Chereads / Metamorphosis: A cocoon of secrets / Chapter 24 - And, the election winner is...

Chapter 24 - And, the election winner is...

Alpha Jackson was chosen to facilitate as he was not a candidate in the running for the election. In theory, any Alpha of a pack in the province could be a candidate. But in reality, it didn't work like that. The Alphas of larger packs always had a higher workload, and some packs with alliances would rally together to vote for a particular wolf they were allied with.

As it turned out, there was five Alphas currently running for the position; one was my father. Father is the Alpha of the largest pack in our province. Our pack has a large territory in a semi-rural, semi-urban area. I felt confident that our Alpha would be the runner-up at least.

Since many Alphas were already rallied around one of the five Alpha candidates. The point of the meeting was to persuade others to change their opinions. The winner had to be agreed upon by a certain percentage of the Alphas. The candidates would all give a speech about why they should be chosen. At the end the voting would happen.

I knew it would be a long night, as we would not be able to leave until the matter was decided.

Alpha Jackson just finished the opening speech and called the first Alpha up on stage to speak. I noticed the order the other four were standing in, noting at this rate, Father was third onstage.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. When I looked in that direction, I saw Kelly. It was clear just by looking at her that she wasn't paying attention to events. It looked like she was deep in thought, as her hands slowly worked on shredding her copy of the paper program of how the evening was organized.

By the time the second Alpha started his speech, there was nothing left of her paper program. I had to do something. Maybe she would talk to me over mind-link about it?

'Hey, Kelly' I thought.

She visibly started. 'Oh. Hey.' She thought back.

'Um…you seem to have something on your mind, and it isn't that onstage Alpha's speech.'

'Yeah. I just keep worrying. I mean, I found my mate, but that whole scene wasn't a very good start. That didn't go how I thought it would.' Her thoughts drifted off into silence for a moment. 'I haven't even properly spoken to him yet. I don't know his name and he doesn't know mine. My inner wolf is going crazy here, just to get closer to him…'

Kelly turned her head in his direction and found he was also looking at her. As she caught his eye, she blushed and then lowered her eyes coyly, before smiling.

I looked away from Kelly to the stage where the Alpha was finishing up his speech. Soon it would be Father's turn.

I felt a tap on my knee. I looked to my right to see Kyle pointing at the floor at my feet. I looked down. I had dropped my evening clutch. Kyle bent and retrieved it and as he handed it to me our hands touched. I noticed how much warmer his hand was than mine. My skin always felt cold. I gently took the clutch from his grip. "Thank you" I whispered.

At the sound of Father's voice on stage, I pulled my attention away from Kyle. Our Alpha wouldn't let any of us hear his speech before tonight, with the only exception his mate.

At the beginning of his speech, I thought he was doing well. A few minutes in, he spoke about the importance of the position, and how much we needed a strong, reliable, and experienced leader.

Then, I started to feel weird. It was like my body was warning me that something was wrong, but I couldn't see any danger. I looked around, but everything seemed ok. No one else seemed to be bothered by any sudden, strange feeling. What was going on? The entire room felt too hot. The walls felt like they were getting closer, and the room had less space in it.

Unable to take it anymore, I threw my evening clutch onto Kyle's lap and hurried away from him to the left, excusing myself as I went.

Free of the seating area, I made a dash for the exit of the room. I kept hurrying along, out of the building and along a path that led towards the gardens. Thankfully, I found a few bushes to hide behind, as I partially unzipped my black dress. Now, with enough of my upper back bare, I shifted.

I only partly shifted; allowing a pair of large bat wings to extend from my shoulder blades. I waited, trying to sense if there was anyone around before I lifted off the ground. I flew up into a tree and perched myself on a sturdy looking tree branch. Unfortunately, I couldn't go any higher up, as the upper branches wouldn't hold my weight. I was only nine feet off the ground.

As I sat there, I pondered over why I had felt the way I had in the meeting room. I had never felt like that before. Suddenly, I heard a rustling in the grass.

I turned to look in the direction that the noise came from. Further along the path of the garden, a man in his 30's came into view. He was dressed in suit pants and a dress shirt. There was something about him… then I saw the tell-tale outline flicker. A shifter! He stared intently to his right.

Out from under the small clump of trees came a familiar woman. She was the shifter from the bookstore, the one who had fought us over the book. They walked toward the other and it was clear they were having a conversation without speaking.

'What are they mind-linking about?' I wondered.

It also crossed my mind that they clearly didn't know I was here and that I wanted to keep it that way.

'He did it! Dad won!' Kyle's mind-link cut through my thoughts. 'Where are you anyways…you left in such a hurry. Are you ok?'

I ignored him. 'Good news is, Father won.' I thought to myself. 'More good news, maybe I can shed some light on this book mystery.'