Weredragons

Are There Other Weredragons?

Frosta breathed a sigh of relief as Clara, Janet, and her mother got into their car and left. She usually wasn't very formal or stiffly elegant, but today her dragon just didn't want to get out of bed. She climbed back and sunk into her cushions, waiting until all sound of the people downstairs had left. Once she heard their car drive off, Frosta stretched and sat up. She pulled out the buffalo hide from under her bed that she had saved from last night's hunt. Royal weredragons make their warm clothes, and true buffalo hide is exceptionally warm.

Frosta heated the stitches together as she made a cloak. Even though it looked like Americans didn't wear one, she wanted to feel like she was back at home. She had dozens on cloaks in her closet back at home, from dyed wool to old weredragon scales that she had shed years ago. Some of them had gold or silver tips. All bore the mark of the werewolf; nine black claws beneath a red dragon head surrounded by orange flames. Frosta knew to save her newly made cloak until she got her Alpha father to put the mark upon it. She swung the cloak about her shoulders and clambered downstairs and out the door. As she went for her morning run, about two and a half hours, she had to keep restraining her dragon from breaking into a trot. To make it more satisfied, she sped up a little and took a detour. She thought maybe she could check out her surroundings a bit.

As Frosta was nearing the end of the seventh street, she heard shouts emit from a house. Loud shouts. She stopped in her tracks and looked inquiringly at it. As if in response to the screams, a window opened and someone looked out. Clara. Frosta camouflaged into the street, and waited. First looking up and down the street, Clara jumped out the window and clung to the wall. She slipped and slid a few times, but gradually made it to the ground. She breathed a sigh of relief as she landed on the ground. Frosta decided to find out more about this, and reappeared, to Clara's great surprise.

"Hi Clara."

"Oh, Frosta. It's just you." She tried to ignore the fact that she just climbed out of her bedroom window face first. Frosta narrowed her eyes.

"Can you tell me what you just did." Clara was stunned. The question wasn't one of awe or amusement, more like a challenge or test. She stuttered.

"I-I just wanted to get away from the screams and-and I could hurt myself if I jumped."

Frosta studied Clara for a full minute. "Clara. I want you to honestly tell me if you know what and who you are."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll just go the easy way. Just a simple one on one interview, you can ask me questions if you like too."

"Fire away."

"Can you fly?"

"Yes. Can you?"

"Yes. I should like to see you do it sometime."

Clara looked surprised, because Frosta wasn't surprised at all. She said it sort of matter-of-factly. A dozen questions were on Clara's tongue, but Frosta got up.

"Wait, are you leaving already?"

"Uh, huh."

"No, please, no! I have questions that need answering."

"Later. For now, take this." She gave Clara the weredragon coin. "And hide it. And remember this phrase. We say it up in Normandy. Shefron Glamonton albandos Capalranturum. See you on Monday." Frosta sprinted up the street.

Clara looked back at the coin and flipped it over. Nothing looked different, just a regular American quarter. But Frosta said to hide it. Why? As she looked at it again, words appeared on the eagle's wing. Shefron Glamonton albandos Capalranturum, Clara read. She supposed it must have something to do with weredragons, and possibly Normandy. She considered Frosta's latest statement. Yes. I should like to see you do it sometime. Was Frosta a weredragon too? That didn't seem right. Frosta was confident and strong in mind, not worried and scared like Clara always was. Maybe there was something more to being a weredragon, something special or unique. But if Frosta was a weredragon, then she must know others, and be able to bring Clara back to weredragon civilization. Humans were kind and all, but Clara couldn't really talk what was in her heart to them. It would perplex their simple minds. Clara had a friend at school, Meg, who could tell that she was troubled. She had offered to help, but Clara always declined. Humans wouldn't understand, and Meg is a human.

