn't in my life for as long as I can remember." You can't miss what you never had if you never knew you should have it.
Again, the table fell quiet. This time, the arrival of our food broke the awkwardness. We started eating, and Dale made the subject light, discussing their packs. I learned a lot during that meal.
Ralph was already fifty when he mated with Cerese on her sixteenth birthday. They'd met and recognized each other as mates the year prior. Cerese was sixty, but she didn't look a day over twenty-five. Cerese couldn't shift, nor had she fallen pregnant. Even with the human methods of ovulation kits, she couldn't conceive.
"When you mated, did you have a vision of your life ahead with Ralph?"
Cerese tilted her head appraising Dale and his question. "It was so long ago."
"Have you ever dreamed real?" I butted in.
Blinking, Cerese glanced at all the others. "Ah, no. Do you?"
"Since I was a child."
"Vera only found out she was one of us after one of her dreams left her injured. She needed me to seek medical attention for her." Dale then continued to describe the nature of my dream, Malcolm, and what he did to me. While the rest of the table sat looking pale and appalled. "When I sank fang to mark her, Vera whispered a preview of our future together. I wasn't sure if that was the norm or a part of her gift."
The entire table fell quiet when Quinton, the oldest and most silent spoke. "We had a female, long ago, to whom the goddess spoke in her dreams. She was quite different from the females we get now. Her mate and she were very happy together. When her mate died, she started dreaming of the deaths of her pack. She would wake injured." Quinton fell quiet.
"It killed her, didn't it?" Already knowing the answer, my eyes filled with tears.
"No one heeded her. Only one listened to her. The dreams claimed the woman before the hunters came and annihilated their pack. But the one who listened survived."
"There are hunters?"
Quinton lifted his grey bushy brows over his aged, grey, eyes. "They were witch hunters. In that age, everything different was a witch, and killed as such." He stroked his grey beard. "Perhaps, you are a descendant of her child who escaped. Perhaps, you are she again?"
Chapter 17
The ride home was quiet. The myth sparked a debate at our lunch table over the belief of reincarnation. Saying no more, Quinton let the others argue all the reasons I couldn't be a reincarnation. Instead, he studied me. I was glad to fade into the background with Quinton and Dale, who also stayed out of the argument. In fact, other than farewells, Dale hadn't said another word.
When we pulled up out the front of my place, I chose to share my thoughts. "I don't believe in past lives."
Killing the engine, Dale sat back, his eyes focused out of the windscreen. "The woman Quinton spoke of; she's known to all Lycan's. Luna is what they call her, but no one remembers her true name. She wasn't born human, but a wolf. She was beautiful but endured a horrible life."
Licking his lips, Dale gripped the steering wheel. "Abandoned by her mother, her sire unknown, humans raised her. She struggled to fit in with humans, her temper, not what a woman's should be in those days. The restriction of clothes, of being in bed at night instead of roaming the woods, was all very abrasive. As a young woman, her beauty attracted a wealthy man's interest, and he married her. After that, she suffered repeated beatings and rapes by her husband."
