The Alpha Emperor’s Resurrection

9: Aurelia

A grown male wolf...

I read the message for the hundredth time, as if the words might offer more of a clue than they had done any other time.

The guy hadn't responded to me since I sent him the address of the hotel, and I wasn't sure if it had been a prank, but he messaged me and told me he was outside, and I sensed there was another wolf close by.

"Aurelia?" he pronounced my name wildly incorrectly, but I was too distracted to correct him; I hadn't bothered to look through the pictures on his profile, and I hadn't been expecting someone so attractive.

It was ridiculous that something so superficial had caught me off guard, but I hadn't been around other wolves much for a long time, and I had forgotten what it was like to be around men like him.

He had a pair of suitcases with him, and I highly doubted the garish pink case with designer branding was his. It made him more of a mystery to me, and I wondered whether he was traveling with a large group or if he was looking for somewhere to settle down with a Mate. He had mentioned a sister in the message he sent me, but I hadn't really thought much about who they were until I laid eyes on him.

I still didn't know what he meant by a grown male wolf, but I was willing to listen to him, at least.

"We should go to the room - I don't think this conversation is appropriate to have in public."

He shrugged, and I tried not to stare at him. He had high cheekbones, a strong jaw, full lips with a black lip ring, and his arms were both covered with monochrome tattoos. Not my usual type, but attractive nonetheless.

"Lead the way..."

I blushed - I had been staring at him.

"Right..."I murmured, and went back into the lobby of the hotel.

He sank into one of the chairs as soon as we got to the room, and picked up the room service menu.

"Do you mind?" he lifted the menu slightly. "My sister found your dad before we had eaten, I...fuck..."

He had probably noticed the shock in my eyes.

"My dad...he died a long time ago. I don't know who you found, but-"

"-you know many people who speak Latin? My sister understood enough to figure that out, and he told her to find you. I don't know who the guy is, but-"

"-there was one other wolf like me. He went missing centuries ago, but it could be him. Does he have black hair? Did he tell you his name?"

He shrugged; he was more interested in the menu than answering me.

"I don't know what he looks like. I was sent to find you, I didn't get to meet the guy. I would appreciate it if you came to figure this out in person, my sister will drive me crazy if I go back there without you."

He had mentioned his sister so much that I was beginning to question whether he was actually an Alpha. It seemed like she outranked him, or at least he treated her as his superior.

"You're trying to convince me that you're an errand boy?"

He smirked, and the way he looked at me suggested it was not the first time someone had made a comment like that.

"It's complicated."

It wasn't complicated - either he was in charge of his pack, or he wasn't.

"And I'm supposed to follow you based on what you've said?"

He shrugged again; he was infuriatingly casual about the situation, and it made me want to scream.

"I need to eat something - think you'll have made your mind up by the time I get back?"

"Get back? I thought you were going to order room service?"

And, for some reason, the thought of him leaving me to grab something to eat was disappointing.

"You seem to need time to think about this, and I'm clearly distracting you."

"Distracting me?" I felt my cheeks burning. I couldn't argue with him, he was distracting me. "I'm not distracted, this is just... it's a lot. There are things you don't know."

Things like the feeling that had drawn me to Rome in the first place, and the encounter my mother had with the Priestess in the temple of Nemesis.

Things that meant I hadn't immediately dismissed his suggestion as impossible or ridiculous.

"Are you going to enlighten me?"

I narrowed my eyes, but he was chewing on his lip piercing and staring at the menu again.

He had asked me that to frustrate me.

"Why don't you tell me what you know about me?"

"You're an attractive blonde and you're older than you look," I was about to chastise him, but he was still thinking, and I gave him a chance to offer a less superficial assessment. "I didn't exactly stalk your social media, but from what I can tell, you travel a lot. I've never heard of you, so you don't interact with other wolves - if you do, you don't tell them the truth about yourself."

"Do you know who my father is?"

I assumed he hadn't told the man and his sister, if it really was him. They would have dismissed him as a madman if he had tried to convince them he was a former Emperor of Rome.

"Should I? Was he an important Alpha or something? Because I'm not big on history, but my sister— "

"— I'll take that as a no then..." I looked at him quietly for a moment before I decided to test him a little. "He wasn't just an Alpha, he was the Emperor of Rome."

Robin blinked several times as what I had said sunk in, then smiled.

"So you're significantly older than you look, then," he laughed.

"I'm a little over two thousand years old."

"Impressive," he responded, but he was more interested in food than anything else.

"You're really not going to question that? You don't expect me to prove it?"

"My sister is a White Wolf, and they aren't supposed to exist anymore. I was raised around extraordinary people, I am used to extraordinary things."

A White Wolf... that explained why he seemed to feel he had less status than her.

"If your sister is a White Wolf, I have heard of your pack."

He closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled; for some reason it bothered him that I had heard of them.

"I'm sure our reputation precedes us."

His voice was dripping with sarcasm, but he wasn't wrong; he came from a pack known for their strength, and for the fact they were more powerful than the majority of our kind were now. The fact he seemed to be more powerful than any of the wolves I had encountered for a long time wouldn't mean anything in that pack.

"You're trustworthy," I shrugged, and he looked visibly relieved. He had been expecting my opinion of him to change drastically, but I knew better than to judge him based on his pack. "I'll go with you - I don't know what I will do if it is my father, but if you're right, I can't abandon him."