by wolves+horses » Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:34 am
Chapter 1:
Jason. That was his name - the name of the boy who'd somehow managed to stumble upon my secret paradise in the middle of the night. And he was human.
In retrospect, I should have seen the signs. But frankly, humans weren't exactly common in this area, save for a few farmers that lived possibly ten miles away from the territory borders, if I remembered correctly. I would never have had reason to assume that a trespasser was human, seeing as our kind was vastly more populous, even if humans apparently never realized our very existence.
Jason grunted to clear his throat a bit before speaking up. "Can you please tell me your name now?" he asked wearily. "I told you mine," he continued, trying to reason with me. I looked back to him. Now away from my special wonderland, we sat on a log in a section of the woods that the rest of the pack was much more familiar with. Pale - almost chalky - morning sunlight progressively filtered in through the pine needles far above, making him clearer and clearer by the minute, and now I could see his face well, and I could see his hair. It was very intriguing hair: an even distribution of black, but always with a tint of very reddish brown outlining it, making it seem (to me at least) that the rich color was hiding somewhere inside the shadows of blackness. His face was thin, pale, and very smooth. "Well?" he questioned in a submissive tone. "Could you? I mean, your name might be just a little important if I'm going to address you."
I sighed, knowing I couldn't argue. "Vanessa," I stated simply without batting an eye. "And might you care to explain to me how exactly you got here?" That made him look away instantly with bubbling memories showing on his face. I barely felt a twitch at the edge of my lips. There was obviously something here that would make perfect sense if he could just give me the right puzzle piece. Something must have happened to him that was made talking about it uncomfortable. "Well, something happened to you from what I can tell," I offered, hoping to shove him in the right path. Every inch of him stopped moving completely then. Cautiously he nodded. I waited for him to say something, but he didn't. He needed more shoving. "Jason." He flinched at the sound of his name coming from my stern voice. He knew I was serious now. Sadly, it only made him become increasingly uncertain. Maybe he needed some guidance. "Jason," I tried again, surprising myself with how solemn and caring I sounded. "What happened?"
His answer danced through the air on his breath. "I... I ran away from home." His eyes remained pointed toward the ground as he spoke, and for an instant he had the appearance of a little kid in time-out being forced to confess their crime. My eyes widened. Ran away? How far had he come? What could have driven him away with such mad force? "I didn't really know where I was going," he continued. "I just - I was just trying to get as far away as possible, so my dad wouldn't find me." He attempted a weak smile, and when he failed, he gave up. "I mean, I saw that red barbed-wire fence you talked about before... but I just didn't know what it was of course," he said, mentioning the conversation we'd had the moment I'd realized we were of two separate species. I nodded, masking my emotions in part because I wasn't sure what they were.
I reached into my mind, thinking back to that alienistic moment that - despite how hard it was to believe - had occurred mere hours ago. One of the last things Jason had said then was that he wondered if I could wait until dawn to alert the pack. I wasn't very keen on the idea, but he insisted that in the daytime people would think better and be able to see him [and him see us] more easily. Now I wondered what had possessed me to accept his request. It was torture waiting all night to send message to my pack about the invasion of a human into our territory, and even more torturous wondering for hours on end how Brandon (alpha) would react to the story of how I dealt with the situation. Apparently, I was about to find out now.
If I'd been in wolf form, my hackles would have bristled then. A middle-aged man with a thin but muscular build and short blond hair caught hold of my gaze from afar, and he held it there, locking me in place armed with the power of his dominance over me. Trying to close my eyes and block out the truth wasn't an option here; I needed to look like I knew what I was doing. His eyes narrowed, but the force in them hardened. Jason must have seen Brandon too, because he stiffened and looked to me desperately for an answer on what to do. I didn't give any signals to him as to how he should behave, knowing it would make him wait for my lead on how to go about discussing this bizarre situation.
"Hello there, Vena," Brandon said with a tight voice. His face twitched every now and then in the places that told me he wanted to growl. He turned to Jason, and the tension in the air became nauseating. Jason bowed his head, watching Brandon with the same fear that he'd shown to me last night. In return, Brandon only bared his teeth instead of a full on snarling. Jason's eyes widened as he witnessed the act. Interesting. He seemed to find it strange. Sadly for him, he had to witness more of it, because Brandon whipped around to face me again, and this time he actually growled, which had a deep rumbling when he did so. "Vanessa!" he seethed, using my full name. A whimper started trying to jump out of my throat. The alpha using my full name was definitely not a promising sign.
