"Come on Madden! Try it again."
I gritted me teeth and narrowed my eyes at Jacob. "I've been trying for the past hour, I don't think this is something I can learn in one day."
"You kind of don't have a choice. We don't really have a Plan B." Blaine countered as he ripped open a bag of potato chips.
"Aww no that's just not cool. You have to share." I held out my hand, Palm up, waiting for a fair handful of chips.
"Not until you get it right." Jacob interjected and I groaned.
I closed my eyes and focused on the place that had held some comfort in my childhood before the shit hit the fan and my family fell apart: the treehouse my father had built for me.
"Good." Jacob praised. "Remember to focus purely on that place and try to capture the exact feeling of it in your mind."
It was suspended between two towering pines, with a little rope ladder and skylight into the house.
"Now try and capture your favorite memory from that place." Jacob continued to guide me.
I was nine and I had just fallen off my bike. I was curled up in the corner of my treehouse, crying and holding my scraped knee to my chest. Then my dad popped up through the entrance of the floor with bandaids and Oreos. That was the last time he was in the treehouse with me.
I smiled at the memory, still crystal clear in my head. My family may be awful now, but it wasn't always that way, and I have strived to cherish the good memories of them over the years.
"Ok Madden. Keep your eyes closed and answer me this, if that memory had a color, what would it be?"
My brow wrinkled at his strange question, but I had an answer oddly enough. "Pale yellow, I guess."
"Alright. And do you remember what the sun rays were like that day? Were they soft? Or were they bright?"
"Soft. It was late afternoon so the sun was just about the set."
"Ok, Madden, you're done."
I opened me eyes. "I don't see how that could disguise my aura."
"It's kinda of difficult to explain, but, as we told you before, an aura is the very essence of your wolf's soul."
"Right?" I still wasn't sure how an old childhood memory would disguise my very soul.
"Well, certain special wolves, such as those with the double recessive gene, have the ability to disguise or completely hide their aura by tying a specific memory to them."
I nodded and took off the ring that they had given me. "So what does this do?" It was a simple silver band with the phases of the moon carved into it.
"That ring is made of wolfsbane that has been diluted so that it is not harmful to wolves, but rather would allow one to manipulate an aspect of their appearance." Jacob explained as he pulled a ring off his finger. It was a more complex ring than mine, though still silver in color, and it had tiny emeralds pressed into it. "My ring allows me to see beyond the regular aura of a wolf and detect their genetic coding for werewolf tendencies."
"That's kind of creepy, but I'm guessing that's how you found me."
"Right."
"I think I've heard of wolfsbane before. What does it do when it's not diluted?"
"It is like our kryptonite. Different forms of the plant can do different things. Every wolf has a natural instinct to avoid the plant when they come across it as the plant can be either debilitating or deadly."
I nodded, glad to hear I have an instinct to avoid such a thing and I slipped my ring back onto my right thumb. "Ok, Mr. Magic Aura See-er. How does my aura look?"
He smirked at his nickname and looked me. "Pale yellow and soft light rays."
Ok I was impressed. But just a little, because their wasn't actually proof that I had an aura, or that I had changed it. The only reason I was going along with anything these guys said was because one, I was just standing a four paws a few hours ago, two, even on four paws, they could catch me easily if I ran away, and three, I was curious as to how far they would take this charade. "What did it look like before?"
"Like a flashlight being shone through a freaken' diamond! It nearly blinded me!" He rubbed his eyes as he remembered.
I smiled, 'Good! If all else fails, I can blind that Prince and runaway.' I looked over at Blaine who was setting up a picnic lunch for the three of us. 'I never even saw him leave! Where did he get all that?'
I walked over and sat down on the blanket and started making myself a huge turkey sandwich. "So now what?" I took a big bite and then continued talking around the mouthful. "I have disguised my aura so the Prince isn't tearing apart the world to take me away. What's next?"
Blaine passed me a napkin, and I wiped a bit of mayo of the corner of my mouth. "Now we have to teach you some etiquette."
