A memory shared

Once inside, the guests made their way straight to the ballroom. Several members of the pack and the tribe were already inside, socializing. Drinks were being served around the massive hall and the people were talking over the sound of clinking glasses and the light music being played by a live band. Everyone present at the ceremony were either witches or werewolves. From the highest, down to the door man. No humans were allowed to attend this ceremony. In fact, the human world was unaware of the fact that these ceremonies were being held at all.

The ballroom was just like every other ballroom in the human setting. The only difference was that there were no humans in the room.

Kate and Tiana dived straight into socializing, calling out to friends and soon, they were lost in the stream of people inside the hall. But Kayla held back. She was still a little deep in thought about the incident that had just taken place at the front yard of the mansion.

Why had Ralph looked at her like that? She wondered.

Kayla agreed that she might have been delusional, but she could swear that Ralph had looked at her as if he recognized her from somewhere!

She had never met with him that close before! Never. So why was he looking at her with such familiarity?

Once again, Kayla reminded herself that she might have been delusional.

The ceremony was just beginning and everybody were taking their places. Tiana and Kate rejoined Kayla where they had left her standing.

At midnight, the ceremony began in full swing with procession of all the leaders and elders of both the werewolves and the tribe.

As always, the alpha and his elders went first. They processed in solemn silence.

As Ralph walked by, Kayla stared at him in rivet. She wondered if he would turn around and see her. If that happened, if Ralph just turned around, and their eyes met in all the crowd, Kayla swore she would accept it as a sign of destiny.

But Ralph did not turn around. He continued the procession, looking straight ahead, until he got to his seat at the high table.

Kayla sighed in exasperation.

"What did you expect?" She whispered to herself.

The procession continued, with the head of the tribe, and the elders coming in next to the sound of chanting by the witches. Kayla did not chant along. She had suddenly lost every single interest in the ceremony, not that she had much interest to begin with. And now, she just couldn't wait for the ceremony to be over so that she could go back to her boring, ordinary life.

Kayla tried to ignore Ralph for the rest of the night, but her eyes kept going back to him of their own will.

"Why did he even hold me up?" She groaned to herself. "He should have just let me fall to the ground and break my neck." She sulked.

As the ceremony continued, Kayla watched Ralph seated at the high table, at the center of the rest of the people at the table. He looked so exalted, so unreachable. It became increasingly clear to Kayla, just how very far apart they really were.

He was the leader of his pack and she was just an insignificant member of her tribe. She didn't even have any powers!

There was no way she would ever have any chance with the alpha. For one, he was the leader of his pack and would have to marry a fellow werewolf. There was a perfect luna for him already, and she was seated there at the table with him. Catherine, the daughter of a beta and a partner at the Alliance Inc., where Ralph was the CEO.

The Alliance Inc. was a company owned and run by the wolf family, headed by the alpha of every generation while the betas and the elders hold major stakes in the company, with other ranks working at several capacities in the company. It was a company on the surface, but a community infact. This was a way to keep the werewolves together, while providing for them in the modern world.

Catherine was the daughter of the leader of the betas. The second most powerful wolf in the pack, and thus, Catherine would make a perfect luna for Ralph and the pack.

But even if Ralph decided to marry a witch, it would be Lil for sure, the daughter of the high priestess of the tribe. Over the years, the werewolves had married into the witch tribe from time to time, as a way to strengthen the alliance also. A number of high profile marriages had been recorded, between the betas and some random witch. Very few. But there had never been one between an alpha and a common witch.

So, if Ralph did decide to make history, since there was really no law against it, Lil would be the perfect match for such a union.

However she looked at it, Kayla knew that she did not stand a chance with Ralph.

Kayla sighed in frustration. The ceremony was getting more and more difficult to sit through. She wasn't doing anything but sitting down, yet she felt so drained and tired.

Like the night when she had attended this ceremony for the first time, Kayla was not feeling it at all. She sat patiently until she was sure that Tiana and Kate were completely lost in conversation with the people around them, and were no longer paying any attention to her. Then she stealthily stole away, out of the ballroom. She almost ran into her grandmother on her way out, but luckily, someone called for her attention and Kayla quickly made a dive for the door.

She made sure that no one was watching as she stole out of the backyard door and carefully closed it behind her.

Someone had seen her though.

Someone had watched her as she sat restless on her seat. Someone had seen her get up and leave, stealing through the crowd like a cat, watched her dodge her grandmother on the way out and smiled secretly when she successfully made it out of the backdoor, and carefully closed the door behind her as she made her way into the backyard.

It was Ralph.