Chapter 1: Katrina

Blood. There's blood everywhere. Lining the walls, soaked into the carpet and the sofa and curtains. Streaked across the pale gray walls like a slasher flick. Sliding through my fingers in a thick sludgy sticky mess and soaking through the legs of my jeans as I kneel in it staring down at the lifeless bodies of my parents.

I don't know what shock feels like. I imagine the numbness that's enveloping me, and the searing pain roaring through my heart coupled with the breaths I need to take remaining lodged in my throat making my lungs burn might be it.

Today was a day like any other. My best friends and I were out enjoying the nightlife of New Orleans, only to return home to half our pack having been slaughtered. Only for me to waltz into my parent's home to find them mutilated almost beyond recognition. Our Alpha and Luna were dead for hours, their bodies already starting to cool to the touch.

I screamed for anyone to come help me when I found them. Nia Rannulf, my best friend, being the one who heard my cries for help first, burst through the doors.  For a wolf, she has a weak stomach, spewing the contents of her stomach across the front entryway at the sight of the two people that were so much like second parents to her mauled, their flesh in ribbons scattered around the room. 

Attacks between wolf packs around the world aren't uncommon. They happen every day as those in power battle for more and more, their greed driving them to kill their own kind. Nowadays, most killings are clean, stabbings, guns, drowning, faked suicides. This isn't that. This was rage and revenge and domination. Another of our kind in wolf form tore them apart piece by piece, likely making them suffer in the process. There are only a few packs that even come to mind who might have the balls to do this, but I can't think about that right now.

My only thoughts revolve around the reality that my parents are gone and, from what one of my father's most trusted said, majority of the rest of the leaders and influential members of the pack too. Many of our fighters, young and strong, and elites, are dead. Ripped apart in the same fashion as my parents. 

I know I need to get up off the floor. I need to handle this. I need to step into shoes I didn't expect to have to fill for at least another five decades. My parents were a young Alpha and Luna, my father having been the youngest son of his father ; the alpha gene choosing to activate within him. That's the interesting thing about Alphas with many children, it's not the oldest or strongest that will become the next Alpha, it's whomever was gifted the spark that ignites the gene as a matter of biology, and it's not known until the previous Alpha declares his or her release of title and duty or they die, activating the gene in the next.

Though the alpha gene usually shows its secretive gift in the males of a line, from time to time it will appear in a female, usually when an Alpha only has a female as an heir. That's me. My parents’ only child, my mother never growing pregnant again after me, despite every effort at trying. Even now, as I continue to cry, my inner wolf howling at a dark sky, I can feel the strength of the Alpha begin to course through me. The tendrils slithering their way through my insides, growing beneath my skin, enhancing my wolf abilities, changing my scent and the very core of me. 

Not only am I the new Alpha. I am a female Alpha. The only one standing in the world at this time.  That target that now aims directly at my back is an undeniable one. The other pack leaders of the world will come after me, both for advantageous alliances and marriages, but also because they will view me as weak being a young woman. 

The Crescent Moon Pack, my pack, is one of the oldest and most powerful in the world. We are one of seven packs, one for each continent, that sit on the Council of Wolves, that oversees the lives of every wolf around the world. We are the gatekeepers, rule makers and enforcers and those that see to it that our race remains hidden from the human world and protected from the other predators that stalk the night with us as prey.

The feuds you know of from movies and stories are real. Vampires, Werewolves, and all the monsters that go bump in the night. We all exist in our own corners of the world, vying for dominance amongst our species and most importantly against humans. The wolves are the only species that look out for human interests, as we are the ones who can most easily live amongst them without notice.

A heavy hand rests on my shoulder, Theo Hemming, one of the wolf commanders, making me look back at him. "Come Alpha, there are things that need to be done."

"I can't leave them." My voice quakes with my words, the wet gurgle behind them the clearest indication of how much I've been crying. 

"You are Alpha now. You don't have a choice."

I shake my shoulder loose from his grip. I didn't ask for this. I'm not ready for this. My parents were supposed to live so much longer than this. As wolves, we live longer than the average human and age slower too. They were supposed to have decades to go with me and now they're nothing more than shredded flesh. I'm heartbroken and enraged all at once, the Alpha strength enhancing every emotion bubbling to the surface.

Struggling to my feet, the squish of the blood soaked carpet beneath my boots echoing through the room, I face Theo.  "I am your Alpha." I point at his chest. Theo has a solid foot and a half in height on me, but I don't care. I didn't back down to the large males of my pack before and I sure as hell won't now.  "I will do as I please. You... do not command me." 

The knit of my brows and the press of lips is enough to make him audibly sigh. I sound more sure than I feel right now. Right now I would rather be curled up in a ball next to the bodies of my dead loved ones, crying my eyes out for my loss, for this pack's loss. 

"You're right, but let me help you. I've always had nothing but your best interest at heart." 

It's true. Despite the other generals and commanders of the guard wolves, Theo has always been the one to stand by my side, providing me with training suited to someone like me. In other words I am a tiny wolf, petite in every way. Five feet even, with a strong build, but barely any bulk to me. It also plays to my advantage, the larger males and females underestimating how vicious I actually am on the fighting grounds.

"I don't need you right now." I shove him off, just as his hand lands on my biceps. I don't need anyone. I need space. 

I don't try to stop it as my bones begin to break, the ear-popping cracking only audible inside my head, my wolf grinning from ear-to-ear knowing it's her time to surface. Then it's the tearing of the tendons and the muscles, the popping of the joints to reform into the wolf’s anatomy build. The sounds and sensations overpower my head, so I don't hear anything else Theo or Nia have to say; I don't hear the tearing of the clothing from around my body, just my growl as I take off for the woods.