"That's not possible," Jett told his sister.

"To be mated to another Alpha?" Bree laughed. "Trust me, Jett, it's very possible. It just means that he'll have to be brought to our pack, since you're the leader of Valor. That definitely makes you the strongest."

"Oh fuck!" he started pacing again. "I didn't even think about that!"

"Why is this an 'oh fuck' moment?" Bree was still laughing. She had no idea just how much of a problem this was.

Jett had waited six years for his mate, hoping that he could find the one that he could spend the rest of his life with. They could grow old together, and help teach one of Bree's sons how to lead when they wanted to retire. She had two at the moment, and they were really tiny, but they were the next in line to take his place when they got old enough.

"Because he's not just an alpha, Bree," he started pacing more.

"Jett, you're so dramatic sometimes," his sister tried to suppress her giggles. "Will you just tell me who it is already? I'd like to meet my future brother-in-law before Christmas, you know."

"There's no way that he's my mate, though," he pondered out loud. "The Moon Goddess wouldn't make a match like this."

"If you were pulled towards him, your mates," Bree said. "And, from what you were telling me about what happened before you came home, I'm 100% positive that you two are now."

"Why?"

"Because you were jealous!" Bree started laughing again. "It's clear as daylight on your face whenever you talked about that girl on his arm!"

"I'm not jealous!"

"You are so jealous!" her face looked way more carefree than his at the moment. And it only made him angrier looking at that smug smile.

Bree was lucky. She had found her mate right when she had turned eighteen. She both started a family and took over the Luna position for their mom before Jett was even of age yet. It made the transitioning of leadership easier if it was done that way rather than all at once. But Jett had to wait to find the other half of his soul.

"Bree!" a male voice hollered from the ground. "Are you up there?"

Oh great. On top of his crisis, he got to deal with his brother-in-law giving him the lecture of his life about bringing Bree on the roof. They must have been talking up there for quite some time, because the sun had just started to set.

"Be down in just a minute, honey!" Bree yelled back at him.

"What do you mean, in a minute?!" he yelled back. "You shouldn't be up there at all! Is Jett there?!"

"He found his mate!"

"Bree!" Jett shouted at her. "What the fuck?!"

"What?" she asked. "It's something to celebrate! I can't wait to meet him. I mean, he's another alpha, so he may not be adorable like I thought you were going to be mated with. But this is going to be so much fun!"

"Wait," they both turned to see that Alex had climbed up on the roof. He probably got too curious about what they were talking about and started climbing as soon as he heard yelling. "You found your mate?"

"You know," Bree kept on rambling without even stopping to answer his question. "I'm a bit upset that you got to see him before I did, by the way." She said to Alex. "Lunas should have top priority of getting to see who the Alpha's mate is going to be."

Alex looked at Jett, confusion in his eyes for a second. Then, like a gear slowly coming back to life and turning, he could see his friend start to figure out his dilemma.

"Oh shit!" Alex said. "Shiro's your mate?!"

"Shiro?" Bree put her hand on her chin. "Now why does that sound familiar?"

"Oh man!" Alex huffed out a laugh. "The Moon Goddess must be pissed or something to match you two up."

"Why?" Bree asked. Her happy demeanor faded once she saw that it wasn't just Jett who was freaking out over this. "Who's Shiro?"

"He's the next leader of the Reverence Pack," Jett answered. "He just turned eighteen yesterday."

Wait. Was that why he didn't want to shake hands with him again? The other leaders he had shaken hands with at the end of the meeting, but he just bowed at Jett.

"Well," Bree looked a bit shaken at that. "I-I mean, I'm sure he has some siblings that could take his place and he could still come to live with us here...Right?"

"He's Sakdah's only son," Jett told her. "He never took another wife after his mate died."

"Well, that changes my plans for the wedding," Bree muttered to herself.

"Bree, this is serious!" Jett yelled.

"So am I!" she argued. "Whether or not you guys are Alphas of different packs, you're each other's mates. If you don't accept that then not only are you never going to be happy for the rest of your life, but you're also subjected to the curse which we've been trying to lift for ages now!"

