That ended up being exactly what I did.
I also discovered that there was wireless internet that I could connect my phone to, and I checked my email and my social media accounts, even though I knew that I wouldn’t be posting things publicly anymore. I couldn’t afford to do that as a werewolf on the run.
I considered calling my parents, just to tell them that I was okay, but I thought that hearing my mother’s voice scolding me might be too much. And besides, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t feel sad about it all. Maybe it was better to have a clean break.
Desta would tell them that I was okay. I would leave it to her.
Later, Sinead came and got me for dinner, and we went downstairs to a room with a long, thin dining room table. It was immaculately decorated—understated but elegant with clean lines and muted colors.
Besides Vivia, Sinead, and myself, there was also a woman named Rachel, her young son Nick, and a man named Alan who ate with us.
I wondered what Rachel’s story was. Nick was too young to be a werewolf. Wolves didn’t start shifting until later in life. Whatever the case, they probably were on the run from something, and they needed a safe place to rest. This place seemed to be that.
I was grateful to be here.
Vivia had said she would answer my questions at dinner, but I was too intimidated by the surroundings and the delicious food to talk much. Instead, I ate quietly and soaked it all in.
Yes, I was grateful to be here, but I had a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that it didn’t make any sense. Why was I being allowed to stay here? It all seemed a little too good to be true.
* * *
That night was another wolf moon. There were three moons a month. The moon was at its fullest on one night, but the nights directly before and directly after were also full enough so that wolves would turn. I wasn’t sure exactly how that would work. I asked Sinead about it after dinner, and she said that we wouldn’t turn as long as we were inside the house. Apparently, Vivia had enchantments in place that interfered with our ability to shift.
“It’s great,” Sinead gushed. “I’d hate to have to shift all the time, you know? This is so much better.”
Yes, it was nice, I guessed. But I had to admit that I was confused. If there were enchantments that could stop us from shifting entirely, why not share that with the population? That would cease the danger of wolves, and we could all live like normal people again. There had to be something more to it, but I didn’t know what.
I decided not to think on it anymore and went back to my room instead. The truth was, I didn’t have any other options. I had to stay here, because if I went back into the woods, I would be all alone against the bloodhounds. I needed Vivia’s protection, and I wasn’t going to get that if I kept second-guessing her. She seemed like a good person. I was only wary because of everything that had happened to me lately.
So, I began to change into my pajamas.
There was a soft knock at the door.
I thought maybe it was Sinead again and opened it right away.
But it was Vivia standing there, hands clasped in front of her.
“Oh,” I said. “Hello.”
“Hello,” she said, smiling a warm smile. “How are you settling in?”
“Oh,” I said, “very well.”
“That’s excellent,” she said. “Listen, I would like to confirm something that I suspect about you, Camber. In order to do that, I will need to perform some tests. Would that be all right with you?”
“Well… what kind of tests?”
“Not the entirely pleasant kind, I’m afraid,” she said. “But you are different from other wolves. Surely you have sensed that.”
“I’ve sensed that I’m different,” I said, “but I thought that was because I was a wolf.” Was I also different than other wolves? I had to admit that I’d noted that the call seemed to affect me and Desta in different ways. Was I destined to be alone for my entire life?
“You are more than just a wolf, I think,” said Vivia. “But I am not sure. I would like to determine it for myself if I could. Would you allow me that?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, all right.” I did want to understand myself better. If I was different, I wanted to know how.
“Excellent,” she said. “Then come with me.”
She led me down the stairs and into the basement of the mansion. It was a finished basement, with a large living room area and a wide screen TV. There was also a pool table and a dart board and a little wet bar area, as if the place had been designed for entertaining. It was all very strange to me. I didn’t know what this house was. Had it been built out here as a werewolf safe house or had it only been appropriated for that purpose? And who built houses in the woods, anyway? I didn’t really understand how things worked out here. Did the werewolves all have jobs, going to work as plumbers and grocers and everything else? Or was all this somehow created by magic?
I tried to ask these things of Vivia, but she was preoccupied, and only turned to me and said, “What?”
I repeated myself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m not really able to concentrate on conversation right now. I have to be in the right mindset for the tests I’m about to do on you.” And then she opened the door to a small room off the game room. It was really more like a closet. It wasn’t anything like the rest of the basement. There was no carpet, only a concrete floor with a drain in the middle of the room. On the walls were chains that had been bolted in and there was a sink in one corner, stained with copper-colored stains.
She walked right in, but I hesitated at the doorway, my heart starting to thump in my chest. This was the catch, wasn’t it?
Maybe my thought about Hansel and Gretel had been right after all. Maybe she was a witch who… who…
What was I thinking? That she ate werewolves? That was ludicrous.
“I know,” she said. “It’s not the nicest atmosphere. There are ten rooms like this down here. I used to have to use them before I perfected the enchantment that interferes with shifting. I had to lock all the wolves up down here. I didn’t like it, but it was the only way.”
Okay, fine. So, that was the purpose of the room. Why did we have to be in it now?
