A wolf scampered off in a forest in New England not far from a stream on an awfully rainy night. It shouldn't have been there. Ask any animal behavior specialist and they could tell you that wolves had been irradiated from the area in the eighteenth century, and yet there it was, wild and free.
A wild thing doesn't care for borders, state lines, or scientific estimations about its whereabouts. Nothing wild cares where it was meant to be, only where it needs to be for survival. At the moment, nothing mattered more to the wolf than being in that particular forest.
The wolf had come mere inches from a human before disappearing off using stealth and skill. It had a good sense of nature, something most humans had forgotten. It could hear better, see farther, and run faster than any civilized creature. As such the wolf could sense the fear of the first human, along with the footsteps of the second.
Usually he'd avoid being seen at all, but his mission necessitated his seeing of one of the two humans. That was dangerous too, but some things are more important than safety. Regardless, almost being sighted by another was too close. It was messy. The wolf wasn't usually that messy, but he was overtaken with emotion, his senses overwhelmed. He knew he should have left sooner, but he couldn't, so the wolf had waited until the last possible second before brambling out of sight.
He ran deep into the forest. He could hear the footsteps of the humans, catch bits of their conversation even over the rain, and even sense how far they'd traversed. They were moving in the opposite direction, that was good. The wolf needed to be far far away.
There was a clearing several miles from the town in the forest that separated it from the other nearby towns and cut it off from most of the outside world. It was marked by an old tree with a deep crook in it, large enough that if somebody had been so inclined they could have climbed up and sat there. Standing already in the clearing were two tall figures, a girl with streaked wild hair caught somewhere in the crossfire between blonde and brown and a boy with thick black hair that swirled in the wind at the base of his neck where it hung nearly to his shoulders.
Such figures were tall, almost too tall to be human, and each bore a deep striking face carved by definite figures. The girl's eyes which had a strange luminescent quality appeared blue and deep, the boy's were a calm steely gray. Neither's face would have betrayed any emotion to another, but they deeply understood each other.
Both of them were soaked to the bone and they looked at each other, anxious to be back inside.
"Stop worrying." The boy stated in a gruff tone.
"We haven't seen him. He said to wait an hour and then–"
"It's only been forty-five minutes." The man reminded her.
"I know." Her complacent face didn't match her tone. "You don't think he'll be seen? It makes me nervous being so close to..."
"If the mission's successful we'll be getting a lot closer, so you'd better fix that."
The girl said nothing. Her eyes darkened to a bluish purple– perhaps just from the light, but somehow clearer.
The silence remained over the pair for a brief moment. The girl checked her watch again, glaring at it for reflecting that it had only been two minutes and she still was unable to properly panic like she wanted to.
"Shouldn't he at least be heading back by now?"
"I can hear him." The man quipped. "Can't you?"
It wasn't meant as an insult, but the woman frowned regardless. Her hearing in no way matched his, and she wasn't happy to have been proven wrong.
"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.
"Even now I'm not sure I could reject him. Having seen him... my wolf already yearns." Elijah continued, his face an emotionless mask.
"Oh, Eli!" The woman called eyes flashing blue as she was drawn forth in a fit of emotion.
The alpha glared at her but didn't ask her to retreat. She didn't dare touch him.
"Omega, remember who you're speaking with." The other man reminded her. It wasn't a statement of anger, more one of great concern and caution.
"I'm sorry, Alpha" the woman let her head fall in shame. "But you speak as if you haven't got a choice. As if it's all decided."
"It is." The alpha shrugged.
"But what about-" The woman began, but stopped herself. "I'm sorry Alpha, forgive me for speaking out of term, but it doesn't sound as if you love him."
"He doesn't," the other man stated plainly, eyeing his alpha with a knowing look. "At least not yet, but he will."
The woman grunted uncomfortably, and shook the man back onto the task at hand.
"Love has no place in this." Elijah grunted. "Either I return with a mate or I might as well not bother returning at all. I'll be a lone wolf."
"Do you think Sampson could handle being an alpha? He'd crumble under the pressure in a week," The beta argued.
"That's what worries me the most. I could go alone without resentment, but I'd rather die than let my father's legacy fall to pieces." Elijah explained. "The peace period given to us to mourn ends at the next full moon. After that the rival packs will surround us... with an omega in charge who's to say what could happen to the pack."
The omega and the beta shared a knowing look of uncertainty. Neither could stomach the idea of what happened next.
"You've found your mate now, Alpha. That's the hardest part," The beta offered. "What are your orders?"
The two attendants waited eagerly for their leader to instruct them their tense mood accentuated by the heavy rainfall. The woman fiddled with her black sleeves, but the man looked his alpha straight on.
"We're not in our own territory." The alpha explained. "The Tibik-kìzis pack are our allies... at least they were my father's. I can't think of any reason why they'd target my mate, but-"
"But they might." The second man finished and the alpha frowned in agreement knowing it was true. Werewolves were notoriously power-hungry, they were also very loyal-- but the new alpha owned no loyalties.
"I'll have to stay in the area, keep an eye on things." The alpha explained.
"We'll all stay," The man stated.
"I wouldn't ask you to spend so much time away from the pack." The alpha argued.
"With all due respect, you might become a little distracted with your mate, and if an enemy decides to attack you, there won't be a pack to go back to." The man reasoned. "I only speak for myself, but I'm not going anywhere, not until we return to the pack with you and your mate."
"...And I as well," The woman agreed slightly less resolutely.
The alpha looked down. He was never one to deal well with positive emotions or gestures of affection, and he wasn't sure what to say. His leadership of the pack was new, and the gesture read as it was intended; an acceptance of his leadership in the pack.
"I..." The alpha paused, eyes trained to the afternoon sun. "It'll be night soon. I think they're probably far enough for us to follow safely. I can sense him moving away. I'm going to watch the house."
"Alpha, are you sure that's wise?" the woman asked, eyes flashing purple.
"Your scent won't be on the human yet. There's no reason to assume he's in any danger, that's a measure we can take later on-- but he's probably safer than he'll ever be again as it stands.... werewolves hanging out in Belford might even raise some suspicions." The man suggested. "Not to mention if you're seen by civilians..."
"I'll be careful."
"Perhaps if you stay and one or both of us go on-" The man began. "Then it isn't the alpha, and if someone comes looking they'll just find a beta and an Omega alone."
"No. I'm going... I–"
"Want to see him again?" The man's stern face cracked into a smile.
"No." The alpha said gruffly with a scowl as if he resented the insinuation. "But I should at least meet my mate before we bring him back to the pack. I'll need to explain everything to him.... and get him to love me. "
"When do we need to have him back to Buffalo?"
"Ideally I'd like him home as soon as possible. Especially since we're a couple of hours from the pack house, but the night of the full moon is the absolute last possible time." Elijah paused to look up at the sky. "The next full moon after tonight, of course. That's meeting for all the packs in the province. Either the Gibbous pack announces me alpha, or Sampson. That's it."
"Have faith, Alpha!" the beta reassured. "It will be you."
Elijah nodded his head down in something of a bow of respect to the slightly older man.