Clara tucked the coin into her pocket, and the words into her memory. Hide it. Frosta's words weren't a suggestion, they were a command. And Clara felt compelled to obey without question. It was almost as if Frosta had some sort of...power? Maybe that was the word. Power. Not magic, not spells. It seemed more like she knew how to act in order to be obeyed instantly. As if she had been trained...by other weredragons. No, no, what was Clara thinking? If she could fly, that doesn't necessarily mean that she was a weredragon. Perhaps she had some suit like Iron Man, or War Machine. Superman could fly, and he wasn't a monster. But these were all fictional characters, right?

The girl shook her head, trying to clear her mind. Last week she would have easily believed what was fictional, and what was real. But since she met Frosta, all of that changed. Hey, she even had second thoughts about Unicorns.

She made a mental note to ask Frosta about this. But more subtle. If Frosta was a regular human, then asking about Werewolves and Vampire bats might lead her to think that Clara was losing her mind. Whatever Clara had lost in her battle between humans and dragons, it certainly wasn't her mind. She was sane, I hope.

Frosta went to her miniature computer she had brought on her flight over to America. It wasn't much, but the Alpha Droma had recommended it, and Frosta couldn't think of anything else small enough to carry. She pulled out a computer chip, and plugged it in. Database files, messages, and snapshots popped up, as the computer warmed up. She selected the tab with her current school's name. A list of students and teachers appeared, and Frosta found Clara's picture. She tried to click on it, but the screen blacked out. She guessed it was too old to regenerate her location.

Sighing, Frosta leaned back on her chair. She supposed it wasn't too polite to go sneaking behind someone's back for information anyway. If she wanted the goodwill of the neighbors, then the best way to become friends was to speak to them personally. Frosta didn't care much for humans, but the Alpha told her it was best to learn to get along with them. He had to whenever they came over to the motherhouse, which was rather often. If she was going to become the Beta one day, she'd better learn to act like one.

Female weredragons don't become the Alpha. Only males do. But if the firstborn is a female, then she becomes the Beta and chooses who to mate with. That person then becomes the Alpha, but the Alpha has no control over the Beta. She is free to do what she wants, except that the Alpha controls the pack, not her. Frosta would have thought that unfair, except that it already happened half a dozen times in her family line. Her grandmother was the firstborn of her great-grandfather. About every other time it occurred. The real problem was when there was a second-born male within the first hundred years of the first-born's life.

In such a case, the firstborn female is still the Beta. She mates with a male, who then has to fight with the brother of the Beta. To the death. If the mate of the Beta dies, she dies as well. If her brother dies, then her mate becomes the Alpha, and she stays as the Beta. True, she loses her brother, but she keeps her mate and still lives. Such is the tradition of the werewolf pack, and Frosta never thought of counteracting it. Although she knew much in the lore of werewolves and their background history, she had no wish of setting off a chain of reactions against the Alpha Droma. Not that he couldn't take it, for he was very strong, but some of his pack might want to leave.

There are many more packs besides Frosta's; the Princes. They were all started by a runaway werewolf. The Princes pack started this way, too. They had left the Shredders a long time ago, centuries in fact. The Shredders had been the first pack developed, and all other packs started from it. Sadly, it was now a dying pack. The younger ones had all run off, and only the males over 660 were left. Obviously, a male needs to mate a female in order to have children, but the females had all gradually been stolen over the years. Another rule of the weredragons is that if a female from one pack is taken away, then she officially and immediately becomes part of that pack. No exceptions. Such was the way of the Shredders. One by one, the females had all gone. No one bothered with the males. They could only cause problems in other packs, and unless won over, were never united with them.

It was actually for this reason that the Alpha Droma had sent his daughter away. He never trusted other weredragons, and wanted at all costs to keep his daughter safe. LA seemed pretty secure, and maybe she could get a degree in acting there. He knew she would never desert him on her own account, for she loved him dearly, Alpha that he was. She was still very young, though, and secretly fear gnawed at his Alpha confidence.