The Alpha Girl and Her Rogue Mate

I was a disappointment from birth. Not that my parents didn’t love me, they always have. Of course they did. They’ve never given me any reason to doubt that. But my birth was a disappointment sixteen years ago and there was never anything I could have done to change that. I have two brothers, 14 and 12. They weren’t disappointments. Neither is my sister, the family baby, who is just 7 and is as cute as a button. My family is pretty happy, all things considered. Even though my dad works a lot, and my mom is a doctor at the hospital in town, there is always at least one parent home for dinner. And my aunt Tara lives right next door, a homemaker married to her high school sweetheart. She only had one son so she loves having us, her nieces and nephews, come over after school. That’s where my siblings and I have always spent most afternoons until our parents came home. And that’s where I am when, as I’m pouring myself a glass of milk to go with the plate of cookies on the counter, I feel a strange twinge in my hand. Then again. Stronger, the third time. I begin to shake, suddenly and violently. Milk spills from the still open jug in my hand before crashing to the ground with a sound of broken glass. I let out a yelp and collapse on the ground, still shaking. I feel a warmth spread through me that seems to emanate from a place in my chest. I hear, kind of distantly, Aunt Tara running down the stairs with my sister. The boys are still outside. A moment, or maybe several, later, I stop shaking. Tara is kneeling next to me and Lini is a few steps away, running the tap and standing on her tippy toes, her pink sneakers almost floating off the floor. Lini comes back with a wet towel, and hands it to our aunt. Tara places it on my head. “Skylar?” Tara rarely speaks above a whisper, so the inquisitive but authoritative tone is what snaps me back into this moment, out of the strangely trance-like state I found myself in. Then Lini’s voice beside her, “Sky?” “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” I push myself into a sitting position, but then when I look down at my hand, I notice I am bleeding from the arm, and the milk is a bit pink now.  Tara follows my gaze. “Lex,” Aunt Tara says, “get another towel, please.” Alexandra runs off. She’s always been the fastest of us kids. A second later she zips back to us, handing the towel over immediately so Aunt Tara can press it gently to my arm. “Thanks Lini,” I say. She giggles at my use of her nickname, a private joke. Her favorite food is Mom’s tortellini. A few years ago I started calling her Alexandrellini. Now, just Lini. My mom hates it, which just makes Lini like it more. I take a big breath in and feel a little steadier. “What happened?” Aunt Tara has reverted to her usual whisper. “I’m not sure,” I say, looking down at my arm again. “I just started shaking. I felt this weird, warm tingle in my chest.” Suddenly, Tara’s face lifts into a huge smile, and she embraces me. “Oh, Skylar, that’s amazing. It’s your wolf!” I look at her, a little puzzled. “No one starts to feel their wolf before 17, Tara. I have a month left until my birthday.” Contrary to popular belief, all werewolves don’t feel their wolf stirring inside them or shift for the first time at a certain age. It’s usually between ages 17 and 20. But no one I have known felt their wolf before 17. When we do, we don’t usually shift right away. It builds up slowly. First you feel odd sensations inside. Heightened smell is usually next. Sometimes people say it comes with thoughts that feel like they aren’t exactly yours, but they also aren’t exactly strange either. It’s sort of a second puberty. Lucky us. At the end of it, we go through our first shift. Once we’ve shifted we are adults in the community. We can hold community positions, we are allowed to take combat training tests to take up pack guard shifts, we are allowed to look for jobs or seek out higher education, and we can find our mate. Of course none of these are automatic. We can still fail our classes (and our school is human and wolf integrated, so plenty of human teachers can unwittingly set a wolf back a year or two in their pack status), we can still fail training exams, and we may not find our mates for years. But it always starts at 17, no earlier. She smiles, dabbing her eyes a little as though they’ve gone misty, even though werewolves rarely cry. It isn’t impossible, but it usually only happens when someone close to us dies. Or if your mate rejects you. “No, Skies. Children of an Alpha sometimes feel the shift effects sooner, if they have a strong wolf. And your father is an Alpha, and your mother and I are children of the Moon Rising Pack’s Alpha. You have a lot of strong blood in you.” “Why didn’t anyone tell me? In Shift Studies, they always say on average it starts around 18 with