SHAPESHIFTERS

“Don’t hide from us, little pup. Don’t you want to play with the wolves?” Beta Valeriu’s voice rings out around me as I duck under the staircase of the empty house, dodging a few cobwebs that get trapped in my long blonde hair. Breathlessly, I sink to the floor and wrap my arms around my legs, trying not to breathe in the thick scent of damp and dust. Closing my eyes, I pray to the moon goddess that they will get bored with chasing me, but I know better. No goddess is going to save my ass tonight. Not when I’m being hunted by literal wolves. I made a mistake. A big mistake. I went to a party in the pack, like all my other classmates at the beta’s house, to celebrate the end of our schooling and, personally for me, turning eighteen. For some tiny reason, I thought I could be normal for one night. Be like them. And not just one of the foster kids the pack keeps alive because of the laws put in place by a goddess no one has seen in hundreds of years. I should have known the betas in training would get drunk and decide chasing me for another one of their “fun” beatings would be a good way to prove themselves. Wiping the blood from my bottom lip where one of them caught me in the forest with his fist, I stare at my blood-tipped fingers in a beam of moonlight shining through the broken panelled wall behind me. I don’t know why I think anyone is going to save me. I’m nothing to them, the pack, or to the moon goddess I pray to every night like everyone in this pack does. The moon goddess hasn’t saved me from s**t. Heavy footsteps echo closer, changing from crunching leaves to hitting concrete floor, and I know they are in the house now. A rat runs past my leg, and I nearly scream as I jolt backwards into a loose metal panel that vibrates, the metal smacking against another piece and revealing my location to the wolves hunting me. Crap. My hands shake as I climb to my feet and slowly step out into the middle of the room as Beta Valeriu comes in with his two sidekicks, who stumble to his side. I glance around the room, seeing the staircase is broken and there is an enormous gap on the second floor. It looks burnt out from a fire, but there is no other exit. I’m well and truly in trouble now. They stop in an intimidating line, all three of them muscular and jacked up enough to knock a car over. Their black hair is all the same shade, likely because they are all cousins, I’m sure, and they have deeply tanned skin that doesn’t match how pale my skin is. Considering I’m a foster kid, I could have at least gotten the same looks as them, but oh no, the moon goddess gave me bright blonde hair that never stops growing fast and freckly pale skin to stand out. I look like the moon comparing itself to the beauty of the sun with everyone in my pack. Beta Valeriu takes a long sip of his drink, his eyes flashing green, his wolf making it clear he likes the hunt. Valeriu is the newest beta, taking over from his father, who recently retired at two hundred years of age and gave the role to his son willingly. But Valeriu is a d**k. Simple as. He might be good-looking, like most of the five betas are, but each one of them lacks a certain amount of brain cells. The thing is, wolves don’t need to be smart to be betas, they just need the right bloodline and to kill when the alpha clicks his fingers. All wolves like to hunt and kill. And damn, I’m always the hunted in this pack. “You know better than to run from us, little Mairin. Little Mary the lamb who runs from the wolf,” he sing songs the last part, taking a slow step forward, his shoe grating across the dirt under his feet. Always the height jokes with this tool. He might be over six foot, and sure, my five foot three height isn’t intimidating, but has no one heard the phrase small but deadly? Even if I’m not even a little deadly. “Who invited you to my party?” “The entire class in our pack was invited,” I bite out. He laughs, the crisp sound echoing around me like a wave of frost. “We both know you might be in this pack, but that’s only because of the law about killing female children. Otherwise, our alpha would have ripped you apart a long time ago.” Yeah, I know the law. The law that states female children cannot be killed because of the lack of female wolves born into the pack. There is roughly one female to five wolves in the pack, and it’s been that way for a long time for who knows what reason. So, when they found me in the forest at twelve, with no memories and nearly dead, they had to take me in and save my life. A life, they have reminded me daily, has only been given to me because of that law. The law doesn’t stop the alpha from treating me like crap under his shoe or beating me close to death for shits and giggles. Only me, though. The other foster kid I live with is male, so he doesn’t get the “special” attention I do. Thankfully. “We both know you can’t kill me or beat me bad enough to attract attention without the alpha here. So why don’t you just walk away and find some poor dumbass girl to keep you busy at the party?” I blurt out, tired of all this. Tired of never saying what I want to these idiots and fearing the alpha all the time. A bitter laugh escapes Valeriu’s mouth as his eyes fully glow this time. So do his friends’, as I realise I just crossed a line with my smart-ass mouth. My foster carer always said my mouth would get me into trouble. Seems he is right once again. A threatening growl explodes from Beta Valeriu’s chest, making all the hairs on my arms stand up as I take a step back just as he shifts. I’ve seen it a million times, but it’s always amazing and terrifying at the same time. Shifter energy, pure dark forest green magic, explodes around his body as he changes shape. The only sound in the room is his clicking bones and my heavy, panicked breathing as I search for a way out of here once again, even though I know it’s pointless. I’ve just wound up a wolf. A beta wolf, one of the most powerful in our pack. Great job, Irin. Way to stay alive. The shifter magic disappears, leaving a big white wolf in the space where Valeriu was. The wolf towers over me, like most of them do, and its head is huge enough to eat me with one bite. Just as he steps forward to jump, and I brace