Dammit all! He forgot about that curse. It affected all the packs of BlackCreek, and had been around for as long as he had remembered. What was it about, you might ask?

Let's just cut a long story short and say that you should never piss off a Goddess.

"I don't even know if we're actually mates," Jett said.

"I mean," Alex snickered. "Now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen you that pissed off when you saw him with that girlfriend of his."

Jett growled at that. He hadn't wanted to think about it. That was potentially another issue that he was going to have to face. What if he didn't want to break up with her? What if he didn't want to accept his mate?

"What did he look like?" Bree ignored his growl and turned to Alex. "Is he tall?"

"Actually no," Alex smiled. "For an alpha, he's pretty short. He's kind of cute, in a quiet and reserved way. His friend though? 10/10: Best ass in the city."

"A short alpha?" Bree smiled. "That's strange, but not unheard of for the leaders of the Reverence Pack. Elder Munni's father was short and he led that pack through a pretty tough era. Although I didn't exactly think that his mate was going to be a quiet person. He always seemed to like the bubbly types better."

"I'm going to fling myself off this roof at this point," Jett muttered to himself. "You both are ridiculous."

"Look Jett," she said. "If you want to be absolutely positive that he's your mate, even though we all know that he is at this point, then there's one surefire way."

"What is it?"

"Touch him," she answered. "That's the one thing that can't be hidden. Just grab his arm or something and you'll know right then and there whether he's the mate that you've waited for your whole life."

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Alex smacked his hands together and rubbed them. "Are we going back to the school tomorrow then? Because I have to see this!"

"Alex, you just want to drool over his friend."

"And keep my best friend from trying to murder his mate's girlfriend," Alex said. "That's important."

"I'm not going to kill her," he rolled his eyes. "That would be ridicu-"

He cut his sentence short when he felt a pain in his heart. He put his hand over it as a means of trying to get it to go away. It wasn't like it was that bad. But it was enough to throw him off and make him lose balance.

"Jett!" Alex caught him before he fell off the roof. "Bree, get your husband up here! I'm gonna need help getting his heavy ass down!"

He wanted to stop him and tell him that he was okay with getting down on his own. But he felt as if he was winded at the moment. Whatever this pain was, it had completely shocked his whole body.

He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, completely tuning out the sounds and movements around him. The best way to get rid of pain was to let it run its course throughout the body. Jett let the pain overtake his body, reaching to every corner of his mind to stay calm through it all. He had seen his father do this once. On the outside it looked like he was almost in a coma. He had told Jett that it was the best way to take control over the body. Instead of fighting it, you redirected it, until it reached your limbs and left your body.

The pain didn't stay for long. It turned into heat and set his whole being ablaze. But even that merely lasted a second. When it was done, and his breathing calmed he finally opened his eyes again.

"Jett!" Alex looked at him worried. "You okay, man?"

Jett groaned and rubbed his face. He was on the ground now. It seemed like they had laid him down on his back.

"Yeah," he told him.

"What just happened?" Bree asked. She looked like she had already been running around to try and help in whatever way she could. "Stay still, Jett. The doctors on her way."

"I don't need one," Jett sat up. "It's gone now."

"What was it?" Alex asked. "It looked like you were about to have a fucking heart attack!"

"It wasn't that," he shook his head. Then he looked up at the sky. It was night now, and the moon had decided to show its face from behind the clouds. The white light shined down brightly on all of them. The way it glowed was ominous as the fog lay stagnant around them. It seemed almost like it was trying to tell him something. Something that was important.

"What's going on, Jett?" Bree had knelt down and was rubbing on his arm at the moment. She looked scared.

"The moon," he said. He was covered in his own sweat at the moment. It only made the glimmer of the moonlight brighter. "I think that was some sort of message from the Moon Goddess. I don't know what she's trying to say, though."

"We haven't done anything to invoke her rath in generations," Bree said.

"I'm not sure whether this is her being angry," Jett told her. He was sure that the pain would have lasted much longer if it was that. He wished that she could just speak or something, though, rather than doing all of this.

