Scarlet Flame

Chapter 1

Shelby's POV:

We had trained together growing up the four of us, James, the Alpha's son, Thomas, James's best friend, Darren, the gamma's son, and of course me, Shelby Nicole Scarlet. I am the beta's daughter, I had devoted my life to learning to support the future Alpha, James. We had spent so much time studying and training together we became very close but never shared very many personal details. My job would be to one day protect him and his Luna. As a child the thought of him being mated to another hurt me, I had a huge crush on him, his friends would always tease me about it but so would mine. As I grew up, I had on and off again crushes on James. There was something about him that always drew me in, he was so intoxicating. When I turned 9 a new family moved to the pack, the Bella family, since meeting them I have grown close to the family Mr. Bella was a handyman and did many odd jobs around the pack. Mrs. Bella was a very talented nurse, together they had three kids, Amanda Noel, Danny Michael, and the youngest Isabella Piper. They were all rowdy, but they made a great addition to our pack, I was responsible for helping Amanda become accustomed to our school. Instantly we became best friends, she was the sister I never had.

After showing Amanda around the school, I introduced her to my friends Karissa and Heather, they were twin sisters and they had been my only female friends for a while. I had made more friends when I had started middle school, but I could not spend much time with them outside of school due to the training and studying that I was responsible for. They always teased me about dating the future Alpha, but they knew I had to be with him all the time due to my future position in the pack. Every other evening, I helped Amanda with her homework, and we became very close. It helped that she was my next-door neighbor, so she was never far away. We would talk about everything under the stars, she knew about my crush on James but understood that I was not after him for his power or title. When I trained with him, I got to know him through his fighting tactics and the way we studied together. He was strong, fearless and he was kind, I saw that in his brown eyes. His eyes softened whenever I got injured during practice even if it was just a bruise, he hated fighting me. He always said it was because I was a girl, but I wanted to believe it was because he returned my feelings. Amanda knew all of this and supported me and even told me to go for it a couple times. Now I am glad I did not listen to her advice.

As time went on, Amanda and I got closer as friends, we would spend the night at each other's house all the time. When my mother went missing, she was the one who spent the night at my house and let me cry for hours. After that, Amanda would always watch me train and heal whatever wound I had gotten, she even would come with me to work with the pups. I knew that she had been ordered to watch me, but it was nice having a friend all the time. One time when I ran away trying to find my mom, Amanda had found me on the beach. She sat with me until I was ready to go home and encouraged me to get stronger so that one day I would be able to save her.

Losing focus in a fight was always a bad idea, but we had been sparing for 4 hours straight now. Eric had caught me off guard and thrown me into the wall next to our station, he walked over and offered his hand to help me up. "Are you ok?" he asked. I just nodded in response.

"You have to work harder," my dad lectured. "He is going to give your spot away if you can not even beat Eric,"

I had been training for hours, Eric was the head of the warrior division of the pack, I had been working with him for a couple of weeks. "Maybe just give her a little break? We have been sparing for a couple of hours now," Eric tried to get my father to give a slight break.

"On the battlefield, do you get a break?" My father replied in a sarcastic tone.

"With all due respect, sir this is a training ground, not a battlefield. I give my recruits several breaks during practice. Shelby is doing exceptionally well, all things considered,"