She reached out and snatched hold of my wrist. She tugged me into the room. Then she shut the door behind us.
I felt panic rising in my throat, and with it, the animal inside me. The wolf was scraping its claws against the insides of my neck. It wanted out. Maybe I should make a run for it. Maybe her enchantments weren’t working on me.
She began to mutter something in another language, putting her hands on my arms.
The wolf calmed immediately, swallowed into my gut, gone and quiet.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
She put her hands on my forehead and she kept on in that strange language. But now, she wasn’t muttering. She threw her head back, eyes closed, and she yelled out the words.
Now the interior of the room seemed to glow, and there was heat coming off the walls, hot enough to burn. I moved away from the heat, yelping, and I was even more afraid.
She let go of me, reaching her arms up to the ceiling. She let out a loud, groaning sigh, and her body writhed, almost as if she wasn’t in control of herself anymore. And then she convulsed and came at me.
Her fingers dug into my neck painfully, and I cried out, because now, suddenly, my whole body was on fire.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Please, stop!” What had I gotten myself into here? Was she going to kill me? But I couldn’t even form those thoughts entirely, because it hurt too much, and I was incapable of doing anything except shaking in pain. All my muscles were tensed up, frozen in agony.
It went on for a long time.
How long, I couldn’t say. It felt like years. Eons. Eternities. I was frozen in pain and she was still speaking the words of her spell, holding onto me, pouring fire and pain all through me.
Then, finally, she w
as done.
She let go of me and we both crumpled to the ground, neither of us able to keep our balance.
I gasped, sobbing a little. I was no longer in pain, but I could still remember the pain, and—
Hell, I had to get out of here. I tried to get up, to go for the door, but I could hardly move my limbs.
Vivia staggered to her feet, moving like an old woman. But her eyes were bright and excited as she looked at me. “It is as I hoped. You are an alpha.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“What the fang does it even mean to be an alpha?” I was saying. It was the next morning, and I was eating breakfast in the kitchen with Sinead. After what had happened last night, I should have run, but I couldn’t. I only had the strength to be helped upstairs by Vivia into my bed, and then I slept like the dead. Now, it was morning, and the sun was beaming down outside over the cold, winter landscape, and it all felt like some kind of awful dream.
The truth was, I was afraid to leave. I didn’t know where I was, what sort of place this was, and I couldn’t be sure I was really safe here at all, but I was staying because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“Alphas head up the packs,” said Sinead, who was peeling a banana.
“Right, I think I know that,” I said. “But I don’t have a pack, so how can I be an alpha?”
“I don’t know,” said Sinead. “I guess I never really thought about what made an alpha different than other wolves. I assumed any wolf could be an alpha. I guess I thought maybe they were elected or something.” She took a thoughtful bite of her banana.
I scoffed. “I don’t think wolves are particularly democratic.” There was a sort of sham democratic government in our own world. All towns elected officials to go and attend sessions in the capital city and discuss things and make laws. And in the end, the word of the king vampire trumped everything, so what was the point of it all?
Sometimes a group of humans got together and started protests about it all. The vampires let them make noise for a while before they herded them up and drained them of blood or had them turned into bloodhounds. I didn’t even really know what democracy was, truly. It was a thing I had learned about in textbooks.
“Well, I don’t know much about it,” said Sinead. “From what I understand, wolf packs are basically extended family groups. At the core of the group, you’ll have the patriarch and matriarch and then all their children and their children’s children. It’s the way things work. I always thought the alphas were the great-grandparents.”
“Yes, that would make sense,” I said.
“Well, maybe it used to be that way and things changed,” said Sinead. “Because I suppose that the great-grandparents might die off and the packs would remain. The packs in this wood are ancient, hundreds of years old. There would have to be another way to chose alphas.”
“It could be passed down,” I said.
“Well, I do know this. There are two alphas of a pack—the male alpha and the female alpha. They are a mated pair. So, how would they decide who to pass it down to?”
“The oldest?” I said.
“And whoever they mated to?” She took another bite of her banana. She chewed. “Yes, it would work, I suppose. But it must not be that way, because you’re an alpha.”
“Well, Vivia says I am. But maybe…” I didn’t want to say out loud that I wasn’t sure I trusted Vivia. I was afraid that it wasn’t safe to admit such a thing.
“Vivia wouldn’t lie to you,” said Sinead. “Didn’t you ask her about this last night?”
“I really was too exhausted after the test to put words together.”
“Oh!” said Sinead, gesturing wildly with her banana, so that the flaps of the skin fluttered haphazardly. “I’ve got it. I know why they couldn’t pass it down.”
“Why not?”
“Well, ninety percent of people are human, you know?”
I furrowed my brow. ‘What?”
“I don’t know what the real percent is,” she said, shrugging and peeling more of her banana skin. “But it’s rare to be a wolf, isn’t it? So, I think it’s likely that the original alphas didn’t have any werewolf offspring.”
