Page 1 of The Alpha's Arranged Mate

Chapter 1 - Reeve

Reeve shoved the hair out of his eyes with the heel of his hand, the realization that he was overdue for a haircut only adding to his already generous heaping of frustration for the afternoon. It felt like he’d been in this meeting for months, mediating an ever-changing but never-ending dispute between his workers and an ever-revolving cast of stony-faced wolves from his brother’s pack. What fresh excuse had they found for interfering with his work this time? What possible problem could they have with the installation of solar panels? Or did they want to keep taking freezing cold showers for the rest of their lives here? It wasn’t Reeve’s problem. He had all the comforts he could want on his yacht. He’d never felt so tempted to just walk out of a room—the only thing that kept him at the table was the knowledge that that was exactly what Darion wanted.

Had it really only been three months since they’d made the move to Kurivon, this beleaguered little island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? It felt like he’d been stuck here for a lifetime—partly because he was used to moving all over the country, of course, but mostly because of the interminable squabbling with Darion’s pack. In those early days, he’d been stupid and naive enough to imagine that enough time had passed that the two of them could let bygones be bygones and work together like professionals. What a jokethathad been. They’d gotten on alright for the first week or two, but as soon as their respective packs had arrived on the island to start building the settlement in earnest, everything had fallen apart.

Reeve’s primary focus had been on bringing materials to the island to get the settlement’s infrastructure up to scratch, to support the population as it expanded, and to empower and protect it against the infestation of demons that made their home on the archipelago. Fighting demons was supposed to be the shared purpose of every wolf, the common enemy that would always unite them, but you wouldn’t know it from the way Darion’s men had been interfering with just about every step of the process. From interrupting shipments to conduct laborious searches, to stopping work at crucial points to challenge exactly what the workers were trying to achieve, Darion’s pack had seen to it that every single one of Reeve’s projects had fallen hopelessly behind schedule. And Reeve knew in his bones that it was personal.

“You still haven’t explained exactly what the problem is with solar panels,” Reeve said now, interrupting the stony-faced old wolf who’d been droning on for the last fifteen minutes. “I’m genuinely trying to accommodate your pack’s aversion to technology, but it’s difficult to accommodate a need I don’t understand.”

A flicker of disapproval on the old man’s face, and Reeve saw it reflected in the expressions of the wolves sitting with him. Darion’s negotiator was an old wolf called Trinn, and he had been one of their teachers, back when they were kids. Insulting enough that his brother had refused to turn up to a single one of these stupid meetings to face him in person… to send their old drillmaster to lecture him in his stead was galling. But Reeve wasn’t going to take the bait. He folded his arms, waiting for the old man to speak.

“I’d thought you’d recall our pack’s teachings better,” he said softly. Trinn had always had a knack for making his pupils feel guilty, but it had been a long, long time since Reeve had counted himself among their number, and his anger with his brother made it easier to harden his heart.

“You’ll have to forgive me if the details escape me. I’ll remind you I’ve lived more of my life here on Earth than back in Halforst.” That particular anniversary had been a few years ago, and Reeve thought wistfully of the lavish party he’d thrown to celebrate. He’d gone all out, hiring out one of the most exclusive venues in New York City and partying until the break of dawn with his staff and anyone who was anyone on the social scene, humans and wolves alike. Right now, sitting at a folding trestle table in a glorified tent at the edge of the residential construction site, that kind of luxury felt about as far away as the moon. But it was still a lot closer than any kind of nostalgia for the miserable years he’d spent growing up in Halforst, chafing at this exact kind of pointless, suffocating traditionalism. He’d been barely out of adolescence when he’d left, a scared kid worried to his bones that he was making the biggest mistake of his life. Right now, all he regretted was that he hadn’t left even sooner.

Trinn shook his head again with that disapproval that made Reeve grind his teeth. “If you wish to reacquaint yourself with the old wisdom—”

“I don’t,” Reeve snapped, feeling a little of his composure give way. “Now, what exactly is the bottom line here? Darion’s thugs have been preventing my workers from installing much-needed infrastructure in a settlement that, I’ll remind you, is still under considerable threat from demonic forces. A reliable power source is crucial for keeping the residential areas well-lit, not to mention the warning system. There will be another attack—sooner rather than later, according to the lorekeepers—and without electricity we’ll be vulnerable. Now tell me what the hell Darionwants.”

“Only for your workers to demonstrate proper respect for the true ways,” Trinn said stiffly. The wolves around the old man were nodding with self-satisfied agreement. Reeve didn’t need to look at his own staff to be able to picture the looks on their faces—a mixture of confusion and frustration, veiled only thinly by a veneer of politeness. He felt a little guilty for bringing them here—none of them spoke the language wolves from Halforst used. But it would have been insulting if he’d turned up alone.

