Hams: The She-Wolf

The chanting started before I even entered the clearing. "Wolfless. Wolfless. Wolfless." Eighteen years. For eighteen years I had lived in the Shadowfang Pack as the wolfless freak. The forbidden daughter. The girl whose mother had betrayed the pack and whose father was a dead Alpha from a fallen pack. My name is Hams. And tonight was supposed to be my shifting ceremony. Every werewolf shifts for the first time on their 18th birthday. Every werewolf except me. I stood in the center of the ceremonial stones, my knees shaking, wearing the white dress all unshifted girls wear. The entire pack was there, watching. Whispering. "She will never shift. Her blood is cursed." Alpha Blackwood stood in front of me, his face cold. "Hams of Shadowfang. It is time." I closed my eyes. I reached inside me, searching for her. For my wolf. I had never felt her, never heard her voice, but tonight the Moon Goddess was supposed to bless me. Nothing. Silence. I pushed harder. My nails dug into my palms until they bled. "Please," I whispered, not to the Alpha, but to her. "Please come out." Then I heard a laugh. Not in my head. Behind me. Lila. My step-sister, perfect, beautiful, already shifted last year into a stunning white wolf, walked forward with her friends. "Oh, look. The little human is trying to pray." The crowd laughed. Tears burned my eyes. "I can shift. I know I can." Alpha Blackwood's expression hardened. "Enough. The Moon Goddess has rejected you. You are wolfless. You will serve the pack as an Omega. Take off the dress." That was the ritual humiliation. When a wolf fails to shift, they are stripped of their ceremonial dress and given Omega rags. My hands trembled as I reached for the zipper. This was it. My life was over before it even began. I would be a servant. No mate. No wolf. Nothing. And then it happened. The wind stopped. A deep, terrifying growl ripped through the entire forest, so powerful that every single wolf in the clearing, including the Alpha, dropped to their knees. The birds stopped chirping. The air turned to ice. From the dark line of trees, a figure walked out. He was massive. Over six foot five, with black hair, golden eyes that glowed in the dark, and a scar that ran down his neck. He wore all black, and his power... his power was suffocating. It was pure Alpha power, but ten times stronger than our Alpha's. The air smelled like pine and storm. Ryan. Alpha Ryan of the Nightclaw Tribe. The most feared Alpha in the entire Northern Territory. The Alpha who never takes a Luna. The Alpha who kills Rogues with his bare hands. The man they call the Demon Alpha. What was he doing here? His golden eyes scanned the crowd, uninterested, until they landed on me. Standing in the center, half-stripped, bleeding, crying. Our eyes met. And the world exploded. A jolt, like lightning, shot through my entire body. My spine arched. My heart stopped. A voice, a voice I had never heard in 18 years, suddenly screamed inside my head, so loud I almost collapsed. "MATE!" My wolf. My wolf had woken up. But Ryan... Ryan's eyes widened. His nostrils flared. His entire body went rigid, and his claws shot out. Then his face twisted into pure, absolute disgust. "No," he snarled, his voice like thunder. "It can't be." He looked at me like I was the most revolting thing he had ever seen. "You're my mate?" he growled, stepping closer, his power choking me. "The wolfless freak is my fated mate?" The entire pack gasped. I couldn't breathe. Fated mates? The Moon Goddess had fated ME, the wolfless girl, to HIM, the Demon Alpha? Ryan leaned down, his golden eyes full of rage, his breath on my face. Everyone could hear him. "I, Alpha Ryan of Nightclaw, reject you, Hams of Shadowfang, as my mate and Luna." My heart shattered into a million pieces. And then, for the first time in 18 years, I shifted. But not into a wolf. I shifted into something they had never seen before.