Primitive Instincts *revised*

Dinnertime

"The Red Druids terrify me." 

Rachel's word stuck with me long after she left to go home. I sat in the pack house kitchen, half listening to Louisa chirp about the recent pack house drama. 

After my 20th birthday I decided I needed space from the domineering and suffocating pack affairs. I was over trying to use my position for the betterment of the pack, when what all the leaders really wanted were poster children. 

So I distanced myself and moved out into a cabin in the woods. Away from the hoax of a hierarchy fabricated here. 

The wilderness made sense. 

It was black and white, eat or be eaten, die or survive. 

I respected that. 

But I'd long for companionship. Making it difficult to stay away longer then a few months. 

"-With the closing of The Willington center, the pack now only has one training building. Alpha Bruno felt the extra space was underutilized, but there was still pack members who disagreed-" Louisa always knew how to fill silences, a trait I appreciated more and more. 

I was perched with my chin on my hand and elbow on the smooth marbled kitchen island in the center of the kitchen. Louisa was zooming back and forth from fridge to oven to cutting board and back again, chattering nonstop. 

It was rude that I wasn't listening but my mind was preoccupied on what Rachel had said a few hours earlier. 

The Red Druids of the far north. 

Infamous and legendary. 

Even before their new Alpha was appointed. Who only managed to inflate their fame tenfold. 

... And their territory. 

They were a war laced pack. Violence engraved into the bones of every pup that was born there. 

But none so deadly as their notorious leader. 

Hunter Kaye. 

The pack devouring, wolf of the undead, executioner's right hand or as he's most recognized as the shadow alpha. 

These names weren't undeserved, neither were they for sh!ts and giggles. 

But because when Alpha Hunter left his territory, another pack always disappeared within a single night. 

He swallowed whole towns and leave nothing but memories of them to be remembered. Then the Red Druids would set fire to the lands, burning away all traces of the previous owners before claiming it for themselves. 

And with that their reputation spread like the fires they lit. 

Stories traveling with it, stories of death and unspeakable horrors. 

But most of those were only just that. Stories.

However, I always wonder if maybe the worst of the bunch, the absolute most vicious, was the only one that played true. 

Thinking this when suddenly I heard footsteps approach and talking at the entrance of the kitchen. 

"Oh, Aspen!" My mother cried and I turned around to look at her. She was with the Alpha of our pack and another advisor.

Her hair was pinned neatly into a bun, without a single loose strand out of place. The clothes she wore were impeccable to match; a neat knee length charcoal pencil skirt and a mauve blouse. 

"I didn't know you'd be visiting today, not that I'm complaining." She smiled and rushed past her superior to give me a hug. 

"I missed you so much!" My mothers arms contracted around me like a python trying to crunch the life from it's prey. Her familiar scent surrounded me and as if it had sedative properties, made my body and mind relax.