A Twisted Anthology: A Twisted Design Book

The Rogue's Initiation Part 1

(This story takes place after The Vampire's Servant)

The human town near my home was small. It had maybe five hundred people in it. They all seemed to know each other and were friendly to me when I moved there three years ago.

My house was well outside of city limits and I paid a lot of money to have an internet line run out to my property so I could work from home. I bought an older cabin and spent most of the first six months there fixing it up. I hired locals to help with the things I couldn’t do, wiring, plumbing, things like that.

When I’d decided to move west from my home in Nebraska, I knew I wanted to avoid being too close to packs and collectives. I didn’t want to get involved with people who would tell me how to live my life. I’d just celebrated my twenty-eighth birthday last week and everything was finally settling down in my life.

Choosing the life of a lone wolf hadn’t been hard. I hunted as I needed, but, otherwise, lived a comfortable life. My parents asked me how I would find someone to offer for if I chose to have a solitary life. It was hard telling them I didn’t really want that life. Not just because I was lying, but because I knew they were hopeful I would give them grandkids, like my twin brother did. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

My parents were good people. My father was fourth generation rogue born and my mother was an ex-pack. She rejected her mate because he was a f*****g asshole who used to bully her in school. He convinced the Alpha to kick her out of the pack with some stupid-ass lie.

Mom went a little crazy as an ex-pack without a mate. They’re often called obsessed ex-packs. It doesn’t happen to every ex-pack and it was more common in the ones who were banished instead of leaving on their own. There was a longing for community and belonging that made them desperate to find their mate, like more than normal. The ones who left on their own chose to abandon community and they were just… normal.

She saw my father taking a nap in a meadow and attacked. Mom said he looked like a fallen angel sleeping in the sunshine while butterflies danced around. Whenever she described it, the immediate connection she had with him was obvious.

Quietly, Mom snuck up, pinned his arms down, and started kissing all over his face and neck. He was a fighter and quickly got free of her. Mom started calling him ‘mate’ and telling him how well she was going to take care of him. She was in tears as she told him how she loved him as soon as she saw him. Dad had never seen anything like it.

Most obsessed ex-packs went for younger wolves and humans, the ones who couldn’t fight back as easily, the ones who could be trained and coerced into accepting them. My dad was just over thirty and decided he wasn’t going to chase females anymore. His mate would be a woman who wanted him, not the other way around.

Dad took it as a sign that the goddess was gifting him a mate. He was drawn to Mom from the moment he looked into her eyes. He asked her name and had his wolf offer for her. Her mind came back as soon as her wolf accepted. She was embarrassed, but Dad wouldn’t let her run away. He told her she was his mate now. He offered instead of just marking her so she wouldn’t regret being his.

He took her home and they took a couple months to get to know each other before they marked each other. They were madly in love and their story was so different that I couldn’t imagine my love being anything less remarkable. If there was a girl out there for me, the goddess would pull us together.

I told my parents my decision and how I wanted to find a perfect love like they had. They said every love for rogues is different. I couldn’t just hope to find what they found. I didn’t want their story. I respected their history and their story, but I wanted something of my own if I was going to have a mate. Otherwise, I didn’t want one.

My brother, Duane, told me I was too much of a romantic. He offered for the girl he was dating in high school and she accepted. Theirs was another good story, they met in middle school, when their two elementary schools combined. She was named Diane Carey; he was Duane Casey.

The school mixed them up a lot, even putting Duane in the girls’ gym class and putting Diane in the boys’ class for the same period. They were in the office getting things fixed so often, that they ended up meeting one day.

At first, they didn’t like each other, but things just kept getting more and more ridiculous and the school finally decided, to avoid confusion, they would just put them in all the same classes and same periods. They were bitter all the way into high school.

They ended up at a party together and were dared to kiss in a game of truth or dare. The guy who dared them was mad that she turned him down for a date and wanted to get her back. So he decided to make her kiss the person she hated. Neither one was happy.

What that guy didn’t realize was their dislike for each other had nothing to do with the other person’s personality. It was all because they hated people mixing them up and being forced into classes they didn’t really want. They actually both developed small crushes on each other.

I was there. Duane looked at me for support. I was only a couple minutes older, but he wanted his big brother to step in and stop this. Unfortunately, those were the rules and he had to do it. I knew he secretly wanted to kiss her, anyway.

Their first tentative touching of lips was followed by the passion of two unmated rogue wolves. She grabbed his hair, he grabbed her waist and pulled her into his lap. They ended up making out for the rest of the night while we just kind of ignored them.

Duane and Diane ended up dating all through high school and offered for each other as soon as they both had their wolves. They got married a couple weeks after graduation. Her father started training him in how to run their family business. Diane was their only child, rare for rogue wolves, and they doted on her.

How the hell could I not be a romantic after having stories like that in my life? My family didn’t understand my obsession with stories. There were so many vibrant worlds inside my head. So many things I wanted to share with the people in this world.

When I went to college for creative writing, my dad shook his head and sighed. By the time I graduated, with my Masters of Fine Arts in writing, I already had one book finished and accepted by a publisher.

The querying process had been hell and I hated every rejection I got. I thought I might never find somewhere to accept me. The only thing for me if it didn’t work out was to teach creative writing.