I raised a brow at him in challenge. "And what would you, my kidnappers, know about etiquette?"
"Quite a lot actually." Jacob responded as he walked up behind me. He placed one hand on my lower back and grabbed my shoulders with the others and forced me to sit up straight and proper. "We also don't have that much time to teach you before the Prince is forced to marry Raylen, so we will have to teach you as we travel."
"What's so bad about this Raylen chick anyways? Is she out to destroy the werewolf world or something?"
Jacob shook his head as he sat down and began making his sandwich, "No. She's not a bad person at all. The thing is, that historically all packs in which the Alpha mates with and marries someone other than their mate end up falling apart or being overthrown."
"So what you see is," Blaine interjected as he ripped open a bag of chips, "if the Prince doesn't find you, or if you reject him, than he will have to marry Raylen. And not that she will do anything wrong, but the kingdom would fall apart."
"Two questions." I held up two fingers and and swallowed my last bite of sandwich. "Number One, does this Prince have a name? And Number Two, you said if I reject him. What if He rejects me?"
Holding the pretzels out to me, Blaine nodded, "Yeah, He's got a name, but we aren't going to tell you it, just for fun. And he wont reject you. You are the one has been waiting for his entire life; his destiny, his sun, his piece of heaven. You see, Madden, he won't reject you because he puts so much faith into the system by which the moon goddess gives us our mates." He said this all scornfully, as if he lacked the faith the Prince had, as if the system had failed him somehow. "But," he continued, "if you reject him, not only will you break his heart, but you will force him into a marriage he will despise because it isn't with you."
"But he doesn't even know me!" I defended. 'Was it really possible that a complete stranger could already be in love with someone they have never met before? I have heard of love at first sight, and I think its ridiculous, but love at first thought? How insane is that?!'
Blaine shrugs, "That just goes to show how much faith he puts in the system."
I ate a few pretzels and mulled over that thought. "What about you two? Do you put that much faith in the system."
They exchanged a glance, seemingly caught off guard by my question. Jacob shook his head, "It is not often that the moon goddess grants us Guardian wolves mates. You see, our instinct would be to protect our mates over the ones we are guiding. In this way, having mates would hinder us from fulfilling our duties."
I nodded, a little bit saddened at the thought that they both believed they would never find true love. "So I am your main priority right now?"
They nodded.
"I am both creeped out and honored."
"And I don't blame you for that, we didn't exactly introduce you to this world in the best way."
I rolled my eyes. "You think?"
"Alright, here is a heads up. You will eventually be a princess, and we will have to train you for that, but first you are going to start out as a servant." Then they launched into this elaborate plan to get me close to the Prince and to give me a chance to get to know him a little by serving in his castle before I introduced myself as his mate.
"So you start off as a maid, and we, Jacob and I, will manipulate events until you are serving as a lady-in-waiting. This will happen by them time of the ball."
"Ball? You mean with poofy dresses, and waltzes, and bowing, and curtsying? That kind of ball?" My voice squeaked a little at the last part because in no way, shape, or form was I made to attend a ball. Sure, I was coordinated enough to learn the dances, and I could probably master the etiquette, but there was no way in Hell that I would wear a big poofy dress.
"Yes, that kind of ball. The Blue Moon Ball to be exact. That is where, as is tradition, the Prince shall choose his future bride and the future Luna of the pack. This of course, is where you will reveal yourself, and not a moment sooner."
"It seems kind of stupid to make it so last minute?" I wasn't completely following the logic of this plan, I understood the part about getting close to him by starting off as a servant, but waiting until the night where he announces his engagement to reveal myself? that seemed reckless! What if something went wrong, or if he didn't want me?
"We have good reason to believe that this way, he will be least angry at you for hiding from him, for that is exactly what you will be doing. Because how could be mad at his perfect mate when she is at a Masquerade Ball looking like Aphrodite herself." Jacob explained as he cleaned up the mess from our lunch.
