The Dark Alpha: Old Blood

Chapter 1: Theo

On my sixteenth birthday, I shifted for the first time in the center of the fields, sweating and contorting in front of a hundred men. I couldn't cry out or shed a single tear, so I clenched my jaw, clenched so hard, I cracked two teeth in the back of my mouth. I spat the fragments onto the grass, and my father smiled, looking down at me with crossed arms.

Corbin was watching with his father—having shifted the year before—but his father, our Beta, stood partially in front of him, ensuring his son didn't act impulsively and decide to help me.

When we were small, Corbin and I constantly adventured together, battling imaginary rogues as we pretended to shift. The forest was our favorite place—a canvas for our imaginations to run rampant. Alexa would slither under a protruding tree root, trapped by some meddling Alpha, and I, the True Alpha, and Corbin, my lethal Beta, would fight through a plethora of trials to save her. But eventually, Alexa got older and no longer wanted to entertain us, so we found a third companion, Daniel, the son of my father's Lead Guard.

Daniel, who insisted we call him Dan, was a few years younger than us and was very willing to spend his free time after school lessons with the sons of the pack's most important leaders. Dan meshed so well with me and Corbin that eventually our friendships became equally cherished and spending time together over the following years was most natural.

But routines started to change when I turned thirteen. My father began training me one-on-one despite the fact that I couldn't shift. Instead of training my wolf, he worked on my human body, building my endurance and strength with running and lifting, hiking and swimming against the river currents. He also brought me into leadership meetings and had me sit in the corner in complete silence so as to not be a hindrance but to understand how such things worked. And then he shot questions at me afterward, asked how to solve their problems, how to win battles, how to provide for the pack.

I was useless—but only at first.

By the time I was fifteen, my time spent hanging around with Corbin and Dan was almost entirely used up by my father, but with what little time I had to spare, the three of us would make it work. My father didn't like me wasting time doing anything that wouldn't better me as a future Alpha, but my mother made exceptions. She would let the three of us hide away in my bedroom and distract my father when he asked about me.

Corbin, Dan, and I liked to blow off steam and complain about our overbearing fathers and inability to choose our own life paths. Dan escaped by chasing girls—flirting and catching as many as he could only to release them upon foreseeable boredom and chase another. Standing firm in his decision to save himself for his mate, Corbin kept away from girls and used swimming to find reprieve from the familial pressure.

I didn't feel the need to escape my life until we were seventeen and fighting in a war we had no grounds participating in. Dan's father was able to save his son from the unnecessary trauma, but my father convinced his Beta that Corbin and me learning these harsh realities early on was crucial to our development as future leaders.

By the Goddess' hand, I did well on the battlefield, so I stuck by Corbin and made sure I had his back, saving his life more times than either of us would like to remember.

And then Alpha Belrose killed my father—something I didn't witness due to the chaos of battle—so, standing side-by-side, Corbin and I watched his wolf burn in the moonlight. Corbin grabbed my shoulder and shook me slightly, instilling his loyalty. Only then did I realize what the oncoming days would have in store.

I had to make countless decisions in a very short period of time. The first was to make Corbin my Beta and Dan my third, which was the easiest even though most high-ranking pack members thought three children running the pack was going to doom us all. I then chose to concede in our war with Belrose and won some approval—total approval would take many years.