Dust flew up everywhere around the apprentice who had been flipped over the shoulder of his master and into the dirt with a heavy thud. He groaned and flung his arm over his eyes. "Is it lunch time yet?"
His master stood over him, amusement in his eyes as he held out a hand for the young wolf. "We've only started an hour ago. You've got awhile kid."
I enjoyed watching the other apprentices train. I learned a lot just by listening to them teach and watching. I watched the teachers mostly because they executed everything correctly, but I would also occasionally sneak a glance at the apprentices to see what they were doing wrong.
The apprentices hated it when I watched them. I could sense their aggression when they passed me. They thought I was judging them when I had no skills of my own. They thought I had no place in being around them when I didn't even have a beast.
I curled my legs into my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs and resting my chin on my knees. I didn't let their loathing looks dissuade me though. This was as close as I would ever get to warrior training. I sighed and continued to watch, observing Judah, the apprentice, try over and over again until he finally did it right.
I felt a sudden prickle raise the hairs on the back of my neck. It was a familiar feeling, I was used to being stared at, so I tried to ignore it. My brows screwed together as I focused on what Judah's teacher was telling him about keeping his claws from slicing his own skin when he went to punch.
However, it grew increasingly difficult for me to actually pay attention, the uneasy feeling settling over me, no longer just discomforting but setting off a sense of danger within me.
Slowly, I twisted to look over my shoulder. My eyes scanned the wooden bleachers behind me. I never sat in them since I would be too far away to properly hear the teacher. It didn't matter much to me if I sat in the dirt by the edge of the ring outlined in white chalk, or on the hard wood. They both offered the same amount of comfort in the end.
There was no one else in the bleachers, the seats usually empty unless higher ranking warriors wanted to have a go at each other.
My eyes moved to the slit between two of the rows, and that's when I caught who it was that was staring at me.
I gulped as I met a pair of grey-blue eyes that somehow always put me more on edge than my own father's did. There was genuine malice in his stare that bored into me. It chilled my blood and I was frozen in place, unable to move.
The beta scared the hell out of me. Coda was a massive male, he stood at the same towering height of my father. I would hardly come up past his midriff if we stood face to face. His expression was always severe and disapproving. Just a single look from him would shut up any boastful young werewolf or hunter running off their mouths.
I had witnessed it many times.
Coda was the subject of gossip in every imaginable way. The young boys looked up to him every bit as much as they respected my father. Coda was an exceptional warrior. He was an alpha himself after all, and that was a fact he never let anyone forget even if he wasn't the alpha of this pack.
The beta's name was whispered between the young females just as often. They'd send him hooded looks, unable to hide their attraction for the middle-aged male.
His jaw was more square than my father's sharper jawline, but his cheekbones were more pronounced. Accompanied with a straight nose set between those greyish blue eyes, it wasn't a surprise the beta was the crush of almost every female, young and old in this pack. It didn't matter that Coda had a more aged appearance that showed just how much he had seen and how long he had been around. He was definitely a man, not a hint of boyishness about him and I think that many of the young females in the pack had developed a fetish for older men because of our handsome beta.
Despite all of the female attention, and male attention for that matter, that he received, I'd never heard of Coda taking a partner. I knew he never would take an interest in any of the younger females who were young enough to be his daughter, they were too annoying and immature for him.
Everyone annoyed Coda though, so I guess maybe that was a void argument.
I myself held no interest in the beta, the other females could fight amongst themselves for his non-existent attention and favor all they wanted. I was absolutely petrified of Coda which is why I avoided him as much as possible.
Sometimes he'd come to the house late at night for my father if something happened, but I would always stay in my room because being near him turned me into a bundle of nerves.
Usually the beta wouldn't pay any attention to me and we didn't actually cross paths often despite him being around my father most of the time. I wasn't ever really around my father either, if I was being honest with myself.
Coda's eyes narrowed at me when our gazes connected through the bleachers, but I was too terrified to look away from him. I felt like if I so much as blinked he would have crossed the wide distance between us and ripped out my throat before I had the chance to scream.
I wasn't even sure I was breathing as Coda stared me down like he was peeling back the very layers of everything that made me who I was. He was examining me as if I were a strange, confusing, species.
Perhaps in his eyes I was. A mere human was nothing like the powerful alpha he was. We were the furthest things from each other. Even a real wolf would be able to understand Coda better than I ever could.
I wondered why he was staring at me for so long. Usually Coda wouldn't spare most people more than a glance before his expression said they were beneath him and not worth his time or interest.
Yet here he was, holding my eyes as the seconds passed. His stance was the exact opposite of my rigid posture. Coda appeared relaxed, his arms crossed, and his shoulder pushed against the wall of the shed set behind the bleachers for storing training equipment.
The beta's finger tapped his own bicep slowly and methodically. His heavy brows were pinched together, his jaw tensed.
