8 p.m. found Savy and me in Dad's office, sitting at the open bay window, the way we often did since we were small pups.
It was dark outside, the forests were pitch black, the brightly lit interior of the office reflected in the glass. I pushed open the window pane on my side. Savy helped me push open the window pane on the other side too.
Outside, a quiet breeze stirred every now and then, and the smells wafted in from our pack house kitchen and backyard forest. It's a familiar and calming smell, the safety of home.
I sniffed for the floury and yeasty scents of the dough for tomorrow morning's breakfast. It was the happy smell of Saturday night air, reminding me that tomorrow morning will see most of the pack's leading families at the dining hall.
"Is everyone here?" asked Dad from behind his desk.
Beta Lucas and Mrs. Beta were seated on a side sofa with Mum. Gamma Harry and his mate, Laura, were sitting on the chairs in front of Dad's desk.
Flynn was standing by the door. He looked at all the kids littered around the office—Savy and me neatly tucked in the bay window, Lizzy and Ben using the cluttered coffee table as a bench, Jonah leaning against a side counter—and answered, "Just one more."
There was a knock, and Dean popped in. "Sorry I'm late... Good morning, Alpha, Luna, Beta, Gamma..." He bowed repeatedly.
My dad waved him to stop. "It's fine, Dean. Just settle anywhere. Let's start."
Dean shuffled to the empty space next to Jonah.
Dad handed the time over to Mrs. Beta, who explained that prophetic dreams are from the Goddess. She took out a large leather-bound book. There was a frisson of excitement, almost like magic, between her fingers when she turned the pages; it shone in her eyes. Mrs. Beta was very knowledgeable about things like these.
Prophetic dreams were a gift from the Goddess, a personal message of one's destiny.
One could receive it at any point in one's life, but the most commonly recorded prophetic dreams were those before a significant change, such as the first shift, or before you met your mate, or after a traumatic experience.
Sometimes, it was a message of assurance. Like the ones before a girl's first shift—running in the forest and meeting her mate. It reassured her of her mate being there for her in life's journey.
Sometimes it was a message of guidance. This was particularly common before mating age, just giving enough clues for the recipient to recognize and sometimes even find his or her predestined soul mate. In such dreams, the details of the place and time were important.
Sometimes it was a message of instruction. This could happen anytime in a wolf's life, and it was usually significant. Such as when my dad dreamed of stepping into a classroom full of young pack wolves, rogues, humans, vampires, and warlocks sitting at their desks, waiting for him to start the class. These dreams were not so much about place and time, but the shape of things to come and the recipient's role in it.
Sometimes it was a message of testing. Most boys received this before their first shift, where they were shown a moment of their most conflicted emotions and had to choose.
I looked at Ben. "What does that mean?"
I had expected him to shrug it off, but he surprised me by answering, "If I trusted you. My test was if I trusted you."
I looked at Jonah, who was staring at the ceiling as if the answer might be found on it—and maybe it was. He said at long last, "To fight till I die and still lose everything."
That took me a while to understand. I had to put myself in his shoes and his dream before I realized it was one thing to die if your death could save your pack, but Jonah had chosen to die fighting even if he couldn't save anyone.
"Does that mean those things won't actually happen?" I asked, suddenly hopeful.
"That's hard to say," Beta Lucas said.
"The dreams are a representation of what will come," Mrs. Beta explained. "Perhaps not exactly, perhaps in a different form, a different setting..."
"But actually, yes. They will happen," Gamma Harry was more direct.
I gulped. Okay. I will never, ever leave Jonah in charge of guarding my parents. I tried to think about how to stop Ben's dream, but the best I could think of was to carry disinfectant and bandages around with me. Lame, I know.
"You have to note," Laura chimed in then, "that only what you see happen will happen, and what you don't see, you don't know."
"Like Alpha and Luna!" Jonah suddenly looked so relieved, I wanted to cry for him. "I didn't see them die."
And that was when I really did cry. But not for Jonah. For me. For my parents. I hadn't realized how much I had been holding it in.
Savy petted my back soothingly, and the tears quickly dried. Suddenly, like a silver lining in a cloud, I saw what I was looking for—the loophole, the OPTION 2: DO SOMETHING CRAZY in their dreams.
I announced, "Then technically, nobody died. Not Ben, not my parents, not even Jonah."
I pointed at Jonah. "Did you see yourself die?"
Jonah shook his head. "But Sam, there was no way..."
"But you didn't see yourself die," I persisted.
"I saw black. I think that meant I died," Jonah said.
"No," I decided then. "You're not going to die. Nobody is going to die."
