The Luna's Forced Mark

Catarina’s POV “Ivy, I can’t go. I have to work,” I told my best friend. “We aren’t leaving until nine at night. You can’t seriously be working. You’re in marketing,” she whined back at me. “I have a client who likes to meet later in the evening. I promise I will go with you next weekend.” “Do you swear on it?” She asked, getting frustrated with me. “Yes, I swear on my favorite pair of shoes,” I said, laughing. We both had an obsession with shoes. “OK, fine, but if you try to get out of it next weekend, I will come to your apartment and drag you out by your long ass hair.” “I’ve got to go. I will call you tomorrow.” “Love ya, b***h,” she said, hanging up the phone. I feel bad. Ivy is my best friend and has been since we were fifteen, but she had no clue what I do. She thought I was in marketing. We went to different universities and while she got a nursing degree; she thinks I got a marketing degree, but the thing is I don’t. I didn’t even go to university. I was born into a life of hunting, but I didn’t hunt animals, as most people do. I hunt werewolves. You might think, I am full of s**t and that is just a myth, but it’s not. I’ve killed plenty. They have literally trained me since I could walk to do this. My dad did it, his dad and his dad and so far back, I don’t even know. We are born with a special gene that allows us to tell the difference between them and regular humans. It’s a smell they have. They smell like wet dogs and it stinks. Most humans don’t smell it, but I do, and so does everyone else that is involved in hunting werewolves. There aren’t many of us left as it is a dangerous job and I know that if I am caught by a wolf, I am as good as dead. Tonight’s mission is in the Deep Lake Pack. This would be my first time hunting them. If I could take down their ranked members like the Alpha and Beta, then the rest of the pack will crumble without leadership and it’s easy to pick them off. I have a score to settle with this pack. Someone there killed my father, and they were going to pay for it. I wasn’t sure who it was yet, but they sent him back to us in the most gruesome way. He was delivered to a meeting place, in a large box chopped up into small pieces with his head sitting on top. He had a note attached that read. I found this disgusting waste of space on our pack property and he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut when I told him I would send him back to his family. The deal never said how I would send him back. Here’s your warning you step foot on pack grounds again. This will look like a peaceful death. -R That was six months ago, and I was just now getting our leadership to grant permission for me to check them out. We also had what is called leadership, and they are the ones who assign you to certain locations. They didn’t want to send anyone for a long time because of the way they killed my father, but after not letting up for the past six months, they gave in and gave me the location. To my surprise, it was the next town over. It was only a twenty-minute drive, but it was up in the mountains. I had a few hours before I would head out because I liked to show up at midnight and watch all night. I would learn the pack patrols and they usually had their beta and gamma taking turns running patrols. You could usually tell which ones they were, since they would be slightly bigger and always stronger. If I was lucky, their Alpha would also show his face. It was really easy to spot them. They were the biggest, fastest, and most deadly. They were born into their position like I was, but the difference between us was that I killed evil and they were the evil killing innocents. I walked to my closet and found my black skinny jeans and a black tank top. It was summer out, so there was no need to bundle up. After I found my black combat boots and threw them at the end of my bed. I would wait to put those on until right before I left. I walked into the bathroom and pulled my hair back. It was naturally a sandy blonde but one of my guilty pleasures was getting it done, so it was more of a bleach blonde and it was long. It sat right at the top of my ass. At least I thought it was my best feature. I combed it up into a high ponytail and then wrapped it up in a bun. I placed a little makeup on because I didn’t like to leave the house without it. That is something my mom always said. She wasn’t born into this life but fell in love with my dad and she was amazing until the day she died. She got sick with cancer when I was ten and didn’t make it. After getting ready except for my boots. I grabbed two silver knives and put them in the holder that I had in my boots and a gun. I made sure I had extra bullets and loaded my gun. Silver was the easiest way to kill a werewolf and so they made all of our weapons of pure silver. The last thing I had to do was make sure that I had plenty of spray. We had spray that would mask our scent. I am not sure where the leadership gets it, but we have an ample supply. Werewolves have an incredible sense of scent and