*****

"Guys, we're going swimming. You coming?"

I furrowed my brows as I lifted my head to watch the hotel door open revealing my sister and Ashton in the hallway. Ashton was one of my best friends her mate, a sole mate every werewolf had. The pair had known each other literally their entire lives, it used to drive one of our fathers crazy, the other hid his annoyance at it better, he usually acted enthusiastic about it but would occasionally keep the two apart when he felt like Ashton was getting too close to his little girl. We were older now though, and eventually our parents had to accept that she would be with her mate so Tamia and Ashton officially mated and got married a few months ago.

Ashton was also my Beta, the second in command, whereas I was the leader also known as the Alpha of our pack of wolves. My father Corey had been the Beta and Ashton's father the Alpha of our pack until Ashton and I took over five years ago. Alpha selection in our pack was random, usually the Alpha and the other leaders were born with a tattoo that showed what their positions within the pack were supposed to be.

"Swimming? We just got here." Our friend Ben said from where he was seated on the bed across the room from mine.

Ashton and Tamia were sharing a room, not just because they were married but because Ashton had the worst sleeping habits. I dreaded it when we sometimes had to share a room while we travelled to see other packs.

"So?"

"So, we just got off a 16-hour flight. I'm sleeping." I said, "Besides... something feels off." Ever since we had landed, I just had a weird feeling.

"Something always feels off to you..." Tamia scrunched her nose at me before jumping suddenly looking incredibly excited, "Oh! Maybe it's your mate this time!" I snorted at that.

"Ha. Mate. That's funny."

I wasn't very optimistic about the whole mate thing, I liked being on my own. Tamia and Ashton were joined at the hip pretty much their entire lives since they somehow always knew they were mated, and my dads could not get enough of each other either. It was nice seeing how close mates were but I loved my space, so at the same time it seemed like a nuisance to me that they seemed so co-dependent. Tamia was probably right, and I was pretty sure the slight pull towards a certain direction I felt since we stepped off the plane was supposed to lead me to my mate. Part of me was excited, of course... most of me uneasy and even slightly afraid. I wasn't sure whether I was ready for what Tamia and Ashton had.

"Come on, look outside. The weather is amazing –"

"I'm really tired." I cut Ashton off. It was winter where we came from, but currently outside the hotel the summer sun shone high making me want to leave even less.

We were there for a break, that's why Tamia was with us. It was shocking that the elder wolves of our pack actually granted us some time to have a real holiday, but they had. I figure it's because the ex-Alpha and Beta were still strong enough to hold things down without us there. Whatever the reasons were, I was happy. The past five years since Ashton and I took over had been so much work, I could remember the last time I slept more than three or four hours. The hotel room was going to be literal heaven to me if I could even just one more hour of sleep.

"Fine. You two can stay here and sleep. We're having fun and finding a nice restaurant –"

"Restaurant?" Ben and I sat up simultaneously.

"Well... we're not really that tired..." Ross looked at me, I looked back to my twin just as she smirked.

I wasn't much like my dad Jayden. He was... soft. He wasn't the strongest wolf and was incredibly soft-hearted and friendly, I was the opposite in almost every way. I loved him though. What we did have in common was our seriousness and love for food. My father Corey, who I usually called Paps, was rarely serious about anything despite his Beta status, then again, neither was Ashton's father Sean and he had been Alpha. Many of the pack elders still found them to be quite the weird pair of Alpha and Beta. Tamia knew mentioning food would make me unable to resist heading outside.

"We'll come with you." I rolled my eyes as Ashton chuckled while Tamia clapped.

After shoving on some shoes and grabbing sunglasses Ben and I followed the pair out of the hotel and I immediately regretted agreeing to go as we stepped out into the hot sunlight. I was so tried...

We walked over to the beach, me trailing behind slightly as I tried to stay awake and once we arrived, I opted to sit down. It was surprising that Ben seemed to have gained energy during our walk in the sun and actually ended up swimming leaving me eating ice cream in the shade by myself.

