Chase (Chasing Tails Rewritten)

One - Returning

Red, hot, angry blood pumps through her veins viciously. It swirls from the tips of her toes to the top of her head in seconds and her teeth sinks into the vulnerable flesh of her lips as she holds back a curse. In front of her, her older twin brothers are leaning against a rental car in the driveway of their childhood home. Through the windows, she can see packed boxes. A few shirts are thrown on top, added as a last minute thing and one of her brothers drinks coffee from a paper cup that comes from a gas station down the road. Their presence alone stirs up frustration but it's the matching grins that stretches across their face that really sets her off.

"You shouldn't be here."

Andy, the oldest of the twins, turns slightly. His red lips lift higher to reveal the white of his canine fangs. Like her, his dark hair is disheveled and chopped awkwardly. It's messy and there are strands longer than others. Despite it all, it suits him nicely and actually brings out the golden-brown hues of his eyes which sparkle as he glances at his brother.

"We shouldn't be here." He repeats.

"Heard that." Zach mutters. The other twin is completely identical to Andy except for the gap in between his fangs from when he lost a tooth in a fight about two years ago. While they both share the same hair and golden eyes, their personalities are night and day. Andy has always been the smart one. He thinks before he acts. He strategizes and plans and ponders. Zach is impatient and irrational. He jumps to conclusions and asks questions later. Both brothers are fiercely protective and at the back of her mind, Julie can't help but accept that they'd be here.

"You're supposed to be with Rose." Julie reprimands them as she steps out of her own rental car and shuts the door. The twins give her matching smiles and shrugs.

"Like we could leave you alone for too long." Zach reaches forward, ruffling her hair. "You're our baby sister."

"And we're not going anywhere." Andy sternly tells her, his eyes glowing gold to show his wolf is in agreement and she reluctantly draws back. Letting out a frustrated sigh, she turns to the old house and stares with a sense of foreboding.

From the earliest of her memories, she knows her family has always been different from those nearby. They did normal things that other families do. They ate together and had chores. They had two parents who worked normal jobs and they went to school. They were completely average but their father, James, always feared something. Towards the evenings, he would grow quiet and that's about as much as Julie remembered. The older she got, the more she understood why and her siblings filled in the rest of the blanks she didn't understand.

It was at night that James let his wolf free and he completely despises his wolf persona. He loathed the fact that his father handed the gift to him and he had his hopes set on his children inheriting their mother's human genes. He kept his entire culture away from them. For the longest time, none of them knew who or what they were. They just knew their anger had to be controlled more than others and that some things were never meant to talk about like the scratches on James's back or the growls that would come out of him from time to time. But secrets like that can't stay quiet for too long and Rose was the first one to shift.

Their mother, Penny, was overjoyed when Rose shifted. She loved that her oldest daughter was a pure red wolf and had Alpha blood racing through her veins. Rose is a wolf of power, of responsibility and of greatness and Penny was proud of it. James, on the other hand, cursed that day. He left the house and didn't return until early the next morning while her siblings and her had to learn from Penny who they were.

Julie, being the youngest of her siblings, can't really remember a time when their father was happy. Rose, Andy and Zach all tell her that it happened once upon a time but from the moment Rose shifted, everything changed. He started taking up drinking. He never wanted to speak about their other halves and became hateful and cruel. Despite Penny's acceptance and love of him, his wolf and their children, he was never happy that the wolf gene carried on. Eventually, he lost the most important thing to him and they never heard from their mother again.