The Alpha Female

It was a cool morning, the sun was just beginning to rise above the horizon. It cast a golden yellow and orange light over the tall mountains. The birds chirped too, waking up with the rising sun to begin a day of flying across different plains in search of food. Carla wanted to wait a few minutes so she could watch and be immersed in the beauty of the sun's rising. It had been her favorite thing to do since she grew up with her pack on this side of the world, in the tall rocky mountains of Denver, Colorado. She wanted to watch the sun because it sure wasn't going to be too sunny soon, signs of winter coming were everywhere. Knowing she was going to be late for school if she spent an extra minute dazzled by the beauty of the yellow sun, she let it go. The air was misty and chilled, and a hissing sound could be heard not far away. Her stomach growled loudly and at that instant, she remembered that she hadn't had anything to eat the night before. Times were hard and prey became harder to come by. The pack did what it could to survive, and that included feeding on insects and beavers, and little rabbits caught here and there. They sometimes ate nuts and berries too, but raw meat from animals they tore open themselves, dripping with warm blood, was the pack's all-time favorite. Nothing else could beat that, not even a thousand berries or nuts.was Carla sniffed around, taking her muzzle close enough to the hissing sound. There was nothing there, no scent of blood or anything fleshy to eat. She only found a few beetles which she ate in a hurry and was off to school. Everyone else was still asleep; Papa, Mama, her sisters, and even Uncle Dylan. While Papa and Uncle Dylan had spent the night hunting for a deer they never got to find, the others had picked berries and killed a little rabbit which was barely enough to go around. She had let her sisters have her share. Carla wanted to help but she didn't know how, the famine was getting tough with each passing day. She hoped things would get better soon, with the coming of winter, which was when the prey was unable to get far in the deep snow and could be easily caught. She was soon off to school, covering a lot of distance in a little time on all fours. She was a runner, all werewolves were. They needed the skill to trap food from escaping if they were ever going to survive out there in the mountains. It would soon be the break of dawn, after which she would be completely human again, at least for a few hours before the next midnight, unless she let her anger throw her off guard. She needed to make use of her paws before they became hands and feet, running in leaps and bounds if she was ever going to make it to school in time. While the pack dwelt in the rocky mountains, Carla had chosen to go to school quite far from home, in a small neighborhood in Denver. All she needed to do was get close enough, right before the transformation would take place, during which she had to make sure she was out of human sight. After that, she would simply walk in through the school gates a regular teenage high schooler, as though she only lived next door and didn't need to take the school bus. Not like anyone knew where she lived, no one knew or cared to know. She was also not willing to tell. She didn't have any friends anyway, partly because she was too afraid she'd one day get upset enough to expose herself, and partly because everyone else in her class saw her as an introverted, mixed-race weirdo. No one wanted to be associated with a weirdo, it just didn't seem cool, so they all stayed clear of her. Some others wouldn't stay clear, and it was not because they wanted to be her friends. They were the toughest and most popular girls at school, bullies who thought that her narrow eyelids were hilarious, they called her curly hair noodles and made fun of it. They were the ones that taunted and bullied her every single day of school until she began to see them in her dreams too, as she slept in the faraway mountains. As if being isolated wasn't enough, she was constantly their object of mockery. Pure humans were cruel and terrible to her. She had no doubt some of them behaved more like animals than animals themselves. Was this why Mama and Papa had decided instead to camp in the mountains and live their lives away from the town? Their pack was an endangered species, gray werewolves living in the Northern mountains of Denver, Colorado. There were not many packs of werewolves like theirs these days, and the famine usually drove away a few in different directions in search of food. Some had gone out of town, finding some way to hide their wolf-like natures at night from preying on human eyes. But Mama and Papa had decided to keep the pack together in the mountains instead. They called it home. They didn't want to leave their home. Papa had confessed to wanting to avoid the hustle and bustle of life in the town, even though he and Mama had once lived in that same place, met and fallen in love as high school sweethearts. The harsh treatment from the purely human people was beginning to make Carla think that there was more to why her parents chose to stay in the mountains. They were most likely doing it to keep her and her sisters safe. Safe from a whole lot of things. But was that all there was to life? Hiding away within the boundaries of "safety"? Carla wanted more, she wanted to see the world outside the rocky mountains. She wanted to experience every bit of what it meant to be human. After all, she was a werewolf and not just a wolf. She wanted to go to school and be amongst kids her age, see how they behaved, dressed, ate, laughed, and talked. She wanted to attend parties at night, and at least stay around before midnight struck and she would be transformed, even though she knew Mama and Papa would skin her alive.