Alpha Tiger

Chapter 1Honestly, it was the first time in a long time that Danni opened her eyes and it wasn’t a response to anything. It wasn’t because an alarm went off or she was being jostled out of her sleep. She wasn’t being pestered by the sounds of someone getting ready and there was nothing going on inside of her mind other than the soft, quiet realization that the night had come to an end and that it was time for her to get out of bed. The first thing she thought of was the fact that she didn’t get this luxury often and it was a strange sense of relief that hit her. Of course, just because her mind was saying that it was time to get up and that she needed to get out of bed didn’t mean that she was going to. She knew that the mind was willing and able, but the body was weak. God, she just wanted to sit in bed today, wrap up in her blankets and just let the world run by her, leaving her in the rearview mirror and not having to worry about what she needed to do. The responsibilities were hiding out there, waiting for her in the darkness of her mind. No, she had things that she was running away from and it occurred to her that maybe hiding wasn’t the smartest or the most mature thing to do, but it was what she was going to do right now. She was on the lam, running from her own heart. It was a crippling and horrifying idea that she was there and she wasn’t back at her apartment in Boston. She wasn’t curled up in her own bed and, in fact, the last time that she had been in this place was when she was in high school. She hadn’t been a person who came home much after she went off to college. She was a straight-A student, active in a thousand different clubs or internships that she wanted to be a part of to bolster her efforts in becoming that perfect employee, something that she was feeling was a waste of effort and time. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to actually be a part of her company anymore. She didn’t want her life to be wasted in a business where she knew that she was going to have to see his face all the time. No, she wasn’t ready for that. That was the exact opposite of what she wanted. But, she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to waste any more time thinking about the world that she had effectively left behind. She didn’t want to expend more effort trying to hide from what she had already run away from. Instead, she decided that today was a new day. There would be no more crying and there would be no more regret. No second-guessing herself and especially, be no more wondering if she was ever going to be okay. No, that was all behind her and she was ready for something more in her life. She was ready for something that was actually going to give her a fighting chance. She had come back to her roots, home to the world that had been waiting for her and that she knew she would always be able to come home to. There were people who were more than willing to have her back, regardless of what happened or where she was in her life. They were going to be with her until the bitter end and she was glad that she had that kind of loyalty in her life. All she wanted to know was that things were going to be okay. At this point, she wasn’t sure that there were any cards left for her to play, but her parents were certain that she was going to be okay. Sometimes, that was all anyone really needed, to have people who believed in you and who were willing to be by your side no matter what. Taking a deep breath, she threw off the covers and climbed out of bed, looking at everything that was in her room. It was like everything was frozen in the past inside this room and there was nothing that she could handle more than her past. All she wanted to do was rip down everything, stuff it in the garbage and inform her parents that she’d moved on with her life, that everything was over and done. . She was a new person with new responsibilities and new duties that she needed to accept. Seeing all of her teen delights and obsessions still frozen on the walls made her depressed. She didn’t want to be that person any more than she wanted to be the person who she had been a day ago. As far as she was concerned, this was going to be something that she never accepted. As far as she was concerned, the girl who loved all of this stuff died when she went to college and she never looked back. There was nothing that she wanted more right now than to be a new person. She wanted a world that she didn’t have then. She was in the process of redefining herself yet again and she knew that there was nothing she hated more than redefining herself. All she could think about was that stupid saying that people passed around -- that everyone replenished their body’s cells over the course of seven years. It made people new in seven-year rotations. It was completely bogus and there wasn’t a drop of truth to it, but the idea was interesting. Everyone was constantly rebuilding themselves, defining anew who they were, trying their hardest to be the people that they wanted to be rather than the people that they were in that moment. Everyone wanted to be something new and different. Everything that she had with her body right now would one day be different, but that was all she cared about at the moment. She was going to be different one day. She was going to be a new person and she wanted to start right away. She wanted to begin the transformation. She was constantly in a state of transformation and it wasn’t anything that she really admired or appreciated. She was a Shifter and that had meant that her entire life was built around the reality that she was something out of a mythical legend. She had the uncanny ability to transform into a wolf and that meant that she could do something that other people could only dream of, something they could only truly imagine in movies and books. She could transform into a wolf and let the primal, animal side of her life take over. She could be something truly breathtaking and it was incredible that she had that power, but it was a power that she didn’t want. There was nothing that she wanted