The Rise of the Phoenix

Growing up

Chapter 1

Growing up as the Beta’s daughter, everyone wants to be your friend, Katya the Gamma’s daughter had exactly the same problem so it was only natural that we ended up gravitating towards each other each looking for a genuine friendship.

When we were young, it was all about being popular, so obviously, being friends with a ranked member instantly makes you popular. As we entered out teenage years and the other girls realised that we didn’t care as much about clothes and being dumb bimbos their reasons for wanting us to be friends changed.

Because we didn’t dress like sluts and throw ourselves at every half decent looking man out there the boys didn’t bother about us either. They thought we were too plain and macho to bother about or be interested in, it wasn’t desirable to them to be around a strong female as men were the ones who were strong and supposed to protect them. I mean for fu.ck sake Queen Genevieve is an amazing warrior, you would have thought having her as queen and her letting females train and become warriors would drag their a.sses out of the stone age but apparently not.

It didn’t take Katya and I very long to discover that most of our friends were fake as hell and were only trying to hang around us to get close to our brothers or the Alpha. So we dropped them pretty quickly after that and didn’t trust the extended hand of friendship easily after that.

I can honestly say I didn’t miss them much. They were fake, uninteresting, airheads, who didn’t have an original thought between them.

Now that we were effectively ignoring them and had cut off their chances to meet and interact with the heirs to the pack, the mean streak in them kicked right in. Oh they were subtle about it at first anyway, just whispers and rumours spoken and spread around, apparently no one knew who started it each time, and they weren’t brave enough to do it directly to our faces after all.

The comment and rumours got worse and more insidious as time went on. Most people didn’t believe a word of what was said about us, but there were a few that did. Especially the cocky guys who thought it was fine to try their luck and make disgusting comments to us.

After having to be pulled into the principals office on several occasions and our parents called into the school to deal with our aggressive behaviour, which didn’t go down too well with them as they knew that we wouldn’t be beating the sh.it out of guys unless the deserved it.

Unfortunately, we had no proof as it was mine and Katya’s word against theirs, and surprise surprise, no one heard a thing, and all our attacks were unprovoked. It came to a head when Prince Sirius overheard a bunch of guys discussing the rumours and what explicitly they would like to do to us as we were apparently so experienced.

Let’s just say that quite a lot of people we’re given a very public lesson from Sirius and our brothers for spreading lies and trying to damage our reputation. They were 18 at the time so they had their dragons and could tell there was no scents of males or females for that matter on us, so they knew for a fact that they were full of sh.it.

Sirius’ slut brigade as we liked to call them were not exactly happy about it and tried every chance they could to turn him and our brothers against us, by making sh.it up and saying we were giving them a hard time.

They were so confident that because they had opened their legs or mouth for them that they would take their side and it would drive a wedge between us. Well, they were pretty shocked to discover that they meant fu.ck all to them other than a warm hole and were warned away from us instantly and told to stay the fu.ck away from them too.

Say what you want about Sirius, yes he is a complete man w***e, our brothers are not nearly as bad but they are definitely no angels. He is loyal to his family and as an only child our brothers are seen as his brothers and he looks at us as his little sisters and he is every bit as protective as our brothers are.

So that was basically our childhood and teen years trying to manoeuvre through life and avoid the pit falls of fake bi.tches and guys trying to sleep with us to say they banged a Beta or Gamma. We did have a couple of other friends, a few girls who had the same interests in being warriors, and were sick of all the superficial sh.it.

There were also some ok guys that we could have a bit of a laugh and banter with, without them trying to get in our knickers. Although I think that was mostly because they knew our brothers would kill them if they tried.

Other than that, life was was great, I have a fantastic family, and my mum and dad are amazing and have always supported me in my training and fighting. My brother Chris is a great guy, and we have always been close, I know I can go to him about anything, and he will listen to me without judgement. He also helped me to train since I was young and supported my dreams of being a warrior or join the elite squad, so far no dragons had applied as they kind of looked down on other species and though they were better, at least a lot of them did anyway.

The strangest thing that happened to me in my teenage years was my dragon, making herself known to me on my 17th birthday. Now, this is extremely unusual as we get our dragon at 18 and shift for the first time, but Ember pops up in my heads introduces herself, and says we will shift at the right time.

Yeah, because that is helpful. Does that mean before 18, or perhaps I am not even going to shift at 18, and then the snidey bi.tches will have something else to gossip and talk about. The first person I told was Chris, who then insisted we tell our parents.

My mum and dad had a worried look on their faces as if to say she has completely lost it, the stress is getting to her, and now she is hearing voices in her head. Well, that was until my eyes flashed a bright molten Amber, as Ember got pi.ssed off at them looking like they were ready to send me off to the nut house.

Chris, being Chris, just said “cool” as he stared at my eyes and became excited at what this could me. My parents, on the other hand, linked King Augustus and made him come over to discuss what the hell was going on with me.

It all went fairly quickly after that, Augustus asked his father to get Queen Calista, the old witch queen, to come over and see if she could pick anything up. She had the rare ability as a seer. Only one is born every few generations.

Queen Calista is a kind woman with pure white hair and warm but mischievous green eyes. The second she held my hand, her eyes turned white for around 5 minutes. When they turned back to normal, she smiled at me kindly before addressing everyone.

“Crimson’s dragon Ember is very special. She will not be appearing on her 18th like other dragons do, a special set of circumstances will occur to bring her out. She is more powerful than even a king, but her destiny is not in this kingdom. Prepare her to lead as she will become a leader no matter how the cards fall. That is all I can tell you” she says.

“Thank you Queen Calista” I say gratefully, I am a bit bummed that I won’t meet Ember properly for god knows how long but I am grateful that I know she will emerge at some point even if I have absolutely no idea how it will happen.

“What circumstances do we need to make Ember emerge” Augustus asks.

“Young King, you should know better than that, with visions there is only so much that can be told and the rest has to be left to fate” she playfully scolds.

“Of course, my apologies," he says with a chuckle.

Augustus can be like a little kid at times. He gets so excited about special dragons, other species, and the history of all of the species. There was a time many many moon ago when there were some variations within the species, but I think they were either bred out or the gods and goddesses no longer found anyone worthy of them.

So I can see his brain ticking away thinking about all the different variations that Ember could be if she is more powerful than a king. Who knows what he will come up with, I just hope she is as good or better than what he has in mind so he doesn’t get let down.