**OLD DRAFT**Protectors: Book 1 of Protectors **OLD DRAFT**

Chapter 1

Falling from high places, falling through lost spaces,
Now that we're lonely, now that there's nowhere to go.
Watching from both sides, these clock towers burning up,
I lost my time here, I lost my patience with it all.

And we lost faith, in the arms of love.

Where you been hiding lately, where you been hiding from the news?
Cause we've been fighting lately, we've been fighting with the wolves.
With the wolves. With the wolves.
Red tongues and hands.

-The Wolves, Ben Howard

Red blood sprayed over white snow, somehow beautiful and disgusting all at once. Jade kneeled in the snow while the world glowed under the moon. She waited for the fit to pass, as it always did. Her insides churned as a million invisible daggers drove themselves into her intestines and twisted. Breathe. She had to remember to breathe, like her physician had told her. There was nothing else to do, she coughed and more blood splattered over her lips, staining the snow with her weakness.

She let the snow bite and burn her exposed fingers, hoping the small pain would distract her from the larger. Then it was gone, just like that. Just as it always had, it left without a trace, nothing to suggest that she was ill. She spit the remaining blood from her mouth and wiped her lips. When she finally had the strength to get up, she noticed she was not alone.

She froze and stood in the moonlight. Her breathe escaped in slow long wisps and disappeared into the darkness. Jade did not blink, she stared into amber eyes and waited as her soul was examined and picked apart, she waited while she was judged.

The wolf let out a deep sigh and disappeared into the trees without another glance in her direction. Jade fell to her knees once more and closed her eyes. Tears burned their way down her cheeks and she made no move to wipe them away. She had failed, again, and yet of all the times she had ventured into these woods, this one had finally pushed her. Her soul had been cracked too many times; this one shattered her.

She cried, she allowed the weight of her burdens to come spilling out. When she finished she stood, grabbed her pack, and walked away from the ground that had witnessed to her shattering. She would never show her defeat, she would return to her people with her head up, as she always had and her secret would remain buried deep within her own soul, where only the wolves could find it.

The snow crunched under her boots and the forest around her was silent except for the wind and the rustling of the pines and evergreens. She had no desire to sleep or make camp tonight, she didn't think she could bare the silence of her own thoughts and the torments that her dreams brought her. It was the same after every failure, her dreams lashed out at her and the memories of her parents shamed her.

Jade listened as she walked for any signs of life, but the wolf was truly gone. It surprised her that she should feel this way. She was after all ten years past the Calling age. No one her age had ever been paired with a Great Wolf, and she doubted she would be the exception, and yet she still hoped. Every time she set food into Felkor forest she dared herself to hope, that maybe, just maybe this would be the time that she would emerge from the forest with her Guardian. Where she would then complete her training, and earn the title of Protector, as her father and generations past had done.

She was a highborn, pure Felkorian blood, the only heir of Lord Dryden, her father, and a disgrace to her family name all because some damned wolf would not become her Guardian. If only her father were here now, he had always made her feel better as a child. He would pull her into his lap and call her his little gem. He would hold her close until the tears stopped and she felt better. He would whisper into her ear things that made the world seem less cruel, she had always felt safe in his hands.