Playing with Fire #1 ✔

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟔 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨

Alone.

That's the way it had been ever since my pack left me. Sure, I'd been around people, but I'd still been lonely.

On that night, I didn't have a choice; it was my first full moon in Lake Oldoy. I wouldn't return home — Neal and Lis, my foster parents (another thing I'd lied to Ember about), wouldn't expect me back. They knew about me and what I was. They were part of an Agency that protected supernatural teens until they were no longer minors.

As nice as Neal and Lis were, I would never let them close to me. My real parents died in a fire just after I was bitten by an Alpha and transitioned. I didn't know it then, but the secrets of that night would be revealed to me when I least expected it.

I was only 10 the night the fire happened. I thought I'd lost everything and everyone, so I had no option but to seek out the Alpha who bit me. I had no idea what it meant at the time — other than the fact the gaping bite wounds in my side had healed in less than an hour, and I was hyper-aware of everything.

That hyper-awareness had never left me. Even now, as I stalked away from Challis High, the sounds of the town assaulted my eardrums. The urge to truly be alone in nature, rather than alone in a crowd of teens, drove me out of the town and up into the vast woodlands.

It's also the drive of the full moon, I thought as I glanced upwards at that faint, pale sphere in the sky that controlled my life.

My first full moon was torturous, to say the least. Every muscle in my body tore itself apart before reforming into those of a wolf. Yet, as time passes, the full moons become more bearable. The muscles heal stronger. As I learned control, I learned how to transition slower.

Typically speaking, there are several degrees to which a werewolf can transform; it all depends on the situation. But full moons meant full transitions — an inescapable fact of my existence.

Every time the full moon came around, I thought about my pack. Every time, I remembered how they left me with no warning. Every time, the cross over my pack's symbol burnt into my skin. Every time I transformed, I thought about my pack and the people that were in it.

Wednesday's psychic trick had refreshed everything over the past few months. Her hand grasping mine and the images she forced me to relive had rubbed stinging salt into deep wounds. Wounds that I feared would never fully heal.

My pack...

The Alpha, Jason, was a natural leader — though he also balanced being a good advisor too. His other half, Sienna, another werewolf, was sweet and kind. Abi was a banshee, whose inklings about death forever haunted her — only her other half, a human called Zack, could truly understand her. The Betas consisted of Hayden, Ryder, Jade and me. There was also a telekinetic called Ryan and a medium called Storm who were also with us for a couple of months.

The ten of us went to high school in Missoula, Montana by day. But by night, we lived wild in the abandoned mining town of Coloma. We lived wild like that for a year and a half, before I woke one morning and they were gone. Gone without a trace, as if they were never there at all. As if these people who I'd spent so long with were a mere figment of my imagination.

I could hardly believe it; I thought they were hiding from me — ready to jump out and yell, "Surprise! We got ya!" And it would just be one of Ryder's stupid pranks.

But they never did.

Directionless and completely alone, I walked non-stop for four hours from Coloma to a small town called Potomac. There, I spent five weeks wandering the streets, searching for someone — anyone.