Kenna
A sharp scraping sound pulls my attention from the book in my lap. I blink then whirl in the chair I’ve been lounging in for the better part of three hours to find my cousin Ryan dragging a massive grill across his back patio.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
“Dinner.” He grins then picks up the grill like it weighs nothing and walks to the far side of the patio where the concrete gives way to a stretch of emerald green grass before it meets the woods.
I huff out a breath as Ryan continues his show of strength. “You’re such a show off, Ryan.”
It’s true, and he knows it. He simply winks at me and walks back into his house–a large log home with several bedrooms, sparse furnishing, and an assortment of manly decorations like the mounted buffalo head over the fireplace… with a glittery blue thong hanging from one of the horns.
This place is a party house, plain and simple, and I’m not surprised in the slightest. Ryan has always been the wild one of the twins, and the pack he rules over, Silverhide, emulates that energy perfectly. Everyone in the wooded village nearby is young and mostly single. The village square is sleepy during the day but a wild party at night, with live music and dancing and street food.
Compared to the cityscape a few miles away, this place feels like… I’m not really sure how to describe it. It’s not like Eastonia, but Ryan and his pack remind me a lot of the smaller packs dotted throughout the Roguelands. Tight knit, secluded, and more in tune with their wolfish ways.
Ryan returns from the house with several packages of meat wrapped in wax paper and dumps them unceremoniously on the table in front of me.
“Are we feeding a small army?” I laugh, pushing my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose. “I thought we were going out to dinner tonight!”
He motions to his body, arching a dark brow. “This is a pre-dinner snack, Ken.”
I roll my eyes and curl into the lounge chair, trying to find where I left off in my book, but Ryan is purposefully being noisy and annoying.
He’s probably right about the six steaks and dozen or so sausages being nothing but a snack before dinner. Ryan is huge. Huge in a big, stupid way that doesn’t seem necessary. He’s the tallest man in our family, with Sydney only an inch behind him. But he’s also broad and so heavily muscled that all of his shirts are always too tight.
The girls drool over Ryan. No wonder he has a thong hanging from his mantle.
“Are you going to sit around being boring all day, or are you going to help me with this?” he asks, cracking open a beer.
“Help you with what?” Sydney’s voice sounds from the house behind us, and I turn, smiling up at my cousin as he walks through the back door dressed in a white button down shirt and gray slacks. “Hey, Kenna.” He squeezes my shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”
“Thank the Goddess,” I groan, rolling my eyes to Ryan. “Now that you’re here, I can actually have an intellectual conversation with someone.”
Ryan glowers at me from over the rim of his can of beer.
Sydney sits down beside me and eyes the table. “I thought we were going out to eat before the festival?”
“I’m hungry now, and Kenna hasn’t even started getting ready.”
I close my book with a snap. “You never gave me a time to be ready, Ryan!”
“Make yourself useful and go start the grill.”
“I don’t know how to start the grill,” I argue.
Ryan wiggles his fingers. “Use those powers of yours.”
I turn to Sydney, giving him a pleading look. “Can I stay with you instead?”
Now Ryan’s laughing and digging in the pocket of his jeans for what I assume is a lighter.
Sydney just smiles apologetically. His pack is closer to his parents’ home, the castle of Crescent Falls, and his pack is… all business, to say the least.
“You’re going to be bored out of your mind staying with Syd, trust me. I fall asleep the second I pass through the gates into Shadowcrest.”
“It’s true.” Sydney nods then smirks. “Plus, my house is going through a renovation right now. You’d be stuck in one of the pack houses in the village, and I doubt your parents would be happy about it. You could stay with our parents if you want.”
“Dad can read you the complete history of the pack lands every night before bed.”
I frown, but wave them both off. Ryan turns to walk over to the grill, but I light the coals with a flick of my finger from all the way across the patio, and he turns, giving me a dramatic bow in thanks.
Despite the constant bickering and teasing, it feels great to be here with my cousins. I’m an only child, and Ryan and Sydney have always felt like brothers to me. They also couldn’t be more different.
Ryan is a playboy. He loves the ladies and can charm anyone out of their clothes with a single heated look in their direction, whereas Syd is more reserved and serious. Ryan’s sense of humor is sarcastic and loud, while Syd is on the dry side and prefers to just sit in contemplative silence.
Ryan and his pack members own a garage that works on luxury vehicles. He’s a mechanic and is usually covered in oil or other grime after a day’s work while Syd is an engineer with his own firm that helps their father, the king, when it comes to city planning and updating infrastructure.
I assume their differences are genetic, but also… Sydney is going to be the Alpha King of Crescent Falls one day. He’s always had that burden on his shoulders. He’s always had to be the serious one.
“How’s your mom?” Sydney asks, leaning back in his chair and sliding a pair of sunglasses onto his face.
“She’s great,” I reply.
“Mom and Dad want a family dinner soon,” he says, resting his elbows on the armrests.
“I’d love to see them. Misty, too.”
Sydney nods as he stares absently at the woods beyond the backyard.
I chew my lip and look him up and down. Though naturally a quiet person, right now he seems slightly out of sorts. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a long day,” he sighs.
“You're still going to the festival with us, right?” I turn in my chair. “You can’t leave me with him. Ryan will have me dancing on a table by the end of the night, and you know I can’t handle alcohol very well.”
