Apollo's Wolves

Prologue

Twelve gods rule the Earth: Zeus, the king of the gods and ruler of the sky, god of lightning, thunder, law, order, and justice; Hera, the queen of the gods, the goddess of marriage and family; Poseidon, the ruler of the seas, tidal waves, and earthquakes; Hades, the ruler of the underworld, god of the dead, and god of the riches under the earth; Demeter, the goddess of fertility, agriculture, nature, and the seasons; Athena, the goddess of wisdom, knowledge, reason, intelligent activity, literature, handicrafts and science, defense and strategic warfare; Apollo, the god of light, prophecy, philosophy, inspiration, poetry, music and arts, medicine, and healing; Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, virginity, archery, the moon, and all animals; Ares, the god of war, violence, and bloodshed; Aphrodite; the goddess of love, beauty, and desire; Hephaestus, the master blacksmith and craftsman of the gods, god of fire and the forge; Hermes, messenger of the gods, god of commerce, communication, borders, eloquence, diplomacy, thieves, and games; and Dionysus, the god of wine, celebrations, and ecstasy. This story is about two children of Apollo.

One day as Apollo was taking a walk through the woods creating poetry, he came across a beautiful woman sitting beside a creek. Her name was Leda, and she thought him quite handsome. The two fell in love, and met many times in those woods. Apollo built her a cabin there,hoping to come down and spend more time with her. Leda became pregnant, and she lived in the little cabin until she gave birth. She didn't tell Apollo one thing, though: she was a werewolf, not a human, and she belonged to Lyacon's pack, a werewolf who hated the gods. As careful as she was to keep the secret from the man (or god, really) she loved, he found out. He didn't visit her again until the day she had the baby, when he came to take her away. Apollo claimed that a werewolf couldn't properly care for a child who was part god. Leda argued back that neither could he; for the love of everything, he still looked like he was seventeen! In the end, Apollo took the little girl, who was named Amari, and he gave her to Chiron, the centaur at Camp Half-Blood in New York. Chiron, in turn, found a good family to raise the girl until she was old enough to go to the camp for the summer.

Amari grew up with a wonderful family who knew her full story. Her foster father was a self-defense teacher, and her foster mother was a master archer. They brought her up knowing how to defend herself, and she was rather handy with a bow and arrow. Her foster family embraced all of her, including her werewolf part. They lived on several acres of land, so she had room to run when she shifted into her werewolf form.

One day, when she was about eleven, Amari came home from school to find monsters overrunning her home. Her foster parents were lying dead on the front lawn. Scared, Amari hid while the monsters sniffed around for her. Chiron arrived not long after with several of his centaur friends, and they made short work of the monsters. He found the frightened girl, explained who he was, and then took her to Camp Half-Blood, where she met other demigods for the first time.

Leda, though, had tricked the god she had loved: she had had twins. When Apollo came to collect their child, she had hidden one of the baby girls safely in a tree. She had put up quite a fight, convincing him entirely that the baby he had taken was the only one. Her tears were real, however; she had lost one of her children. Anger and hatred for the gods, as well as Apollo's betrayal, burned inside of her, and she brought the little girl she had hidden up to hate them as much as she did, perhaps even more. Leda named her daughter Delta, and trained her to be a cunning wolf, able to shift with ease at the drop of a hat, able to track her prey with such stealth that the other werewolves could hardly sense her coming. The pack accepted Delta as one of their own, despite knowing that she was part god.

Lyacon received orders one day from Gaea, to go track down some demigods who were causing trouble in the ancient land. The pack left, all except for Delta. Knowing how dangerous the ancient lands could be for someone of godly descent, Leda refused to let her daughter go with them. Delta stayed, watching over some of the younger pups. Werewolves have a mental bond, so she was able to keep up with where the pack was and what they were doing. She was playing with the other pups when she felt a change: her mother was dying. In horror, the sixteen-year-old girl felt her mother die at the hands of one of the demigods.

Rage filled her, and when Lyacon returned, he shunned her from the pack. With nowhere to go, Delta ran off, following some odd instinct that told her to go to New York.