An Alpha's Duty

Chapter 54

Callum met them at the door, a large grimace across his face and a crazed look in his eyes.

"Will one of you make the arguing stop? I can't seem to think straight and they've been at it all morning." He shouldered past them and led them to the pack's living room. The sound of raised voices indicating this was where everyone had gathered.

They walked through the door and everyone quieted down, whilst Akari and Luke came up to them, their smiles widening as they both caught sight of the obvious mark on her shoulder.

"Why that's really something else." Luke went to step closer to Lenah to get a better look at the intricate runes adorning her mark but Ryan's warning growl rang around the room.

"Sorry Luke, but my wolf is a little protective, you might want to step up a few paces." Ryan hated to have to warn his friend away but right now his wolf was too close to the surface and he'd spent so little time with his mate. He was feeling caged and a little on edge.

His wolf would be distrustful of anyone in the room getting too close to his mate. He knew it was irrational. No one here would dare hurt his mate, but it was harder to ignore his natural instincts than most people realised.

Werewolves were naturally torn between two worlds, the instinctive and wild side of their wolf, and the more tame side of their human. It was often hard to juggle between the two so for the time being Ryan preferred to play it safe and warn those before his wolf pounced.

Holding his hands up in defence Luke stepped away and so did Akari. Lenah just gave them a small smile but stayed close to Ryan, his wolf seemed to be more settled as long as she was near him, preferably touching him. She tried to send calming vibes down the mate bond, feeling it tingle and bounce in response.

"Maybe after this we could go for a run?"

Lenah hoped by spending time with his mate in his wolf form, it would keep Ryan calmer.

Ryan reached down and grabbed her hand, kissing her knuckles.

"That sounds perfect to me."

"Right, come on, leave the new couple alone for five minutes and can someone give us a hand here?!" Morgan came strolling into the room carrying a large box in her hands, with Emyr following behind her, two boxes tucked under his arms.

Lenah let Ryan led her over to the table whilst everyone else in the room joined them. She watched intrigued as Morgan and her brother rested the boxes on the table, which was already littered with papers and books.

Taking a quick look, she ruffled some pages and felt the echo of magic trail off them. Spell books and incantations. Clearly, Morgan had already made a good start in their absence.

They all watched as they both emptied the boxes placing a large assortment of items across the surface of the table. Lenah felt her magic shifting as they took each object out of the box.

Since the boxes had entered the room, she'd felt a presence. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and her fingers twitched as if they wanted to reach out and touch something but she wasn't sure what.

"Okay, the only problem is, we don't know which one of these items belonged to the shadow walker from Poppy's dream." Lenah looked around the room, seeing everyone weighing up the objects in front of them. There were toys, pieces of clothing, a small collection of jewellery, and all other sorts of everyday things.

To anyone else it would just be a collection of nondescript items, practically worthless, but to their owners they must have been items of extreme importance to have so much of their essence imprinted on them.