Page 19 of The Alpha's Triplets

“Ladies and gentlemen. Wolves of the Moon Shadow and Yellow Cicada packs. Today, we have fulfilled the wishes of our ancestors that came before us. Today, we join our packs together, to forge a lasting peace between our two communities. And now, it’s time for the final part of the ceremony.”

He gestured toward Eleanor and Blake. “The couple have been joined as man and wife, but we are not ordinary humans. We are wolves as well, every one of us. To complete this ceremony, they must now enter their union in their wolf forms as well, bonding their wolves as one.”

There were cheers in the crowd. Blake had heard about this before. He didn’t attend a lot of weddings, and he rarely ever waited for the end. But he’d been told that according to tradition, the newlywed couple were to run through the forest in their wolf forms, as the final step of the wedding festivities.

He felt weird about the entire process, but he smiled as he and Eleanor were ushered outside by their packs, toward the edge of the woods. The run was supposed to take them through the woods and straight to his home in Rhinestone. A forty-five-minute run with thinning light.

A part of him was excited about it—his wolf was bursting to be let out. He had been looking forward to the run the entire day. He couldn’t wait to run side by side with Eleanor’s wolf.

He looked at Eleanor and smirked. “Looks like you won’t be needing that dress anymore.”

She rolled her eyes. “Good thing I don’t have any plans of getting married again anytime soon. Are you ready?”

Blake chuckled and looked into the forest. “Are you kidding? I was born ready.”

Eleanor grinned. “Yeah? So what are you waiting for?”

Before he could reply, she kicked off her shoes and ran toward the forest. She gathered her dress, bunching it up her thighs as she ran. She bent her knees and jumped a few feet into the air.

In a magnificent display, she spun around and transformed into a sleek, elegant, black wolf with a shiny coat of fur. Her wolf looked strikingly like Xander’s, only just smaller than his. Her dress fell in tatters around her just before she hit the floor on all fours, and she took off sprinting into the thick forest.

Loud cheers rang out from the other wolves who had been dazzled by the acrobatic display. Blake watched her go with a smile, his heart hammering delightfully in his chest.

He turned back to the crowd and spotted Xander in front, shaking his head. Blake thought he heard his friend say “show off” with a hint of a frown on his face.

Blake grinned widely and shrugged, walking backward into the forest. When the cheers got loud enough, he turned around and broke into a sprint. He leaped into the air just as Eleanor had done, and performed the same acrobatic maneuver she’d done as she transformed.

His red wolf tore through his suit, ripping out of it like a hot knife through butter. He loved the way colors and sound changed, sharpened, and brightened when he transformed into his wolf form.

Cheers rang loudly behind him, but the sound of wind rushing into his ears drowned out the voices. His wolf thundered through the forest, leaping over logs as he chased happily after his new mate.

Chapter 7 - Eleanor

Eleanor sensed Blake. It was beyond his strong scent, or his thundering paws beating the forest bed. She noticed those things, but what she felt was beyond her heightened five senses.

She felt his presence in the forest. She felt him all around her. She felt the forest react, as if it was aware that something powerful was inside it. He was an alpha, of course, and she was familiar with the tremendous power they possessed.

But Blake was different. Her wolf felt so subdued by the suffocating presence that all she wanted to do was bend her knees and bare her neck to him in submission.

Eleanor didn’t need to look back to know he was closing in on her, tearing through the forest with his powerful limbs. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she ducked under a low-hanging branch and then jumped over a fallen log.

This was her forest. She knew these woods like an old friend. She’d run through them a million times, killed hundreds of beasts too when she hunted alone or with the pack. She was a part of the forest, as the forest was a part of her.

It was the one reason she kept coming back. For this. When she was in Silver Springs, or any other predominantly human society, she had to always put a lid on who she was, moving and behaving with extreme caution to avoid detection.

She was never truly free or at ease. She never felt like she belonged. She never felt like she had a place. She loved the double life she lived among the humans and she loved her friends, but deep down she knew that everything about the person she was when she was with the humans was a lie and a fabrication.

Would her friends still love her if they knew what she really was? Would she be able to walk through foreign cities as freely as she did if someone found out that she housed a beast inside her?

If the world found out that underneath that pale skin lurked a being from bedtime stories and children’s horror books, with fur as black as the darkest night, would it accept her with open arms?

Eleanor knew that discovery meant death. She knew it with all her heart. She didn’t dare go hunting anywhere far from home, for fear of discovery. And the hunt was as integral to a wolf as swimming was to a fish.

So, she always returned home, back to Deepwood, where she could stand on a rocky ledge in the dark of night and howl long and hard toward a beautiful moon, high in the sky.

The sun was starting to dip behind the frost mountains to the west, but there was still enough light piercing through the thick trees and branches, guiding Eleanor toward the borders of her town.

She loved how the wind billowed through her sleek fur, the trees rushing past her in a blur of dark green and brown. She cut a hard right, catching the ground with her powerful limbs as she changed direction suddenly.

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