Chapter 95
Chapter 95
Gideon’s POV
“The first time you shift, everything feels larger than life. Your wolf’s voice speaks in your head for the first time. His senses overwhelm yours. You see, smell, hear, everything as though it were amplified through a megaphone.
“The first time I shifted, the forest called to me in an imperative siren’s song. There was nothing better for a young boy and wolf to do than to shift and run free under the full moon.
“I was a gangly, moody teenager, desperate for my parent’s approval. I didn’t understand at the time that to them, I was just a means of securing their succession.
“They weren’t prepared for my intensity, and although they were the leaders of the pack, from an early age they became submissive to me, and resented me for it. The Alpha genes were so defined in me, that they avoided my presence as much as possible to be able to retain their own identities and rank, knowing it was only a matter of time before I took over their pack.
“When my brother and sister were born, they fit into the family better, and became immediate favorites to my father and mother. I was the one who carried all the family responsibility, and they were more than happy to let me shoulder it alone while they had their perfect family unit. So my first memories are lonely ones.
“Still, for my early years I was taught in the village school and until my parents pulled me out as a teenager, Malakai was my best friend. His mother worked in the pack house, so he was often up near where I was, and we would run around in the woods and sneak off to play together.
“He always had a quick sense of humor, and a quick temper too. I was the one who was more tentative and cautious, so being with Malakai was also one of the few times where I felt like I could come out of my shell a bit instead of retreating into myself under the weight of others expectations.
“When we shifted, our wolves were evenly matched in size, and while I delighted that my best friend and I were able to keep up with each other, my parents only saw that Malikai had the potential to challenge the Alpha, and they warned us to stay apart.
“There was a third wolf who ran with us. Her name was Autumn.
“She was a bit younger, but her wolf matured early, and from the moment she first shifted, she and my brother knew they were mates. But she was my friend first.
“Because of my parents disapproval, we had to sneak away to run through the woods together. Sometimes my brother would join us, but his wolf and Autumn’s were smaller and had a harder time keeping up, and he resented that I was so much more powerful than he was. He feared that I would steal Autumn from him.
“But my mind was not on mating. I just wanted my friends. He didn’t understand that those friendships were a lifeline for me, the only people in the world who didn’t see me as the future Alpha, but instead loved me for me.
“My parents feared my wolf from the moment they saw him. I didn’t learn until later that the black wolf was a classic marker of the demonblood gene I carried. The manifestation of the gene skips generations, and while my grandmother had it, no one in my parents generation did.
“So in their eyes, I was cursed, but to protect me, they hid the knowledge and forbade anyone from speaking of
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Chapter 95
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the curse. They didn’t tell me either.
“Hudson found the references in the library, and he did his own research. He didn’t understand what the curse did, the berserker rage it could cause. He just thought it would make me do something foolish, and break the reputation I had in the pack of being the perfect future Alpha.
“He wanted me to be humiliated, so he picked Angelica flowers, and brought them to the woods where Malakai, Autumn, and I were hanging out.
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