The Messenger( Iva) novel Chapter 2

II Dinner Invitation

When Iva returned home from school, tired from training, classes, and the weight of thoughts she didn’t dare voice, the front door opened before she even reached for the handle, and her mother, Rana, appeared with that familiar soft smile that always made the world feel slightly less cruel.

“Iva, sweetheart, you’re home,” Rana said warmly, pulling her into a gentle hug that smelled faintly of jasmine and the herbal oils she used at the pack infirmary. “You look exhausted. Long day?”

“You could say that,” Iva murmured into her shoulder, letting herself soak in the comfort for a moment before they stepped inside.

Rana had always been her safe place, a warmth that tried—silently, relentlessly—to compensate for her father’s coldness.

It wasn’t that her mother didn’t love her mate; she did, fiercely and loyally, but she loved Iva just as strongly, and sometimes that love seemed to stretch her too thin, caught between the duty of a mate and the heart of a mother.

They sat in the kitchen, Rana slicing vegetables for dinner while Iva perched on a stool, dropping her backpack to the floor with a thud.

“You’re thinking again,” Rana said softly without turning around, her hands moving gracefully over the cutting board. “I can always tell.”

“Just school things,” Iva said, though her voice betrayed more.

Rana paused, glanced over her shoulder, and the gentle lines around her eyes tightened with concern. “Did something happen?”

Iva hesitated, her fingers tracing the edge of the table before she finally spoke.

“Lori’s already applying to medical schools… Everyone’s planning their futures and I… don’t even know if I’ll be allowed to go anywhere.”

Rana exhaled slowly, as if the weight of that truth pressed on her heart too. “Iva…”

“I talked to you about it,” Iva said quietly, “and you said you supported me, but that Dad’s opinion would be the deciding factor. And when I tried speaking to him…”

She let out a shaky laugh that held no humor. “He barely listened. He just scoffed, said college was a waste of money, and walked away.”

Rana’s jaw clenched, a rare flash of resentment crossing her normally serene face. “Your father can be… stubborn,” she said carefully, though her eyes were filled with apology. “But I promise you, I will try again. You deserve options, Iva. You deserve a future you choose for yourself.”

“I don’t know if the Moon Goddess agrees, otherwise I would have been a boy who could become the next Gamma… but instead… it is just…me,” Iva whispered.

Rana set down the knife and turned fully, leaning against the counter with a sigh. “Oh, sweetheart… that’s not what this is.”

But it was hard not to think that way.

Hard not to feel punished.

Because Rana and Rhys, like many chosen couples, had only one child.

That was the silent curse the Moon Goddess had cast upon them decades ago—chosen mates would bear only a single offspring, no matter how deeply they loved each other or how desperately they tried for more.

It was the Goddess’s way of punishing their kind for abandoning their roots, for drifting too close to the human world, for ignoring sacred traditions. Only fated mates, blessed pairs united by destiny itself, could still have large, thriving families.

The children of such unions were extraordinary—superior in strength, enhanced in abilities, their wolves fiercer, faster, sharper. They were called the Elites, the highest echelon of werewolf kind, and every pack wanted more of them.

But finding one’s fated mate had become nearly impossible… or a matter of pure luck.

The Goddess had taken away the sacred ability to recognize a fated mate on sight.

Now it was blind luck… or divine intervention.

“Sometimes,” Iva murmured, “I wish fated mates weren’t so rare. Maybe Dad would have loved me differently if I’d been born a boy or had a brother.”

Rana crossed the room and cupped her daughter’s cheeks gently. “Don’t you ever think that. You are enough, Iva. More than enough.”

Iva offered a small, fragile smile, though her chest still ached.

Because the truth was harsher.

Fated mates weren’t only rare—they were nearly myth. And the last known way to reliably find them had just vanished from the world.

The Messenger.

A single werewolf blessed by the Moon Goddess every few decades with the uncanny ability to sense who belonged with whom. They could feel the thread of destiny between wolves, a gift so precious that every pack hunted for them the moment rumors of one surfaced.

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