Moonlit Bonds: Alpha's Embrace

Chapter 1

Over the last half an hour or so, the forest had become denser. That was the only revelation Fleur had come to over the last five-hour car ride. Andrew really wasn't kidding when he said Bennington was remote. The last time she had seen any civilization was hours ago, and she was slowly but surely becoming desperate to use the bathroom. At least the weather wasn't as bad as everyone had warned her it would be; if anything, Fleur was enjoying the feeling of the sun on her face. She had become bored of her countless playlists a while ago, and the connection wasn't good enough for her to download another podcast episode. So that left her to stare out the window and analyze the forest dumbly. With an exasperated sigh, she turned to the front of the car.

"We're almost there now, pup," Andrew, her stepdad's voice softly cut through the silence. His eye shone affectionately in the rear-view mirror's reflection as he took in the teenager. Fleur gave him a tight-lipped smile, but internally, she was incredibly relieved, for her butt had become numb from all the sitting, and the gradual increasing pressure of her bladder slowly became painful. Fleur didn't want to ask to stop, not wanting to be an inconvenience; if Andrew said they were close, then she would tough it out.

Andrew held her mother's hand in his right hand and the steering wheel with the other. Fleur's mother, Sabine, had fallen asleep hours ago, and Fleur could not have been more envious because she would simply get to arrive without having to take in hours of forest which frankly all looked the same to Fleur from the car window.

However, it was no surprise to anyone that Sabine would have been out like a light as soon as they hit the road. Sabine had managed to sell their home, pack up their belongings, tie up all loose ends and get the family moved in a matter of four weeks. As soon as she and Andrew had decided to relocate back to his pack and out of the human settlement that Fleur had been born and raised in; there was no stopping the women. Now that all her efforts had come to fruition, what else was there for her to do but crash.

Throughout the drive, Fleur would catch Andrew looking over at her Mother lovingly, and a content expression would settle on his face the further into the woods they drove. Fleur was happy for her mom, and she did like Andrew, or at least he was growing on her more and more. But of course, the thought of leaving behind everything she's ever known was an incredibly daunting for a seventeen-year-old. Never really having left the human settlement before being uprooted from one day to the next had left Fleur in fits of anxiety, and the week leading up to the move, she had cried herself to sleep every night.

"It'll be great! Just you wait; you'll feel at home in the pack in no time," Andrew continued with his usual lecture on the benefits of pack life over those of the way the human civilizations conducted themselves. Andrew was a huge advocate for how packs cared for each other.

"Everyone there is family; we truly care for one another," he kept saying. "Not in a weird Alabama way, I swear," He would add with a wink, and Sabine would dissolve in fits of laughter. Fleur thought that Andrew had a good sense of humor, but to Sabine, any remark he'd make was of groundbreaking comedic value.

After hearing them the third time, Fleur has learned to blend his jokes out. It's not that she was trying to be rude by any means, but since she was a child, Fleur had had the habit of getting lost in her mind. So, it was easy for her to nod along to what Andrew was going on about.

Sabine had often been worried for her daughter as Fleur had always been somewhat of a recluse, preferring her mother's company and books to spending time with people her own age. When Fleur was a child, her mother would set up playdates for her, and she could almost set a timer that within the hour, Sabine would get a call from other child's mother with the request from her daughter to be picked up. The older Fleur got, the more it just became clear to her mother that Fleur was just an introvert.