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Emissaries are meant to remain separate from the packs they shepherd. This is why their identities are often hidden from everyone but the alpha they guide. This is why all emissaries are trained by their own, kept away from werewolves until they are grown and ready to begin their duties. An emissary is entangled with a pack, but they are not a part of it. An emissary must always, at their heart, be a druid.
Julia grows up hearing the horror stories of emissaries who become too attached to a pack. The ones who go off the deep end, using their connection with the earth to benefit their pack instead of using it to keep the balance. She rolls her eyes at those stories when she is a child. She is the best in her family, a strong druid with a connection to the grove like no one has seen for generations. She will not be led astray by some halfling with teeth too long and claws too sharp. She is Julia Baccari, and she will not fail.
Julia meets Kali in the spring, when the wildflowers give the forest floor a riot of color and the trees of the grove sing to her with their health and abundance. She can feel the alpha approaching from miles away, the forest whispering to her about this potential threat. Julia calms the animals and the trees, stifling a giggle at her resemblance to a Disney princess as birds flutter around her head. Julia feels the power of the forest filling her like a gust of wind, readying her to battle the enemy if necessary. The forest protects her, as it always does. The grove cares for its own.
Julia pushes the power back into the ground, lets it flow naturally toward the nemeton. This alpha is not a threat. This alpha is not here to fight. This is Julia's new charge, the alpha of a prominent northern California pack whose emissary recently passed. In the way of the grove, Julia knows nothing about this alpha, not even their name. She has spent the last three days in meditation, preparing herself to enter into her role. Julia Baccari is ready.
The alpha approaches from the East, along with the rising sun. Julia insisted on a meeting at dawn, because beginnings beget beginnings. It seems important to her, in a symbolic way; the poetry of it connects a circuit in her chest, turning her heart into a live wire that floods her with energy and purpose.
The alpha crunches a few leaves as they get closer, a courtesy to a new ally. Julia feels a smile twitch onto her face momentarily. The alpha acts as if Julia is human, and not the most powerful being in this forest. The alpha may have teeth and claws, but Julia has the strength of the nemeton.
The alpha comes to a stop a respectful 20 feet behind Julia. It's another symbolic reassurance; if the alpha wanted to attack it would take mere seconds to cover the space. Julia appreciates the gesture nonetheless. Several of her brothers and sisters tell stories of their arrogant, narcissistic alphas. It appears Julia has gotten a good one.
Digging her bare toes into the earth once more to calm any nerves that might be lingering in her stomach, Julia turns toward her new alpha.
The alpha is magnificent, back lit by the pink and orange sun just breaching the horizon. She is tall, straight as an oak but flexible like a willow. Her hair flows down her back in a waterfall, and her eyes are red (like the wildflowers dotting the clearing, like the seeds of a pomegranate, like freshly spilled blood). The alpha is smiling, teeth sharp but nails blunt.
In that moment Julia thinks back to her lessons, the ones she scoffed at as a child. She remembers the stories of emissaries who become pack and turn against the grove, and she understands them. If all alphas are like this alpha, if all emissaries feel this connection zing through their chest at the sight of their AlphaPartnerEqual, she understands completely why they would betray the grove that fosters them for the wolf who makes their heart leap.
The feeling is only comparable to what she experiences in worship, the sheer power pulsing alongside her heart and flooding her veins like morphine. Julia smiles back at her alpha, letting the potency of the forest flow through her the way it is always clamoring to.
Their first meeting doesn't go the way the elders say it should. They come together on the forest floor, surrounded by wildflowers and mere feet from the nemeton. Julia feels the soul of the altar pulsing through her from where her bare back rubs on the grass. She feels the power of her alpha where she is plastered against Julia's front. They bite and claw and scratch like animals, and when it is over the alpha wraps herself around Julia and leeches all the aches and stings from her body. It is here, spooned together on a bed of wild grass next to the sacred altar of Julia’s people, that Julia hears her alpha speak for the first time and is lost to the grove forever.
"Kali," her alpha says. "My name is Kali." This is a fitting name for Julia’s alpha. The annihilator of evil and redeemer of the universe. The benevolent mother and the bringer of death. Julia turns toward her alpha, her Kali. She whispers her own name into Kali's neck, bites it into her stomach, scratches it onto her back. Julia marks this alpha as her own, hers to kiss and scratch and guide onto the path of balance. She is not one of the overconfident emissaries they tell stories about; she will keep her alpha and maintain the balance at the same time. She is Julia Baccari, and she will not fail.
Years later, Julia remembers once more the stories she was told as a child, the ones about emissaries who lost their way and abandoned the grove for the sake of their alphas. She remembers how all the stories ended: with the packs they loved too much betraying them, with the emissaries being punished for their misdeeds. She wonders, as her alpha throws her against the floor of the forest and rips claws through Julia's face, if this is her punishment for turning her back on the grove. She wonders, as her alpha walks away from her nearly lifeless body without turning back, whether all alphas turn on their emissaries in the end.
She wonders, as her alpha’s footsteps fade into nothing and her own sluggish heartbeat slows and sputters, if Kali remembers that this is the spot where they first met.