Dakini's Hope

Chapter 3

Once school is over, I decide to head on home so that I can take Pippin - my Belgian Malinois - out for her evening walk. Like I mentioned earlier, I don't have any two-legged friends in my life anymore; it both fills me with intense loneliness and big relief at the same time. At least I can hang out with my four-legged friends with the assurance that they won't be horrible to me unless they see me as weak and want to take my place as Alpha. Which won't happen. Because I don't let my pack walk all over me without punishing them.

Mum is the ultimate Alpha of all of us. Both me and my pack listen to her whenever she's around and not one of us will dare step out of line unless we have a good reason to. My mum isn't nasty or oppressive though, she's the most amazing person I know - plus she taught me some ancient werewolf skills that many modern werewolves have forgotten about. Including being able to understand and communicate with wild wolves and being able to feel the vibrations of feet hitting the ground from up to 5 miles away, which both come in handy when I'm searching for my wolf-dogs.

My mum's name is Cassandra and she's 38 years old. Her hair is wavy and is the same colour as mine, which stops to about the middle of her back. My hair isn't wavy and it comes to the middle of my shoulders, but it's the same colour. She used to be a werewolf when she was younger, but due to the pack finding out I was born with Black Eyes and that she lied to them for two years, Mum had most of her werewolf powers taken away from her before my father intervened to save us.

Apparently, both my mum and father fled my father's pack to Witherington to avoid all of us being executed for being traitors and members of the Katana line. Four years later, the Curse which our family suffers with took hold of my father and he forced himself to leave us and Witherington behind to avoid killing anyone and being caught by the werewolf government. He only got about two miles outside of Witherington before he lost full control of himself.

About a month later, a news report on TV says that a rabid wolf was found in a nearby town and had to be put down by local animal control before it hurt anyone - luckily, there were no casualties besides my father. As far as I know, nearly everyone in Witherington believes that my father left because he and Mum got divorced so most people believe that the wolf in the report was just that - a normal, rabid wolf.

With no pack to call her own, and her mate dead, my mum was left alone in Witherington with little wolf-baby me. I was born as a wolf pup and Mum had to teach me to shift to human form a year after she fled the pack. I have no idea what she looked like as a wolf but she described herself as being chocolate brown with black markings. She even claims that her Alpha once considered her the most beautiful she-wolf in the pack.

It's a shame my wolf form isn't like hers - if it was, I wouldn't stick out so much. Hence why I never show myself as a wolf. My head is completely russet but the rest of my body is pure white with no markings. It's a coat colour and pattern that is extremely rare among werewolves. Not so much if you look at my family's genetics. Hadri looked exactly like me when he was a child, but his adult coat later changed so that most of his body was ginger with white markings. Mum says my coat won't change as I get older, so I decide to keep Wolf me a secret.

Anyway, back to my mum's history. She didn't let the odds against her sway her determination and eventually told me everything. She made everything work, got a decent job and is the only active parent in my life. Heck she even got a university degree when I was 10 and eventually went in to work as a qualified nurse in Witherington Hospital.

We made the vow together to keep my werewolf side a secret and to keep my eyes as hidden away from the world as possible. We live in a modest house close to my school, which backs out into a forest where my wolf-dogs now roam.

I enter the living room and put my school backpack on the floor behind the couch. My mum's in the backyard, probably making healing potions for tonight. For some reason that not even my mum knows, the Curse takes a proper hold of me whenever there's a full moon or if I lose my temper for more than five minutes. So, whenever there's a full moon, I have to sleep in the cellar which has a barred door in the doorway as well as the usual door.