Living in the Past - Prologue
1004 Words
Cyrus POV:
I impatiently paced the woods as I sniffed the air carefully, there had been reports of violent rogues along our borders. My scouts were returning to the packhouse battered and bruised with jagged claw marks torn into their skin, some had been found dead just on the outskirts of my territory. I was done sitting around on reports on the threat being extinguished, months had passed, and I had finally decided to venture out on my own.
I was only seventeen years old and already the new Alpha of the Blood Moon pack and I wasn’t about to allow anyone to question my authority. I needed to show the others that I could lead them and strong enough to protect them, going as far as refusing back up. I may have been reckless but something within me had told me that I needed to go alone, something was waiting for me out in these dense woods and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.
“Alpha storm, please return or allow us to at least accompany you!” My current Beta pleaded through our shared mind link.
He had been my father’s Beta and had proven himself loyal to him, but I was the Alpha now and all he was to me was a nuisance.
I growled as I shook my head and abruptly cut the man off.
I quickly shifted my gaze as the scent of aged blood filled the air, my nostrils flared as I took in the scent gingerly. It couldn’t have been that old, but we were far in the north where the snow remained year long and the nights remained blistering cold.
Tonight, was no exception.
I squinted my eyes as I took a step forward, my heavily padded paws sinking within the compact snow beneath my massive body. I was one of the largest in my wolf pack, a true sign of an alpha and they all knew it. I was the newest alpha of the Blood Moon pack, one of the oldest and strongest in the region.
Blood, I thought again as my ears pulled back as I followed the scent.
It didn’t take me long before I located the familiar bloodied scent.
A young woman around the age of thirty lay in a bloodied mess that had now been frozen to her body. Gnarly and gruesome claw marks adorned her body digging right down to the bone, it was obvious that she had suffered before she bled to death.
I quickly looked around me cautiously as I took in my surroundings, I was miles away from my pack borders and all alone. This was a rogue attack and yet I couldn’t help but feel uneasy as the signs showed that they were lingering close to our territory.
I frowned as I pulled my gaze back down to the deceased and frozen woman before me, she was a human and yet I couldn’t help but wonder what a human had been doing this far north. She was days away from civilization, surely no human could survive this far north and judging by her corpse I assumed that I was right.
It was just then when a piercing cry filled the silent winter air, a sound that screamed of desperation and innocence. The cry was coming from the woman’s arms that had been frozen to her chest with a fur blanket clutched tightly to her chest as if she were desperately protecting something.
The screaming pierced my tender ears convincing me to shift back to my human form so I could pry her frozen arms away from her body. I grimaced as a temporary pain overcame me as my body shifted from that of a wolf to a human-like form. A human form that held striking hazel eyes, dark brown hair, and a supernaturally attractive face like all other werewolves.
There was a sickening crunch as her arms were pulled away from her body, I gently grabbed at the bundle in her arms and narrowed my eyes as the bundle seemed to shift. I turned it around and took a sharp breath in as I looked down into the face of an infant, an infant who couldn’t have been more than a few days old and whose body was ice cold and with lips slowly growing blue as the chilly air threatened to freeze her tiny body.
I quickly pressed her body against mine and lent her my body heat and continued to examine this tiny life before me. She reeked of humans and yet there was something different about her. She finally stopped crying and closed her eyes to reveal eyes as dark as chocolate that seemed to match her loosely curled hair that sat atop her head.
I shifted my body weight away from her deceased mother and towards the moonlight so I could get a better look at the infant that was laying silent in my arms. She looked up at me intently as the gentle vibrant waves of the moonlight caressed her face before reaching her piercing eyes, eyes that seemed to drink in the moonlight and change before me.
Golden, I thought to myself in awe.
Her eyes were slowly shifting to a golden colour as the moonlight reflected off them, a feature that no human possessed. This child clearly wasn’t a human and yet everything about her screamed humanity, I wasn’t sure what she was, but I knew at that moment that I couldn’t leave her alone in the woods to die.
Her eye colour shifted back to their normal chocolate brown once I shifted my body weight and took cover under the dense woods, cutting off the source from the moon. Once the connection had been severed, she began to cry in my arms, the sense of awe now gone.
She’s a unique creature, I thought to myself with a smile as I held her tiny and fragile body tightly in my arms as I headed back to my territory.
At that moment I couldn’t wait to show everyone, my new daughter.
Winter Storm.
- Writer