As my friends messed around in the water, I watched them while feeling the pull towards my mate strengthen a little and smiled to myself. I wondered what they thought about it, no doubt they could feel it too. I was Bi, so it did not really matter to me what my mate was. I bit my lip suddenly feeling the pull strengthening, showing me that my mate was moving closer; I was beginning to feel anxious. All my friends that had already found their mates had known them for a while, I would know nothing about mine until I met them. I did not want to be mated to a psychopath...

My hand moved automatically to catch a ball as I had heard it swoosh through the air towards me. I had not even seen it, my hearing ability was just incredible. I looked up to see a couple of kids not too far from me pretending it wasn't them but occasionally glancing over to see if I still had their soccer ball. It made me laugh as I got up before kicking the ball back to them. I watched as the younger one caught it with his foot before it could touch the ground and raised my brows as I walked over to them. I didn't need to ask them if I could play, because he kicked the ball back at me before I passed it over to his friend.

"What pack are you in?" I asked suddenly as I got passed the ball again.

They both looked at me surprised.

"Alpha," I stated explaining how I could tell what they were without touching them.

"Oh." The younger looking kid stared up at me looking a little afraid and I chuckled. He was probably worried that I was here for a fight, but I had done my research and chosen a place I knew was no one else's territory because it was a town mostly populated by humans and it was surrounded by packs so no one could claim the area as theirs unless they wanted war. These kids must have been from one of the surrounding packs.

"I'm here a holiday – my friends are over there." I pointed to where I had last seen Tamia and the guys and sighed seeing Ashton and Ben hurl mud at each other before I felt my chest tighten. Where was Tamia? My eyes darted in a quick panic until I spotted my sister further in the ocean and felt my shoulders relax.

Being Alpha, I was worried about everyone in my pack, Tamia and our younger brother Danté just got to me more because they were related to me and she was Ashton's mate so she was an obvious target to get to us, so was Danté. Nothing had happened to either of them ever since we were old enough to walk around without our parents, but it still worried me.

The teenager in front of me chuckled. "Our pack is called Letsela."

"Family line?" Some packs' Alphas were actually all born into one family in different generations, usually packs like that were named after the Alpha family. He nodded. "My pack's called Galaxy," I said.

"Galaxy? The Galaxy pack?" He asked in surprise.

"Yes." I nodded with a smile. Our pack was pretty well known everywhere because of our size, strength and magic. I had yet to meet a pack that did not immediately know about us when I stated which pack I led.

"Eli, we're ready for food – Oh. Hey. Who is this?" I looked at Ben as his hand grabbed my shoulder when he came to a halt beside me and looked at the kids in front of me.

"Uh..." I looked at them raising my brows because I had no idea who they were.

"Kevin, this is George." The teenager motioned to the younger boy.

"Eli, Ben." I said motioning between us. "Where are Ash and Tamia?" I asked Ben.

"They left." He said. I raised my eyebrows as I turned to him.

"They left? But they're the ones who dragged us out here."

"Yeah." He frowned, "They're at a restaurant down the road. You guys are wolves?" he looked at the kids.

"Yes." George grinned before we all heard a barely audible howl that sounded quite far away.

"That's George's mom, we should get going," Kevin said grabbing the younger boy's shoulder.

"See you around." I smiled as I grabbed the ball off the ground and handed it to him.

We split up and Ben and I made our way to the restaurant talking about what the pack they were from was possibly like. I could smell more of their scent around us, and from the looks we were getting the other wolves were suspicious of the new scent they could pick up from us, so I figured meeting their Alpha to show him I wasn't here to fight would be a good idea.

I figured that could be done the next day, at the moment, I was starving...

"Hey Alpha, how about we ditch the love birds and get dinner somewhere where we don't have to stare at them sucking face the entire time?"

