Big Bad

WOLVES

"I know. I can feel him... he's close." She lied. The man rolled his eyes. A lie as it might be, she was right and he was beginning to feel the closeness as well.

Suddenly a gray-brown rush blasted through the outside wall of the clearing grasping claws into the dirt ground as debris fled the force. The animal's features came into view and it became clear that it was a dark brown wolf with vicious claws and dagger-like teeth.

Neither flinched at the spectacle, nor seemed to pay any mind to the snarling beast that lay before them. The woman's eyes flashed yellow, blue, and purple all at once as she inclined slightly forward.

Then the wolf then sat back, and in another swirl of brown fur the wolf was replaced with another tall man standing at a fighting stance. Had anyone been there to see this in the little clearing they might have been astonished, they might have been terrified, but all who saw had expected this and took it to be as natural as changing clothes.

The man revealed was as soaked as his companions and had dark brown hair heathered with lighter sections that were most concentrated towards the sides and front of his stoic face. He was immediately the tallest of the three and the largest in terms of body density as well. His muscles swelled under his black long sleeves and his gray joggers. Around his waist he had tied the red and black checkered shirt he'd been wearing earlier; rendered useless by the heat of running through the forest. On his handsome face he wore a glare accented by reddish orange eyes that pierced through the cloudy day like the sun.

"Alpha," The first man nodded. "Were your instincts correct?"

"Yes." The man said in annoyance. "My mate is near."

The woman's eyes flashed a deeper blue before being quickly replaced with the calm steel gray that matched the first man's.

"And she's... human?" The woman asked slowly.

"He." The alpha corrected. "And yes. He's human."

"How?" The woman risked asking the question. Everything about the Alpha said that he was not to be messed with, and yet she had to know.

"I don't know," The alpha sighed. "It doesn't seem to make sense... but-"

"But now that you've seen him..." the man trailed off.

The alpha nodded. "Now things are complicated."

"What are you going to do, Alpha?" The woman asked.

"You know how serious this is," The beta reminded. "Sampson is at the ready if you don't---"

"I know!" Elijah said in a strong voice, silencing the conversation. There was an air of finality to his voice and neither of the other wolves dared to speak. The alpha rubbed his chin in a slightly anxious manner, but no nerves were present in his stance. "This is an.... extraordinary circumstance."

Sampson was Elijah's older brother. Born an omega he had no business trying to lead the pack, but that had never stopped the man from trying. Elijah and his brother bickered horribly and the presence of a mate would only make that worse. 

"Either you accept him and take on a massive weakness, or you reject him and can't take over as alpha." 

"It's awfully dangerous to be the mate of an Alpha," the woman mused. All in the circle knew the truth of the statement. 

"Sampson will strike quick to take my place if I don't come back with a mate. My mother is relentless. She'll back him before me without a mate."

Elijah's mother was a stickler for tradition, and she wouldn't hear of him being made alpha of the Gibbous pack without a mate. The death of Elijah's father had sped up the process and now Elijah was on a time crunch trying to find his mate.