Faultlessly good looking in that Latino, pretty boy kind of way with far too handsome a face. He’s over six feet of muscle and radiates aggression without trying and is a rare black furred wolf on turning, one of the largest among us. I think the one time he actually acknowledged my existence was the day he pushed me out of his way in passing. I tripped in front of him in the corridor to the great hall, and he didn’t bat an eye or miss a step in shoving me back aggressively, like I was a lightweight piece of trash. All the girls laughed at me when I landed on my ass and skidded back into the trashcan and I’ve made sure to never get in his way again.
Not that we have much time in the same place. I live in the orphanage and go to the school nearby that was built purely for our kind, away from ‘normal’ people. He was ahead of me by one year, so we didn’t really cross paths in all that time, and since he lives with his pack on the south side of the mountain, only coming to the shadowy north when required, I never see him or any of his subordinates. Like all the rest of the people who avoid the ‘Rejects’.
Our people all moved and convened nearer the mountain from all surrounding areas after the great war. Keeping close to stay protected and no one ever left again. His father is the unofficial Dominant Alpha and likes to check in with all on the mountain when he sees fit. Since Colton graduated school, we only see him when by his father’s side for official visits. Lording over their newfound kingdom of obedient and submissive packs, keeping law and order.
Rumor has it the vampires have been brewing and gathering for several months, maybe even years, to regain numbers and launch a new war on our kind. We always knew they would. I mean we won the war, but we didn’t defeat them in the way we wanted. Many survived and fled and have been out there for almost ten years, recovering from it and licking their wounds. It’s been quiet for so long, eerily so, but there is so much unease and unrest in the air that the packs called together a meeting a month back to decide the fate of our future. Trouble stirring and we could all feel it, our senses on high alert and that vibe that something huge is coming. They think a coming together to create one pack and one unity is the answer to a brewing war. Not that it changes much, as we have been living almost that way for a decade.
We were never united before under just one Alpha though. We fought as separate packs and it almost wiped us out. There was no leadership as a whole and it meant packs like mine, known for peaceful living and farming, were almost annihilated. Many of our kin never returned and those who did, were forever changed. Those like me who lost everyone; my parents, grandparents, uncles, and my brother… we are shunned by people who like to pretend it never happened. My family were lost, none of them came back and therefore in the eyes of the pack hierarchy … my bloodline is weak. They don’t want to claim us as their kind anymore and they sure as hell don’t want us procreating and spreading our genes to future wolves.
Warriors came home. The weak did not.
We were never ready for it.
They were farmers, they were peaceful, and had never had to fight in their lives. Not all wolves are savage killing machines, or feral beasts, like human legends and stories dictate. Some are quiet, land loving people, who never want to experience the thrill of a hunt or the warm blood of another being in raw savagery. In a whirlwind of months, we were dragged into a battle to the death and children were left in the care of the old and frail, or the pregnant.
We waited endlessly to find out who of our loved ones would come home to us. Until one lone night, the people who cared for me in their absence, the last of the Whyte’s who were too vulnerable to follow them, were slaughtered by invading vampires in our own homes on the far edge of the farmlands, and I was a lone survivor who was then shunted to the orphanage.?The events of that night are so foggy and hazy, I don’t really remember it at all, or why I was even spared. I was just a child.
I still remember the agony of the day I watched others return in masse, the battle truly over with the vampires in retreat, and no one, not a single person from my bloodline came home. An entire pack, of more than forty people I called my own, they were all gone, everything I knew…. Every single last one of them. I was all alone.
There is no pain compared to that of an eight-year-old child learning everyone she ever loved and was protected by, were never coming home for her. My security was shattered and my future dead and all I have known since was the isolation and solitude of being one of the many who were thrown here to rot.
So now here we are, a house full of teens who bear the only living connection to our past loved ones. A mixed bunch of leftovers, but no one in the packs will bond to us for fear of producing weaker offspring. It’s all about dominance in our world and power, standing, and ability. DNA is everything.?They call us the Reject Pack which sums up exactly why we are overlooked.
We don’t belong to anyone anymore, even though by rights we should be part of the united wolf community, this new singular pack, we are bonded by location after all. We’re not though, they see us as cursed children and deny our mere existence, throwing us to the dark shaded side of the mountain so they don’t have to see us. This house is the only home we know now and the people who care for us do so in duty, but not love. They’re afraid we curse them by proximity.
It’s forbidden to abandon a pack child, even if they come from a shamed bloodline. The fates and traditions have laws and rules from old that we have to abide by and abandoning the vulnerable is abhorrent. So, we are given a home, shelter, food, and education. Basic care in the understanding that upon our Awakening, we get to leave. Severed like a rotting limb.
We can go out, find our own path, and fend for ourselves. Turning gives us gifts and ability to go it alone. Find a pack who want us if that is even possible. Solves their problem and shirks off any responsibility they have for us. Which sucks if you happen to turn at a young age while caught here with us.
So, that’s where I am now. Just a mere four hours before we have to climb to shadow rock for the full moon and I’ll transform for the first time of my life. Changing from child to woman and my gifts will manifest along with my first emerging of my full wolf self and whatever that will look like. Not that I have any clue what those will be, if any at all. Not all of us have a special gift and it’s unlikely I will. My parents never talked of theirs.
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