early shifters beginning at 17. No one ever said anything else.” “Because that is true for everyone but the children of the Alpha! And you still probably won’t shift until after your birthday, anyway. This is just the first of many little signs you’ll feel.” I shake my head a little. It seems hard to believe. Aunt Tara suddenly stands while I am still digesting her words. Then she pulls slightly at my uninjured arm, and I stand on instinct. She guides me toward the bathroom, saying, “Let’s just get this bandaged up.” A few minutes later, I’ve strolled out into the sunshine of the backyard. Behind me, Tara does the closest to shouting she ever does, calling lightly out a window “remember, no further than the pond and come back right away if you feel anything else!” I wave a hand dismissively over my head without looking back, so she doesn’t see the little smile on my face at her concern. She knows I like to head out to the pond to think. And after all that, I definitely need to think. When I reach the pond, I climb into my favorite tree, with a low set of boughs perfect for sitting in. Usually I bring a book. Today I only bring my thoughts. I didn’t even grab my phone as I hurried out the door, not wanting to hear Lini talk excitedly about how this meant maybe she could shift before all her friends. “This is stupid,” I say outloud. I’m not sure who I am trying to convince. Maybe my wolf. My wolf I’m not even sure that I want. The oldest child of the Alpha is always a boy. Always. The oldest child of the Alpha is always a male child, a future Alpha. I am an abnormality, a mistake. A disappointment. Everyone knew it. I knew it, I had my whole life. But what made it worse was that no one would say it. My parents assured me over and over that I was perfect as I was. That it didn’t matter. That my younger brother Acer was only two years younger. It was no burden for my father to work an extra few years until Acer came of age, found his mate, and proved himself as Alpha. But I knew. They had to be disappointed. I heard the occasional whisper of my father’s Beta, Pierce, when I was young enough that he thought I wouldn’t catch it. Never in front of my father, but to others, he thanked the Goddess for giving him a male heir first, as She intended it to be. He sometimes had speculated that perhaps I was not even a wolf at all. After all, the chances of two Alpha bloodlines producing a human child were rare, but not impossible. And that would make Acer the real eldest child, in the ways that counted.  I didn’t want to be a wolf. I’d rather be a human than be a mistake. A wolf the Goddess overlooked, somehow, for some reason, making a baby girl where my parents rightly deserved a boy. Where every single Alpha had always received a son. Where I simply did not fit in. I did not make sense. Every summer, the five Oregon packs had a summit for Alphas, Betas, and their kids. Every summer, the kids would show up, their simple existence reminding me that I didn’t belong. The only Alpha with a child older than me was the Blood Soil Pack Alpha, Marlon Silverlight. His son, Weston Silverlight, was three years older than me. He hadn’t met his mate yet, so he hadn’t taken over as Alpha. I was lucky. Because I was older than almost all the other kids, I wasn’t teased or bullied too much. Weston made snide remarks sometimes, but it never went further than that. Because I was stronger than most of the other kids, despite being a mistake, they were afraid of me. Even Weston, a little bit, because the Omegas organized little activities to keep the kids busy during the summit, and I always beat him in combat. Honestly, it was because he was dumb as a rock. Heavy like a boulder, but dumb like one too. He couldn’t move fast, and he couldn’t think fast enough to compensate for that. I just try to stick to myself at those events, honestly. The Oregon Federation has always been pretty unusual, in that very few states or geographic areas ever see the packs band together. Over in Seattle, the three Packs there were always fighting. Allying, turning against each other, allying again. Sometimes, in the worst part of my heart, I wished that a Pack would break the Moon Oath and attack us, because then I wouldn’t have to go to those summits anymore.  “I don’t want you,” I say out loud. “Do you hear me?” I know I am shouting into the wind, the void, the silence. But it feels good anyway. My wolf is linked to my mind, but we can’t hear each other yet. Not in my mind, and certainly not out loud. “Just go away! I’d rather be human.” Somehow, that would make me more normal. I hope I had a seizure or something. Not everything is my wolf. Not everything is a sign. Sometimes people just feel a twinge. They just shake, right? It could be that. I want it to be that. I don’t want to be an abnormality.  I don’t want to be a disappointment anymore.