Then, I was accepted and it was the best feeling in the world. Someone really wanted my stories. I thanked the goddess for not letting my education go to waste. I didn’t like the idea of teaching others. I wanted to write not grade papers.

My first book got great reviews and the publishers started pushing it a little harder. It didn’t make the best seller list until a couple years later, when a national morning show personality told the world my main character was her ‘book boyfriend’. By then, I’d written two more books to follow it.

I made enough money to buy my little house in the forests of Oregon and move away from my home. It was everything I ever wanted. I wasn’t a famous author, but I was someone with a fairly large following in several countries across the world.

Writing was how I spent my life. I got up in the morning, had my breakfast and went for a run. Then, I’d write until lunch time, eat something, and write more until about five in the afternoon. I treated it like a normal job. Some days, I just researched, others I wrote like a fiend, and, occasionally, I would just stare at a wall and let my imagination roam free.

-

Since wolves and humans are both pack animals, I would come to town for dinner sometimes or to have a drink or two at the bar. I’d gotten to know a few people and told them I was a writer. The woman who ran the little library in the center of town was actually a fan of my books. I started giving her a signed advanced copy whenever they came out.

Tonight, though, it was a slightly bittersweet reason I was in town. A few days ago, I felt my territory markers disappear. The power of a rogue Alpha washed over my land. Some rogue King or Queen had expanded their territory to include mine. My home was now in a collective.

I didn’t want that. I was planning to go meet the Alpha and negotiate a way maintain my autonomy. If nothing else, how much it would cost to stay out of their collective. Most people could be bought. I wouldn’t tell them what I did for a living. I wrote under a pen name.

No one was going to take what I earned from me. I didn’t really care about the land, if they told me to leave. All I wanted was to control my books and my life without outside interference.

Sipping my beer at the bar, I mentally went over the speech I’d prepared. I was going to follow the pull. When the power swept through, my wolf got the offer to join the collective. We’d refused and started feeling a pull to the person who ran the collective. The Eaten Heart. Eating hearts was a pretty nasty threat.

There was no room for misunderstanding. If this King or Queen viewed me as a threat to their territory, they would eat my heart. I’d sent off an email to my family, letting them know everything they needed if they didn’t hear from me within the next seven days. My parents told me to be careful. My brother told me not to piss off the King or Queen.

I had a will and left everything to my parents and brother, with him receiving the royalties to my books. I wrote an alternate ending for of the book I recently finished, so it could be the last one if I died.

All my affairs were in order. This was just one last night with the few friends I’d made in the human town. I couldn’t even tell them, because they didn’t know I was a werewolf.

“You’re pretty deep in thought there, Vaughn.” Ted, the bartender, said.

“Going out of town for a while tomorrow. I’m meeting someone important. Gotta settle on what I’m going to say.” I replied.

“I get it. One of your writer-y things. You gonna go pitch an idea to your publisher or something? Write something other than your girly mysteries?” He chuckled.

“Cozy mysteries aren’t ‘girly’, Ted.”

This was an argument we’d had often. There was no grizzled detective, no horrific murder scene, no graphic s*x, in my books, so Ted called them girly. I had to admit, my female readership was a lot higher than my male readership. That didn’t matter, books weren’t gendered. Anyone could read a mystery, a horror, a romance, a sci-fi novel.

“Right, genders are for living things, not for thing-things. You gotta be a real man, Vaughn. Write something with teeth and a hot babe. Something that could be made into a movie.” He prodded.

“They don’t use books to make the movies you watch, Ted.” I snorted.

“That’s because the writers are artists all on their own. You should write stuff like that.”

“I’m not writing erotic novels, Ted. It’s not my thing.”

“Because you’re a virgin?” Ted asked loudly.

There were a few snickers from around us. I’d turned down a couple women who were ‘well-known’ in town when I first moved. They started rumors that I was gay or I was a virgin and terrified of them. None of the people in town wanted to believe I was gay, except one guy, so they all latched onto the idea of me being a terrified virgin.

It didn’t matter to me too much. The opinions of humans rarely did. Their teasing made me feel more accepted than any other conversation. It meant they saw me as one of them. They didn’t tease people they didn’t like.

“Because I prefer writing stories whose plots are more than how many ways a guy can stick his d**k in a woman.” I scoffed.

“Because you’d rather think of all the ways he can stick his d**k into another man?” Carl called out from behind me.

“Because you’d rather think of women doing it with other women, right?” Glen shouted from the same table as Carl.

“Because there’s more to life than s*x. Seriously, I don’t know how your wives put up with you.” Kelly laughed from down the bar.

She was a widow and worked as a waitress. Kelly said it kept her from going crazy, even though she had enough money from her husband’s life insurance that she could take care of herself. There were some rumors saying she’d poisoned him, but no one said it to her face.

It didn’t matter, Kelly seemed to know. If someone was bugging her, she would bring out their food or drinks and tell them it was exactly how she used to fix it for her husband. The looks on their faces were priceless.

“Enough talk ‘bout books and s*x. I don’t know why you guys are ignoring me.” Lex Jenkins grumbled.

“Because you think the sheriff’s deputy is a werewolf.” Glen laughed.

That got my attention.