Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Mate?

A/N: So I wasn't totally crazy about my old story so might as well make a new one. 

For as long as I could remember, I hated plastic water bottles. Nothing bothered me more than seeing that stupid clear plastic in the middle of MY serene woods. Why couldn't the bloody idiots just pick up after their garbage? Was it really that difficult to put it in a recycling bin? It took away from the nature ambiance that the woods gave. How dare some fragile human disrupt my woods.

Then again, it wasn't really my woods. It was only my forest for the temporary time being, seeing as how I move around quite a bit. I can usually stay in one place for up to about three weeks at a time but then some big pack butts their hairy noses in and I have to move on to the next one. 

At this current moment, I was cozily lodged up in some abandon ski house in some nameless state up north. Since it was the middle of July, I highly doubted that anyone was going to be up here to vacation since there was no signs of snow anytime soon. Somehow, even when they are not here, humans manage to pollute the woods and make it dirty for the animals. As a rogue werewolf, I am quite the environmentalist. If I didn't shift into a huge white wolf all the time, I probably would have had quite a career by defending the earth's environments and biomes. However, I'm too passionate and I lack a great deal of self control and I doubt that shifting in front of humans would be appreciated by the Council.

Not that the Council totally gives a shit anyways, the only thing they have managed to prevent is that our wolfy secret stays a secret. Everything else has been left up to the alphas and their packs, which is why I'm stuck running from place to place.

I became a rogue at the age of 15, which seems pretty young but it isn't. It wasn't like I was leaving some great family behind and ditching some great friends. I grew up as the pack foster child because apparently my folks died when I was really little. It's not like I had too many friends either, mostly because I was highly independent and didn't feel like I was really missing out on anybody. For the most part, my life was pretty hunky-dory until the Alpha died and his son took over.

Now, this isn't one of those stories where I am the pack slave/punch bag, but believe me there were some of those in my pack. What Elijah did to me, or should I say try to do to me was much much worse. Since the Council doesn't do much in terms of governing the werewolf community, the packs are left to raise money on their own so that they can take care of themselves. Usually the Alpha is some big entrepreneur who makes millions and supports his pack so they can get smaller jobs and work within the pack. However, Eli was not very smart and basically shut down his father's business within a matter of months. With the business shut down, the pack began to run really low on funds and soon we barely had enough resources to feed ourselves, let alone protect ourselves.

Now, most sensible Alphas would turn to allies in their time of need and ask for some help to get back up and running, but not Eli. Eli had a "brilliant" plan that didn't make him look weak or stupid and would get the pack back on their feet. What Eli had planned to do was to create a brothel, a prostitution ring. A brothel of his own young female pack members, and the ones that were targeted were the unmated and the ones without family.

I was a perfect target to Eli since I had absolutely no family to protect me and no mate that was binded to me. I can still see that evil little shimmer in his eyes when he called me into his office. He claimed that it was a "duty to my pack" and that people "needed me". I responded with my classic Scarlett charm and sneered at him, "People need me? To be a sex slave? Yeah, I think they need food more than they need some alone time with me." That got him pretty mad. That night, I ditched my pack and I became a lone wolf ever since. I was actually quite happy with the way things turned out because I have clearly been destined to be a lone wolf. I like being on my own and I like getting to decide where I want to go and what I want to do. That freedom just isn't really allowed in the patriarchal world of wolves so I see that it's better that I can just move on and go from place to place.

Of course, as I get older, I become more endangered. A female rogue is rare but a female rogue without a mate is almost unheard of. Sometimes, when an unmated female is found, she is auctioned off to higher position wolves as a second wife if their first mate dies. It's pretty barbaric but male wolves love to pass down their lineage which means the more children, the better for them. Even rogues have tried to trap me before by trying to mark me, even when it is clear that I am not their mate. Marking doesn't have to just be between mates but once it's done, it's done, there's no turning back. It's complicated, the whole mating system, but the way I see it is that a man wants to own and control me. I don't think so, Scarlett Hansy does not follow the orders of another wolf.

I would rather die than have to give up my freedom.