To Kiss A 𝙹𝙴𝚁𝙺𝚆𝙰𝙳

Prologue-THE HUMANS

[TRISTAN]

†

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

A low rumbling growl left my throat, and I dragged a pillow from beside my head, covering my face in hopes of blocking out that god-awful sound but it only seemed to get louder.

Beep! Beep! Bee-!

Lashing out my forearm, I aimed to slam it down on the annoying thing but missed my mark and the incessant beeping continued.

After a few torturous seconds, I finally flung my arm out, sweeping it across the bedside table in a blind rage and sending a flower vase, along with the stupid alarm clock, flying into the opposite wall and shattering to pieces.

I tried going back to sleep after that but with all the commotion I was now wide awake.

It had also dawned on me that today I would meet my father's new wife.

Supposedly, his mate.

My wolf guide, Zain, paced restlessly inside me to express his discomfort.

He's always on high alert, and especially now with tensions rising between the neighboring rogue pack and our own, but I chose to ignore the warning, flinging off the covers and dragging my lethargic body out of bed and straight into the adjoining bathroom.

I was exhausted and with good reason too. I would typically limit my morning border patrol to one round, but with Alpha away, more duties fell on my shoulders and I had to share in his responsibilities. 

Ever since he'd phoned me to give the good news of finally finding his mate and that they'd tied the knot on some tropical cruise, a sense of unease had taken root, a strange apprehension festering inside me.

There were so many things wrong with his announcement that I couldn't quite wrap my head around—questions I had no answers to.

Alpha Jackson is in his mid-forties and now he randomly finds his Luna?

After all this time?

A human at that?

Now, I have nothing against humans, but could you blame me for being wary when mate bonds with humans were so exceptionally rare that only a handful have been seen in centuries?

There were hardly any humans left in Lyrcania after the last great war, which meant Alpha Jackson had wandered beyond the barrier again and found her in the human world.

The shifter population is small compared to humans and we tend to keep to ourselves, abiding by the treaties that separate their world from our own, and we are always mated to members of our own pack or a neighboring one, not random humans in an entirely different part of the world.