Fated

Prologue

Jaxon

If things had turned out differently, I wouldn’t be sitting here feeling like the luckiest boy alive. Instead I’d be in another continent trying to find my way in the world. My mother didn’t want me, she’d basically had me for money and once she had spent it all, she went off to find another money maker or a new sugar Daddy. I wasn’t sure which, but one thing for sure, I really didn’t care.

At least she had the sense to go back to the UK, taking me with her before her money dried up.

Her parting words to me were, “If the wolves don’t want you, go to the nearest police station and tell them that they should call in some hunters and get rid of the wolf problem.”

I was nine, scared out of mind and completely clueless. Sure I knew about panther shifters, we’d lived with them for a while. They helped me when I was young and not in control of phasing between forms.

I say ‘helped’ like they were the good Samaritans in the world, they weren’t. They didn’t want me phasing into a panther in front of the other villagers. They locked me up and provoked me, getting me angry, forcing me to shift into my panther form, and then as time progressed and I was getting good at phasing, they changed the goal posts and upped the ante, beating me if I did phase into my panther. I learnt pretty quickly to get control. My mother had watched, told me to ‘not ruin things for her,’ like I had a choice!

I’ve been fully in control of my panther since I was four years old.

Not long before my mother decided to leave Africa, she’d got involved with one of the panther shifters, he’d treated her really nice to begin with, but he didn’t want me hanging around. He wanted my mother’s womb, and when she wasn’t able to give him what he wanted, he tired of her, but she’d tried to hang on to him promising that they would have a baby soon. When the months turned into a year, things changed. I’d heard her crying out as he hurt her. Something inside of me snapped when I heard her cries of pain. I phased into my panther and took him on. At eight, I was still just a cub. He had my head locked in his jaws in a flash. It was my mother begging and pleading with him not to kill me that finally stopped him. It was the only compassionate act that my mother had ever shown me.

On the long flight to the UK, she’d delighted in reminding me that she had ‘saved my life’ and now it was time ‘for her to live hers.’

I’d caused quite a commotion when I’d arrived on their doorstep nearly eight years ago. My mother had insisted that I be polite and that I would be okay.

Not that she’d hung around to see if they would take me in. As soon as my feet hit the pavement, she drove the hire car away, leaving me little choice but to go down the road and knock on their door.

I knew that they were angry, but for some reason, I was calm. I wasn’t half as scared as I should’ve been.

I had been thrown to the wolves, literally, feared them even. Yet even though they were wary of me, they were kind and compassionate. They’d asked me questions about my mother and about where I had been living, I told them as much as I could, as much as I dared to at the time. I’d held back on some things, I guess I’d wanted them to like me and to take me in.

Doctor Brookes and his wife Eve said that I could stay with them. They gave me a roof over my head. At first, Eve was sceptical about me living with them, but I managed to win them over. Eve could tell when I was angry or upset, she used to ask me to go to a room so that I could phase into my panther. She would lock me inside. I hated it; it reminded me of my infant years.

One day I begged Eve to leave the door open; I cried and pleaded with her. I think I somehow struck a cord with her and from that day on, she has been like a mother to me – no, better than that, my mother only had me for money.

Trevor got me interested in medicine, I’d done well with my exams, Lexie was an excellent tutor and I was an A star student, lapping up all of the information that I could, reading every book that I could get my hands on. Between Lexie and Doctor Brookes, I had done enough to get into med school.

Like I said, I was the luckiest boy alive.