I silently took a deep breath, restraining my instincts to become submissive. "Alpha," I replied as calmly as I could manage, fighting back the shakiness clawing its way into my voice. "You - " I faltered then. I was about to say, 'You can't attack him,' but that would have sounded like an order. The thought of giving him such a stern order made me tense up more [which was apparently possible]. I was realizing how delicate the immediate situation was, and suddenly I started panicking. "Brandon." I started differently this time, hoping that I could appeal to his humanity. "We can't attack him," I continued, making sure to add we instead of you. Still, I mentally readied myself for some hardcore dominance maneuvers and mentally exhausting lectures afterward. "He doesn't understand. He... can't. He's human." I couldn't say whether I expected yelling, savage growling, both, or for him to simply look at Jason again with a new light. To my relief, he executed the last of those actions.
Not to my relief, however, was the expression - or shall I say, lack of expression - on Brandon's face as he turned to Jason to examine him another time. Silence swept over the three of us, so heavy that I swear I thought I was going to be crushed under the weight of it and crumple to the ground as it cracked my bones. Just as my sanity started slipping away with a dangerously fast advancement though, there was a single sound comprised of three smooth notes. All it took was the tiny solo of a titmouse to erase the dizziness from my brain. I could breathe again. In fact, I was nearly panting. Sometimes the world amazed me with things such as a seemingly silly detail, like a songbird's cry, being able to restore sanity to an alpha, an undoubtedly hormonal female lycan, and a teenage boy.
Brandon sighed, and I could sense the nails-on-chalkboard-like tension falling away, dissipating into nothingness. Normally this would comfort me, but now it meant that he would make his next move. What would it be? He stepped toward Jason nonchalantly, and I knew that I was about to find out. Right now.
"So," he began slowly, eying Jason up and down. For some reason, I found myself hoping that it didn't make Jason too uncomfortable. "What's your name?" he proceeded to ask. It was such an innocent question - but innocent questions led to easy discoveries, if one knew how to use them correctly and evaluate the power of the answer and how it was given. Perhaps I'm reading too far into this... I thought. No. I halted, mentally digging my heels in. This was Brandon; he was alpha for a reason.
"Jason," replied the owner of the name simply. Good; at least he was taking things slowly. Thank God we had such a patient alpha on our hands. Not for the first time since things had gone haywire, I let myself wonder just how carefully this human was evaluating the situation.
"Jason," Brandon echoed back, sounding far away. As the word pushed its way out of his mouth, he made certain to enunciate every sound hidden in the name, like a toddler who'd just found a sparkly rock and was turning it over uncountable times, considering if it would look good in their collection. It was eerily similar to the way Jason had mulled over the word 'pack' when I'd first told him of mine.
"So," he continued in a deceptively nonchalant voice. "How old are you?" With every question he asked, I saw more and more reasons why I wasn't very high ranking. He was so many things I wasn't: calm, confident, clever... Hmm. All C words. What was my letter?... NO! I remembered, stopping myself. This is no time to daydream! Snapping myself out of it, I turned my attention to Jason, but he'd apparently already answered, because the next thing I heard was Brandon saying, "I see." There was a pause in his speaking, and I tried using it to search for any emotion in his voice, but there was nothing I could clearly make out from it."You seem to be pretty nervous," he assessed. Brandon in his full alpha mindset was staggeringly tricky. No questions had been used, and yet an explanation from Jason seemed vital. Ah, the subtleties he used - normally for the sole purpose of aggravating everyone.
The boy on the log nearly jumped at the remark. A nervous sound somewhere in the gray area of a laugh, a scoff, and a sigh was emitted from his mouth that was now twisting into a sheepish grin. He knew how obvious it was. "Well, um..." He turned to me, his ice orbs locking onto my lightning-crackled green ones. "Va...nessa" he stumbled. "... Um, Vanessa here told me. About... you. Yyyou know... Who you are?" His eyebrows twitched madly. Couldn't he just spit it out? I could see Brandon's own eyebrows coming together in a scowl, so I made the nerve-racking decision to make things easier.
"He knows we're lycans," I practically yelled. Oops. I was about to apologize when Brandon cut me off, pinning me in his gaze without moving a single muscle.
"Thank you, Vena," he somewhat boomed. I shrank back a hair. The tone in his voice had made one thing very clear: that this interaction was to be between him and Jason alone. I gave a small nod, showing my understanding and respect for the actions the circumstance required.
Last edited by
wolves+horses on Tue Mar 26, 2013 8:23 am, edited 6 times in total.
I'm flattered. I don't really think there's much need for an introduction. It's simply a story idea that I was mulling over one day not so long ago on the bus when I'd forgotten my book. So I decided to try reading a book in my head in a way. While I tried (pretty unsuccessfully) to do that, this idea came into my head. I'm not sure if I want to tell you what it is yet, because I want you to read the story to find out. 
Feel free to leave comments; I love hearing what people have to say, and I like constructive criticism. Enjoy! 
] during the full moon, and much less powerful [and kind of boring] during the new moon. Lycans, on the other hand, can change into a wolf or human whenever they want to, and they're not very affected by the full moon. A little more than humans, but not like werewolves.
Well done,very nice work! 
) But seriously, thank you!