Kierren

It's been a few days since I found her. Again. My daughter. Who would have thought that our paths would cross yet again? Definitely not me.

What I did expect the least was finding her on the brink of death, her entirety covered in the battering of the raging river that was full because of the full moon.

"She's asleep, dad," Ralph informs me, placing her arm back into the water. I nod my head as he leaves the cave to tend to a dying elder.

I can't help but feel sorry for the poor young girl. She's clearly been through a lot, and I wonder how she ended up washed up on a river bank near our territory in Oak View. Whatever happened must have knocked the wind right out of her, and now she was lying in a bed of healing.

It's been a few days, and no one has come around looking for her. It's almost as if they've accepted that she's gone, or maybe they just don't know that she's still alive. Barely at that, but still holding on. At least tonight she was able to wake up and speak to us.

Sighing in mild relief, I walk towards the healing bath of rocks, and watch her expression twist in anguish. She must be having another nightmare - like the ones she's been having ever since she's got here.

At least now her unconsciousness is a result of the medication my son has given her. Unlike before, when I just brought her back here, and all she did was float in and out of consciousness. And barely opening her eyes.

I need to visit the elder, Amos, who's slowly dying of heart failure. Not even our proximity to the moon or the crystal-clear healing waters from the spring can provide him healing. But what is the point of visiting someone who doesn't have much time left, when I can watch over the daughter I never knew I had.

I chuckle to myself as I remember how I did the math and found out that I did in fact have a child with Cassandra. All it took was a simple thing - recognizing how the familiar and unique way the tie on the young man was tied. It's the only way I've ever worn mine ever since she left. And suddenly I'm looking down into Anastasia's face, the breath escaping her cream lips, her long eyelashes fanning her cheek. But it's not my daughter, Anastasia anymore.

It's Cassandra, as the Moon Valley Pack makes our way to my coming-in ceremony.

I'm two full moons into my nineteenth, and she's three into her eighteenth. I'd been waiting for this day for a long time, and I had a feeling that tonight, when father swore me in as reigning Alpha, I would find out who my fated mate was.

She walked up to me, her long, wavy and brilliantly shocking red hair cascading across her shoulders, a plait on each side keeping her hair from her face. Ah! I always loved it like that, when her porcelain skin was mine to feast my eyes on. She was almost too perfect to be real, her face flawless and every intricate feature so prominent, down to the birthmark on the left side of her cupid's bow.

"Dear Moon Goddess!" Cassandra exclaimed, "aren't you already too late, Alpha?"

"Late?" I turned and outstretched my arms in a pose, "fashionably late, wouldn't you say?"

Cassandra giggled, the graceful sound like music to my ears. "Fashionably? I don't think so. I mean, look at this!" she pointed at my tie, "it's a disaster!"

Groaning, I looked down at the tie I failed to tie. After all, it was my mother who did such things for me, always stretching up on her tiptoes to tie my tie, or bending down to tie my shoelaces. Even when I insisted that it was high-time I learned to do it myself, she was adamant that I'd always be her little boy.

And then she passed, leaving me with no motivation to learn any of those things. But soon enough, Cassandra became the best friend who fussed over me as much as any mother fusses over their child.

But it's not familial love I felt for her. It's much more. So when she stands on her tiptoes and undoes my tie, mumbling under her breath about how a grown man and the leader of Moon Valley couldn't do a simple task like this, I grab her wrist and pull her closer.

She doesn't know it yet - what I felt for her. The look in her big blue eyes tells me that she's more surprised than ever before. I could almost hear it, that persistent voice asking a million questions inside that pretty head.

"What is he doing?"

"Who does he think he is?"

"Does he think that just because he's the Alpha…"

"Yes," I breathed against the side of the neck, "I'm the Alpha, remember? I can do whatever I want to."

"Oh?" she challenged, pulling away and throwing the black tie back in my face, "if you can do whatever you want to, then try doing a decent job with that!"

I grabbed her back and shoved the tie into her hand. "As your Alpha, I command you to fix my tie."

She grunted under her breath and rolled her eyes, but dutifully wrapped the tie around my neck before starting with the knot.

Silence fell on us - a comfortable silence we often found ourselves in, like on one of those many nights when we would lay on the grass and gaze at the stars, counting them to pass the time. I can't remember the exact day we became the best of friends, but Cassandra had become someone I always found myself leaning on.

As she folded one piece over the other, her tongue prodding the inside of her cheek as she focused, I knew that I could spend the rest of my life exactly like this. Bickering like two opponents, and making up like lovers.

I gulped as the thought came to mind, and Cassandra stilled, her eyes on the bump in my throat, her untainted cheeks turning a deep shade of pink. Is she my fated mate? I wonder to myself, thinking that maybe she can somehow read my thoughts.

Don't think it! Don't think it! I scolded myself, thinking that if she can read my mind, she'd know that tonight I planned on telling her how I felt. She pulled on the front end of the tie, and stepped back to inspect her work. Satisfied, she nods, pointedly avoiding making eye contact with me.

"Cassie?" I called out just before she left the room, "can we meet after the ceremony? At our usual spot?"

Something did change between us, I realized when she turned around slowly, her eye kept on the ground as she tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "Sure," was all she said, before she disappeared down the hall of my family home.

I bring up a hand to my chest, feeling for an imaginary tie there. I mutter under my breath what a fool I am, but this old fool has a second chance to do what is right.

I can take care of my daughter.

I kiss the inside of my fingers, and place them on the top of her forehead. I look up towards the sky, where the moon is slowly retreating for the night. I too should retreat, so I can be back here by her side first thing in the morning.

Sleep seems to come with ease tonight. I'd spent all these past nights tossing and turning, wondering if Anastasia would ever really wake up. It seems now that she has woken up, I'm able to be at peace.

But it's more than peace I find tonight. With my daughter here, I'm able to see Cassandra's face in my dreams. I'm sure I'm smiling in my sleep, when I find her in her white robe, hugging her arms around her chest and gazing up at the stars in a memory that plays out like a dream.

"Alpha of mine," she said when she heard me coming towards her, her back to me, "you've called me out here, now tell me why."

I waited until I was standing beside her to reply, "what's with the sudden impatience? Won't you at least wait until the moon gives the stars some time to shine?"

"I was hoping that She'd bear witness to what you want to tell me," she turned slightly, just enough for me to notice the chaste smile playing on her lips. "Besides, have I not waited long enough?"

It took me a while to catch on what she was trying to say, but when I did, I pulled her into my arms, slipping off her robe and finding her bare underneath.

She sensed it, even though her fragrance wasn't as sweet as what a fated mate should be to my senses. She was my precious rose, and while the moon witnessed us, I proclaimed my love to her, laying her down on the bed of soft grass. She giggled as I teased her sensitive skin with my breath, and told her that I loved her. She said it back - she said it a thousand times back with every breathless whisper, every moan, every soft gaze as I halted my thrusts and stared deep into her eyes.

She may not have been my mate by fate, but that night - the night I became the Alpha of Moon Valley - I made her my mate. I would make her my mate in every single lifetime, and to me it didn't matter that it wasn't fate that bonded us.

It was fate that brought us together, was it not? It was fate that had us falling head over heels in love with each other, until neither of us could tell where the one ended and the other began when our bodies united in a show of that love. I kissed her with all the passion and desire I felt, and on her tongue I tasted something far sweeter than any scent of a fated mate could give me.

And isn't it fate that the Gamma, who grew up in the house just across from mine, would be a descendant of an Alpha? And fate that turned our fiery night into something more.

The conception of a child.