1 The Missing Alpha-in-Line
[ARYA]
"It's been eight years Ricardo. Eight years since I last saw my daughter. Please help me find her, she's your daughter too," Caella pleaded with her stubborn husband, Ricardo Knight, the alpha of the moonlight pack.
She had been singing the same song, making the same request to the alpha for those eight years, but the man was adamant. Today, they were both in the alpha's study, dealing with some of the werewolf conflicts in their pack.
Caella knew her daughter would have solved all of these peacefully and not even made any chaos about it, but she wasn't here, and as much as the good luna wanted her daughter back she just couldn't accept that Arya had run away from home.
"She ran away. She didn't want the throne of the alpha. Arya is no daughter of mine" the alpha insisted. How was he supposed to tell his wife that he was worried about their daughter too?
Arya Knight had gone into the human world for an adventure, she was sixteen at the time when she realized the beauty that was Todorov city.
A barely educated werewolf princess, the young lady did her best to fit in. She knew her parents would come looking for her, so she had made it her mission to go back home every month.
However, the end months turned into the end of three months until eventually, the young princess stopped coming home.
Being their only daughter, Ricardo and Caella had sent warriors to look for her, but they all came back either dead or broken by the little princess. Of course, her father never believed them, because how was a sixteen-year-old girl supposed to beat his best warriors?
But that was just it, Arya was no common wolf. She had known that, but she just didn't want to believe it. The werewolves were used to bearing firstborn sons. First-born daughters in the werewolf world were unheard of, and Arya was just another abnormally in their community.
Her father had wanted to kill the child at birth, but given how hard they had tried for a child, he wasn't sure that the goddess would forgive him for taking the life of his own daughter.
"She's still our daughter. She's not dead. How long are you going to sit here and pretend we didn't have a child?" Caella asked angrily. Her patience was wearing thin and she knew it was just a matter of time before she disobeyed the accords and went into the human world for her daughter.
She was tired of worrying about Arya. If her daughter wanted to live as a human, then Caella was willing to go there and live with her.
There were nights she wondered whether her daughter had eaten, or whether she was getting enough sleep. All of this haunted her, and the poor woman never had a choice. Whatever it was, she was ready to go for her child.
"We can always have another child, or better yet, we can adopt pack wolves who have no parents," Ricardo said nonchalantly. He was honestly tired of hearing his wife go on about their daughter who had more than once refused to come home.
It could have been better if Arya believed in her role as the next alpha of the pack, but the stubborn girl didn't want anything to do with the werewolf pack, the home she had been born into. Her lineage, her everything.
"You don't mean that," Caella said. She couldn't believe that her husband, the man she had loved for all those years since their childhood, could make such atrocious comments, but what else could they do?
"Oh but I do Caella. Arya has been intentionally going around the human world, trying to live like those weak beings. Our daughter doesn't want to live like us. She doesn't want to lead the people. Look around Caella, we're growing older, and the pack needs a leader.
"Arya knew she had to be the pack leader when she turned eighteen, but she's now twenty-four and still living in the human world. Who knows what she's even doing there? Tell me my love, what is so good about living a mundane life that got our daughter so attached to that world?" Ricardo asked frustratedly.
He knew they would never get to the end of this. And he also knew it was useless sending more warriors to be broken and bruised by their daughter.
Ricardo wanted to tell Caella that their daughter had resorted to working as a spy in the human world. He wanted to tell her that she loved getting justice for the mundane humans more than coming home.
He wanted to tell her that their daughter was doing okay and had adapted so well to the human world and more than anything.
He wanted to tell his luna that their daughter was doing okay and that they would hold the fort for as long as they could, to give her time to take care of her shenanigans or for her to get bored with the human world and come back home.
But Ricardo couldn't tell that to Caella.
It would break her to know that her daughter preferred living away from home. It would ruin her to know that she missed her daughter's sweet sixteen birthday and eighteenth birthday because their daughter didn't want to come home.
Ricardo knew it would also break Caella to know that their daughter had her wolf at the age of fourteen but she'd never let her wolf out because she was so determined to live like a human.
All of these things would make Caella question her motherly instincts, and Ricardo loved her too much to let her wallow in self-pity. He didn't want the love of his life to be worried about things that even they had no control over.
All he could do was sit and wait for his daughter to come to her senses. He needed her to make the choice alone, and hopefully, she could make it soon, because she was nearing the age of twenty-five, the very age her wolf would force her back home.
Hopefully, she came home on her own volition, because her people needed her.
"I'll find our daughter myself then," Caella said, not giving Ricardo any opportunity to say anything. Ricardo sighed as he slumped on his seat, not wanting to argue with his luna.
He looked at the papers before him, wondering when it had been his daily mantra to fight with his wife over their own daughter. No parent would ever want to go through what they were going through and yet somehow, their darling daughter had subjected them to a fate so cruel.