It took a bit of explaining on my part, then more explaining on Mrs. Beta's part, and then even more explaining on what I meant by "do something crazy."
All the adults wore very perplexed expressions at my idea that we might not necessarily have to follow the standard dream path. My analogy of a choose-your-own-adventure book or a hidden dungeon in a computer game did absolutely nothing to improve their understanding.
Finally, however, we had a breakthrough when Lizzy managed to explain it as taking a road trip and making unexpected detours. We were not exactly abandoning the journey; we were simply stopping at the gas station for fuel and supplies.
"Not only that, we are also going to study the printed map instead of blindly following the GPS," I added. "We're going to see if we can find a better way through."
All the adults acknowledged that, while novel, this might be a possibility.
So, without further ado, here was the final interpretation of our prophetic dreams:
What we did know about these dreams was that each dream held a piece of our personal destiny.
We also knew that what we saw happen in the dream will happen. However, we wouldn't know when or how it would actually play out. For example, instead of rogues attacking in wolf form, they might be in human form. Or they might not even be rogues—just something similar.
Instead of stabbing Ben with a knife, I could, in reality, use a dagger… or whatever else, really. I would rather not think about that now… or ever, actually.
Jonah decided to point out to me that the sharper the blade, the cleaner the cut for Ben. I guess he was trying to be helpful.
Back to the interpretation: even though these were personal destinies, in reality, our destinies were often entwined. The fact that our dreams all happened on the same night confirmed that.
Furthermore, the dreams came to all the children of the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma families of our pack, meaning that these destinies pertain to our pack—and that it was our generation's turn to run.
The dreams also came before their time, indicating urgency.
My mate's dream was probably not a pre-shifting dream. It might actually have been more instructional in nature. My mate being on the stage made him a key player in what might be a gathering of a Lycan army. The many unique and individual warriors indicated that it was not an army of any single pack.
For some reason, I had been given privy access to my mate's dream. Why? That question had no answer.
The fact that my mate's dream was not a pre-shifting dream probably meant that he had already shifted and was likely older than I was—perhaps an older teen, as seen in the second dream in the woods.
And if I was seeing my mate at his current age in the forest, then there was a high chance I was also seeing him in his current condition, which was pretty bad. No further comment. There was no reason for me to remind everyone how bloody he had been.
Lizzy's dream of her mate seemed like just that—the usual pre-shift dream. He was in his wolf form, and brown wolves were everywhere! I supposed Lizzy only had those "amazing grey-blue eyes" to help her identify him, but the adults all sounded much surer that she would know at the right time. The adults were very confident of our mating bonds like that.
Ben's and Jonah's dreams were clearly indicating war or capture, and that our pack would need to train and prepare for it.
Based on their descriptions, though, it seemed that they were much older in their dreams than they were now. Both said they were taller and bigger. Jonah was in his wolf form so he was old enough to be shifted, and Ben remembered having outgrown stubble in his dream—to which Lizzy scoffed, because at this point in his life, Ben's chin was as smooth as a baby's bottom.
And there was one more thing: their dreams all triggered the night after my mate's dream, and on exactly the same night as my meeting him in the dream forest. Somehow, my mate was a huge piece of the puzzle of our pack's fate.
"Makes sense," Gamma Harry agreed. "After all, he will be our next Alpha."
"Or Luna," Beta Lucas countered.
Gamma Harry rolled his eyes. "Please. Whoever heard of a male Luna?"
Beta Lucas did not miss a beat. "No, but there are two in the next continent!"
"The next continent is a mess!" Gamma Harry waved it off.
"There are records of female alphas in our lycan history too." Mrs. Beta informed us. I had personally never read of them, but Mrs. Beta had read far more books than anyone else in our pack.
"Yah man," Beta Lucas quickly picked up the ammo his mate dropped for him, "If it's in our history, it's bound to repeat itself."
Which I did read in chapter one of my history text book, but we were missing the point.
"Beta Lucas, Gamma Harry, please," I said. "I don't think it matters right now. Whether my mate is an Alpha or Luna, we need to focus on our game plan."
"Spoken exactly like an Alpha," Beta Lucas crowed.
"Or a wise Luna to an Alpha the Goddess chose to lead such a splendid army!" Gamma Harry insisted.
He looked around the room and must have sensed our general flabbergasted expressions, because he explained, "An army of warriors from different packs is no joke! It is very hard to control! In Lycan history, an Alpha must defeat all those packs and then absorb their warriors into the army. Very hard—impossible, even!"
Suddenly everyone was a history expert, but point taken.
