*She knew it was a dream, but it felt so real, like it was happening all over again.*
The drip, drip, drip of the water as it hit the cement floor was loud in the otherwise tomb-like silence of the basement. One of the pipes running along the ceiling had a leak, and a pool of water was gathered underneath it. There was barely any light down in the basement, there was only one tiny window in the upper corner of the large dark room.
Because it was so small, it wasn’t especially useful in terms of letting light into the basement, even if it hadn’t been dark outside. There was only a small stream of moonlight coming in from it now, the stream of light bounced off the water gathered under the leaking pipe.
It made a bright enough glow, that you could see the small form of an incredibly young female chained to the nearby support post. Her body lay crumpled on the cold stone floor, blood covered her, and was splattered all around her. A small pool of it surrounded her.
The little female’s eyes were open, but they were lifeless. If you looked closely, you could see she was still breathing. She was covered in open gashes made from the whip her mother had used on her, bruises from the beating her father had given her, and slashes from the knife her sister had sliced her up with.
The little female didn’t know why her punishment was so harsh this time around, she didn’t remember misbehaving or breaking any rules. Her family hated her, they beat her endlessly, for every little infraction. She never understood what she had done to bring on so much hate. None of the other pups were treated like her.
She did look different from everyone in both her mother and father’s Clan, with her dark skin, black hair and her dual colored eyes, the inner ring was a violet color, the outer ring silver. Her Clan members were all pale skinned with blond hair and blue dual colored eyes. She may look different from her Clan members, but there were other Clans with pups who had dark hair and skin, but they were all loved by their family and Clan members.
However, no one had her eye color. That fact and not having a wolf like the other Werewolves, made the little female, Alora, feel like a freak of nature, an abomination to be erased from existence. Alora wanted to die, she longed for it. She thought it was the only way to escape from all her pain and torment.
Alora was desolate, full of despair and hopelessness. Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. “Moon Goddess, please let me die and let my soul return to your keeping.” The girl begged silently with all her heart.
She was startled when she got a reply in her head, but it wasn’t the Moon Goddess who answered her. It was something else entirely. *“I'd rather not die just yet, especially when I have now finally been able to join you.”* There was a faint growl in the soft feminine voice.
Panicked, Alora exclaimed, *“Who are you!”*she was worried she had lost her mind.
*“I’m your wolf, my name is Xena”* The female voice said, introducing herself to the little female.
*“But…but…I was born without a wolf.”* Alora said, her small child-like voice trembled with disbelief.
For Alora, it was easier to believe she had gone insane and was hearing voices, than it was for her to accept that she was lied to all her young life, and really did have a wolf.
*“You were born with a wolf, I just haven’t been able to come to you until now. I have been sealed away until tonight.”* Xena told Alora. Xena's voice, like Alora’s, was young, the growl in it sounding cute instead of intimidating.
*“You know my name?”* Alora asked Xena, feeling surprised.
Xena thought this was a silly question at first, but then she had been sealed away from Alora since their birth. *“I may have been sealed away, but I was aware of our life the entire time, I’m a part of you and know your name.”* Xena explained to her.
Xena’s soft growling voice and her warm presence was beginning to sooth Alora, her intense longing for death fading to the background for now. *“You said you were sealed away? How did you get free?”* Alora asked.
Her curiosity now peaked as she started to accept that she did indeed have a wolf, she was no longer a wolf-less pup. Excitement over that fact began to build in her.
Xena felt her humanoid form’s curiosity, her and Alora were two sides of one being. Two souls, one shared body that transformed from a humanoid form to that of a wolf or their shared Lycan form. Their Lycan form would be their most powerful and deadliest of their three shapes.
*“The Moon Goddess broke the chains binding me from you.”* Xena paused in her explanation, not really wanting to tell Alora the rest.
Alora felt Xena’s distress, she knew instinctively what Xena had to tell her had to be something that would upset her. *“Tell me.”* Was all she said.
That was all the prompting Xena needed, her humanoid needed to know, so she could begin to separate herself from the cause. *“Our mother had the spell placed on us that sealed me away.”*
Alora was quite a moment as she absorbed that information, a wave of hurt running through her. She had known all along her mother had hated her, she just hadn’t known how deeply till this moment.
*“Why does mother hate us so much?”* Alora asked, tears in her voice.
Xena was silent for a moment, hesitant to answer. *“Because we are everything she fears.”*
BEEEEP, BEEEEP, BEEEEP!!!
Alora sat up straight in bed, startled out of the dream. Xena’s cryptic answer to her question all those years ago fading away. She slapped at her alarm clock, her heart still racing. It was the worst way to wake up, not only did her body shake. The alarm sounded so much like the fryers at work, it made her feel like she needed to rush into a kitchen to dish out fresh fries.
Nothing was more annoying than dreaming that you were at work when you are not at work. There you are, standing there in your dream, pushing the button to turn off the fryer alarm, only for it to keep going. Then you start to realize, you are not at work, you are at home in bed, and it’s not the fryer’s timer going off, it's your alarm clock.
Alora didn’t usually need the alarm clock, she rarely slept more than two hours at a time at most when she managed to fall asleep at home. If you could call this place a home. According to the romance novels she occasionally read, the rare time she read a fiction novel, a home was a place you felt loved, and safe in. That was not this place.
Hopping out of her rarely used bed. A tiny twin size that belonged to her older sister when her sister was a small cub. Alora brushed her hair, this took a while, as the thick midnight black strands reached just above her hips. Alora took her showers at school, or the research lab she interned at, never at the house. She had interned at the lab last night after she had gotten off work from her fast food job at Wolf’s Bite Burger Palace.
Normally she would have slept at the lab for four hours before sneaking back in through the second floor patio door. Unfortunately, Alora had done that one too many nights in a row, and it was noticed. Based on the text message Alora got from her mother Bettina, accusing Alora of being a harlot and staying out at all hours of the night being a prostitute.
So, Alora had to report home by eleven the night before, and spent most of the night studying, before she finally gave in to exhaustion. Alora had tucked her chair under her tiny bedroom’s doorknob, set her refurbished alarm clock, and passed out for two hours.
Alora looked at herself in her dingy cheap, supposedly full length, mirror hanging on her closet door. Her room was adjacent to the attic, an eight by eight with only a seven foot ceiling. A tight fit for a six foot nine Werewolf. There was no window, the only light was a tiny lamp on the tiny desk in her room. The only other piece of furniture besides her bed and desk chair.
Alora was fit, like most Werewolves. She had lots of evenly toned muscle. She had an hourglass figure with broad shoulders, heavy breasts with wide hips and a bottom that balanced out with her top. Her large luminescent eyes matched her face better now that she was grown, they no longer took up most of her face anymore.
High cheekbones paired with an angled jaw and a gently pointed chin framed a long straight almost lupine nose, and a generous mouth with full plump lips. Her lips a natural dusky rose was accentuated by her milky caramel colored skin complexion.
Alora was not delicate looking like her mother and sister, who only came in at five foot nine and five foot ten. Alora’s body matched her height. Her father had to look up to her as he was only six foot seven, he was also one of the rare few Werewolves who could be called overweight.