"We can't explain all of our reasoning to you right now because you aren't ready for that, but we do need to get you ready to serve among the Royal Family." Blaine stood and dusted off his pants. "First of all, and this is most definitely Rule Number One, you must never go into either the Prince's room or his office unless you get his specific instruction to do so. Those rooms contain many secrets about the pack that, if let out, could be extremely destructive."
"Okay, that seems simple enough, what else?"
Jacob and Blaine then shifted in front of me, once again their huge wolf forms. I finally had the chance to really look at them. Blaine's wolf, dark grey like Jacob's, had a black strip of fur down his spine and his fur was a bit longer. Jacob's wolf was solid grey except for the tip of his tail which was black. Both wolves heads were even with mine, much higher up than normal wolves, and they were well muscled, definitely skilled hunters.
Blaine's wolf cocked its head to the side as it looked at me and I realized they were waiting for me to shift also.
"Oh." I looked at the mess we were leaving behind and wondered where we would get clothes when we changed back. Then, concentrating as I had before, I found myself again on four paws. 'So freaken' cool!' And now that it had happened twice to me, the thought of it being a hallucination was so distant. I simply wanted to enjoy this new discovery.
'Good job! That was much faster than the first time!' Jacob's voice sounded in my head and I stared at him in confusion.
'I can hear your thoughts.'
He dipped his big head. 'Yes, and I can hear yours, and so can Blaine.'
Blaine lifted his lips in the equivalent of a wolfy grin. 'Hello.'
'Alright, this is new. Can you hear all my thoughts? Or just ones I direct at you?'
'We only hear what you want us to.' Jacob's voice explained and he walked forward, his paws leaving huge imprints on the ground. 'We are going to enter the Prince's territory in this form, that way your scent will be disguised by ours.'
Blaine walked up to me and I turned and faced the direction they were, feeling weird as my four feet moved naturally under me, almost like I was never not a wolf.
'Is something wrong with my scent?' I inhaled through my nose, surprised and fascinated by the strength of old smells as well as the presence of new ones thanks to my heightened senses. But I smelled fine to me, like my vanilla honey body wash.
'Yes and no. You do not smell bad or anything, it is just that, to the members of a pack, you will smell like a rouge, which are often seen as threats to pack life. However, by having you travel with us in this fashion, your scent will be mixed with ours, and they will now you are under our protection and therefore, not a threat.'
'That makes sense.' I leaped over a fallen log, landing deftly on all fours and continuing the easy trot we had settled into.
'Now Madden, werewolves can run much faster than normal wolves, do you want to try?'
I pictured my self flying through the forest, my paws kicking up leaves, and wind racing through my fur. 'Hell yeah!'
We all took off then, tearing across the ground, miles flying by in minutes, and our fur flattened by the wind our speed created.
It was exhilarating! Far better than a roller coaster or sky diving. This was my own little sense of adrenaline, and I was hooked.
'Alright, we should be in Idaho in a little more then 14 hours at this rate.' Blaine commented as we skirted around a small lake.
'How fast are we traveling?!' Idaho was about a thousand miles away, how could we possibly get there in 14 hours?!
'75 miles per hour. And that's not even our top speed.' I turned my head in time to see Blaine wink one big brown eye at me.
'That's insane! Normal wolves only travel about 35 miles an hour!'
Jacob and Blaine exchanged a glance over my head. 'Normal wolves? There are no normal wolves, only werewolves. The wolves you are thinking of our heterogeneous wolves that were birthed in wolf form and for some reason they cannot shift into human form. These wolves are typically slower and not as intelligent as us werewolves.'
I felt my nose twitch in irritation as Jacob's explanation made me doubt the reality of the world I had lived in before discovering I was a werewolf.
'Okay, Madden, it's time you learned some etiquette.'
I growled in response to Blaine's jest and shouldered him so that he stumbled.
I could definitely get used to this whole wolf thing.
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Author's Note:
Ta-da!
*mock bow*
I wish I could've finished this sooner! But wow! Over a thousand reads! Thank y'all so much for the support and comments and votes:)
Y'all are so cool.
Bye for now:)