The story came out in broken pieces, four years of separation from his clan and loss making his voice crack. He told her about the storm that had caught his ship four years ago—a merchant vessel he'd been traveling on, doing routine clan business along the coast. The weather had turned violent without warning, waves like mountains, wind that tore sails to ribbons. The ship had broken apart in the darkness, and he'd clung to debris for hours before washing up on this island's shore, more dead than alive.
"I tried to signal for help," Althander explained, his voice hollow. "For weeks, I built fires, created markers on the beach, anything to attract attention. But nothing came. No ships. No rescue. It was like the island didn't want to be found." He looked at Jasmine. "Then I met you. And I understood why I'd survived. Why I'd been brought here."
He'd fallen in love with her within months. A human woman, alone on an impossible island, carrying a mystery inside her that she couldn't explain. She'd told him about the energy she felt but couldn't touch, the power that had been with her since childhood, growing stronger every year. He'd recognized what she was immediately—a reservoir carrier, one of the rarest phenomena in the supernatural world.
"I should have told you what I was from the beginning," he said. "Should have explained about shifters, about the supernatural world, about what you were carrying. But I was afraid. Afraid you'd see me as a monster. Afraid you'd reject me. And selfishly, I was grateful. Grateful to be away from clan politics, from the constant hierarchy and obligations. Here, I could just be... myself. With you."
Then Jasmine had gotten pregnant, and everything had changed.
"The moment our daughter was conceived, I felt it through my shifter senses," Althander continued. "Felt her forming, felt the way your energy was responding to her presence. And I knew—I knew—what we'd created. A hybrid child. One who carried both my shifter bloodline and your reservoir of spiritual energy. Something that should never exist."
He'd been terrified, but also awed. Their daughter was a miracle, impossible and beautiful. He'd convinced himself that maybe, hidden on this island, they could raise her in peace. That the supernatural world would never need to know.
"But I underestimated the pack bonds," he said bitterly. "I thought being shipwrecked, being presumed dead, would have severed my connection to the clan. But pack bonds don't break that easily. They stretch. They fade. But they don't disappear entirely, not unless the shifter truly dies."
When Jasmine's pregnancy had progressed, when their daughter had begun to develop her abilities in the womb, the energy fluctuations had been massive. Unprecedented. And those fluctuations had resonated through Althander's weakened but still-present pack bond like a beacon suddenly flaring to life.
"The Council felt it," Althander explained. "Felt me, alive, after four years of silence. But more than that, they felt her. Felt the signature of what she was—shifter and reservoir carrier combined. They didn't understand it at first. Didn't believe it was possible. So they sent scouts. Trackers. My father led them personally."
The Silver Ridge pack had spent months trying to locate the source of the signal. The island's concealment magic had made it difficult, but their daughter's growing power had created cracks in those protections. Every time she'd practiced manipulating energy in the womb, every time she'd responded to Jasmine's emotions or Althander's voice, she'd sent out ripples that the supernatural world could detect.
"They found the island two weeks ago," Althander said. "Didn't land. Didn't make contact. Just confirmed what they were sensing. Then my father returned to clan lands and called an emergency Council session."
He'd felt it through the pack bonds—the moment of discovery, the shock, the horror, the immediate need to find them!
Once he felt that through his pack bond he knew they didn't have much time left.
Sophia, in her incorporeal form, watched all of this, feeling on edge, and anxious, like something.. big and not good was about to happen, the goddess standing in her infinite mangnificance watched the unfolding scenes with the same facial expression as always but if one looked closely enough they would see the tiniest of sadness on her face. thought you would have to be close enough to tell.
And then...
Jasmine's water broke during a lightning storm.