Page 4 of The Alpha's Sold Pregnant Mate

However, despite his great leadership qualities, Asher had not yet figured out what was really happening or why it was happening now. Callahan and Blake were right; the situation on the ground was rather alarming, and it was beginning to give him great concern.

The land upon which Asher's Pack was settled was a burial ground for hundreds of witches who were executed, burned at the stake, hanged, or beheaded. The punishment was brutal, notwithstanding that not all accused of practicing witchcraft were indeed witches. At the time, the townspeople were afraid of the witches, the power they possessed, and the things they could do so effortlessly.

Fear turned to hate, and hate turned to massacre. In a self-proclaimed righteous act, the townspeople ventured on a witch hunt, rallying up those caught practicing or those accused of practicing. In those dark days, hundreds of witches were tried in a justice system rigged to always find the accused guilty and thereby sentence them to death.

Despite how few they were, there were those with a conscience enough to know the act was wrong, purely barbaric. But the deed was done. Now, the blood of the witches, filled with hate and resentment, was crying out for vengeance.

Their corpses littered the earth on the Ghostbound lands; their blood, deep within the soil, cursed the very land never to be fruitful, never to be inhabited by any living soul.

Even to this day, elders of the Ghostbound Pack and anyone with a much deeper connection than the physical could still sometimes hear the deadly screams of the witches killed on their lands. According to the elders, the ghosts of the executed still roamed the land, and they were angry.

The curse on the land made it uninhabitable; no one dared step foot there. Tales of the dead witches and their vengeful spirits traveled far and wide, leaving the lands deserted.

Only the Ghostbound Pack could live on that cursed land, which was possible because of their Shamanistic roots. They were a Pack from a native tribe, blessed with the ability to tamper with, manipulate, and understand the spiritual. This gift was the reason for their survival on this land.

The elders knew what they were getting into, but they had faith in their charms, relics, and totems. They tried to cleanse the land and purge it of the curse that plagued it, but that proved to be a Herculean task, impossible to achieve with their limited knowledge of the supernatural. They weren't witches; thus, there was a limit to what they could do.

Elders of the Ghostbound Pack might not have been able to completely cleanse the land, but they somehow succeeded in keeping the curse suppressed. But this success did not come free; it came at a cost. A price was paid for their survival.

One of the early elders, Eoman, had an exceptional daughter named Apiana, who was beautiful with long, braided white hair. She was different from the others, not just because of the color of her hair but also because her people had never seen an individual with two different eye colors before. Apiana's left eye was gray, the other was green, and even when she turned, her white wolf had the same eyes.

Apiana had stumbled across an ancient ritual that their ancestors used to practice, Oot'Kalan. She believed that the rite could rid the land of the curse if there was a vessel to contain it. After much deliberation, the elders decided to use the witches’ graves as the vessel. And so it was.

The ceremony was done at night under the energy of the full moon. A quarter of the Pack had turned to their wolf forms and were on guard while the others gathered around in a circle, drumming and chanting. Apiana was at the center of the circle, slowly swaying her body to the rhythm of the chants. Her face was painted red with the blood of an animal, and her robe was made of wolf fur. Around her neck, red, green and blue beads cascaded.

The louder the chants, the more powerful the whirlwind blew across them. Apiana instructed them not to sever the link as they had now locked arms with one another. After the wind came a deafening thunderclap accompanied by eerie whispers and scary laughs of witches they could not see. Strange voices echoed across the woods, and those already transformed into wolves were snarling, growling, and violently flashing their canines.

Apiana had broken the barrier between worlds with the ritual she initiated. Her gray and green eyes glowed as her body stiffened suddenly with a gasp. She faced the moon, and her mouth was moving, although it produced no sound. Soon, her nose began to bleed, but she wouldn't stop chanting those inaudible words. Her father, elder Eoman, tried to put an end to the ritual that was obviously killing his daughter, but she wouldn't let him. As he attempted to stand, she stretched out a hand in his direction, a gesture telling him to remain where he was.

He'd wondered how she saw him, given she was looking up at the moon, but then again, she was fully connected with the energy around them.

In tremendous pain, Apiana was groaning and trembling, but she never stopped chanting, even when her eyes and ears began to bleed as well.

The elders and those around watched with dropped jaws as her toes gradually turned into vines, traveling into the earth beneath her. The ground began to grow plants instantly; grass and flowers soon covered the once barren land, drifting their excited attention away from Apiana. They were fascinated by the magical fruitfulness of the cursed lands, but by the time they turned back to face the one who had done the magic, she had already turned into a fully blossoming tree with fresh white leaves and healthy branches.

Apiana might not have been alive as a human or a wolf, but she was alive as a tree, the tree that gave life to the dead land. She had successfully channeled the curse to the witches’ graves away from the surrounding land where her people could live and work.

Her sacrifice had been the backbone of their survival; her tree, now a monument of glory, was a shrine adorned with beads and charms—some hanging off the branches, others buried within the soil to make the crops grow. The land where the ceremony had taken place was now a special farm for the Pack, guarded and blessed by Apiana's tree.

However, something must have gone horribly wrong. Despite Apiana’s sacrifice,the curse was awakening again, the farm was gradually losing its power, the charms were no longer working, and Apiana's tree was slowly withering. Now, their crops were dying, the wards were getting weaker by the day, and, to make matters worse, they were on the brink of extinction.

“We've had something much more disturbing over the past two years. Our women are miscarrying,” Asher said with a heavy sigh.

“Miscarrying?” his friends chorused, and he nodded.

“That's not all. It turns out that…that we can no longer procreate.” The words were too heavy to speak.

“You're joking, right?” Blake asked.

“That's a vampire thing, Ash. Werewolves don't have issues procreating,” Rowan said.

“Well, my friend, these wolves now do.” Asher exhaled sharply and poured another round down his throat.

“It’s actually worse, now that you put it like this. This wasn't how you said it earlier.” Callahan sighed, “So, let me get this straight; your wards are getting weaker, and the Elders believe it has something to do with the dead witches?”

He nodded without a word.

“Asher, what are your Elders saying about this? Surely, there has to be something that can be done. If what you're saying is true—and I hope you're wrong—then that means your Pack is facing extinction,” Articus said, concerned.

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