Sydney chuckles. “I’m going, don’t worry. And don’t worry about Ryan. He’s just not ready to settle down yet.”
“Are you?”
Sydney looks at me, a ghost of a smile touching the corners of his mouth. “I might be. I’m considering it.”
“So you’re going to look for your mate during the festival?” I grab his arm as excitement blooms through my veins.
“Sydney is going to end up with some princess from a far off land,” Ryan grins as he walks to grab the meat for the grill.
“I have to find someone to fill Mom’s shoes,” Sydney corrects, “regardless of her societal standing. She has to be–”
“Don’t start,” Ryan says in warning. “I don’t want to hear any of that ‘she has to be dutiful, responsible, blah blah blah’ shit tonight, Syd. You’re getting drunk. I swear on the Goddess, I will drink you under a table tonight.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Sydney laughs.
Ryan shrugs, a playful gleam in his eyes. “You gotta get out, man. You need to have a little fun before Dad retires and makes you sit on his throne. Right, Kenna? See, that’s why she’s here, to have fun before taking over as Luna of Veiled Valley.”
“So that’s still the plan?” Sydney asks, ignoring Ryan completely.
I nod, trying my best to smile. “Yeah. Grandpa Westfall was always going to retire when I finished college and turned twenty-one–”
“Speaking of which,” Ryan cuts in from across the patio, where he’s now laying fat steaks on the grill. The smell of roasting meat fills the air and suddenly, I’m just as hungry as he is. “You and I are going to shift one of these nights. I want to see what you can do.”
“You’ll be terribly disappointed, Ryan. I’m not much of a wolf.”
Sydney eyes me curiously. I haven’t seen them since I finally came into my wolf powers. I’ve only been able to shift for a few weeks now, and it hasn’t been going well.
I sigh and turn to fully face Sydney. “I’m a really small wolf, and I’m clumsy.”
“Okay… that doesn’t really mean anything, Kenna. You have to get used to being in your wolf form. It takes training, sometimes, for some people.”
“Shifting… hurts.”
“Oh,” he says. “It shouldn’t hurt.”
“I know, that’s what my mom said.” I swallow and glance at Ryan, who is looking at us over his shoulder, likely listening to every word we’re saying.
Sydney considers my dilemma for a moment. “What do you think is wrong?”
“My powers are overwhelming my wolf abilities for sure. So, there’s no way around it. I’m a witch. A Firestone, at that. This is just who I am, I guess.”
“What about the mate bond aspect?” Sydney lowers his voice and leans in. “Have you felt… anything?”
“No, and I went all over Eastonia this spring during our mating season. I went to, like, every ball and festival held in the villages. I felt nothing. That’s why I’m here. Maybe my mate is on this side of the border.” Or maybe I can’t feel the mate bond at all. All I know is that if this fails, I can return to Eastonia and take over Veiled Valley without feeling like I didn’t leave a single stone unturned. I can rule alone, not having to worry that my mate is still out there, looking for me as much as I’m looking for him.
And maybe I’ll meet someone. Someone special, someone I can fall in love with despite not having a mate bond between us. I mean, before the veil between Crescent Falls and Eastonia fell, a lot of people in Eastonia did something called imprinting, which is the act of marking and pledging to be with each other forever.
I think of Evander’s parents. Granger imprinted on Amanda, because as a fox, and the only fox at that, she was mateless. But from what I heard from my parents, Granger felt the mate bond with her regardless of if she could feel it.
Maybe my mate is out there, and I’m just incapable of feeling it.
Ryan sets a plate in front of me. “Eat. We have a long night ahead of us.”
“Do you ever eat fruit and vegetables?” I tease, staring down at the steak taking up the entire surface of the plate.
“This body,” he grunts, flexing his arms, “isn’t built on broccoli, Kenna.”
Sydney slides his tongue along his lower teeth and laughs. “No wonder you got stuck in our mom when you were born. Your head is just as big as your ego.”
Ryan chokes out a laugh, “Damn, dude. Don’t let her hear you say that. You’re the current favorite and that might knock you down a few pegs.”
Sydney and I sink back into silence while I eat a few bites, but then he clears his throat, momentarily checking his watch. “Have you talked to Evander lately?”
I set my fork down. Great. I really don’t want to have this conversation. Sydney and Evander were friends as kids when our families used to meet in Maatua every year.
“No, not in a very long time.”
“I haven’t either. Last I heard, he was some kind of specialized warrior who can shift into a fox and a wolf interchangeably. Is that true?”
“It is.” I slouch in my chair, not wanting to even think about what Evander has to do for work.
Sydney licks his lips. “But he’s going to be your Beta, right?”
“So many questions,” I tease, giving him a big, sparkling smile that I hope hides the hurt behind my eyes. “I need to go dressed for this party, huh?”
“Sure,” Sydney says, but there’s an edge to his voice I’ve never heard before. In fact, as I walk back into the house, I glance over my shoulder at the twins, who are now talking quietly as if they don’t want to be overheard.
I have a sudden feeling that something is amiss.
But, I’m not here for drama and politics.
I walk into my guest room and throw open the closet, looking past the boxes and cramped workout gear on the floor, and pull out one of the dresses I packed.
Tonight, I’m going to find my mate.
Or, at least, I’m going to try.