They were all wolves here, that was what their leader Renfrey kept reminding them. But that point of unification was feeling less and less relevant as time wore on. Wolves they may be, but wolves from two completely different worlds. And nobody was more aware of those differences than Reeve, who as a young man had made the decision to leave the traditionally-minded pack he’d been born to and make a new life in the world beyond the portal at Halfort’s heart. His brother, of course, had been offended by that choice. But it had been decades since then, and it wasn’t as though the years had treated Darion unkindly. With his brother gone, he’d risen quickly through the ranks and become Alpha of the pack. And nobody could have been happier for him than Reeve, who’d forged his own path to greatness on Earth. He’d hoped they could forge a new friendship after their estrangement—a relationship of equals, two men who’d risen to leadership in two different worlds.

But instead of being met as an equal, he’d been met as a problem. Darion had wasted no time in making it clear that he didn’t respect Reeve as an Alpha, didn’t respect the structure of his pack, didn’t respect the wolves from Earth or the ways they did things. Reeve couldn’t quite figure out whether it was the modern technology Darion hated most, or the fact that the pack was bound not by ties of ancient kinship, but by wealth and corporate structure. Reeve trusted his advisors as much as any Alpha, but they were his employees, not his family. They were a pack, but they were also a company. And Darion had wasted no time in sewing the seeds of suspicion in the hearts of his own traditionally-minded wolves. It was clear to Reeve that Darion had convinced the whole pack that he was a deserter and a traitor, abandoning the old ways for the easy way out that technology represented. Darion couldn’t have created a more hostile environment if he’d tried… which was the opposite of what they needed right now. Weren’t the demons that inhabited Kurivon enough of a threat? Did Darion have to risk civil war at the same time? It was unbelievable. His brother had always been stubborn, but this was a new low.

“This is a waste of time,” Reeve said, once the silence in the room had become unbearable. “Trinn, has Darion given you any power to actually negotiate, here?” The hesitation on the old drillmaster’s face was all the answer Reeve needed, and he rubbed his face with exasperation. “Great. So—we’ve sat here at this table bickering amongst ourselves for an hour, and for what? Are you going to let my workers install the panels tomorrow?”

“If they do so with due respect—”

“No,” Reeve snapped, lifting a hand. “That’s not an answer. If you can’t tell me—explicitly—what steps need to be taken so that my workers are allowed to do their work, then I’ll be escalating the matter to Renfrey.”

Trinn’s eyes narrowed. Renfrey was the only wolf on the island whose authority explicitly transcended Darion’s. He’d been put in charge of the establishment of the new Kurivon settlement by the Halforst Council, the ancient organization that served as a kind of central governing authority to maintain peace between the hundreds of wolf packs that made their homes in Halforst. Kurivon was a location of immense strategic importance, placed as it was over a portal that joined Earth to Halforst. The other end of that magical gateway was in the heart of Council Headquarters, in the center of Halforst. If demons were allowed to take control of that portal, it would be disastrous. Renfrey had proven himself a wise and capable leader, especially with his soulmate at his side—a gifted lorekeeper in her own right, and one of the toughest people Reeve had ever met. But there was only so much even a leader like Renfrey could do about an irrational feud like this one.

“I see,” Reeve said grimly, when it became clear that Trinn had nothing to say. “Well, this has all been a phenomenal waste of time—thank you all for that, really—and I look forward to continuing to live in the goddamn dark ages until the demons wipe us all clear off the face of the island. Thanks.”

He rose to his feet and swept out of the tent, hearing his staff murmur their slightly more polite farewells to the stony-faced wolves from Darion’s pack, who no doubt wouldn’t understand a word they were saying. The warm night air enveloped him like a suffocating blanket and he reached up automatically to undo the buttons of his dress shirt, wondering again why he was still bothering to dress for the corporate Earth world after three months on this tropical island. Spite, mostly. He knew how much his brother hated the way living on Earth had changed him, how much resentment festered behind Darion’s stoic exterior. Deliberately antagonizing his brother was childish, perhaps, but it was beginning to feel like the only power Reeve had left in this situation. And if Darion wasn’t going to take the high road, why should he?

