Alpha King's Hybrid Luna

Leviathan

After my talk with Asa about our daughter, the last thing I want to think about is a border meeting. Luckily they’re usually pretty short.

I walk toward the meeting room and, much to my shock, I notice more scents than usual.

Border meetings are usually small and consist of five of my lead warriors. I’m smelling at least a dozen.

I walk in and see there are, in fact, twelve members at the table, looks of concern plastered on all of their faces.

“What’s going on?” I bellow.

Beta Zade stands. “Alpha King, over the last few days we have had reports of unidentified scents surrounding our borders.”

“Why am I being informed now instead of when it first surfaced?” I say angrily.

“Protect Pack. Protect family. Kill invaders,” I hear my wolf Damien command.

“We don’t know what it is. Calm down. We WILL protect our home at all costs.” I try to calm my wolf.

I can feel the unease of my wolf. His anxiety is on high alert, just as is my own. I feel the itching sensation to search and destroy the unknown.

“The warriors were unable to verify if the scent was anything worth reporting and this was not the first time your men have come across this,” my old friend Liddia says.

“If you are here, this must be a big problem. What have we learned?” I ask, trying to mask my concern.

“Sir, I was called in to pinpoint the source of the scent and I must sadly report I have never come across it in my life. This is not any creature I know of,” she says with a hardened face.

The news worries me. Liddia and I have lived for thousands of years. I am the first wolf made. What could possibly emit a scent unknown to us?

“Are we all sure this isn’t just a rogue scent that’s been tampered with? What other information has anyone gotten from this? You said this isn’t the first time we’ve crossed this, how do we not know what it is then?”

Beta Zade speaks again, “Before now, the scent was only noticed maybe twice a year, over the course of three years, and never to this extent.

“The smell is so unusual and close to nature it didn’t seem abnormal. We thought of rogues at first, but we’re not sure; that is why we called Liddia.”

Zade nods at Liddia with respect. “She has confirmed this is not of wolf, witch, or Goddess scent. Nor is this a natural scent.

“According to patrol logs, the scent seems to be slightly different every day, which makes us believe whatever this is, there are many of them.”

“HOW MANY?! I WANT NUMBERS!” I roar.

Zade clears his throat nervously as if he can feel the energy of my anger swallow the room whole.

“We do know there is a lingering smell of moss, and it seems to be at least twice a day now in multiple locations around the border.”

“This is unacceptable. The entire wolf race looks to us to have the knowledge of anything that could be classified as an enemy,” I snarl.

My anger gets the best of me and my fist comes barreling down against the solid oak table, causing a corner chunk to break and crumble away.

I feel my body tremble in anger at the unknown. My wolf is fighting to take control.

The room is so silent you can hear the building creak from age and I can see the subtle hint of fear in everyone’s eyes.

In recent years, since I found my mate and had a child, I have been much tamer and even-tempered, so they are not used to this reaction anymore.

“Take me to the most recent location immediately,” I command in a lower tone.

My beta and Liddia escort me to the grounds, toward the southern border of our pack, where they say the most recent encounter occurred.

The closer we get, the harder the smell of moss assaults my nose.

“This is the last-known spot, probably three hours ago at the most,” Liddia explains.

I lean down and pull forward my wolf. His sense of smell is stronger than my own, so if we have any chance at catching a whiff of something, it will be with him.

“Familiar,” Damien states with no explanation.

I look around the area, trying to find anything out of place, but nothing sticks out. Just the overpowering smell of moss. And yet I don’t see anybody, nor anything, that would produce that strong of a smell.

“We have encountered this being before somehow, but Damien isn’t giving further explanation. For the time being, we double the patrols, and as soon as another scent occurs, you tell me immediately,” I command.

Liddia and Zade both nod sternly. Liddia heads back to the packhouse and Zade stays by my side.

“Damien won’t tell you anything else?” he asks in a hushed tone.

“No, he just said it was ‘familiar’ and left it at that. How is it possible there is something in this world we don’t know about?” I asked, racking my brain.

