Spirit Tales (The Millennium Wolves AU)

God hated me. There was no other way to explain the situation I found myself in if that wasn’t true. Because sitting in a small, dense room with little to no light, while sitting on a chair before the Alpha of the Millennium, Strider Luxford, and three more werewolves who were huge - except the woman, who was lethal in a slick way - who didn’t took their eyes off me as though I was the Bringer of Doom, wasn’t something that happened to normal people.

The five wolves stared at me, their eyes testing, scanning, judging, and I planted mine on the floor, my cheeks burning from embarrassment. I couldn’t stand it when people looked at me, especially werewolves. We’d been here for a couple of hours already, and all they did was talk among themselves in some language - maybe Spanish or even Latin - and sometimes glanced at me. In the past few minutes, however, they resorted to staring at me, as though they expected me to grow wings or turn into a beetle or something.

Obviously, I was afraid to break the silence, because now that I got my rage under control again, I didn’t have the guts to do so. I didn’t even believe I had the courage - stupid as it was, but courage nonetheless - to scream at them, or call them filthy. I had no idea why I did that, too - while I had anger management issues, I usually stewed in silence rather than yell. Besides, I still had no clue how or why my screaming had anything to do with the shattered windows or the earthquake.

What bothered me the most, however, was the way the Alpha called me: Spirit of Chaos, Calamity, and Disasters. What the fuck did that mean? What the hell was going on?

“Angela Wayne.”

I jolted, my head snapping up to look at the Alpha, whose red eyes studied me. “Yes, Alpha?” I said in a voice so tiny, I could barely hear myself. My body was terse and frigid and my fingers dug into the seat of my chair to stop themselves from shaking.

“You’re aware of what you’ve done,” the Alpha continued, narrowing his eyes. “What do you have to say?”

If only I could turn back time… But even if I could, what could I have done differently, anyway? I would still be stuck here. “I don’t know,” I whispered, staring at the floor. “I d-don’t understand how I’m related to that earthquake or whatever it was. I have nothing to say.”

The Alpha sighed, and I saw him turning to look at his four friends. He told them something in the foreign tongue and they nodded, while Strider seemed to be lost in thoughts. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them truthfully,” the Alpha told me, returning his penetrating gaze to my face. His expression was inscrutable.

I swallowed hard and nodded.

“Who’s your parents?” he fired the first question.

A shiver went through my spine. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, “my mother gave birth to me at the orphanage I grew up in and died afterward - or so I was told. They couldn’t tell me who my father was.”

“How old are you?” he continued, seemingly unsurprised by my answer.

I stilled. “Nineteen.”

“What are your aspirations?”

That surprised me, and I raised my eyes to his in disbelief. “How’s that any of your business?!” I suddenly screamed, feeling a hot surge of unexpected rage replacing my fear. Before any of them could say something else, the floor began to shake. Horror crawled inside my gut, not strong enough to overcome the rage, which I tried to fan out in vain; instead, it only grew more powerful. The floor shook even harder the longer I tried to calm the rage down, and I tried to think about stopping the goddamn floor from quaking again, pushing through the rage and focusing on the shuddering instead -

And suddenly, the earthquake was gone. I blinked, confused and more scared than before, trying to figure out if, maybe, I caused the earthquake to stop this time. And if I did it, did that mean I really had caused it after all?

The wolves stared at me in stunned silence. Even the Alpha seemed off-kilter. “What have you done?” he asked, his low voice like an intimidating caress.

I shivered again. “I-I don’t know,” I mumbled out, flushing and lowering my gaze. “You angered me and it probably made the e-earth to s-shake and then… it stopped.”

“How did it stop, Angela?”

When said my name, like another caress, I felt myself melting, and it infuriated me, and not that different thing inside me that got angry and literally shook the world. Why was I so easily enraged today? What had Maria done to me when she touched my forehead?

“I… wanted to make it stop,” I said and closed my eyes, feeling suddenly weak. “Why am I here?” I asked in a whisper. “Why are you interrogating me? Why is there another… something, or someone, inside me, that shook the whole universe when it gets angry? Why… me?”

I opened my eyes and looked at the Alpha. He did not respond and only walked toward me in measured steps. I gulped and tensed when he was only an inch away. He then crouched so his eyes were level with mine. He was even closer this way, and I was a little distracted when I saw how red his eyes were, and how much his hair looked soft to touch. He was so perfectly hot, so strong and sexy, with lips that made me want to take a bite -

“I promise to explain everything,” he said softly, and I felt my cheeks burning again. His hand raised, reaching out to me, and I flinched until he cupped my face. At once, a current of shocking electricity poured from his palm directly to my chest and a lower, more intimate spot in my body. I didn’t know what it was and while that scared me, I was even more afraid it was only me because his face remained unreadable.

My lips were dry and my voice raspy when I asked, “Now?”

A smile broke his face, and it was like magic, the way that sudden, surprising smile made my dark world light, lighter than it had ever been. The smile made his eyes sparkle and turned him even more beautiful than he was, and I was frozen in place, my eyes refusing to blink so I wouldn’t miss the rare sight. “Not now,” he spoke in a voice that made me want to melt into a puddle of goo. “Later, when you’re more… stable. Right now you’re agitated, and your emotions are all over the place because of what happened - when it all passes, I’ll give you the explanations you deserve. I promise.”

