Chapter Three

My mother lost. It took Trist a while to calm down enough to allow her to receive medical attention. Her unconscious body, still in wolf form, was carried into our house where there was an infirmary room. My siblings and I waited in the hall outside, while the priest and my father tried their best to put her back together.

Honey and I sat on a bench. Luca leaned against the opposite wall. We were all silent, no doubt ruminating our own problems. Our mother was no longer the alpha of our pack. We would lose our house. Our status. And who could tell what sort of leader the new alpha would be?

On top of it all, the new alpha was apparently my soulmate. Of course, I had heard of soulmates existing before, but I had never really believed it. I just thought that it was a fun little story, not something that could actually happen, especially not something that would happen to me. But how else could I explain what was going on between me and Trist? I needed to speak to the priest. He would probably know if Trist and I were actually soulmates, and what we were supposed to do about it.

Now that things were calmer, I could easily untangle Trist’s emotions from my own. It felt a bit rude to see into somebody else’s mind like that, but I couldn’t ignore them no matter how much I tried. Thankfully, he seemed to be doing all right. There was a hint of anxiety and confusion, but he mostly felt joy. It seemed that the pack were taking good care of the new alpha, which was good, I supposed. Meanwhile, the old alpha was lying in the infirmary, torn to pieces.

I wasn’t actually angry at Trist for what he had done to my mother. I knew that it was just the way that things worked in a wolf pack. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but that did not make it any easier for me to accept.

At last, the door to the infirmary opened and my father walked out followed by the priest, both looking exhausted. Luca straightened up and Honey leaned forward on the bench, clearly anxious for some news.

“She’ll survive,” announced my father, “but it will be a while before she recovers.”

“Is she awake?” asked Honey.

“Not yet. Probably not for a while,” he replied.

There was a moment of pensive silence as we absorbed the news.

“I’ll go and check on her,” said Luca as he opened the infirmary door.

There was nothing else that I could do for my mother, so I got up from the bench and walked over to the priest.

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” I asked quietly.

“Of course. What do you need?”

“Can we go somewhere else? Somewhere private?”

My father and sister had turned to watch us, obviously curious. I felt a twinge of guilt for keeping them in the dark, and for leaving my mother’s side, but the sooner I got this all sorted out, the better.

“Will the temple do?” the priest suggested.

I nodded my head and followed him outside.

There was still a large crowd in the square. Though I did not see him, I knew that Trist was in the middle of it all. I kept my head down and followed the priest through the village and then into the forest.

The temple was in a clearing, not far from the village’s edge. Unlike the elaborately decorated buildings that humans made for their gods, our temple was nothing more than a circle of small, flat stones laid on the forest floor. We worshipped the Moon Goddess, or at least we were supposed to, and we did not want a ceiling to separate us from her.

The priest went to the centre of the circle and waited patiently for me to join him. Somehow, seeing him standing there, with his slightly hunched back and his long white beard tucked over his shoulder, I felt calmer.

We were sort of friends, in a way. Like me, he was an abnormally weak werewolf. My mother had thought that he would be a good role model for me, that he could help me find my place in the pack. A few years ago, she made me become his apprentice. I shadowed him around and helped him with his duties. It wasn’t bad, really, but I quickly realised that I could never become a priest. It would be a bit hard when I didn’t exactly believe in the Moon Goddess. While the experience did not help my position within the pack, it did teach me that I could trust the priest, so I had no qualms discussing my current predicament with him.

“I think that the new alpha might be my soulmate,” I just blurted out.

“And why do you think that?” the priest asked straightforwardly.

“Last night, I felt like something was pushing me towards him! And then today, I realised that I can feel what he feels!”

The priest slowly nodded his head.

“That does indeed sound like you are soulmates,” he said.

“But how? It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Soulmates happen when one soul is split between two bodies, creating a bond between the two werewolves. The goddess does this for those that she has planned a great destiny for, so that the burden of that destiny is shared.”

“A great destiny? What does that mean?”

The priest shrugged, which wasn’t very helpful.

“I can’t do this,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands.

I looked up again when the priest placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“Yes, you can,” he said calmly.

“Don’t you understand? He’s the alpha! And I’m the complete opposite! Isn’t it cruel of the goddess to bond someone so strong to someone so weak?”

The priest smiled benevolently as he explained, “the goddess is not cruel, though she does work in mysterious ways.”

I barely suppressed a groan, but I could not stop myself from spilling more of my fears.

“And he’s a complete stranger! I’m not going to marry someone that I do not know!”

“You do not have to,” the priest said, stopping my rant instantly. “While the most popular stories about soulmates revolve around romantic connection, that is not explicitly implied by any of the teachings.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to say that you can just be friends.”

“Really?”

“Well, the soul is split by the goddess, but the relationship that forms is developed entirely by the two people involved.”  

“So, we can just be friends…” I contemplated, suddenly feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

“Obviously you need to discuss it with him. If you like, you can bring him here. I need to go over a few things with him for the leadership ceremony tonight, and it would be a good chance for you to get him away from the rest of the pack.”

I honestly did not want to talk to Trist. I was afraid of him, afraid of his strength and afraid that he would hate me. Yet I knew that I did not have any other choice, so I sombrely nodded and went off to get Trist.