I had not considered it from that point of view. Gamma Harry often thought a little off-tangent from the norm. It had always been both a frustrating distraction and a surprising source of solutions.
My dad moved then, and everyone fell silent, waiting for his next words. "Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts. I need time to think about this, and I believe our planning would benefit from any new information we might be able to recall or research for now."
"Yes, Alpha," everyone chorused automatically.
"We will adjourn this meeting until Monday evening," Dad concluded.
"Yes, Alpha." The group broke into smaller clusters as people began to part.
Dad spoke with Beta Lucas. Mum talked with Mrs. Beta and Laura. Savy talked with Lizzy. Everyone was talking to someone.
I wanted to draw up a plan now. I hated not knowing what we would do. Should we not at least step up patrols, scale up our army, inspect our safe houses, or send representatives to source more information from neighboring packs? It could not be just our pack that would be affected, right? Something of this scale would easily engulf the entirety of the Green Pack lands. Were the kids in the Morning Light Pack also having prophetic dreams? What about the Lorent Pack?
I supposed we did have several years to prepare for the event, but it left me feeling edgy. I left the office to wait outside for the rest of my family, leaned against the old wallpaper, and sighed.
I needed to write everything down. I needed to rethink everything. My plan had to be more than just never asking Jonah to guard my parents, or carrying disinfectant on me in case I walked into a prison cell and found Ben chained there. Oh—I should get Ben to carry his own disinfectant and bandages. Or wear a bullet vest at all times. I was brilliant.
"Hi, Sam."
I recognized the hesitant voice immediately. "Hi, Dean."
He leaned against the wall beside me. "You didn't ask me what choice I had to make in my dream."
Well, it was not like it had anything to do with the pack's destiny. It was not even any of my business. Everyone else was dying, and he was playing his stupid guitar on stage.
I knew it was not Dean's fault what he dreamed, but I still resented how his dream completely ignored the tumultuous future of our pack.
"What choice did you have to make?" I asked roughly. I did not really care.
"I had a stage, my guitar, and a beautiful mate," Dean said.
"Uh-huh," I replied.
"And I had to choose between that dream and giving you up." Dean actually sounded conflicted, as if it had been a difficult decision for him.
"I chose my mate," he confessed sadly.
"Well, you should," I told him, my voice still hard.
"I didn't want to give you up," Dean said.
"There was nothing to give up in the first place," I replied.
"I know," Dean admitted. "But for what it's worth, I had hoped."
The conversation was becoming frustrating. I pushed off the wall and walked away. I did not have time to coddle Dean's tender heart—not now.
I wanted to save my pack, maybe even make sure my parents survived, Jonah did not die, and Ben lived past his operation under my hand—if it really was an operation. He chose to trust me. Even I would not trust myself to pull off a stomach operation.
I did not even trust myself to say the right things at times.
What if finding all the loopholes and charting a "do something crazy" path through our destinies turned out to be not only unorthodox, but a truly terrible idea?
We would not know until we tried.
But what if trying killed us?
We were all going to die anyway.
What if it killed us worse?
Hey, Goddess—how about a dream tonight? One that would show me what to do? You gave one to my mate. What about me? What was my part in this catastrophe?
Okay, let's be honest. I did not really think the Moon Goddess would give me a dream. Prophetic dreams were not like on-demand cable. And I suspected she knew that I would probably just take that dream and do something crazy anyway.
{A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.}
Huh—what? That thought had popped in from nowhere.
But yes, good point. Making a plan based on a few prophetic dreams from a single night was foolish.
What I needed was a trajectory. If the Goddess had a plan, I needed to figure out its rough direction, and then we could ride that movement. If the whole world was hurtling toward a certain point… I could not control the flow of the world around me, but I could steer my ship.
I could use the dreams as signposts. When we passed them, we might be able to navigate this life.
I got it now. My dad was right. We needed more time to study the matter.
It was not about saving Ben, or Jonah, or even my parents anymore. At this point, it was not even about saving my pack (but do not ever tell anyone I thought that). It was something bigger.
I never thought there could be anything bigger than keeping my pack safe, but now that the thought had surfaced, its existence loomed over me like a massive storm cloud.
I changed my mind, Goddess; I didn't want another dream. Prophetic dreams had been nothing but trouble.
And I especially did not want a testing dream. I didn't want to choose between my pack and some unknown, larger thing out there. Wait—I already knew my answer; I would choose my pack—no further comment.
Because as much as I wanted to help the world, and as glorious as it might be to play the hero in some unseen cosmic battle, my place was with my pack.
I was the Alpha and this pack was mine to protect.