Alpha’s Hybrid Cinderella
Chapter 23

Evan wouldn't be returning to the Scarlet pack house for a while. His absence should have made it easier for me to stay there, but the idea of walking in alone, knowing how everything had changed in just these last few precious hours... I couldn't. I stayed at Raf's apartment, and we had late brunch together while we went over our assignments. No classes today since it was a Reading Day with mid-terms drawing closer, but that didn't mean we could slack. We decided to go to one of the libraries on campus so we could study without the distraction of thumping neighbors. But when we got there, I only lasted an hour before my thoughts began to wander. Curse.

Evan had thought something about a curse, but his mind had clouded and darkened before I could hear anything else. What was it? What had he been talking about?

It was stupid of me to dwell on it when Evan clearly didn't want me to know. What was I going to do when I found out, anyway? If I ever did? Confront him and say I had gone behind his back to snoop in business he didn't want me to know about? Would that make him fall in love with me?

I snorted, and the sound of my own frustration brought me back to my senses. I stared down at the page in my textbook I had been reading over and over for the last fifteen minutes without absorbing a single word. Ugh.

"I'll be right back," I whispered to Raf. "I'm dozing, I need to walk around and wake myself back up."

She waved me off with advice to pick up coffee from the attached cafe outside the library entrance. But instead of strolling out, I doubled back to enter the aisles on the other side of the library, the reference area.

This was probably pointless. More than that, it was pathetic. Why was I being so desperate and clinging to someone that clearly didn't want me enough to fight for me? My newfound obsession with this so-called 'curse' was just me sublimating my feelings for him onto something else. And yet, even armed with that knowledge, I couldn't stop myself.

My mind raced with tumbling thoughts and disjointed theories as I combed over the reference texts. I'd always enjoyed my history classes in high school even though I'd missed so many days due to Dark Moon's treatment of me, but not once had I ever learned anything about a curse. But if there was any information to be had about such a thing, it would be here.

Mates. Fated mates. History of fated mates and the course of history altered by strong connections... There were so many topics and sub-topics related to the subject, and I had no choice but to skim through all of them at lightning speed to replace what I needed. My eyes were watering within minutes, but still I didn't stop. Raf would get curious if I took too long and start looking for me, and I could already imagine the face she would be wearing when she found me hunkered down in the 'Mates' section of the reference area. Superstitions. Taboos. Curses. Here! Was this it? I grabbed the slim volume off the shelf, ignoring the thin film of dust that laced the hard edges. No one had taken this book out in ages, and no surprise. Who besides me would ever be interested in this kind of thing? Even I was only invested because of a personal matter.

Curses. Archaic curses. Cautionary tales. Fairy tales based on real life tragedies. Nope, nope, nope. None of these sounded right. But then again, I'd only heard that one sliver of a thought in Evan's head. That wasn't enough to form a theory on. I had no choice but to go over every last page.

With a sigh, I scanned each subheading, following the lines with a forefinger pressed to the page.

Back to archaic curses, which then indicated me to cross-reference it with the stories of the real life tragedies recorded in the later sections. How convoluted.

But the more I read, the more it caught my attention. Wait.

Was this it?

Alpha Bowman of the Light pack. Deceased. He had lived nearly two hundred years ago, and his territory used to span three-quarters of the continent. Although it had eventually broken up upon his violent death and been distributed to various Alpha underlings, Bowman went down as one of the greatest Alpha Kings of all time, a conqueror born who never faced defeat in battle from the beginning of his campaign to the very end.

By the age of twenty-five, he had already unified nearly all of the werewolf people. The remaining quarter of the continent that he did not annex were dependent on him for essential trade and economic prosperity, so they were as good as his protectorates in principle if not in name. Under his rule, the Light pack became the single largest group in the entire werewolf world, triple the count of the next-largest pack.

But the massive Light pack imploded as violently as it had grown. It existed for only a dozen more years after he came to the head of it, and when he died at the age of thirty-five, the pack was thrown into tumult. Within a few years of his death, the Light pack was no more, having shattered into over twenty sub-packs who would go on to establish themselves as sovereign in the following decades.

There were many accounts of Alpha Bowman, many of them alternately criticizing and praising him in turn. For his ruthlessness and cruelty and abject coldness to all who even remotely stood in his path, historians called him a tyrannical dictator who would rather wipe out an entire people rather than listen to their concerns and allow his subjects to temper his actions. He was prideful, arrogant, and merciless to both friend and enemy, and even his closest companions praised him for his intelligence and strength rather than his humanity.

But for his military genius, his unbeatable combat prowess, and the example he set for generations of werewolves going forward, especially ambitious Alphas, Bowman would go down in history as one with criminally wasted potential, life cut tragically short before he could even bring a tenth of it to fruition.

An additional document recounted several poems written in tribute to the great Alpha King Bowman, lamenting the loss. One in particular included annotations on the side, but I ignored them in favor of reading the original text:

***

If the sky be his path, he becomes as an eagle.

If the waters be his path, he becomes as the leviathan.

But the land is his conquest, so he charges forth, a sight to behold.

He is wolf, he is man. The enemy is great, but he is greater.

Amid the dead and dying, amid the sea of blood,

He is calm. No wave can break upon him and not be shattered.

His allies seek his iron strength, and he is their strong arm.

So long as they cleave to him, he does not let them fall.

His enemies fear his iron strength, and he is their terror.

So long as they set their faces against him, they will fall.

If only that he could have found iron strength in another

The Moon Goddess would have looked upon him with favor

And blessed him with that which is greater

than all the glory he sought in the bloody throne.

***

I flipped to the next page, but there was no more to the poem. Instead, the historian's account detailed Alpha Bowman's tragic decline into insanity. He became psychotic, a slave to a killing wrath - and killed even his fated mate in one of his violent fits. The werewolves of the time believed he had been cursed. It was just a story, of course, but... Odd how it had a hint of similarity with Evan's brooding thoughts.

I was still thinking about when Raf and I parted ways, and I returned home.

***

The housekeeper informed me that she had had no choice but to report my absence to Peelle and Evan, and although she had known I was with Rafael, it was still her duty to do so. I understood. Peelle didn't, and he called me, insisting that I stay home where it was safe until Evan returned to the city. It was all I could do to quash the lingering, painful wish that it had been Evan himself who called to tell me that, not Peelle.

I put it out of my mind. That evening, I planted my new banshee weed seeds in the garden. Evan might have led me on, but I still had my job to do, which was to make sure he slept well. I wouldn't begrudge him that. Couldn't.

He lingered in my mind long after I went to bed. I woke three times in the night, dreaming strange things.

In the last one, I dreamed of Bowman. But his face turned into Evan's, covered in crimson blood. He

stalked toward me with hunched shoulders, half-man, half-wolf, all monster.

His claws came out. They slashed me through in one swipe, and I collapsed into pieces, dust and debris.

Evan stared down at me, confused and terrified, until his eyes brimmed with so much blood he could no longer see, blinded by his own violence. He staggered around and dissolved piece by piece, and I could do nothing but watch. When I awoke, I was drenched in sweat, and could not return to sleep.