could smell us out without our spray. I attached everything where it should be on my belt and put my shoes on. Heading into the living room and clicked on the TV and watched reruns of my favorite show. I sat down and watched two episodes, and then it was time to go. I ran to the bathroom real fast because once I was out there, I would have to hold it. They would smell me if I did that. Once done made sure my cat had food and headed out the front door. I pulled up my phone and went to my pinned location where I was going to park my car and took off. It was a fast twenty-minute drive. I parked my car and sprayed my body before getting out. Once out, I double-checked I had everything and hid my keys. I took off into the woods. My father left me no information on this pack, so I went in blind. I had studied the borders and had a good idea of where I was going, but it was always a risk. I walked as quietly as I could for two miles and found myself a tree that I could climb and sit at the top of. This was my go-to hiding place. Wolves are not skilled climbers and they would have to shift into the human form to come up and they would be easy to pick off. I climbed the tree with ease and made myself comfortable and waited. It took a few hours, but I finally heard them coming through on their nightly patrol. I counted a group of ten. They would have several groups come throughout the night and usually, each group had a different number of wolves in it. I am not sure why they do that, but any pack I’ve ever watched is that way. I noticed what I assumed to be the gamma of the pack, as he was slightly larger than the rest, but not too much, and he led them. He was in front of the group, with everyone following him. They walked through slowly, sniffing around and looking around, but they didn’t look high enough to see me. That is reason 101 that they are stupid. They always looked at the ground and never up. If they looked up, they would find me, but I had yet to have someone do that. They slowly moved on, and I waited for the next group. It took the next group about an hour to come through and again the same thing, however; I don’t think they had ranked members with them. The leader of this group was slightly bigger, but not as big as a gamma. This was probably more like a lead warrior. They were in charge of protection and help training the younger warriors. Again, they smelled around and continued to look at the ground, never looking up. It was the same thing all night. Every hour, a new group until we were back to the original group. There were four groups in total. This pack must be large if they had that many on night patrol. It was time to get out of there. The last group had just moved through and the sun was coming up. They should be doing their patrol switch and their daytime ones would come out. I didn't dress or prepare to watch their daytime patrol. I slowly and quietly walked back to my car and kept yawning. Before I wrote my report, I was going to crawl into bed. I made it to my car unscathed and grabbed my keys and unlocked my car and got in and took off. After a twenty-minute drive home, I walked inside. I could barely keep my eyes open. As much as I hated the night shifts, I had to do them, but it was important to learn both daytime and nighttime routines. My cat, Mr. Whiskers, meowed at me for more food as I walked into my house. I dropped some more into his bowl and walked to my room. I put my weapons away and stripped down to nothing and crawled into my bed. Before I did anything, I needed a few hours of sleep. I woke up with a scream. It was the same thing every time I went out on a mission. I dreamed of a faceless man who killed my father. I was there watching them kill him, but couldn’t stop him. They chained me up, and I knew I was next, but I always woke up before they killed me. It was horrible because I truly don’t know how my dad died, but I know how he was given back to us and my dreams would go wild and he would be alive while they chopped him up. His screams in my dreams haunt me during the day. I hope that finding the guy who killed my father and killing him myself would put a stop to these dreams. Once I have tracked him down and killed him, I would take a vacation, but not until that is done. I dragged myself out of bed and went and took a quick shower before I emailed my report to my boss about last night. Once I was out of the shower, I grabbed my phone and saw I had about twenty texts from Ivy from last night. She got extremely drunk and, from the looks of it, she took someone home or went to their home. She was always doing that. I sent her a quick text telling her it looked like she had a good night and went and got dressed. I went to my computer and Mr. Whiskers jumped up in my lap. I petted him while I filled out my report, sending it to my boss about last night. My boss was a direct member of leadership. There were six of them, and they all had a team. We would report to them and they would take it to the other five members. This was part of the job that I hated.