The Prince's Fated Mate: M/M Alpha/Omega Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Norvargen Wolves Book 1) (2 page)

The son of the pack alpha officially wedding a mate would no doubt call for a huge celebration — Will and his community lived at the furthest outskirts of the Norvargen territory, a good distance away from the Den, the centre where the ruling members of the pack resided. A wedding celebration for one of those upper members of the pack would no doubt require multiple festivities all over their territory.
 

Undoubtedly, Will would find his quiet hometown of Hemslock being visited by the pack leaders. Quiet it may be, it was still the perfect meeting point for the various townships scattered around the region, and their inn in particular was famous. People from neighbouring towns would come and have grand birthday or wedding dinners there and enjoy the famed hospitality of the inn.

"Imagine how much work we'll have to do," was all Will could say in response, grumbling as he followed Kytes out into the street, ready for a long day under the hot sun.

*

A full moon came and left, and the news was confirmed and disseminated throughout the entire Norvargen pack: James, the firstborn son of the pack alpha, was to be wedded and bonded to Prince Dashel, the second-born omega son of the Redfang Alpha.
 

The Redfang wolves were in control of a small territory to the northeast, much smaller than that of the Norvargen pack, but they were nonetheless a very proud community of shifters who more often kept to themselves than not.
 

The wedding ceremony was still many months away, and the heir to the Norvargen pack was expected to visit all the wolves throughout the land to celebrate with them. It was an old tradition for the pack alpha and his lineage, to journey from the eastern borders of their land to the western, greeting and feasting with all the wolves along the way.

As both hoped and expected by Will's father and Byron, an official emissary of the pack alpha had come, requesting their services in hosting the upcoming celebrations in their area. It would be Will's first time catching a glimpse of the royal family, and though a tiny part of him was rather excited, the overwhelming feeling he was facing those days was exhaustion. James and his family would be arriving in Hemslock within two weeks, and preparations were already underway to make their stay comfortable. This meant more than plenty of work for Will around the inn, and it was more than enough to keep him busy enough, pushing away all thoughts of fated mates from his tired brain.

And yet, in the brief minutes between lying in bed and waiting to fall asleep, the same memory of his mother and what she had told him would come back to him: “
I knew. Just like that, I knew he was my fated mate.
”
 

He didn’t know why he kept thinking about it, why the memory had been stirred awake and plaguing him for the past few months, why he felt so attached to it — and a part of him was scared to know why.

One afternoon, on a particularly bright and sunny day, with the arrival of the alpha’s party just a week away, Will sneaked off from work. He just just finished going through the books with one of the inn-workers, and found himself suddenly with perhaps an hour of spare time.
 

He ran to his room, grabbed a book off his nightstand, and dashed back down. He took the way to the party field, the massive, lush green expanse that sat behind the inn, and ran to the shady woods at the end of it. All his life, he would come running here to hide away and find some peace and quiet from the ever-busy inn. It was his mother who had brought him here the first time, teaching him the importance of a private place to rest and think alone in.

The book was open in his lap, and his eyes flitted through the words printed on it, and the notes scribbled in the margins. Some were written by his mother, some by him, annotations and reminders jotted down over the years. It was one of the many books his mother had given him and taught him with. She had come from the far west beyond the Norvargen territory, and spoke another language, one that she taught Will through many stories. He reviewed the books constantly to keep her language fresh in his mind, along with the memories of his mother teaching him.

He was flipping a page when he heard a rustle from behind him, and his nose twitched as a pair of easily recognisable scents greeted him.
 

"What are you doing?" a bright and chipper voice followed, eliciting a sigh from Will.
 

"What does it look like?" Will said tiredly, setting down the book on his lap. Just when he thought he would be able to relax in peace. "I'm reading. Well, trying to, at least, before you came along, Jack.”
 

"Reading what?" A young boy's face popped into his view, blocking the page he was reading. “Another one of your fairy storybooks?”

"Jack," Will complained, pushing the kid's face away. "Mind your manners."

Jack giggled, and soon his twin brother joined him in their usual game of bothering Will.

"Come on and play with us! Fox-and-hound!” said the brother Peter. The seven-year-old started tugging his shirt off, ready to shift into his sprightly wolf-form. “Chase us around, Will!”

"Too tired," said Will, not dishonestly. Before checking the books, he and Kytes had the task of fetching and lugging back huge crates of ingredients from the nearby market that morning, and his back deserved a break. "Go find Kytes and bother him."

“We tried already,” whined Jack, pouting. “He’s busy. And not with a book, with actual work.” For that last remark, Will flicked at his forehead reprimandingly, but the boy dodged it with a cheeky grin.

"Kytes told us to come bother you instead," added Peter.

"Well, he told us to come and tell you to get back to work," corrected Jack. "But you can play with us first!"

“How about you two just sit down and let me read to you, instead of running around?” Will suggested, hopefully.

Jack grimaced. “Don’t want to. Your stories are weird and for babies.”

Will snapped his leather-bound book shut. “Kids this days,” he muttered under his breath. “No appreciation for anything. Well, in that case, I guess I better get back to Kytes…”

"Oh, come on," whined Jack, tugging at the sleeve of Will’s white shirt.

"Don't you two have things to do?" said Will suspiciously. “Books to study, homework to finish, chores to do, errands to help your parents out with…”

Jack and Peter exchanged guilty looks at each other, confirming Will's suspicions.

"Tell you what," said Will, smiling at the boys. He had known them since they were babies, and though they could be a handful, he was fond of them. “I won't tell your Ma and Pa that you were out here playing if you don't go gabbing about that I was slacking off too. How's that?"

"Deal!" chirruped the twin brothers.

