When I finally came to, a hand immediately gripped my hair harshly and jerked my head up, forcing me to take in the scene before me and recall what had taken place. It hadn't been some sick nightmare, it was all really happening right before my eyes.
The invaders were using the auditorium's stage to parade students up one by one, no doubt for the inspection they'd mentioned. I felt sick.
Just then the man who knotted his hand in my hair yanked me up to my feet and shoved me towards the line of my peers. "Move, little pup." He growled into my ear, his words made me want to disappear and get as far away from him and his sour breath as possible.
My eyes were wide as I watched the testing process take place. They stood in a semicircle and brought us onto the center of the stage where they then forced us to shift. Just my luck.
There was a man with a clipboard who was taking detailed notes. It was after the shift when the clipboard man either sent them outside or had them brought backstage.
By the time he dragged me to the line there were no longer any others in front of me, with a final shove he sent me into the stairs. Like literally into the stairs.
There was hooting and hollering as I slowly picked myself up to climb the remaining stairs and walk onto the stage. This was it. I was going to die in my high school's auditorium in front of everyone.
I couldn't shift, not once in my entire life had I ever even felt my wolf before. I would fail the test because I couldn't do the one thing they asked and then they would kill me because who wants to deal with a deadbeat werewolf who can't even shift?
The man with the clipboard stood on the side of the raucous group of wolves, he had dark blonde hair that fell dirty on his face. I could see a vertical scar that rested across his eye as he looked me over quickly.
"Name?"
My heart was pounding and with their hearing I'm sure they had no trouble picking up the thundering in my chest. My mind was racing and my body annoyingly began shaking. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
"Name? Age?"
This time when I tried to speak a voice came out, I just wasn't sure that it was mine. "Olive Ludovic, eighteen."
The girl who responded was much more confident, almost fearless, the exact opposite to how I felt in reality. I watched him scribble my information down before giving a pointed look towards the wolf closest to him.
The man, I immediately recognized as the one who originally knocked me out, the eyeless wonder. I instinctively took a half step backwards and away from him, immediately hoping both he and the crowd didn't notice my small display of fear.
But because I am me and because life loves to sh:t on me, my moments had not gone unnoticed as I wished.
"Shift."
This time it wasn't the clip board man or the eyeless dude, it was a collective whisper from the group. Different voices from the circle all began to chant and call for me to shift.
I stood there before them, I closed my eyes suddenly becoming religious and praying to anything to bring me my wolf in that moment.
Please. Please. Please.
Nothing.
When I opened them I was face to face with Eyeless and he immediately shoved me backwards. "If you're not going to shift on your own we'll just have get it out of you. One way or another we'll get the information we need, pretty girl."
I fell back onto my ass, my hair obstructing my vision temporarily as I scrambled back onto my feet. When I pushed my hair away from my eyes I noticed that Eyeless was gone, that was until I heard growling coming right behind me.
I pivoted on my heel and took in the wolf before me. It was big and ugly, clearly Eyeless as the gross wolf snarling at me was also missing an eye.
I immediately began to back away once more from the Eyeless' wolf only to bump into another body behind me, his hands locking onto my arms preventing me from moving.
Eyeless stalked towards me trying to scare me and entice me to shift. Props to him, he succeeded on the scaring me part because I was definitely scared but as for the shifting and my wolf? Nada. Zip. Nothing.
He lunged towards me after watching me just stupidly stand there and snipped at my ankles, taking hold of the skin and creating a small flesh wound.
I refused to cry out. That was what they wanted and I wouldn't give it to them and since this was to be my very final stand, I couldn't let my final moments be embarrassing.
This process went on for what felt like years, wolf after wolf taking turns roughing me up all in an attempt to get me to shift. They mistook my inability to shift as deliberate and stubborn. A defiant challenge. One they were enjoying far too much.
Suddenly a quiet fell over the group and the wolf that currently had me pinned beneath it's paw quickly scurried off and away from me.
I was bloodied and bruised after their handiwork but I managed to get myself up and off of the ground somehow.
My eyes landed in the figure silently moving to the front of the crowd, the wolves parting like the Red Sea to allow him access. His presence was cold and immediately chilled the room, he was terrifying. This and way the others bowed their heads and cowered to him could only mean one thing.
He was their Alpha, he had to be. There was no other logical explanation for that amount of power to be radiating off of him.
As he came to a stop, I was able to get an even better look at the man everyone was seemingly so terrified of. His eyes albeit, were scary all on their own, I gave him that. They were a bright amber color and stood out blazingly prominent from the dark features and hair that surrounded his face.
His skin was tanned and muscled, but not as much as some of the other creepy wolves in the room. The Alpha wolf loomed over everyone else in the room as he stood considerably taller above the rest. He appeared agile and yet still ridiculously toned, as if at any given moment he was going to spring into action and attack. Very unnerving.
There also was not a single tear in his clothing. No sign of a struggle or any sort of siege on his person.