"Beta." A voice distracted me, and I unfroze, my eyes darting away from Coda and over to the werewolf and his apprentice trotting at his heels, walking around the bleachers over to him. I scrambled to my own feet, not even bothering to dust myself off.
My eyes flicked immediately back over to Coda, wondering why he hadn't responded yet only to see he had never looked away from me.
I took a step back on instinct.
Only after that movement did the beta finally pull his gaze away from me and turn his attention momentarily on the other werewolf and his glowing but obviously nervous apprentice, who was shifting his feet at the sight of his idol.
Coda looked them both up and down, sizing them up in one glance before pushing off of the shed, turning on his heel and leaving without a word.
The werewolf sputtered behind the retreating form of the beta, not expecting to be completely ignored.
My legs trembled violently, and I stumbled back several steps, my one knee buckling and sending me to the ground. I landed on my backside, my hands catching me.
"What in the name of the Moon was that?" I breathed to myself.
I didn't understand in the slightest what had just happened. Coda's very presence didn't even make sense. These sparring rings were the older ones, only ever used when the other ones were full. They were stationed at the edge of our community, right at the tree line unlike the new ones that had been built closer to the center.
For Coda to be here meant he had come all this way looking for something, or someone. Obviously, that had not been the werewolf or his apprentice, so that begged the question who then? Did the beta think he would find someone else here or had he really been searching for me?
Why though? Why in the name of the Moon would the beta come looking for me?
I was on my feet in an instant, dashing past the bleachers and the two werewolves now muttering to each other and after the beta.
My fear for the powerful alpha-blooded beta was overridden by my curiosity as I chased after him.
Coda had a good head start on me and people moved out of his way without needing to be directed to.
I was less fortunate, left to try and dodge around the other werewolves, smacking into some of them and receiving threatening snarls and angry grumblings.
I watched as Coda's salt and peppered head walked into the building devoted to curing pelts to make blankets, rugs, coats, and the works. It was busy at this time and would only grow increasingly more crowded as more and more people brought in their animal hides to make new blankets and coats before the cold weather at the end of autumn approached. We had only just started into the fall season, but the waiting list would only continue to grow.
I ducked into the building behind Coda, looking around to find him but couldn't spot the beta. I frowned, moving down the racks of pelts in the middle of treatment.
A sudden herd of people left from the back of the building, ushering out the others lingering around with them. It was apparent they had all been told to leave, but instead of just giving up for now and leaving with everyone else, I panicked and hid.
I slipped into a gigantic wooden wardrobe stationed against the wall to hold all of the furs in need of a deep cleaning.
I was small so it wasn't hard to make room, pushing aside some of the hanging pelts and crouching at the bottom. I swung the door almost completely shut, stopping it just before it clicked into place, giving myself a sliver of space to spy out of.
I gagged on the stench of the dirty pelts in desperate need of washing. While the smell was wretched it would at least conceal my scent.
Only after sitting in the closet for several minutes, not hearing or seeing anything because Coda must have stayed in the back of the building, did I realize how ridiculous I was.
Why did I hide myself in a wardrobe? How long was I just going to sit here? I should have just approached Coda and asked him what he was staring at me for.
I moved to push out of the closet only to hear heavy footsteps approaching and two male voices I recognized. I froze, snapping my hand away from the door and holding it to my chest just in case it got any second ideas and pushed open the door anyway.
No way was I going to leave now. Not when it would be obvious, I had meant to spy on Coda. Plus, it wasn't any random werewolf he was talking to, it was the alpha. They were still a little out of earshot so I couldn't fully make out their sentences until they grew a little closer.
Coda was the first to speak a full sentence I could understand. "You should have had told Grey to let the rogue attack her. "
My eyes widened at that. He was talking about me obviously and I wondered why in the name of the Moon the beta and alpha would be discussing me of all people. I was more surprised by that, than the actual meaning of the beta's words.
"I know she isn't good for much, but she'd be even less useful as a corpse." My father's back was to me, but I didn't need to see his face to know it was set in his usual icy expression. The shards of ice in his tone gave it away clearly.
Coda's form suddenly came partly in view, his profile half obstructed by my father's back. "I didn't say Grey shouldn't have stepped in at all, I just said you should have let the rogue attack her. A life or death situation like that is usually enough to pull out even the most stubborn of beasts. "
I watched as my father pulled off one of the finished cloaks made out of a heavy beige fabric, the top stitched with two different fox pelts. "Trust me, " he said while slinging the heavy cape over his shoulders, "from what Grey told me, she was as terrified as she'd ever get. She passed out after Grey killed the rogue and he had to carry her back. "
"Then she doesn't have a beast!" Coda snarled as if that was somehow news.
My father remained unconcerned as he adjusted the way the cloak hung on him. The color suited him nicely, offsetting our shared skin color that was a darker hue, a bit browner than Coda's warm complexion. My father and I always looked tanned, even in the winter when most people began to fade back to a paler color.