"Now get out of here, you brats," scolded Will, but right before the boys turned away, he dug deep into his pockets, and threw to each of them a single wrapped candy from the lobby for them to snack on. They flashed bright grins at him, and the boys scuttled off for good.

Alone once more, Will was tempted to sit right back down at the base of the tree and flip open his book again — he was only halfway through the story of Pip the Hound, and though he knew the story off by heart, he never did like leaving a story only half-finished. But he had been away for long enough, and time was a precious commodity in those busy weeks. So reluctantly, Will tucked the handsome leather-bound book back into his bag, and he dashed back to the inn.

"There you are!" his father cried out, not a moment after he had just entered through the wide open doors. "I've been looking all over for you."

"Just went out for a short break, Pa," said Will a little defiantly, but more guilty than not.
 

His father sighed. "I thought as much. Reading again?"

Will flushed pink as he nodded. His hand clutched protectively at his bag, where his book was safely tucked into, even though he knew that no harm would come its way. His father had never given him grief for his obsessive reading of the books his mother had given him, but Will knew that the thought of his mother was painful for the old wolf.
 

Will was eight when she passed away suddenly from illness. At eight years old, he had been old enough to remember her, but young enough that his memories were still scant, not nearly as much as he would have liked. She had not been typically pretty, with a hard-set face, stern and sharp eyes, and a crooked nose — it was fortunate for Will that all he took from his mother was her long, dark lashes, while he borrowed everything else from his more classically handsome father, like his bright green eyes. But she had been smart and hardworking, an impression that had never left Will, not with all the many memories of her working in the inn alongside his father, running around managing the place, handling the finances, making deals with suppliers and customers alike.
 

Just like she had said, she had met with Will’s father at a corner of the local market, and instantly they knew that they were fated mates. They bonded, and then married. Not long after Will’s mother had bonded with his father, they had started a small corner tavern, and through the years, it had flourished into a massive enterprise that occupied an entire block, with immediate access to a lush and uninhabited field and forest beyond.

When she died, she had left behind a father and a young son, and the many memories of her. She had been a lone wolf, descended from a pack many miles to the west, and had made a long journey by herself to see the land, until she one day came upon the Norvargen territory, met Will’s father, and fell in love.
 

“One-in-a-million chance of meeting her,” Will could recall his father murmuring wistfully a long time ago, “one-in-a-million chance and I was lucky enough to meet her, my fated mate.”

His father had been devastated at her passing. Will remembered those bleak weeks after his mother's funeral, when he would find his father weeping quietly to himself by the fireplace. Not until Byron insisted on joining the inn did they finally resume function again, and from then on, with the help of their neighbours and friends, Will finally felt like he had a family again, even though something had always been missing from his father.

Is that what it feels like to be living without your fated mate?
Will sometimes asked himself.
 

There was an awkward silence between the two for a moment. And then, Will’s father spoke. “Could I speak to you in private for a moment?”

"Is something the matter?" asked Will. Something was bothering his father, that was obvious.

Pa looked like he was debating saying something, and he took a moment to gather himself. Only then, he spoke, “Just spare a minute for me before you head back to work. There's something I'd like to say to you alone.”

Will glanced at the other workers around them.
 
A couple were currently minding the front, and another was cleaning a table off the side. "All right," he said, suddenly anxious. It seemed like it was going to be important, judging from how serious his father looked.
 

He followed his father to the stairwell, and they went up until the third floor, where they turned down the long hallway until they reached Pa’s private quarters.

"Take a seat." Pa gestured Will to a seat by the bay window with a front-facing view of the street across.
 

Will took a quick peek outside; he could see Jack and Peter back at the front of their house, still wasting time, throwing pebbles on the ground for whatever game they were playing, and at the end of the street was Kytes on his way back to the inn, lugging a huge crate in his strong arms.

"I've been meaning to discuss this with you, son, and I thought I'd best do it in private."

That caught Will's attention. He snapped his head to face his father, who was sitting on his bed. "What is it?"

Pa cleared his throat, appearing as though he were starting a speech he had been preparing a long time for. "You're twenty years old now, Will," he started.

"I'm well aware of that."

Pa sighed. "Save the smart remarks for later, Will."

"Sorry."
Not a laughing matter, huh
, Will thought nervously. It wasn't unusual for his father to be grave, but something felt uncomfortable this time. Perhaps it was the fact that Pa himself seemed nervous for whatever reason.

"As I was saying, you're an adult, Will. You're of age now to make your own decisions and to carve for yourself the beginning of your own life."

"I don't want to leave, if that's what you're thinking. I want to stay here and help around the tavern," Will cut in. It wasn't unusual for wolves who had come of age to leave their pack, whether temporarily or permanently, to go out into the greater world. His own mother had left her pack in her youth and never returned.

Pa nodded at that. "I didn't think you were planning to anyway. Not much wanderlust in you, son. Your mother was different, but you and I have always been more alike in that respect. No, that's not what I wanted to speak to you about, Will. I just wanted you to know that, at twenty years old ... twenty years is ... "

His father stumbled for a while, and then faltered into silence.

"Yes?" prompted Will after a moment longer.

Pa sighed again. "I'm not very good at these kind of talks, son, you know that. I was twenty-one when I met your mother, as was she, and so we weren't much older than you when we bonded."

Will's eyes widened as he suddenly realised what exactly it was that his father wanted to talk to him about. His father wanted to discuss him finding a mate! Well, this would be a short-lived conversation; there was no one in Will’s life that he felt particularly keen on bonding with.

"And so, I want you to know that if you are planning to bond with Kytes, I would be very happy to give my blessing," his father finally finished with a deep exhale, looking as if a large weight had just been lifted off his shoulders with his words.