Her sweet chains

Part 1

Chapter 1

It was growing late for me to experience my first shift everybody knew that but nobody thought to openly express it especially not Darius. The Alpha who was growing more and more irate in our meetings during which I became more and more adamant that my shifts would never occur and that despite his fervent wishes I would take after my mother's biology becoming Human. Darius at first calmly and then angrily declared that we were all unique and my shifts would occur when the body was ready. He was right shifts did vary and couldn't be encouraged by any means (not that the knowledge stopped up from trying). But they did generally take place in the mid teens, fourteen or fifteen was about average and when Darius was a child he experienced his first shift at twelve. So you can imagine my frustration when Derek found me in the forest a month shy of my eighteenth birthday and still awaiting my first shift. He approached with the stealth of a perfect hunter which was after all what he was. Nobody but one of us could have found him. By my father simply being who he is meant that though the shifts were still denied to me I was gifted with the forest being my second home and heightened senses that meant I could achieve almost as much stealth and awareness there as Derek. Hence why I was able to hear my best friends approach and recognise his calm deliberate breaths, that pretty much sums up Derek everything with him is calm, measured reasoned and deliberate which meant that he never said anything in a rage that he later regretted but that also meant that anything he threw at you he meant which made it hurt all the more, and we argued about the colour of the sky some days but he was my best friend. I know that means that I shouldn't want to change him for the world but I have to admit I may have tweaked him a little. I may have liked his first shift to have been denied to him just a little so he could understand me and not just echo the patient message of the Alpha that claimed to understand. But no he got his first shift a week after his fourteenth birthday mastered his control and was appointed an enforcer within six months(although of course this was only his part time job until he took his GCSE'S) a position he'd now held for eight years. A slight contrast to me. I also may have chosen to reduce his hormone levels just a little. We had been best friends since well forever, not that that in itself was that unusual though we grew up together. The pack was something of a closed community, so we grow up together and don't socialize much outside of our little family. Although this did mean I was the object of the boy's attention. None of them I ever believed was truly serious. I was simply the only one accessible girl. Humans, for a young male was a very thorny issue so being the only female of our kind in our pack well in the teens anyway I was the recipient of their hyperactive hormones. There were two other women (Connie and Katie) although neither of them were naturals and so were obviously mated up; you only mess with a mate if you have no desire to keep all limbs in tact. So I was the centre of all the light hearted flirting an innuendoes but I always had been and that was fine, I was the girl and so that was the way it was and I knew none of them took it for anything real. I was seen as somewhere between a friend with breasts and a sister. All except Derek, he had never flirted never tried to subtly grope me, nothing like that I know it's not very Derek but never. Like I said when Derek spoke you knew he had thought it through everything was considered. So I knew he hadn't been joking, Derek had clearly been very subtly yet very persistently pursuing me pretty much since his first shift and I knew Derek so I knew he was totally serious about it. Worse than that was the fact that I wasn't the only one that knew everybody in the pack knew and they all approved, as far as they were concerned and regardless of what I said me and Derek were together or would be, but right now they although I was just playing hard to get.

"I thought I'd find you here." He said flopping down next to me.

"I wanted to be alone." I said sharply giving him a glare he simply laughed off the rebuke it sounded more like a cough.