Smoothing back his dark hair which I'd also inherited from him, the alpha tossed back the cloak so that it wrapped around his neck and hung over his shoulder. "Maybe not," he conceded offhandedly, more interested in the fit of the clothing than discussing anything related to me.
Coda did not share the same sentiments. "That's it?" he growled out. "Everything that bitch told us was a lie and we've wasted all these years we should have been hunting the last of them to extinction? We let that lycan whore into the pack for nothing?"
"No."
It was just one word. A soft-spoken denial that also held firmness to it.
"We still have her alive, Coda, and as long as we have that then he'll come back."
I inched forward in the closet, intrigued by the mention of lycans. Lycans were said to be the ancestors of all werewolves and hunters. They were created by the goddess Lune. Her children held extreme power and from them had come a less powerful subspecies: the werewolf.
Hunters were further branched off from werewolves. Both hunters and werewolves were not favored by Lune. We did not get special hand-crafted lifelong partners like Lune designed for her lycans. Instead we had to be content with the several sub-par options Fate threw at us.
Lune's favor had always emboldened the lycans and they had always stood at the top of the world and looked down on werewolves, hunters and humans alike. Hunters were always at odds with the lycans.
The gene gave hunters something the lycans did not possess, venom. While the lycans lacked venom they made up for it in size and strength. They were much bigger than werewolves and hunters and stronger too. Beyond that, lycans and hunters were evenly matched and because neither hunter nor lycan wanted to stand below the other, they became enemies.
The blood feud had raged on for centuries. The lycan and hunter populations took turns rising and falling with each passing generation, but the shift was always somewhat balanced, the scales slightly tipped in favor of the lycans. Then the hunters had a sudden spike in numbers and thus began the decline of the lycans. A massive shift occurred in a genocide that broke into a desperate war for survival.
The werewolves were eager to join the hunters, tired of serving under the lycans.
I had thought all of the lycans had been killed, but the conversation happening before me eluded to the fact that such an assumption might not be correct.
"Really, bait? You think he'd fall for something so obvious?"
"You know what she is to him. You know what that means to his kind. He has no choice. He has to come back."
Lost in my thoughts about wars and lycans I tried to focus back in on the conversation but struggled to understand who they were talking about now. I wasn't sure how much of their dialogue I had missed.
"And what good will that do us? That bastard never dies. Lune watches over him more protectively than a mother bear guards her cubs. We need what was promised to us. If only those vermin hadn't killed Irene before she bore your son." Coda stepped around my father and began to examine the cloaks himself.
There was a stretch of silence, a sign of my father's silent agreement with Coda. "If it was all a lie, daughter or son would have made no difference. Perhaps that means that he can also be killed another way if the prophecy was false. And if she didn't lie after all, then perhaps we just need to wait a little longer."
The beta whirled to his superior. "How much longer do you want to wait, Eric? Until those bastards manage to rebuild an army? Or did you want to give them a chance to resurrect their empire we've spent centuries destroying?"
I had never heard so much sarcasm dripping from Coda before. The beta was usually a man of few words, able to communicate in a series of grunts and glares and the degree to which his lips tightened. Yet the male was downright frustrated with his alpha and wasn't trying at all to hide it.
"It will take them decades to repopulate and grow to a formidable size."
Coda slammed his hand down on the wooden rack, the slap echoing through the building. "Moon, Eric, take off your blindfold! They don't need to repopulate to create an army, they are already starting. They've taken over one of the Old Kingdom packs."
"And their hands are full trying to keep control over it," my father replied and shrugged off the fox fur cloak, folding it neatly in half before draping it over his arm.
Coda followed alongside of his alpha as they headed right towards my hiding place. I shrank deeper into the closet. "So we are all just going to sit on our asses and wait to see if maybe Cleo will get a beast?"
"Maybe the point is that she's human," my father mused. "Underestimation can be a dangerous weapon if wielded wisely."
The beta snorted understanding something I didn't. "And what poor bastard is going to be burdened teaching that pathetic waste of time?"
I nearly let out a squeak at that.
My father was going to have me trained, even though I was just a human? Could all of my prayers to Fate had finally been answered? I felt a swelling in my chest at the news, so ecstatic I was finally going to get the chance I had been begging for that I didn't even think about why my father had finally decided to let me train under a master.
I tried to quiet the whirling thoughts in my head as I tried to predict who my mentor would be. I had to put a hand over my mouth to keep myself quiet as Coda and Eric approached, just a few paces from where I was hiding. I held my breath until the pair of alpha-blooded males sharply made a left and stepped out of my view as they headed towards the entrance.
Once I was sure they hadn't discovered me, I let out a little sigh of relief feeling warmth flood my body at the prospect of finally joining my community, only to have my blood turn to ice at my father's response to his beta's question.
"Well, that would be you of course, Coda."