His Alpha's Guardian

**Kataleya's POV--4 months prior

I rolled over in my bed, trying to hit the alarm clock on my nightstand and repeatedly missing it. Justin groaned as I rolled away from him, groggily touching the cold, hard floor with my feet. I shuffled to the bathroom and started a shower. I stood there under the water, trying to find the energy to move and to fully wake up.

I squeezed my eyes shut hoping that it would help. I finished showering, just as Justin rolled out of bed to take his shower. I quickly dress in my workout clothes, while I wait for Justin to finish his shower.

It has been five years since I have taken my oath as Alpha. Five years since I have fully accepted my mate. Five years since my nightmarish hell has ended.

Gosh, so much has changed in that time.

The first thing that changed after the summit was demolishing the pack’s Elder council and I had added my own advisory council. The council consisted of my most trusted advisors. My father was the head of the council, then there was former Beta Damien, and former Gamma Sean. Then, I added some newer, younger faces. Garrison, Gael, Jessica, and Catrina made up the rest of my council. Catrina was the only one that was not a warrior out of the younger faces. Catrina was a school teacher. My goal for this new council was to be more progressive. It was hard for me to keep a council that consisted of bitter old men that did not want anything to do with change. Plus, it still felt that most of them were against me when I abolished the council. Many of the packs, or at least the ones surrounding mine, abolished their Elder councils. Many of us run into the same issues with our councils. Typically, they try to fight any changes or “progressive” ideas that we had simply because the pack was not run like that in the past. News flash: new Alpha means new changes. Changes that you may not always like.

Then, my poor brother...Michael was rejected at the last summit meeting and he wasn't the same afterwards. I did convince him that he needed to ask if he could spend some time in her pack, just to get to know her. It took him a while to stop moping before he decided to seek shelter there...that is where Michael had been for the past few months, steadily trying to convince her to come to him and be with him. He never accepted her rejection. I could not imagine the pain that he was going through with his bond sitting there festering.

I remodeled the lower-level school and was finally able to find more room in the budget to hire some more teachers and was able to reduce the pup to teacher ratio, which was a good thing for us. These pups were sometimes ruthless when you put a bunch of them in a room together.

We have, also, had an influx of new members join, so we started work on a new subdivision and we are hoping it lessens some of the difficulty we were having with housing issues.

Instead of having a summit every three years to discuss issues and concerns, we petitioned for the King to allow us to have them once a year. Since Lucas oversees the summits, he generally has to approve how often we have them, which is fine with me. We have taken turns hosting the summits around the packs in North America.

Then, there is Elijah, who has finally grown out of his rebel stage. He finally found his mate, Jasmine. I think that she had something to do with him changing his playboy, rebel ways. He had to work in order to keep her though. She had heard about his playboy ways and wasn't very fond of it and was concerned about the level of commitment that he would show her, so she made his life a living hell before accepting him.

Justin and I have been doing well, overall. The only issue that we face now is the constant barrage of pack members asking us when we are going to start a family, but I am not sure if I am ready to be a mom yet. I just retained a grasp on being Alpha and now they want to throw a baby into the mix! I swear sometimes there is just no pleasing people...

I didn't realize that I had been completely lost in my thoughts until I had heard the water shut off and then Justin appeared with a towel wrapped dangerously low on his waist. He walked to the closet and got dressed.

Once he was ready, we both made our way to the training grounds to begin our training session. We gave the warriors an extra five minutes to appear before we started the session.

Oliver rushes over to us once he enters the training field.

“Sorry! I am late. My alarm didn't go off, so it threw off my entire schedule.” I rolled my eyes at him. He was not late because of his alarm. He knows better than to try that bull bullshit excuse with me. The only time he uses that excuse is when he took a female home or went to her house and forgot to either leave or kick her out. I am still the only ranked member that is mated. Oliver and James relentlessly go out in search of their mates, but they have yet to find them. I could tell that it was starting to weigh on James and Oliver, but mainly Oliver. He has waited for his mate since he was young; always talked about finding her...and now it is like he can't find her to save his life.

We went through our normal training routine. We started with having the warriors do a preworkout, which involved a run around the training grounds, sometimes utilizing timed obstacle courses, and making sure they were stretching, before we started to spar. Usually there were three different types of sparring we would partake in: weapon, wolf, and hand-to-hand.

Hand-to-hand was my favorite, but sometimes I used it to get out my pent-up aggression. When I used the weapons, I always had to be careful and dial back my skill level, so that I didn't, you know, accidentally seriously maim a pack member.

I usually sparred with Justin because of the simple fact that he did not like anyone else putting their hands on me. Some things just never changed with him.

Once training was finished, I went back to the pack house and prepared for a meeting that I had. This was what my day mainly consisted of. Training and then an endless amount of meetings. There was one bright side to all this: I usually got to spend my entire days with Justin since I had made him co-Alpha. We had split the duties of Alpha and Luna down the middle and we tended to do most of the work together anyway.

I was excited about the night to come. Justin had asked if we could go out tonight and just forget the pack for a few hours and spend time together...you know, now that I think about it, running a pack is almost like raising pups...you never get a break, but when the opportunity to take a break presents itself, you immediately jump at the opportunity.