The Pride-1
1112 Words
Sigrid- Everybody Knows
I guess this all started the way most things do. Ambition and fear. The ambition to be the first and the fear of dying before realizing that dream.
Before the world became what it did, shifters were born into elite families we now call "The Bloodlines". The Bloodlines are made up of the shifters whose bloodlines go back generations that can be traced way back to the first of our kind. No, we are not descendants of the human race. Our kind just adapted to the superiority of the world.
Some of us are purebloods. We have no type of genetics linked to humans. We just are what we had been born from the moment our species began to take form in this world. Most of our kind have some human genetics just not enough to keep us out of our pelt. We call these the aristocrats of our kind.
The most common shifter is a wolf. They're born in packs. Before the outbreak, there were six-packs and the biggest held four-hundred members. The second biggest had less than two-hundred. The rest were just smaller packs that had stayed behind to the true traditions of being a pack of wolves. There's one pack that specializes in farming, one pack sticks to its politics, one pack for the elders, and the pack that trains the deadliest pack dogs there will ever be.
The second most common shifters are tigers. Three streaks no more than forty in each. Jaguars are rare but only because they don't play well with others and infiltrated the world's most elite members of society. Not a single jaguar has ever been known to know poverty. They're quiet but don't let that fool you. Jags know how to throw a party and they like to settle their scores with their teeth when bribery fails.
The top spot for legendary shifters sits at the top just like the mimic. Lions. There was one pride that ruled over the small group of lions alive. They lived like royalty. Just like animal prides the majority of lions were female and the males never bred outside their own kind unless it was with a purebred in a different bloodline. We all loved the lions as if they were our own.
The packs, the streaks, and the Jaguars all paid tribute to them and in return, all shifters were protected. There was never a time when shifters risked exposure. The Lions did a good job of being the tyrants of us all. There was no one that would dare challenge a lion. Not even a little one. The little ones were the worst.
In two thousand six, a little twelve-year-old wolf girl by the name of Olivia Tucker was kidnapped from her home and disappeared without a trace. She was completely erased from all records. The humans went as far as telling her family that little Liv had never actually existed. What they didn't know then was that Lions have a thing about children. Particularly female alpha pups in wolf packs. Lions didn't just love their queen, they basically worshipped at her feet.
Liv Tucker was found in a facility where she had been used as a test subject by a human who had mistakenly come across a rogue wolf who didn't cover his tracks. The lions thought that everything had been taken care of when Liv was returned safely to her home. Boy were they wrong.
At the age of twenty-six, Liv Tucker was executed publically by a new breed of shifters for hiding a group of humans who wanted no part in the new age epidemic the world calls "The Awakening". We call the new breed, the turned. The scientist that had taken Liv's blood had synthesized a vaccine that genetically rewires human DNA and triggers the shift in them. The vaccine worked best on humans under the age of thirty.
When the new world found out that Lions ruled the world from their ivory towers, the hunt to get lion genetics became a sport for the humans who had the money and resources to send an army after them.
The purebred population was reduced down to a third the night the raids started. The lion family fought with honor. Maybe that was their downfall. Money speaks louder than morals in this new world. As a last resort, the remaining purebreds burned the lion corpses and set fire to the entire mansion and battlefield destroying any chance of anyone getting any kind of sample.
The thing about lions is that no one really knows the extent of their power. I met one once and the charisma of the guy was beyond the comprehension of my feeble-minded alpha brain. I would have handed that man my pack without question. Like many of us born into this, they have a glamor about them. The stronger it is the more beautiful they are and man were they beautiful. There was nothing and no one who would ever say no to them.
Those are just stories now. Legends left behind of kings and queens that had once reigned by teeth and claw but most importantly elegance. There is nothing elegant about this new world. We all just survive. It's hard for us purebreds to do that now.
As the acting alpha of my pack, I had to break and bend the tradition of what we once were. The laws of humanity have changed. Religions were stripped and bent to fit the new world order. We had once been a myth, we were free and mostly kept to ourselves.
Now there is nothing special about what we are. These new breeds took the unique structures of who and what we once were and destroyed it like everything else they touch. Yet, it's not as bad for us as it is for what's left of humanity. Those who refused to turn live in isolated areas where those who pretend to be our new kings and queens have left them to fend for themselves.
I had never paid close attention to humans before this but they are particular. Even when things seem lost, they keep fighting. They rebuild and start over from scratch. It's rare to be human now. They have become special. Something worth fighting for. They now belong to those who are like me. A purebred. A species untainted by the awakening epidemic and like us. They fight. It's beautiful and the face that represents The Forsaken is the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. She is the loudest. The strongest fighter.
We should have known. At least, I should have known.
- Writer