"Ben." I groaned. I did not want to picture that, seeing it at their wedding was enough to make me cringe for the rest of my life – and I had a lot of life left as werewolves were practically immortal. He looked at me questioningly because I had failed to actually answer him. "Right." I nodded pulling my phone from my pocket to tell Tamia we were headed elsewhere. "Where to?" I looked around and gave a charming half-smirk to a group of girls nearby that were staring at Ben and me while whispering compliments they thought we couldn't hear. They insanely burst into gushing and giggling that made me chuckle as I turned back to Ben to focus on his answer.

"I saw this really..." Ben's voice drifted from my ears as the pull I felt suddenly intensified and my head tilted to look towards where it was leading down the road.

Mate.

I swallowed nervously. Was I really ready to be tied down to one person for the rest of my life? What if they liked living where they currently did and would not come home with me? What if they had already given up on finding their mate and had moved on with someone else? It was a pretty late stage to find my mate... They could be younger than me though... what if they were way younger? Ew... I would have to wait years for them to be ready and it would be so awkward knowing we met when they were not of age even if we did live very long.

"Alpha." I coughed as Ben's fist met my stomach, "Snap out of it."

"Why the hell would you –?" I punched him back a little harder. He began to retaliate but I grabbed his wrist before he could. "Food?" I asked.

"We're here."

Oh. I looked up and felt myself relax as I realised the mate pull had become less intense again. We weren't going to meet just yet, I could calm down. My mood fell when I realised where we were.

"A club? For food? Are you kidding me?" I asked turning to glare at Ben.

"What? My stomach just led me here." He waved at a girl as she walked up to the club entrance and she winked back before giggling while holding onto her friend's arm.

"Damn it. We didn't come out here to –"

"Have some fun, Alpha." He cut me off aggravating me even more.

"Ben, we did this at home. Why –" I grit my teeth as he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the club completely ignoring what I had to say. I growled in annoyance and Ben glanced back at me a little worried.

"How hungry are you?" he asked.

"I'm not going to rip anyone apart," I muttered in defeat. We didn't eat humans; vampires were disgusting. "I might kill you though," I added, it actually seemed like a good idea. He rolled his eyes at me.

"Hey, handsome. Wanna dance?" I looked down as a small hand touched my chest and my eyes met a brown pair belonging to a really beautiful brunette woman. She didn't look or smell drunk and her dress hugged her curvy body incredibly well, she was very attractive.

'Still want to kill me?' I narrowed my gaze at Ben as he smirked and cursed at him through our link before I smiled at the girl. What harm could come from a dance?

"Of course," I said to her as I took hold of the hand on my chest and let her lead me away from Ben as he headed to the bar. 'An hour' I linked to him. I grit my teeth hearing him scoff. I swear if he wasn't one of my best friends I would have killed him already. Probably when he ate the last of my sour straws when we were eight.

I danced with a few people and drunk a couple of beers before taking break at the bar while trying to spot Ben in the crowd but a girl blocked my view. I recognised her from earlier when I was dancing with a group of random people.

"You owe me a dance." She said taking the drink from my hand to place it on the counter and replacing it with her hand, intertwining our fingers.

I chuckled. "Since you're so –" I cut off and frowned as I looked around feeling uneasy. Something's wrong...

"What?" she asked.

"Oh – nothing. I'm sorry, I have to go." I pushed by her carefully and made my way out of the club and onto the sidewalk, my eyes searched it until I saw him run up to me at human speed, his face stressed.

"Eli –"

"Where is Tamia?" I cut Ashton off.

"We were arguing – she-she said she needed some air and I said fine, because I needed to call my mom anyway. I thought she meant air on the balcony, but when I went out to look for her she wasn't there and then I noticed her sneakers were gone and-and she'd left."

"She left?! By herself?!" I snapped.

"I –" Ashton began.

"You let her leave by herself?!" I cut him off furiously.

He was her mate! Not only were we on unfamiliar territory but Tamia was just so careless sometimes. She never took danger seriously and was always somewhat aloof, even when we were kids. I didn't care that she was an incredibly strong wolf, there was always a possibility of her getting hurt... or worse. My chest immediately tightened in anxiety at the memory of what happened to our fathers when we were younger. I was going to kill Ashton if something happened to her.

*****