The reason why the Valor pack had always been so keen to their wild side was due to the moon. The more in touch with your wolf, the easier it is to listen to what the Moon Goddess is trying to say. While the other packs tried to do this in other ways, the Valor pack made a habit out of making their warriors stay in their wolf forms for long periods of time so that they wouldn't lose touch with the one who made all of them. For the ones who were still in school, it would be during their summer break that they would be forced to be in their wolf form.

Since Jett and Bree were trained to be Alpha and Luna at a young age, they had to be in their wolf forms for almost every one of their summers as kids. To be in the wilderness and learn the forest that they all called home. Jett remembered the rare nights where the moon would shine down on him. He swore he could hear the softest of voices blowing through the wind.

"It's a warning," Bree said. He turned to see that she had been watching the moon as well. "She warns to not forget the past."

"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Alex asked. "We're supposed to lock ourselves in the library for the next two weeks?"

"No, dickweed," Bree rolled her eyes. "It means that we need to think about our actions."

"Do you think it has anything to do with those hunters?" Jett asked.

"That's not what we were talking about last," Bree shook her head.

What were they talking about last? He had gotten so caught up in the pain and then the bright moon that he had completely forgotten what they were discussing before all of this. It felt like the fog was going into his brain at this point.

"Wait," Alex interrupted the silence. "Is this about the curse then?"

"The curse?" Jett looked at him. "There's no chance. No one in our pack has been inflicted with the curse in almost three generations!" They had prided themselves in that. They taught all of their children to accept their mates no matter what they were or who they were, and accepted all of their members, no matter what their preferences might be. They were the only ones in BlackCreek that had been able to keep from getting the curse for as long as they did.

"But you were just talking about how it was impossible that you were Shiro's mate!" Alex argued. "And Shiro's definitely hiding it if he was hiding his scent from you."

"He's got a point, for once," Bree said.

"I wasn't denying him, though," Jett told her. "I just wasn't sure if he was."

"I'd consider this a definite 'yes' from the Goddess herself," Bree smiled at him. "I think you're going to need to talk to him sooner than you thought."

"Ooo!" Alex changed from serious to excited in a matter of seconds. "I'm helping with the break up plan for his girlfriend!"

"I don't even know how this is going to work with us being mated, though," Jett got up. "I mean, we're both going to need to be in our territories most of the time so that we can lead."

"So, you get a house in the city," Alex shrugged. "It's not like you're going to be far anyway. Our territories are right next to each other."

"Wait!" Bree squealed. "That would make for the perfect wedding spot!"

"The city?"

"No!" she slapped Alex's arm. "The forest! We could have it right on the territory line as a symbol of peace for both our packs! Oh! I'm getting so many ideas!"

"Don't I get a say in this?" Jett asked as they headed for the door of the building. Bree was always like this when she found out that someone found their mate.

"No, because you have the worst taste when it comes to fashion and design."

"Bree!" Her husband yelled for her again. He could hear some crying babies coming from the inside of the house. "Can you stop planning a wedding for your brother and give me a hand?"

"Be right there dear!" she yelled back to him. Before she could walk in, Jett stopped her.

"No one is to know about this," Jett told her. The way he said it made it seem like an order. "That goes for you too, Alex."

"But we're going to have to move quickly with the curse starting," Bree said.

"The curse is only if I deny him as my mate," Jett told her. "I don't want the rest of the pack to know until I tell them, okay?"

"Why?" she asked. "Do you think he'd reject you?"

Oh jeez, what a horrible thought. Jett didn't know what that would turn into if he got rejected. He couldn't think about that at the moment, though. He needed all the confidence that this would work out that he had.

"I don't want anyone harassing him," Jett told her. "I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. We'll see what happens then."

Bree looked a little upset that she couldn't tell the whole world about him finding his mate. She was always such a gossip. But, after a second of silence, she nodded her head.

"Fine," she said. "Just don't take your time with this, Jett. You're the leader. We need you to have a clear head."

"I know, Bree," he sighed. He looked back up at the moon that was still shining down on them. "I know."

He had been searching for his mate for six long years. And now, after all this time, the Moon Goddess decided to give him one of the most challenging mates of all.

Jett went inside after that, splitting off from the ones he had been talking to for most of the day. It was going to be a long, restless night.