“We didn’t know sirens existed until five years ago, Leviathan… There are ways to hide, your mate is living proof of that.”

I don’t know what angers me more: the fact I don’t know what this is or the fact Zade is right.

My fingers comb my hair out of habit and stress.

How do I protect my pack, my mate, my child…against something we know nothing about?

Unable to think of a better plan, I manage to pull myself away from the scene. The sun is setting and the smell is fading, so there isn’t much more we can do until there is a fresh lead.

I dismiss Zade and hang back to linger in the woods. I feel Damien itching to be released and decide to indulge him.

It’s a nice break to let him take the reins.

I remove my clothes and pull down my walls, allowing my wolf to take over. After a few seconds of breaking bones, I am in the passenger seat.

I barely get a moment to adjust when Damien takes off around the border, sniffing and hunting.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“Familiar,” he replies again without any context.

I watch through his eyes as he jumps over fallen logs and listen to the thudding of his heavy paws beating against the forest floor.

Trees speed past. Then we come to a halt in the woods closest to the packhouse.

It takes me a moment to realize the scent is strong here too.

My blood boils as it dawns on me how close to my home we are. You can see the packhouse through the trees.

“How the hell did they get this far past our borders?! We are five miles in!” I try to ask my wolf.

The scent is much fresher here than in the area we just left. By the strength of it, I would say less than an hour ago.

“They are watching our home. They have been to this spot many times before,” Damien explains, his own anger increasing.

Looking around the area, I cannot find a single footprint. Just the smell of moss mixed with something else I can’t put my finger on.

There are no broken twigs. No agitated soil. It feels as if it were a ghost lurking.

I mind-link Liddia to come to me and see if her wolf can find anything else. As the best hunter/tracker I have ever met, she must be able to see something I cannot.

Within minutes, Liddia shows up in her wolf form and starts her search. I watch as she gets low, sniffing every small nook and cranny. Her wolf stands up on hind legs to sniff higher in the trees.

I must admit, she’s doing a much more thorough job than I did.

She stops and starts rubbing her snout into the dirt like she smells something she is trying to remove.

“What did you find?” I ask through our link.

“Every time I get higher, I get a faint whiff of something else, but the moment I start to pin it, the moss smell increases and invades my entire sense of smell.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I would think the moss knew I was getting close and got stronger to hide the smell,” she tells me as her wolf lies down, rubbing its paws over its nose, whining.

“What’s wrong with your wolf?” I ask, concerned.

“I can’t smell anything but the moss. It just keeps getting stronger. It’s driving my wolf crazy and throwing her into a fit. It literally feels like my nose is being attacked. Isn’t the smell affecting you?”

I inhale deeply, but the moss smells exactly the same as it did before. I shake my head.

“Home,” I link.

We both rush back to the packhouse. Once we shift back into our human skins and change, Liddia walks into my office. Her entire face is blotchy and red. She keeps sneezing and rubbing her nose.

“Fuck, this smell. I don’t understand how this didn’t affect you, it’s so damn strong,” she complains.

“The smell didn’t change for me,” I say, confused, trying to piece together why it is affecting her so badly.

“I must have gotten close to the source. Maybe some sort of spell was cast to…” Liddia stops mid-sentence and begins to sneeze uncontrollably.

“Fuck!” she cries in between sneezes.

“Once you get close, it appears to attack your senses, preventing you from getting a good hold on what it is,” I finished her sentence.

Liddia just nods as she continues her sneezing fit.

Her nose begins to swell and the redness spreads down her neck.

“We need to get you to the pack doctor and find a way to neutralize the smell. It seems to be making you have some sort of allergic reaction,” I conclude.

“We are wolves. We aren’t allergic to anything,” she responds before sneezing again.

“Maybe, but we have never encountered this before…,” I state grimly.

I escort her to the pack doctors and they begin to rinse her nose out and give her medicine to help her sleep, hoping her wolf would fight off anything attacking her.

My mind is racing, confused as to what is going on.

What could have done this? How can we figure out what the cause is if we cannot even get close enough to decipher it?

Fuck, now we are back at square one.