A Winters Memory

Prologue

Most families cherish their children no matter how different they are; you're supposed to love them unconditionally.

Ara's family was a different case. She was born cursed, or so her family thought.

They feared her so much that she was banished from her pack and forbidden from ever coming back to reunite with them.

She couldn't understand how an entire family could just turn their backs on an innocent child who knew very little of the world and everything involved in it.

Ara was only thirteen when they decided to turn their backs on her, leaving her to her own vices.

Ara had been born into a family of shapeshifters, or werewolves as you would call them; her family's pack consisted of wolves that were either black wolves or wolves that were mixed in color.

Her family, for example, was all black, including her brother Christian who was just a year older than she was; the rest of the members of the pack were either mixed with black, or gray, some were even red wolves but not one of them had a coat that was pure white, that was until it was her turn to shift for the first time.

Once the pack caught sight of her fur, her life had been completely ruined; branded as being cursed and unwanted. No one had ever heard of a wolf with a coat as pure as fresh snow let alone with eyes that matched the ocean's surface.

After that fateful day, she never saw her family again, but instead, she made a new one.

Ara wandered the forest alone for days, hungry and cold; just when she thought her body was about to give out on her from hunger she found salvation.

In her wandering, she had managed to stumble upon a wolf den and even though they knew she was far from their equal, they still accepted her as one of their own, feeding her and sheltering her despite the human appearance she often had when not in her wolf form.

Ara spent the next few years with the family of wolves learning their trade as they taught her how to hunt and how to care for herself.

They acted as if they were her true family, not once had they excluded her from any activity they did; each one trusting her with their lives and the lives of their young.

Life for what it was worth was going well until that one fateful day when she met Alec, a boy who would forever change her life and the life of those around her.