Chapter 4 — Rainn

Some nights, I run alone. Some nights, my pack finds me. What’s left of them? We’re a pack of orphan cubs. All our lives changed the same night ten years ago when the adult and teenage members of the Mountain Ridge pack went into the forests and never came back.

Every shifted wolf in our small pack was killed that night by other wolves. Our parents, uncles, aunts, and older siblings. We all lost someone. I was the lucky one, the half-breed who still had a father. The rest weren’t so lucky. Almost every cub in our pack lost all their living relatives that night.

In the aftermath, while the human world was investigating a grisly animal attack in the woods, my dad tried to ensure all the cubs were taken care of. He couldn’t risk keeping us close together because no one knew why the pack had been killed or if the killers would come after the cubs. So, most of the others went into the system. All my dad could do was keep painstaking tabs on the others to make sure that one day we would find each other again, but even if he hadn’t bothered, we still would have found each other. The call of the pack is stronger than the distance.

I hear Caleb before the big brown wolf bounds to my side, black eyes gleaming in the night. He bows his head in respect and then keeps up alongside me. Eli arrives next, then Rebecca. Caleb was adopted by his parent’s human neighbors, who had always known he was a wolf. Eli went from foster home to foster home before he was adopted by humans who have no idea and would never believe that wolves exist. Rebecca has only recently aged out of the foster system.

The others trickle in. The oldest is three years older than me, and the youngest is only fourteen. We all had to learn how to be wolves on our own, with no elders to guide us. We found our wolves and learned to run.

My first shift happened just a week after that night. I was nine years old, still grieving, aching for my mom to return. I’d always known I was a wolf, but I thought I still had years before I would shift for the first time. However, the orphaned pack needed an alpha, and the call was strongest in my blood, so it chose me.

So, while other kids had normal lives, I learned to run in the woods at night. Alone. I learned to face my fears and conquer them.

I learned to be alpha in more than name.

For now, my job is to bring the pack back together, reclaim our territory, keep eyes on the little ones who haven’t found their wolves yet, and teach them everything they need to know…

…and when we’re strong enough, we’ll find the wolves that murdered our pack.

And we’ll get justice.

I come to a stop, and the others stop with me. We’re deep in the forest, and I can hear the soft sounds of life around me, trees moving in the wind, animals moving in the brush, a rushing stream just out of view…

“Are we training tonight, Alpha?” Rebecca asks; the question pops into my head like a thought in her voice. She’s a sleek gray wolf, stronger than she looks, and always ready to fight as a wolf or in human form. Even with everything she went through in the system, she’s sweet and kind, but she fights like there’s a demon on her back and trains until she collapses in exhaustion.

“No, we’re not.”

“Too bad.” Her wolf grins. “I was looking forward to beating the bones out of Eli again.”

“I let you beat me the last time,” Eli replies, smiling. His wolf is also gray but much bigger than Rebecca’s. “I’ll be glad to let you beat me again if it means so much to you.”

“Is that how you cope with her kicking your ass,” Caleb says. “If you tell yourself you let her beat you, you never have to accept that she’s just a better fighter than you’ll ever be.”

“You hear that?” Rebecca says, “I’m just a better fighter than you’ll ever be.”

“I don’t mind that you think that.” Eli is still smiling. “That’s why I let you beat me.”

“I’m going to do it again,” Rebecca threatens.

“I can’t wait.”

“Enough with the love talk,” I cut in, ignoring the gagging sound Rebecca sends. I enjoy the friendly banter as much as the next person, but tonight, we have work. “Tonight, we’re reclaiming land.”

A howl ripples through the pack, and then I let them all into my thoughts, showing them the entire region of the Mountain Ridge territory before I zero in on the area we’re reclaiming tonight. In the ten years since that bloody night, other packs have settled into some of our territories. But Mountain Ridge belongs to us, and we will secure it for the future of our pack.

Whatever it takes.