Fire in the Heir

As I stood there looking at my reflection in the mirror while I washed my hands as slowly as I could, I felt that same old hitch in my chest that I always did when I paid too much attention to the girl staring back at me. Those eyes, while bright, always felt like they didn’t belong to me, but then again, it’s not like I could ask my parents if anyone in my bloodline had eyes like mine. I was the adopted daughter of Lucien and Rose Salvator and had been born that awful night seventeen years ago. Both of my parents had been lost, along with many others in our pack, in that horrible blaze. My father was a high ranking member of the guard and my mother worked as a teacher at the pack nursery school. I had no other family here because they were both new to the White Fang pack and had come right after they had been mated and married a few years prior. My mom had pictures of them up in our house and I had a small picture of them in my locket, but I could never see myself in them no matter how many hours I stared at their smiling faces. My mom and dad, while both attractive, did not resemble me in any way and, with no children of their own, it had taken years for the other families to stop staring at us when we were out in public. Mom was like literal fire with her dark red hair, amber-colored eyes, and was a feisty wolf inside her five foot-four inch frame. I had become taller than her by the time I started high school around four years ago and my insecurities had begun to grow along with my continued height. My dad was the Beta of our pack and even though there were some similarities in our features, with his place in the pack everyone knew that I was his “orphaned” daughter. “Come on Taylor, what is taking you so long,” Monika yelled as she rushed into the girls’ bathroom. I hadn’t realized that I had gotten so lost in my thoughts that the sink was almost about to overflow. “Sorry Mon”, I replied as I rushed to turn the water off before it spilled out over the side of the sink. Reaching around, I quickly grabbed some paper towels from the large silvery machine to dry my already slightly shriveled fingers. “Jeeze T, were you hypnotized by your own reflection,” Monika tossed out as she casually leaned against the side of the door frame while simultaneously keeping the door open with her other foot and picking at her perfectly manicured nails. As I reached to throw the wet towels in the trash, I made sure not to glance in the mirror on my way to her and the door so that she wouldn’t start picking on me. Walking through the door and over her extended leg, Monika let the door go and as we started walking down the hall, but when it slammed, I couldn’t help but wince. We had just finished with practice and, with school out, the whole building was empty except for us, and the last of the girls in the locker room, so the slam seemed to reverberate through my entire body. “So, what’s for dinner?” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and laugh at Monika’s question. She ate dinner at my house almost every school night. It’s not because her mom was a bad cook, but it’s because she lived in the pack house and had to share meals with everyone else who lived there, including the guard members. We lived in our own home about a mile away from the pack house nestled near the base of the mountain, and since it was just the three of us and my mom cooked like she was feeding a small platoon, she was able to eat as much as she wanted and even take leftovers to hide away in her mini fridge. That’s the thing with wolves. We could eat. “Salmon I think,” I replied as I quickly tried to wrack my brain to remember what I saw in the fridge when I got my lunch out this morning. “Is your mom making that butter sauce with the green pea-looking things to put on top?” I couldn’t help but laugh because that was one thing that could distract Monika no matter what she was doing; food. “Not sure.” As we walked down the end of the hallway, I glanced at her and I swore I could see drool already collecting at the side of her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be picturing the meal that we would be going home to. Our gym bags were on the floor outside on the steps by the bike rack and as I leaned down to pick mine up I got this sudden feeling that someone was watching us. I hefted the bag over my shoulder and did a sweep of the perimeter, but I didn’t see anyone strange or anything out of the ordinary. Weird, I swore I could feel it. There were a few other girls walking to their parents’ cars or their bikes, but there were two girls in wolf form with their bags slung around their necks who were barking at each other as if they were counting down for a race. I always loved to take my time walking to the house, since this was some of the only time I was ever alone, even though I wasn’t truly alone because I was still with Monika. Monika and I had been best friends from before I could remember. We are just a few months apart in age and with both of our moms working at the pack house in administrative roles, we were constantly together. She was the sister I never had, and she told everyone I was the sister she always wanted, since she was the only girl in a family with five boys. Her mom was the sister to our Alpha and her family lived in the pack house even though her father was an engineer and not a member of the guard. I spent almost as much time in the pack house as she did and I didn’t even live there. With my dad the beta, we were constantly there and I even had an air mattress in Monika’s closet for those nights when I slept over. Being the daughter of an over-protective mother and having a father who is the beta of one of the biggest packs on the continent, I had little to no privacy. I usually didn’t mind, but sometimes a girl just needs to be alone with a good book and a large cup of coffee. My house was only a ten-minute walk from the high school and I could walk the path it in my sleep. As we walked, Monika’s full attention had already been consumed with what she was imagining my mom to be cooking for dinner, but the same strange prickly feeling on the back of my neck did not go away. I kept checking the areas around us as we made our way to my neighborhood, but I couldn’t find the source of this feeling. When my house was finally in view, like clockwork, my phone began to ring. “Hi mom, I can literally see the house and will be walking through the door in less than two minutes.” “Well it has been more than ten minutes since practice ended and I just wanted to make sure that you and Monika were doing okay,” my mom answered as I saw her open the front door and make eye contact with me. I lifted my hand to her with my phone still to my ear and Monika began frantically waving as the smell from inside my house hit us as soon as we stepped into my yard. I hung up my phone just as my mom did the same, but as I followed them both inside the house, that prickly sensation intensified for a brief second before it swung closed behind us. Monika had already shucked off her shoes, dropped her duffle bag on the side of the couch, and was following my mom to the kitchen like one of those cartoon dogs I used to laugh at in the Saturday morning cartoons. A part of me wanted to laugh at her outrageous display, but the smile on my mom's face made me hold my not too nice comment in and keep my silly little thoughts to myself. If they both enjoyed these types of reactions and simple displays with each other, then who was I to get in their way. Slowly, I took off my own shoes and placed them next to Monika’s. My slippers were right by the couch where I always left them in the morning before I headed out and I slipped them on and sighed with the small, but simple pleasure they brought me. Dropping my bag right beside Monika’s, I followed them into the kitchen where I heard their laughter coming through the house already and let myself forget about that bothersome sensation as I went.