myself for something painful, a shadow of a man jumps down from the broken slats above me, landing with a thump. Dressed in a white cloak over jeans and a shirt, my foster carer completely blocks me from Valeriu’s view, and I sigh in relief. “I suggest you leave before I teach you what an experienced, albeit retired, beta wolf can do to a young pup like yourself. Trust me, it will hurt, and our alpha will look the other way.” The threat hangs in the air, spoken with an authority that Valeriu could never dream of having in his voice at eighteen years old. The room goes silent, filled with thick tension for a long time before I hear the wolf running off, followed by two pairs of footsteps moving quickly. My badass foster carer slowly turns around, lowering his hood and brushing his long grey hair back from his face. Smothered in wrinkles, Mike is ancient, and to this day, I have no clue why he offered to work with the foster kids of the pack. His blue eyes remind me of the pale sea I saw once when I was twelve. He always dresses like a Jedi from the human movies, in long cloaks and swords clipped to his hips that look like lightsabres as they glow with magic, and he tells me this is his personal style. His name is even more human than most of the pack names that get regularly overused. My name, which is the only thing I know about my past thanks to a note in my hand, is as uncommon as it gets. According to an old book on names, it means Their Rebellion, which makes no sense. Mike is apparently a normal human name, and from the little interaction I’ve had with humans through their technology, his name couldn’t be more common. “You are extremely lucky my back was playing up and I went for a walk, Irin,” he sternly comments, and I sigh. “I’m sorry,” I reply, knowing there isn’t much else I can say at this point. “The mating ceremony is tomorrow, and I wanted one night of being normal. I shouldn’t have snuck out of the foster house.” “No, you should not have when your freedom is so close,” he counters and reaches up, gently pinching my chin with his fingers and turning my head to the side. “Your lip is cut, and there is considerable bruising to your cheek. Do you like being beaten by those pups?” “No, of course not,” I say, tugging my face away, still tasting my blood in my mouth. “I wanted to be normal! Why is that so much to ask?” “Normal is for humans and not shifters. It is why they gave us the United Kingdom and Ireland and then made walls around the islands to stop us from getting out. They want normal, and we need nothing more than what is here: our pack,” he begins, telling me what I already know. They agreed three hundred years ago we would take this part of earth as our own, and the humans had the rest. No one wanted interbreeding, and this was the best way to keep peace. So the United Kingdom’s lands were separated into four packs. One in England, one in Wales, one in Scotland and one in Ireland. Now there are just two packs, thanks to the shifter wars: the Ravensword Pack that is my home, who worship the moon goddess, and then the Fall Mountain Pack, who owns Ireland, a pack we are always at war with. Whoever they worship, it isn’t our goddess, and everything I know about them suggests they are brutal. Unfeeling. Cruel. Which is exactly why I’ve never tried to leave my pack to go there. It might be s**t here, but at least it’s kind of safe and I have a future. Of sorts. “Do you think it will be better for me when I find my mate tomorrow?” I question…not that I want a mate who will control me with his shifter energy. But it means I will shift into a wolf, like every female can when they are mated, and I’ve always wanted that. Plus, a tiny part of me wants to know who the moon goddess herself has chosen for me. The other half of my soul. My true mate. Someone who won’t see me as the foster kid who has no family, and will just want me. Mike looks down at me, and something unreadable crosses his eyes. He turns away and starts walking out of the abandoned house, and I jog to catch up with him. Snowflakes drop into my blonde hair as we head through the forest, back to the foster home, the place I will finally leave one way or another tomorrow. I pull my leather jacket around my chest, over my brown T-shirt for warmth. My torn and worn out jeans are soaked with snow after a few minutes of walking, the snow becoming thicker with every minute. Mike is silent as we walk past the rocks that mark the small pathway until we get to the top of the hill that overlooks the main pack city of Ravensword. Towering buildings line the River Thames that flows through the middle of the city. The bright lights make it look like a reflection of the stars in the sky, and the sight is beautiful. It might be a messed up place, but I can’t help but admire it. I remember the first time I saw the city from here, a few days after I was found and healed. I remember thinking I had woken up from hell to see heaven, but soon I learnt heaven was too nice of a word for this place. The night is silent up here, missing the usual noise of the people in the city, and I silently stare down wondering why we have stopped. “What do you see when you look at the city, Irin?” I blow out a long breath. “Somewhere I need to escape.” I don’t see his disappointment, but I easily feel it. “I see my home, a place with darkness in its corners but so much light. I see a place even a foster wolf with no family or ancestors to call on can find happiness tomorrow,” he responds. “Stop looking at the stars for your escape, Irin, because tomorrow you will find your home in the city you are trying so hard to see nothing but darkness in.” He carries on walking, and I follow behind him, trying to do what he has asked, but within seconds my eyes drift up to the stars once again. Because Mike is right, I am always looking for my way to escape, and I always will. I wasn’t born in this pack, and I came from outside the walls that have been up for hundreds of years. That’s the only explanation for how they found me in a forest with nothing more than a small glass bottle in my hand and a note with my name on it. No one knows how that is possible, least of all me, but somehow I’m going to figure it out. I have to.