Maze of Trees

Gateway

    I had made it about three quarters of the way back to our dorm room when suddenly I felt Mefitis snap to attention and star pacing anxiously around. The best way I can describe the feeling is like a dull ache at the base of your head.  But this time it was worse, she was pushing hard, fighting me for control and I came to a stop in the middle of the walkway. 

    "you smell that?" she whispered, almost sounding as though she was in awe of something great and amazing.

    I tentatively inhaled and was immediately hit with a smell that reminded me of an evergreen forest on a misty morning just after a rain storm. The more I inhaled the more excited Mefitis got. 

    "No!" I whispered, half to myself, as I quickly scanned my surroundings trying to pinpoint where, and who, the smell was coming from. This way I could beat a hasty retreat and stay down wind of them so I could try my best to avoid being detected. 

    "Mate!" her excited yip bounced around in my head and boy was she worked up over this! Mefitis and I did not agree when it came to mates. A werewolf, as young as the age of 16 could go through their first transformation and gain their wolf. An awakening of sorts. This was not always guaranteed however, and a werewolf could be as old as 19 or 20 before they went through their first transformation. Much like how everyone grows and develops at the same time, our wolf awakening and our transformations were the same. It was never at a set age or a set time.  My wolf had awakened a couple days after my 16th birthday but there had been a warrior in the pack who hadn't gained their wolf yet, and he was soon to be 20 years old. 

    "Not happening!" I growled , forcing myself to march, like a stomping toddler, towards my dorm and my safety.

    "He isn't here you know, you can stop with the attitude. He passed this way, but he's gone now." Mefitis said, and I could tell that she was about to suggest us following the scent to see where it went and if we could find him. 

    "Nope, we have talked about this Tissy. You know I'm not ready for the whole finding my mate thing.  We just got freedom from our pack not that long ago, and I'm not ready to give that up again. We are avoiding him!" I decreed, though from her huff I could tell that this was something that would be constantly brought up.

    The girl at the desk inside the front door tried to welcome me but stopped mid sentence when my eyes glared daggers that, had they been real, would have murdered her a couple times over.  I felt bad that she was on the receiving end of my misdirected anger, but right now with a grumbling Mefitis in my head and my own senses on high alert, I couldn't help it. I'd bake cookies or something later as an apology.

    "Well look at what..." Clarke turned to look at me when I slammed the door. " Damn, did you kill that cat that tried to drag you in here?" She snickered. " Were classes that bad? You're letting your tail show." Clarke would often call my attitude a tail. She would always joke when I was in a bad mood that my tail was showing as a way to remind me to cool down before my true identity revealed itself. 

    I knew she was trying to lighten the mood and make me feel better, but the inner war I was feeling between my instinct and Mefitis' instinct was taking up too much mental energy. I slumped down onto my bed and pulled the comforter over my head as I turned to face the wall, my back to Clarke. She understood the signal and went back to tippity tapping on her computer doing who knows what. She had seen me in many moods and knew my signals and when to push something and when to wait me out. She knew no matter what she'd be filled in on everything later.

    About an hour later she got what she wanted. I had thrown the blanket off me and sat up in bed like a vampire coming to life out of their coffin. She had turned around with her coffee cup in hand, crossed her legs and let me vent to her about everything that had happened that day.

    "Wait, so your history teacher is a werewolf?" She asked, biting her lower lip. "Is he from your pack? Was he someone you recognized?"

    "No and no. Neither myself or Tissy have ever seen him before and his scent was one that we didn't recognize."  I pulled up a map on my laptop and Clarke scooted her chair over next to mine.

    "Okay, so how does that work? wouldn't your pack have been aware of other werewolves? I don't know how territories work or anything." She was firing off questions rapid fire it seemed and some of them I didn't even know the answers to. I had never been told how pack boundaries were chosen. Were they something determined by the alphas only, or was the council, an elite group of alphas chosen to oversee pack politics and the like, the ones who determined the boundary line? 

    "I think once a pack has chosen a place to settle down there is a certain amount of land around that area that is then determined to be theirs? I am not sure though, I never was really told the exact specifics of how it was done."  I could feel Mefitis agree with me, she had never been one to be too concerned with pack politics, only that every wolf got along and that the pack stayed together. the boundaries she could care less about.

    "Well, its not like we are too close to your pack, from what you told me. So do you think he could be a homeless wolf. One of those rogues?" She asked her eyes wide.

    "no." I smirked slightly. After all, I was a homeless wolf. "A rogue smells horrible. It's like they rolled in a week long dead animal on the side of the road." I saw Clarke scrunch up her nose. 

    "More than likely we are far enough away from pack borders that we are either in a neutral zone, or we are in another packs land." Which only confused me more. If we were in another packs land that would mean they would have noticed my presence and they would have already approached me. Packs were not fond of having unknown wolves within their pack borders and would immediately approach, if not drive out, any newcomers that were not part of the pack or not willing to join the pack. So that meant this had to be neutral land. Neutral land was the space between pack borders, unclaimable, and peaceful. They were usually made up of large public areas like big cities. 

    "well you better figure it out soon. wouldn't want a big bad wolf to come and swallow you up now would we!" she laughed but inside I shuddered. She had no idea that that is something that my mate would probably be able to do. Not literally swallow me whole, but I could be in a figurative sense. Mate bonds were curious things, while you had the option to reject your mate and choose your own the instinct to claim your mate and be paired together for life was incredibly strong. Even after accepting each other the mate bond would constantly pull you together, making so you never wanted to leave your mates side. My whole world would become completely controlled by this bond. I would no longer want to go travel, I wouldn't want to learn and discover how the world worked. How I understood it was that all I would want to do after accepting my mate would be to find a home, settle down, start a family, please my mate in whatever way possible, and be content with my life. It sounded like a damn nightmare to me. 

    This was my first day of college and I couldn't help but feel dread while thinking about the rest of this year. Not only would I be juggling the normal schedule of classes and homework, but now I would also need to avoid my mate, fight with Mefitis about her following her instinct to find him, and figure out my history teacher and whether he was a safe werewolf or one that could blow my cover completely.