Luther POV
I pretended not to notice my twin's agitated pacing and tried my best to concentrate instead on the scroll in my hands.
The door suddenly opened and in bounced a short, energetic man with an angel face that almost always had a smile. A deceptive mask for the fierce warrior underneath.
Knight, our beta.
I raised my eyes, grateful for the distraction.
"This is real nice." Knight nodded in appreciation as he looked around the Alpha's quarters.
I followed his gaze. It was large room filled with furniture draped in furs and skins of beasts.It's proximity to the garden caused it to have a pleasant smell.
For a moment, a memory slipped into my head. The fireplace surrounded by the soft cushions that my mother would place around so that she could read us stories while my father tickled her and play wrestled us intruded on the present and I shook my head to banish the ghosts.
There was no place for that kind of softness.
"What were the casualties?" I cleared my throat.
Knight's baby face hardened.
"We lost six of our men." Knight said mournfully.
I sighed, reflecting on the men who had taken up arms for my own cause. It was an honour to have people stand up and decide to place their support and belief in you even when they did not owe you a thing.
While we were a well trained unit, we all knew that anyone could die.
I felt sorrowful at the thoughts of those soldiers who had fallen while marching beside me.
"We will hold a memorial for them."
There was no family to be notified.
Most of the people under my command did not have any family, we were our own family.
"What's wrong with him?" Knight glanced at Elias who was unusually quiet and still pacing.
"Ignore him." I mumbled dismissively and focused on the scroll before me.
"You may ignore me." Elias bit.
He seemed tired of pacing and was ready to talk. "But you can't ignore the problem."
Knight looked from Elias's highly animated face to my no doubt blank face.
"What going on?" His eyes narrowed. "What aren't you telling me?"
"We can smell Edumund's daughter." Elias said, still pacing.
Elias had been like this since we found her. The scent had affected him more than he would admit.
I heard Knight's sudden intake of breath and I resisted the urge to run my hands through my hair in frustration.
I was the voice of reason, the cool headed one.
If I started to panic, they might start to really worry. And that would make me actually go crazy because the truth was that I was not calm at all.
The memory of the enticing floral scent that brought us to the pale, fragile looking woman sprawled on the forest floor in her bridal dress.
Edmund's daughter. The very man I had come to ground into the dust and eliminate.
For a moment I had been almost lost in the innocence on her face until remembered who I was looking at.
She was probably as treacherous as her father, after all what apple falls far from the tree?
It still stung that he had escaped.
But only for now, I would have him in my grasp soon enough.
"But, you shouldn't be able to… " Knight gasped.
"And she's your worst enemy's daughter—the one with no scent? Tell me it's not her."
"Exactly!" emphasized Elias as he came to a stop before the desk I sat behind.
"And he says that I should be ignored." He muttered.
Just then, there was a knock on the door and an old tall woman with a slight hunchback opened the door and stepped in.
Sitara, the oldest woman in our group.
By far the most knowledgeable. She knew everything about werewolf lore and had been very important in the planning stage for the attack on Stormfang.
She was also a healer who had learned quite a lot from her travels. Alternative medicines, dark magic and herbs.
"That is exactly why I sent for Sitara instead of pacing back and forth, wearing the ground out."
"You sent for me Alphas?" She asked and without waiting for permission sank into one of the fur covered seats.
Sitara pretty much did what she wanted. I figured it came from having travelled all over the world and seen it all.
Or maybe it was simply because she was old.
"We can smell Edmund's daughter." Elias said nervously and Sitara's face swung to mine.
I nodded. "Unfortunately it's true." I answered.
I knew what was going through Sitara's mind, probably the same thing going through all our minds to be honest.
Elias and I were not supposed to be able to smell a female werewolf. What had me up in knots was the fact that nobody else could smell her, why then could we smell her?
Elias and I had realized a long time ago that unless we made drastic sacrifices, serious changes we would remain at the bottom, trodden by anyone who could.
The world we lived in had no mercy for the weak, It was either eat or be eaten. Onl the strong would survive.
So we had struggled hard, trained hard.
Won conquests and matches for our master, earned so much that we had been able to buy out our freedom and still make a lot more money.
But that had not been enough for us.
What we needed, was enough power to mow down everyone in our path.
So, we had undergone a ritual that promised us power beyond belief. It had been a success but it also changed us.
One of those changes was that we lost our ability to ever sense our mate. Her scent would be hidden from us and we would never be able to smell her.
Another one was that I was the host.
A condition that left me in constant pain, a pain I noticed had reduced since I saw Edmund's daughter.
I did not want to voice my thoughts, even I had not fully comprehended the meaning.
It had been a small price to pay. The power to get revenge on behalf of our parents and the chance to be able to come back home had been too irresistible a choice to make.
We did not care about having a mate. We did not need one and when we were ready to take a luna, we would simply appoint Cassia.
Personally, a mate was a weakness.
A distraction from the main thing, which was to take down everyone who had a hand in our family's destruction.
Sitara who's face had been set in deep concentration, raised her eyes to my face.
"This is very strange, Alpha." She said "And I fear what it could mean."