He shrugged off his jacket, too, sighing with relief as the night air cooled his sweat-damp back, then tilted his face up towards the sky, admiring the blanket of almost unbelievably bright stars. He’d been living in big cities for so long that he’d forgotten what the night sky actually looked like when you got away from light pollution… the first night here on Kurivon had almost taken his breath away. He tried not to think too much about that week. The tension between him and Darion had been there, of course, but being back together again, working towards such a noble purpose, he’d been so sure they’d be able to mend the rupture in their relationship. In those first few chaotic days, part of the six-man vanguard that had first come to the island to break the back of the demonic infestation… they’d all been close as brothers. He’d fought side by side with Darion. He’d seen the way his brother’s grudging respect for him had returned, felt himself in turn warming up towards the stubborn old bastard. Darion always had been more like their father than Reeve.

But then the packs had arrived, and everything had begun to fall apart. Darion’s hidebound old wolves were all stiff and unresponsive, even to Reeve’s best efforts, and he was a man who’d always prided himself on his charisma. They’d been even less enthused to meet his staff. Though his company employed both shifters and humans, he’d made sure that the specific task force he’d selected for this mission was made up exclusively of wolves. He’d even gone to the effort of running a few workshops in cultural sensitivity, hoping it would help break the ice between the Halforst and Earth wolves on the island. But though his staff had done their best, it had become rapidly clear that the Halforst delegation weren’t nearly as interested in harmony on the island.

He found himself walking, pacing the construction site idly as his racing thoughts searched for some kind of resolution. Reeve had always found it hard to think while staying still—it was as though his mind needed the movement of his muscles to keep ticking. He picked his careful way through the enormous construction site that had taken over the majority of the southern part of Kurivon, mentally cross-referencing with the huge blueprints that were pinned up on the wall of his office. Half of these cottages should have been built by now, he thought sourly, heedless of the dust that was now covering his expensive shoes. There should be a third pack moving onto the island, ready to expand the settlement and assist with the next phase of development. But thanks to Darion, they were still stuck in this infuriating limbo… and all the while, Reeve was hemorrhaging money. That was one thing he couldn’t blame on Darion’s spite, at least. His brother didn’t know the first thing about money. But it was getting harder and harder to justify the considerable expense of this little mission to his shareholders, especially when so many of the details had to remain confidential. Not all of his investors were wolves, and if humans were to learn about Kurivon and the portal that lay at its center… well, the problems they’d have then would absolutely dwarf this little brotherly spat, that was for sure.

Chuckling to himself at the thought of how Darion would react to a fleet of humans arriving to poke around on the island, Reeve almost missed the faint sound of footsteps behind him. But even though things had been quiet on the demon front for a while, he wasn’t out of the habit of maintaining a sharp situational awareness when he was out at night—especially on his own. A thrill of unease ran down his spine, his wolf stirring in the darker corners of his mind, warning him wordlessly to pay attention. The sound came again, faint, just on the edge of hearing. Reeve kept moving, not letting his body language reveal that he’d noticed anything. Some demons liked to stalk their prey, but he couldn’t feel the usual acrid taint in the air that accompanied such predation. Which meant…

“If you’ve got something to say, come and say it,” Reeve said tiredly, sitting down on a canvas-covered stack of building materials and rubbing his forehead. “I’ve got about four hours of work waiting for me in my office as it is, I can’t be playing hide and seek all night.”

He heard a sharp intake of breath, and flicked his eyes in the direction of a half-built nearby cottage, starlight peeping through the scaffolding that had been erected. A young man was emerging from the shadows of a brick wall, silver eyes glinting in the light of the half-moon above them. He could tell from the angle of the wolf’s shoulders that he was disappointed to have been detected. “How long have you known I’ve been following you?”

The poor kid sounded so defeated. Reeve remembered his training, the way he and Darion had been punished for anything less than absolute excellence. “Only a minute or two,” he said. “You were at the meeting, right? If you’ve been following me since then, you’ve done well.”

That seemed to bolster the kid’s spirits a little, and he moved closer, the fidgeting of his hands at his sides belying a solid attempt at looking as stoic and imposing as his Alpha. He must have been about the same age as Reeve had been when he’d left the pack… which meant the same age as Darion had been the last time Reeve had seen him. Despite the fact that Darion had been about twice this kid’s size, he couldn’t help but be reminded of his brother. Didn’t much care for the wistful twinge of melancholy it provoked in him, either. He was furious with Darion, that was the line. No room for sentiment here.

“What do you need?” he asked, letting his voice roughen a little. “Did Trinn send you to give me another vague but foreboding reminder of the importance of tradition?”

“Master Trinn doesn’t know I’m here,” the young man said, and from the way his voice shook when he said it Reeve knew he was telling the truth. He leaned forward, eyes widening a little in surprise. “I told him I was going to the training ring.”

“You better keep that promise,” Reeve said, lifting an eyebrow. “That old man’s a living lie detector.”

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