On its own accord, my hand rose and rested against the hand that cupped my cheek. The moment I touched him, another electric current streamed through the contact straight into my body, making my hairs stand on end. “You promise,” I said quietly, trying to ignore my absurd reaction to him.

“I promise,” he confirmed, and his hand froze on my face as his jaw locked, his smile dropped, and his gaze turned hard. All of his toughness, and the fact he promised something, after nineteen years no one had ever promised me anything - or if they did, they broke those promises - made me throw my arms around his neck and hug him.

At first, he didn’t react to my impulsive hug. Instead, he froze as I put my head in the crook between his neck and shoulder, my hair wild around my head, and then, after a few moments he seemed to collect himself, he wrapped his arms around my waist. He pulled me forward, sitting on the floor, and cradled me in his arms, hugging me tightly.

It surprised me how safe I felt right there, wrapped in his body. Mine was sensitive, goosebumps covering my skin, and electricity ran through my vein, causing my heart to pound loudly and heat encompass me from head to toe. But it mattered not when he made me feel so relieved and safe as I’d never felt before.

My body relaxed, and I felt his heat wrapping around me, covering me piece by piece. All worries disappeared from my head as exhaustion settled in, causing my lids to dropped against my wishes.

I fell asleep with the Alpha of the Millennium’s arms wrapped around me, his woodsy, fresh scent in my nose, and his heated body like a warm blanket, pulling me deeper into dreamland.

When I woke up, I found myself reclining on something soft. I forced my eyes open, even though my lids were still heavy, and saw I was curled up in a duvet, the mattress I was on comfy, big and wide and could fill four people and more.

I shoved the duvet off and pulled myself into a sitting position. The bed I was on, I could now tell, was a canopy bed, like that of princesses in fairy-tales. The room in which I was was huge and fancy, too, with a closet that stretched over an entire wall, a wooden desk, small yet wide chandelier, and a grand window that led to a small balcony. Dim light streamed through the window, and I gathered it must be dawn now, meaning I’d been asleep for a long while.

After I did some stretching - my limbs were surprisingly sore - the events of last night came back with a bang into the front of my mind. Me, a ball of anger, shattering windows and shaking the earth; calling werewolves filthy to their face; imprisoned in that interrogation room; throwing myself on the Alpha of the Millennium and hugging him tightly; falling asleep in said Alpha’s arms; brutally attracted to the Alpha like I’d never been to anyone else before…

My face burned from shame and I buried it in my hands. God, what hell had been wrong with me? How, from a relatively quietly-angry girl, I became this hysterical bitch who badmouthed people she shouldn’t and made the world tremble in her wake? I wouldn’t even delve into the thing about me throwing myself on the Alpha like some desperate fangirl.

Soon the shame was replaced by confusion. Why was I here, anyway? Why, when enraged, I could cause disasters? What had Maria done when she touched me? And where was the Alpha and his damned answers?

But the true, and worst question was - who the fuck am I?

The door was opened at that same moment, and into the room entered that beautiful and lethal she-wolf from the back in the interrogation room. She saw me awake, sitting in bed, and gave me a bitter smile. “Good morning, child,” she said.

“Good morning,” I responded.

“Fred sent me over,” she explained, stepping forward. She wore jean shorts, brown Cowboy boots, and a tight, white tee underneath a black leather jacket. She had hair so black it almost looked blue, and eyes that made me want to stare; the irises were blue, but the ring around her pupil was golden-brown. She was tall and toned, but still had curves where it counted, and her skin was the color of a hot mocha drink. She was exotic, and she was scary as fuck.

“Err,” I mumbled out a little stupidly. “What?”

The woman sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m Samantha, but you can call me Sam,” she offered with half a smile. “I’m one of Fred’s personal Guards.”

“Fred?” I repeated, baffled.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s the Alpha’s name - Frederick. Everybody’s calling him Fred.” She shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal - and it really wasn’t. But somehow, a rush of jealousy filled me. How come this Samantha was allowed to call him by his first name, not to mention a nickname, and he’d ordered me to call him ‘Alpha’?!

Logically, I knew this line of thought wasn’t rational, so I pushed it aside, and thank God but today I actually managed to control my feelings, unlike last night. “So why did he send you over here?” I asked, realizing that, despite me shoving it all aside, my jaw was locked my teeth were gritted.

Samantha raised a brow and folded her arms. “I’m here to explain what you are, what happened yesterday, and blah, blah, blah.” She rolled her eyes again. “Fred’s busy with Alpha stuff, so this responsibility fell on me. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” I retorted accusingly for no real reason.

Her smile was now dangerous. “Watch your mouth, girl. I, unlike Fred, will not feel sympathy for you, and if you annoy me too much…” her fingernails suddenly elongated, turning into claws. I’d seen werewolves do it before - to threaten, intimidate, or attack. I’d just never had these claws aimed at me.

I paled and nodded. Her smile widened. “Good. Now, be quiet while I give you the answers you want. If you have more questions, wait until I finish and then ask. But until then, shut your mouth. Are we clear?”

I nodded again and moved back so I leaned against the wall. I needed a moment to slow my frantic heart. “Crystal.”

Her smile was gone and then she spoke.