The Lost Female Alpha

I woke up before sunrise, just like I usually do when the nightmares come. The dream was just as painful as usual but there was something different about it now. When it got to the part where we were all in the kitchen working out what to do next I heard my mother talking to me through mindlink.

"There is so much that I want to tell you little one but if I don't make it look for the box in the attic of the cottage. It is hidden in a hidden compartment inside the chimney. The key to the box is your favourite smell." She said. This must have been the missing piece of the puzzle that my brain was trying to work out. When I woke up feeling sad but also relieved, like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Some part of me must have recognised that she was trying to tell me something. I just had to wait until my wolf was awake before I could hear her message.

Maybe I should have been worried that my mind was playing tricks on me but I wasn't. I was 100% certain that what I heard in my dream was real, I don't know how I knew it was real but I did. All I had to do was find this box. I didn't bother to wash or get changed. I left my sleepwear on and went straight up to the attic. The attic was full of all our toys and old furniture from when we were younger. I ran my fingers along them as I walked towards the chimney at the end of the house.

I had so many memories related to this house. I spent most of my childhood here. I couldn't believe that in all the years we had lived here there had been something in here from my mom and I didn't know about it. I had been so close. I looked at the chimney from each angle. There were no obvious compartments or doors but there was a small section at the bottom right that looked different. In that section the bricks were a slightly different colour to the rest of them. They looked newer and the mortar was soft and powdery, almost as thought it was just compacted powder. That must be where this box is hidden.

I sat down on the floor and started pulling at the bricks. As I suspected, they weren't attached with mortar but they were stiff. It took a bit of effort before they started to come out. Soon I had enough bricks removed so that I could see into the hole behind. It looked as if there was some kind of safe hiding behind the bricks.

"What are you doing up here?" Ryker said.

I could sense that he was standing on the top step of the ladder into the attic without even having to look. I didn't turn around or stop removing the bricks but I explained to him about my dream and the message. He came over and sat down next to me and started to help me remove bricks.

With Ryker's help all of the bricks were removed in no time. I pulled the safe out of the gap and started looking at it while Ryker started replacing the bricks. The safe had a digital keypad with space for up to eight numbers to be typed in the display. Ryker glanced over at me.

"Did she tell you what the code was?" He asked. I shook my head.

"She told me it was my favourite smell but I am not sure what that means and the code is a number." I said.

"I am sure that you will work it out. You are the smartest person I have ever met." He said.

I smiled at him, his faith in me made me feel warm and happy. He leaned closer to me, looking into my eyes. His face was only a couple inches away from me.

I could feel the heat from his body. Part of me wanted to reciprocate, to lean in and give in to our feelings. Let him kiss me and do all those other things that I had been fantasising about for the last few months.

It would be so easy. He wanted me just as much as I wanted him. Just one kiss would probably be enough to persuade him to take me right here. I felt a flutter of desire in my stomach just thinking about it.

I couldn't do that to him. If I gave into my feelings for him today it would give him the wrong impression of our relationship. He would think that there was a chance for us, that I would reject my mate and be with instead. I couldn't give him false hope, that would be cruel of me.

I leaned back slightly to give us both a bit of space.

"I thought you weren't going to accept your mate." He said. He was still looking into my eyes but now he looked hurt.

"I don't think I can be with my mate but you still have a mate out there and you deserve a chance with them." I said.

"You are the only one I want but if I have to wait until we have both rejected our fated mates to prove that to you then so be it." He said.

He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. He trailed his lips gently across my cheek only pulling away as they grazed the edge of my lips. Then he stood up and walked away without saying another word leaving me alone with a safe that I had no idea how to open.

The safe was a puzzle which occupied almost all of my mind for the rest of the day. It was clear that in order to make my favourite scent (whatever that is meant to be) into a numerical code I would have to convert letters into numbers. As I was given no other clues and there was nothing else hiding along with the safe I had to assume that these numbers were related to their position in the alphabet.

This raises more questions though, like how to deal with the first ten letters of the alphabet. If these characters were a single number it meant that the code word could be anywhere from four to eight characters long.

I started thinking of smells which I liked, most of them had something to do with food. I converted a few of them into a numerical code and entered them into the keypad but none of them worked.

I made a note of the words I had tried in an app on my phone. Part of me wondered if I should hide it better but after a lot of thought I decided that it would be fine. Nobody would know what it was if they saw it anyway, it just looked like a shopping list. At least this way I wouldn't keep trying the same things over and over again in an infinite loop.

When we got back home I put the safe in the bottom corner of my walk-in wardrobe and hid it behind some shoe boxes so that nobody would see it. My parents had gone to a lot of trouble to hide this safe so it didn't feel right leaving it out in the open where anyone could just stumble across it.