My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

Zosime was alone with Andreas in his office heating water for blooming tea. The continued absence of Marius was slowly wearing away Andreas' stoic exterior, and she hoped the tea would calm him for the conversation he had called her for.

Even Zosime was curious about what had caused Marius to disappear. No one had an answer for it, and there was no trace of the man who was once the most formidable lycan in the pack.

While the water heated, Andreas paced behind his desk muttering to himself and stopping occasionally to flip through papers. Graeme was now a growing concern. Damon had phoned Andreas to tell him about the new resolve their young would-be Alpha now seemed to be displaying this morning, which meant they were teetering on the brink of Graeme taking power.

If Graeme stayed in the pack house or even on pack land much longer with that posture of dominance, the pack members would fall in line with him like dominos. He needed Graeme out of their fur long enough that the human girl's downfall could be arranged.

If the elders could reveal Ms. Cady as a threat rather than a promise of renewal, then they could chip away at the confidence everyone instinctively felt for Graeme. And with others doubting Graeme, he would hopefully return to doubting himself.

There was also the issue itself of Eliade rooting around nearby. It made Andreas' skin itch. Eliade was abandoning their search for now, but there remained a chance that they would return. They would never actually find the lycan territory, he knew. The hatred for the witches was strong among the elders, but the security of their centuries old witch-made border stood the test of time.

Still, having an entity like Eliade sniffing so close put Andreas on edge. Not to mention that there was a witch within Eliade's ranks—specifically a powerful Winter. The Winter witches. Andreas groaned to himself and raked a hand down his face.

But it didn't matter. He hated the Winters, but no Winter—no witch, regardless of how loathsome or powerful they were—would reveal other lycans to humans or even to other creature communities. Andreas knew this.

Penelope may be working with Eliade in some capacity, but it would never be with full disclosure about where her abilities came from. And it would never be detrimental to lycan kind. There was no benefit. It would initiate war—war between humans and lycans, war between lycans and witches. And if the witches were anything, it was loyal to their heritage and to their roots. To a fault. Andreas snorted. They were bleeding fucking hearts is what they were. That's what made them such an easy target.

In fact, a decade ago when the elders had decided to remove Derek and Genevieve from power in order to pursue an opportunity that aligned with their own interests, Pearce was the one who was skeptical that the witches could be framed for the Alpha and Luna's deaths.

There was prejudice against the witches because they were without wolves, sure. They were even feared in many cases because of the remarkable abilities they held that no regular lycan could understand, but the witches were never violent. They rarely caused any problems at all. On the contrary, everything they did was to help their lycan counterparts. And, above all of that, they were beloved and protected by the Alpha and Luna. Why would the witches be behind a plot to kill them?

But Andreas' argument was that the fear of the alyko witches would win out over logic, particularly following the immense fear and panic that being without both an Alpha and Luna would cause. And he ended up being right.

The elders probably could have avoided the drama of burning the accused, because that trauma seemed to still linger amongst the pack—even though many participated in the frenzy of hate surrounding it. But it had been done to stoke that fear and hatred, and they just had to deal with the horror that remained. In the wake of the event, it was a clean slate for their kind. Or at least that was still the goal.

Andreas emerged as a kind of savior, and Pearce had been less likely to question Andreas ever since, securing Andreas' authority among even the elders. Auden just followed along like he always did.

Since that time, Andreas had enjoyed being what amounted to interim Alpha of the Hallowell pack. He didn't have the strength. He didn't have the Goddess-given power in his very words to make the pack members submit like Graeme would, but he had his reputation as the one who saved the pack from the traitorous witches amongst them and avenged Genevieve and Derek Hallowell.

But Andreas wasn't so removed from the people not to realize how the pack had been hobbling along ever since. It set his teeth on edge. That the very witches who were responsible for the Alpha and Luna's murders, according to the elders' well-crafted history, could leave such a large, aching hole made Andreas resent them more, if that were possible. Even the witches deaths couldn't fully alleviate him from the magical sway they had on the people—his people.

This restlessness and yearning for the witches who had passed and for their Alpha and Luna wasn't something Andreas knew how to address. All he could hope for was that the absence of witches amongst his people would eventually mean they would be forgotten or flattened between the pages of history—a history in which they were not even written.

But Graeme's human mate threatened that. Graeme threatened that. And now the proximity of an organization like Eliade with a Winter witch in their ranks made everything that much more tenuous.

Andreas growled to himself. No, it didn't matter. Penelope Winter was not a threat, and neither was Eliade. If the elders could just take care of the human, the shadow of Eliade looming over them would disappear.

Eliade had no awareness of lycans, and it would stay that way. Right now, the purpose of the human virus was to reduce the human population and strengthen a select few—no one was looking for mythical creatures or the source of folklore. No one was looking for a lycan pack in the forest.

The scientists believed in science—in the genetic variability and diversity they had come to find among their own species. That's what witches like Penelope were to them—sources of diversity. Human diversity. No virologists or Eliade researchers were searching for monsters. They were seeking to create them.

Instead of worrying about Eliade, Andreas had to keep his focus here—on the fucking human. On Graeme. On bringing them both down.. Somehow.