She Wolf

3.

I wake up to the most delicious smell. My mouth waters for whatever my mom is baking in the kitchen.

I get up and start getting dressed for training.

I have training with the adult warriors of our pack every morning, even though I am not yet connected with my wolf.

My fighting abilities are advanced compared to other kids my age and I have been moving up the ranks much faster than the norm. Even faster than Marcus when he was younger.

Two years ago, I joined my parents, Alpha Stone, Marcus and the other warriors in a rescue mission. Some of the neighboring packs were faced with small-scale attacks by vampires and rogues.

The attacks started escalating a few months later and the attackers took hostages. Young, old, children, men, women, they had no set victim and it did not make sense. Our trackers tracked them to a cave a mountain rage over. When we got there, we were basically surrounded by the filthy things, but it did not take us long to work our way through them - killing one after the other. After a group of us broke through and managed to find the area where the hostages were kept, we were shocked at the sight of almost just as many humans being held captive as there were wolves. The reason being purely for feeding.

After that, random attacks on our pack started. Like the ones before, they started small, then it escalated and became more aggressive and also, like before, some of our pack members were taken hostage.

During the investigation of the previous attacks, our Intel discovered that the vampires are doing tests on the wolf hostages, trying to figure out how to permanently destroy our kind.

Obviously, we could not have that, so our trackers went out again. They found the bastards and we destroyed a large group of their clan members. The rest managed to flee.

Luckily, it's been quite quiet ever since. With the exception of finding the odd rogue when out on patrol. Life was more or less back to normal.

I head down to the kitchen to meet my mom and see what that delicious smell is. Croissants. I grab one, give my mom a quick kiss on her cheek and head out to the training grounds.

I am met by Daniel.

Daniel is Marcus' Beta and best friend. They grew up together. These guys are inseparable and together they are an unstoppable force on the battle field.

He is a good guy and since I moved here and got to know them, I have grown quite fond of him too.

I did not always live with the Stone Hill pack. When I was younger, my parents sent me to live with my mother's older brother and his family. Uncle Vince is the Alpha of the Grey Moon pack.

In the years after I was born, our pack was often under attack. With both my parents being formidable warriors, they often had to leave me with pack nannies for long periods. And after an attempted k********g on me, they made the difficult decision to send me away to safety when I was just 4. It sucked and I missed them, but my life growing up with my uncle and his family was actually great. He also has a daughter, Jenna. She is my age. And an older son, Franco.

Franco was my sparing buddy up until the day I moved back to Stone Hill and Jenna is still to this day the sister I never had. There is not another soul on this earth that knows me as well as Jenna does. We don't see each other as often as we would like, but we make sure to be there for the big stuff.

"Where is Marcus?" I ask Daniel while stretching before our run. "We made plans to kick ass this morning." I say with a smirk.

"Alpha stuff. He was up early this morning. I got a link at around 2 am. There was an attack on a border patrol. We went out, but there was nothing that we needed to do. It seemed only one wolf was knocked out but the others managed to capture the vamp. He's up in the office dealing with it now." Daniel say, trying to not look too bothered. I get a suspicious feeling he is hiding something, but I try not to think about it too much. I focus.

"Well you'll do for today then." I say to Daniel with a devilish smile. As soon as he registers what I said, his head snaps at me with a faint, worried expression across his face.

We start our run into the forest. It's still cold outside, but the cold, wet air and the smell of dirt and pine makes me feel alive and free. The pack runs in its human form. Daniel and I lead them through the forest on one of my favorite trails. It leads deep into the forest to a clearing with a big boulder and a narrow stream. As the sun rises, it shines into the clearing and directly onto the boulder.

Daniel leads the pack on but I stop and climb the huge piece of rock and sit down taking in the first morning rays. I take 5 minutes of peace and quiet before I take the long jump and continue running. I catch up with the pack quite quickly. Not that they're slow, it's just that I am very fast.

My uncle informed my parents early on that he is astonished at my unique abilities. I run faster and fight harder, even my healing abilities are faster, and that for a underage girl who has not yet met her wolf.

After our run, we come back to the training arena to find that Marcus is still not here. I can see Daniel is also finding this odd. He never misses training sessions. Curious. Our physical training starts. Daniel and I both take some hard hits - after the adrenaline starts kicking in it gets hard to know when to stop.

By the end of the session, we were both covered with dirt. Cuts and bruises everywhere.

Looking in the mirror of the locker room, I see the big cut above my eyebrow and blood smeared all over my face. I can tell this one is going to take a little longer to heal.

On my way home I put my headphones on, zoning out. My mind, however, kept wondering about the attack on patrol this morning and why something seemingly so small kept Marcus so busy. I turned the street corner, not focusing on where I was walking and suddenly hit a hard pole. I look up into two green eyes. Marcus.

But something is off - his face bearing a stoic expression. He firmly takes hold of my arms, pushing me back a little. With a raised eyebrow, he gives me a look over.

"The f**k," he says a little too loud. "what happened to you?"

"I just came from training?" ending my statement in a question. I am not sure why he seems so surprised. "Where were you?"

"Please go clean yourself off." he commands using his Alpha voice.

Okay. This is not right. He sees me looking like this every morning. Maybe not so bloody, but still.

"I..." But he cuts me off. "Go - please."

I give him a frowning look, eyeing him as I walk past him. His head is turned down. What? He is not even looking at me! What the f**k! I scream at him internally.

The only time he has used his Alpha voice on me is when we are in battle. Never before. What happened this morning?

After my shower, I take a look at the scar above my eye. It's almost completely healed. A scar like this will take at least a day to heal for other wolves. The feint red mark left should be easily covered with some make-up. No one at school will even notice.

My mom and dad are already at the pack house. So I grab my lunch and head to my car. I drive to school still thinking about this morning and Marcus acting so strange. There is definitely something going on. I am making a mental note of asking my dad tonight.