“Wait, what do you mean? If two werewolves have a baby, it’s not automatically a werewolf?”
She was chewing her banana. She shook her head vigorously. Then swallowed. “No, no. It’s like the humans in the cities. Most werewolf genes don’t activate. Only a small percentage gets the call.”
“Oh,” I said. “So, then, in the wolf packs, they’re not all wolves?”
“No,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said. “Well, that’s all odd. If the wolf packs are family groups, then how does one get into a wolf pack?”
“You have to mate in,” said Sinead.
“Like you meet a wolf already in the pack, and then when the two of you end up together, you’re part of that pack?”
“Exactly.”
“There’s no way to do it without, um, coupling up?”
“Not that I know of,” said Sinead. “From time to time, wolves from various packs come by the house, just to see the lone wolves here that Vivia is sheltering. Some of them have courted me, but I’ve never felt a connection to any of them. Still, someday, I’m sure I’ll find a mate, and then I’ll settle down in that pack.”
“That’s… odd,” I said again.
“Maybe,” said Sinead. “But it’s the way it is.” She finished her banana, popping the last of it in her mouth. “Look, you shouldn’t worry too much. I know it’s strange, but it’s got to be a good thing, being an alpha. Who knows, maybe you can start your own pack.” She grinned.
“That would be…” I didn’t even know how I felt about that.
“Anyway, stop looking so worried,” she said. “Are you going to eat your banana?”
Wordlessly, I handed it to her.
* * *
A few days later, I spent my first Christmas in the woods. We had delicious food and we watched Christmas movies on TV, but there weren’t any presents. Well, Alan got presents, but the rest of us didn’t, which was fine.
Sinead called her parents. I didn’t. I didn’t call Desta either. But I didn’t feel lonely. Sinead and I had wonderful time. We made Christmas cocktails with peppermint liqueur and drank enough to be tipsy and giggly.
A week after that, I was up in my room when I saw a car pull into the driveway. It was a fairly new-looking SUV, and it reminded me that I needed to ask more questions about werewolf society. But I was beginning to think—if most of the people in the woods were not actually werewolves but humans born to werewolves—that it must be as I had thought, that there was a thriving society out here, with all the things that we had in the towns.
A man got out of the SUV. I couldn’t see him too well from my vantage point, but he looked young, perhaps in his early twenties. He was trim and fit, but he had powerful shoulders and strong arms. His hair was reddish brown, cropped close to his head, and he sported a neatly trimmed beard.
Immediately, I ran to Sinead’s room and knocked on her door.
She opened it up. “What?” she said.
“Who is it that just came in?” I said.
“Someone came in?” she said.
I dragged her over to the window and pointed out the SUV. “Whose car is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Damn it,” I said. “I was hoping you knew who he was.”
“Why? Was he especially nice to look at or something?” She waggled her eyebrows at me.
I giggled. “Well, he was, you know, put together well.”
She giggled too. “If he’s a wolf looking for a mate, we might have to fight over him.”
“Oh, really?” I said, laughing.
“Watch out,” she warned. “I can be a terror if I don’t get my way.”
We were still giggling when Vivia appeared at the doorway to Sinead’s room. She cleared her throat.
Sinead and I stopped lau
ghing and turned to face her. I had the feeling like I’d been caught breaking the rules by a strict teacher. But Sinead and I hadn’t been doing anything wrong.
“There you are,” said Vivia. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Camber. I have someone I want you to meet.”
I exchanged a glance with Sinead.
She widened her eyes.
I raised my shoulders a bit.
“Well, come on,” said Vivia. “We’re keeping him waiting.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I followed Vivia out of Sinead’s room and down the stairs. She led us into a fancy sitting room on the first floor. There was a painting on the wall of a pond covered in lily pads.
The attractive man was sitting on a couch beneath the painting. When Vivia and I walked in, he stood up.
“Here she is,” said Vivia, giving me a little shove in the man’s direction.
“Well, uh, hello,” said the man, who looked as confused as I was.
“This is Camber Fordham,” said Vivia. “Camber, meet Judah Wulfsben of the Northeast Pack.”
Judah offered me his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I shook with him. “You too.”
Vivia sat down on a chair opposite the couch where Judah had been sitting. She gestured. “Sit down, you two.”
I looked around for somewhere else to sit, and all the other chairs were far away, so I felt forced to sit down next to Judah. The couch was a little small, and he was a big guy. His leg kept brushing against mine. Every time it did, he pulled back abruptly, as if I burned him.
“Well, how have you been since I saw you last?” said Vivia.
“Fine,” said Judah. “Just fine.”
“And the enchantment you purchased from me?”
“It’s holding up just as you said it would,” said Judah.
“Oh, very good.” Vivia smiled. “Now, you were talking about your hunting village last time I spoke to you? You spend your summers there?”
“Oh, yes, practically the entire pack goes there,” said Judah. “It’s like a vacation for us. There’s a lovely waterfall and a swimming hole.”
“Sounds picturesque,” said Vivia. “Really lovely.”
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