more than to be a normal person. Instead, here she was, working to find out whether she was going to actually have the ability to do all the things that she wanted to do. There was nothing in her life that she could get over than to suspect that everyone she met was secretly getting their strings pulled by their parents. She didn’t want to be a success just because she was a Shifter. After all, Shifters always stuck together. Whether you were a part of the clan, tribe, or pack, they all took care of each other. There was no getting away from what you carried in your blood and there was nothing that you could do to run away from your people. You were stuck with your people, no matter where you ran to. If you were going to run and there was a Shifter near, they were going to find you. They were going to know that you were a Shifter the moment you came within range for them to smell. It was just something that you were stuck with. She didn’t hate that, but what she did hate was how many of them she ran into when she was at college. Whenever she was in a meeting, she would find them. It was just a matter of time before she would run into someone in a meeting or at a coffee shop and she would know what they were. She would know that they were Shifters and she would get special treatment because they were similar and she would be expected to share the same kind of loyalty. It was a bogus system and she didn’t understand why she was expected to give people special treatment just because they were something unnatural. But, it was something that she knew she was forced to respect, regardless of what they were doing. Standing in her room, she took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror and knew that there was really no saving herself at this point. She looked like a nightmare, or at least in her opinion. It was yet another one of her curses that she was faced with. As she looked at herself she knew that there was a lot of pressure. When she was in this room, she was free to be anyone that she needed to be and she didn’t have to worry about the expectations that the world put on her. Danni was a musician and that e was something that people wanted to keep asking her about. There was something new that they wanted to know about her life every time that they ran into her. She had a crappy teaching job at the nearest middle school that she lived near, teaching music to a bunch of children who couldn’t care less about knowing how to play instruments. She played at shows on the side and made more money doing that than she did from actually teaching. It was easily the lamest and the most depressing job that she’d ever had; yet this was what she did. It was cancerous to her soul, but people always expected that it was some kind of whirlwind fun. She liked her job and she enjoyed what she did, but it wasn’t as glamorous or as incredible as people wanted to make it out to be. No, it was probably the most depressing and pointless job that she had the possibility of finding. But, whenever she played a show, some secret Shifter would always tip extra because they were linked by genetics. It made her furious. Her parents were always so in love with the skills that she had been naturally born with, but there was something deep down inside of her that told her that there was nothing for her to be proud of. There was no natural skill at work here; it was hours and hours of practice and a love for the art. She knew people who had natural talent and they were much farther along in their careers than she was. No, she would be working for a symphony orchestra or teaching at a university if she was truly talented. But, she was just good enough to get by with a decent life and that was enough for her. She stared at herself in the reflection of her vanity mirror which was smudged and marred by a thousand different pieces of tape and stickers that had held up pictures of her old friends and boys that she had been crushing on profusely. They were all gone and she had moved on from them and found something different in her life that had filled her heart with interest and promise, But, everything was gone now and that girl had completely vanished from her life. There was nothing even close to her anymore. But as she looked at the woman standing in front of the mirror, she couldn’t help but realize that she still looked a lot like that missing girl who had vanished from this room on one fateful July day to run off to college. She had long blonde hair that was naturally curly, but it was the kind of curly that made her think of rolling, soft curls that people worked really hard to achieve with an effortless look. She had them naturally and for so much of her life she had tried to have straight hair. Her blonde hair had been perfected over a series of dye jobs that had left her with the exact kind of natural golden fade of colors that she had wanted her entire life but had been bitterly unable to actually achieve. She looked at herself in the mirror and knew that people would kill for her hair, but it wasn’t the only thing about her that they would kill for. She was blessed with her mother’s features. She had high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and the flawless complexion of a woman that had lived in a climate-controlled world for her entire life. Her mother had taught her at a young age to take care of her skin and that it would pay off in spades later on in her life. Her lips were not thin, but they weren’t fat and inflated-looking either. They were full and a shade of pink that made men covet the taste of them and the feel of them. Her nose was a soft, and arched to a point that didn’t turn up and didn’t crook down. Her eyes were a light, cornflower blue, but she remembered that one time a boy had told her that she had forget-me-nots for eyes and she had loved that. As for her eyebrows, they were perfectly sculpted and crafted into the perfection that they were now. All of that was done by her. As she stared at her face, she knew that she was her mother reborn and that she had been blessed with the face of a model.