Mated

One

From the day I was born, my life had been different than most girls my age. Because of what I am, a lot of rules made up my childhood. Being a werewolf meant avoiding making friends with humans and not trusting anyone outside of my pack. For their protection, we kept what we were a secret. Werewolves like me who could control themselves around the scent of blood were hardly any threat to them, but there were others who lost that control and put our very existence at risk. My father told me there were humans who killed our kind and that was why there were rules.

I was born in Vienna, a small community of members of our wolf pack. My father was the Alpha, my mother his and the pack's Luna (Woman in Charge I liked to think of it). My sister and I were destined to become leaders with our parents' rankings following us like a royal bloodline.

We aren't the kind of werewolves you read about in folklore. We have the ability to shift at will, even without a full moon, and as long as we follow a pack, we have no desire to eat human flesh. In fact, many of us were far more human than those stories make us out to be. We are your modern day wolves.

"You bitch," Kendra's wolf growled in my head. I threw my head back and laughed to provoke her.

"Let it go, Kendra."

Kendra only snarled and began circling me. Her slanted eyes tucked in the fur above her snout narrowed.

"Don't flatter yourself, you're not his type. He only feels sorry for you because you still haven't found your mate." Oh yeah, and like human girls, we too have boy problems. I ignored her and watched as she continued circling me, her furry black tail rigid, keeping her every move in my line of sight.

"You turn twenty in a few days right? And still you haven't found your mate. You might just turn out to be a soldier, like me." Her high-pitched laughter echoed in my head. "Can you imagine? Malia, the Alpha's daughter turned Warrior." Her voice was taunting. "A joke I can't wait to tell."

"Shut up." I snapped. No longer enjoying this fight.

"Have you smelled anything Malia? Anything at all? Nothing? Not a single whiff of him, huh?"

"Shut up!"

"Or what?"

"Keep going and you'll see."

"Ooh, is that a threat?" I lunged at her. Caught by surprise she growled when I clawed at her head and rolled her onto her back. We swiped at each other with our claws not caring how sharp they were as we scratched at each other and howled, signaling our fight to the others. I bit down on her arm and she cried out in a grumbling whine.

Her teeth were around my arm and she clawed at my sides. I howled again and tried to kick at her with my legs when she got me beneath her on my back. Considering how much stronger she was, it didn't work and she just bit down harder on my arm and I winced in pain.

We were supposed to be on watch.

"Enough!" A booming voice broke through my thoughts and Kendra instantly jumped away from me. I crawled onto my feet and tucked my throbbing arm behind my back.

"What is this?" My dad asked, looking back and forth between us. Switching from his mental to actually forming the words with his mouth. He stood in his human form in the middle of Kendra and I. As his lips moved, his voice echoed in my head.

"We just got a little carried away, Dad. Just fooling around," I said, straightening my stance and trying to pretend I wasn't hurt.

"Get back to the house." His dark eyes burned bright like that of his wolf. It was a command. I obeyed and dashed into the trees.

Once I reached the woods leading home, I began shifting, changing back to my human form. The change was a bit painful and a few seconds slower than usual, but still it happened in under seven seconds. Pain was always easier to endure in wolf form, but Kendra had managed to get a clean cut in my arm leaving blood trickling out of the open wound.

My skin rippled and muscles stretched then resized themselves as the fur that covered my head down to my neck and on my hands, stopping before my elbows began to disappear, revealing the skin underneath. My elongated fingers and claws regressed to their human length just as I felt my ears shrink down to a decent size. The broken skin of my bicep was already beginning to pull closed, healing quickly. When I got to my room, I cleaned the dried blood from my neck where the gash had been just moments ago.

"You are going to be a leader, Lia. Do not engage in fights that don't better your people," My father's voice snuck into my head before I drifted off to sleep.