"Shift."
His voice hit me like a serrated blade as he stepped out of the crude semicircle of hardened wolves that had formed around me. I pushed myself off of the cold floor for what felt like the thousandth time that day, wiping the small trail of blood coming off of my lip and down my chin.
"I won't ask you again."
My limbs felt like lead, these wolves had been at me for hours trying to get my to shift into my wolf, unbeknown to them was that their efforts would forever be futile considering the fact my wolf wouldn't make an appearance for me even when I begged. I seriously doubted she would suddenly pop up as a result of their abusive tactics.
Instead of explaining my circumstances, driven by a bizarre combination of adrenaline and fatigue, I leaned back on my heels and sent the largest loogie I'd ever conjured flying over and landing squarely between the eyes of the man before me.
There was an immediate uproar from the crowd upon realizing what I had done, two of his wolves rushed forward and each took hold an arm to restrain little old me.
I watched the Alpha with a quiet mix of horror and extreme pride at what I had done. His hair obscured his expression from me as he used the pad of his thumb to remove my spit from his forehead.
A terrifying smirk crawled onto his lips as he lackadaisically made his way across the floor, stopping directly in front of me. His next movements were unfortunately not as disinterested.
In a flash, his hand was tightly clenched around my throat. His orange eyes were narrowed into terrifying slit as he squeezed tighter.
I began to thrash against the wolves pinning my arms away, desperately trying to relieve the constricting pressure. When suddenly again, just as quickly as his hand had found my throat, it disappeared.
The Alpha almost stumbled away from me as if my skin was made of the most toxic silver, his once narrowed eyes were wide now and consumed with an emotion I couldn't put together.
All I cared about was the fact I could breath freely again.
One of the wolves holding me turned out to be Eyeless and I guess he must have sensed the impending outburst and quickly attempted to save his own skin. "Alpha Matteo, my apologies. We've been working on her for hours and the little b:tch refuses to shift, we should have taken her outside a long time ago but I can assure you this will not happen again."
Alpha Matteo? At least my prediction about his status was correct but, Matteo?
Matteo...as in the Pack Conquerer? The Silent Killer? Dark Alpha? The actual personification of evil itself? That Alpha Matteo?
I certainly knew that name. Every werewolf under the sun knew that name, feared that name. It became all too clear just what pack these wolves were from and what kind of situation we were dealing with.
He was the infamous Alpha of the Malice Pack.
Growing up I had heard many gruesome stories of Matteo and the Malice pack but I'd never imagined in a million years that they would be here and he would be smirking in front of me. No one ever lived long enough to see them, their attacks were always quick and deadly...not this bizarre siege.
"Mate." Matteo suddenly growled out.
Eyeless was clearly perplexed as he stumbled over his next words, looking back and forth between his Alpha and me. "But she..I mean...She didn't...So, do you want her dead? What do you want us to--"
Without warning, Matteo's fist collided with Eyeless' jaw just as mine had done a while earlier, it successfully silenced his babbling.
However, it didn't silence the confusion in the room. Mate? Right now? What the hell was that supposed to mean? This monster certainly couldn't be my mate, there was no way that the two of us could be destined for one another.
I must have heard him wrong. Yes, that was definitely it, I misheard him in my delirious state from all the injuries I was currently sporting.
"Mine."
Sh:t. Sh:t. Sh:t. So I definitely didn't mishear him.
He approached me again, his cadence eerily silent and smooth across the stage and this time when he reached out for me it wasn't to strangle the life out of me but instead to catch a tear that was making it's way, unbeknownst to me, down my cheek.
My entire body went stiff under his touch, between the creepy caress and the possessed look in his eyes I was unable to be comforted by this newfound gentleness; So much so, I jerked my newly tear stained face away from him.
"Bite me." I spoke with as much venom I could gather as I turned my chin away from him.
Yes, technically I was a werewolf. I mean sure, I lived in a pack around a bunch of people who had supernatural abilities but other than that, I was really just a human with a lot of meaningless combat training and a weird home life.
I didn't have super senses or freakish strength. I didn't have a wolf. I didn't have accelerated healing. And I learned a new fun fact today, that I definitely did not possess the mate bond either.
All our lives we were taught that when you met your mate it was supposed to be the greatest moment of your entire existence. One touch and your fate was instantaneously forever intertwined with your one true soul mate.
It was supposed to be this insane moment of immediate love but I felt nothing for the man standing before me.
Well, that's not entirely true. I felt repulsion, hatred, crippling fear, and nausea toward him. After all he was the one responsible for this freak show massacre...but definitely not the mating bond.
That's why this had to be a mistake.
However, my retort obviously was not the smartest word choice in my current predicament as Matteo's eyes immediately darkened and that wild smirk returned back onto his features.
He let out a cold laugh that pierced through the dead silence of the auditorium. He leaned forward and brushed my sweaty hair away from my shoulder as he angled his face closer to my ear. "Trust me, I intend to."
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