Chapter One

A changed life.

I can remember the last time I was happy, I mean truly happy. I’ve had happy moments since, but they have been fleeting and I could most likely count them with all ten digits, in fact, leaving some spare.

It was the one minute before my Mum died in my presence. I was twelve. Too young to lose my soul, too young to lose one’s true light.

The first twelve years of my life I had spent close to my Mother. She was a cherished Luna to our pack, loved by all due to her fairness and charitable spirit. My Father and older Brother would spend most part of the days together, my brother training to be the next Alpha. Therefore, Mum and I spent every moment together unless I was at school. We baked, we played, we shopped, we read, we sewed and each summer we would visit each pack member’s home to provide a blessing for the cooler months to come.

When she passed, numbness took me. I gave my father and brother the chance to rescue me from my ache but they didn’t know what to do with me. I was a twelve year old girl, in need of her mother. The pack doctors initially pumped me with drugs to wake me up from my depressed state, they even went as far as to try electroconvulsive therapy but being a she-wolf with alpha blood, it just caused me pain.

The night before my fifteen birthday I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let them manhandle me anymore. On the surface I would appear as the “fixed” daughter and sister, perhaps then they would finally leave me alone. I could fade away into the shadows. The only problem with being in the shadows is that one only just survives. There is no happiness, just a constant feeling of keeping your head above water.

Being left to my own devices, I shamefully admit that I turned to breaking pack laws for attention. The problem was I quickly learnt that I was only seen by my father and brother, if I did something bad. I began to crave more time with them, perhaps if they gave me more attention they would see I wasn’t a lost cause, I was still capable of loving.

My girl friends started to distance themselves from me. Their parent’s didn’t think I was a good influence and my punishments were never as bad as if some other pack member had done it.

That’s when I started to turn to the boys in the pack. The girls bored me and they were not willing to push boundaries. The boy’s on the other hand, had no qualms with sneaking out at night to drink and to light fires. On numerous occasions we even managed to get off pack lands without being detected and stole cars in the local villages, to joyride. Eli and Kai are identical twins except for the slight birth mark on Kai’s cheek. Finn is cousin to the twins and Theo and Archer had always been close friends to the three family members and Caleb.

But the boys soon turned their back on me when I, and it was an accident, I unintentionally lit the winter crop on fire. My Father and Brother completely refused to see me at that stage. I had to spend five days in the prison cells without food, just water. Our Beta William informed me, when he carried my weak body back to my room, that it was to teach me the importance of food. How my stunt could have costed the pack its food this winter, putting babies and young children at risk. I calmed down after that. I concentrated on school but the girl’s started to pick on me and I started to turn in-wards on myself again. Caleb, Beta William’s son, was my only true friend. Having heard I was imprisoned he raced to my Father to tell him it was an accident and I put the fire out.

Soon Caleb and I did everything together, we even joke that we could be fated mates. His birthday is in the month of October, annoyingly on the same day as Skylar. We are all in the same academic year and Caleb is seven months older than me. Caleb and I have even promised to each other if we weren’t mated by the time I was 25, we would be each other’s mates. Along the way, he had somehow become my life’s spark again and he slowly brought me out of my shadow self. I didn’t know when it turned to love. I certainly didn’t just wake up one morning deciding I was going to be in love with him from that day onwards. I think it gradually happened, he was my everything. He helped to keep the nightmares at bay, they had plagued my sleep for so long. They only appeared when I was lonely, feeling lost and missing my Mum so much my chest hurt.

Being in the same year at school we also spent break and lunch together. Werewolf children from other packs attended the school but we all just kept to our own pack members. It helped to avoid rivalry in the school grounds.

Since the girls blanked me I stopped caring about my dress sense. Where they wore pretty dresses showing off their slim figures, I wore athletic leggings and baggy tops to hide my petite hourglass figure. I didn’t like to be looked at in that way.

Skylar, Melody, Tanya and Isla were in my year at school yet they acted as if they were the upper year. Caleb and his friends kept just as much of a distance from the girls as much as I did. Melody, Tanya and Isla were bearable, Isla in fact was very sweet but lacked confidence and seemed to just want to survive the drama of school. Skylar though was something different. She had pink dyed hair, wore tight tops showing off her perky breasts and belly button piercing. Always the same, a ring with a hanging wolf charm.

We attended a wolf shifter only school. To the outside human world it passed as a private school and even though humans applied, none were ever accepted.

“Ready?” Caleb whispered into my ear causing me to jump from his closeness. I was so busy daydreaming I didn’t even hear him approach.

“Yes..sorry. In a world of my own. Let’s go!” I grabbed my school bag and we walked to the school car park together. Caleb had past his driving test just after his seventeenth birthday and gave me a lift to and from school every day. He, or I should say we, couldn’t wait to get off the school bus. He drove me most places to be fair, I always offered to pay my way, but he said the Alpha’s daughter had a lifetime guarantee of free rides. I didn’t drive, I wouldn’t drive, I couldn’t stomach the memory when my hand held the steering wheel for the first time. My breathing became so erratic that Caleb had to pull me out of the car and carry me home. He never pushed me to learn ever since.