Weird
Messed up
Un-Natural
Crazy.
A freak of nature.
This is who I am. For years, I have been an outcast. Werewolves are supposed to be majestic beings that can change between human and wolf, communicate telepathically, belong in a pack, and find mates.
I'm none of that.
When I was seven, all of my friends got stronger. Faster. And then they started shifting. Of course, this was all normal, we are werewolves after all.
But what wasn't normal was me, because none of this happened to me. Instead, I got weak. I was always sick and I couldn't shift. Not even a little fur would show up when I tried.
Because of this, I no longer fitted in. All of my friends rejected me, my classmates gossiped about how weird I was, and my crush would shun me like the weakling I was. My mother was embarrassed. How could her own child become so weak?
That's why I became I rouge.
No, I didn't want to. But I don't have a choice.
Maybe if she had found her mate he could have convinced her to let me stay. But she never did find him, and I was just a mistake from a one-night-stand.
She said since I was always so sick everyone would believe her if she told them I died from the unknown illness that had been affecting me.
She shifted into her wolf and grabbed the back of my shirt with her teeth, and ran into the snowstorm. Snow plus the dead of night equals freezing cold.
Ha, dead of night.
It's kind of ironic considering that almost happened.
Note: almost.
Something incredible happened that night as my blood became cold and my fingers stopped moving, all the strength having been drained from my body.
I finally shifted. The change gave me the slightest bit of strength to move against a tree. My pelt quickly became coated with snow. The added protection helped to keep me warm but I still should have died.
I guess it just fits my reputation of being weird.
I laid there, shivering in the cold, waiting for my suffering to end. I tried to keep my eyes open, but eventually, I fell asleep, or more likely, I blacked out.
I was lucky to open my eyes the next morning because that meant I was alive. I wasn't out of the woods yet, though. I was too weak to hunt or to find water. I didn't know how to build a shelter or survive by myself. I was doomed.
A gentle voice cut through my thoughts.
"Hello? Are you okay?"
I jumped to my feet, planning to run from this being that had snuck up on me. Then I fell back down, too weak and ill to run away.
"Oh my, I'm so sorry I startled you, little guy."
Wait she thinks I'm a dude? Then I remembered: I had shifted. But why would this... I didn't even know what she was, not had I seen her. I had guessed she was female from her kind and feminine voice.
She walked over to my head and finally came into view and looked about my age, with long platinum silver hair. Her eyes were squinted, yet they made her look happy.
But still, why would this girl approach a wolf? Adult werewolves are ten times the size of a normal wolf, and since this is the first time I shifted I should be a little larger than an average wolf. Did she have a death wish? And why did she come over to me in the first place?
I know I was dumb, but I shifted back.
What? I was seven at the time, do you expect me to be a genius?
At least she got the message that I was a werewolf in need, maybe she was from my pack and my mother hadn't crossed the border but thought she had.
But what if I was on Blue Moon Pack territory? Being from the Eclipse pack, they would surely slaughter me. What if she was a hunter? What if she was a merciless rouge?
I didn't find out because the little strength I had was gone with my wolf form.
I fainted like the weakling I was.
(I originally had this as part two but it's here now.)
What is she?
I don't know, she was a fox when I found her.
Why wasn't she with her pack?
Maybe they made her a rouge because of it?
I think she's like us.
Those were the words I heard them say that day, words I will never forget. And I was like them. For the next nine years, at least.
I had a new sister, a new mother, a whole new family of rouges. They weren't rouges because they were cruel, psychopathic criminals, they were outcast because they were special.
Aarien became my new mother. She was sweet, caring, (slightly overly) protective of me, and she could walk through walls, nothing like my old mother. The one who abandoned me because I was weak.
The alpha of her pack thought she was a spirit there to haunt someone and do evil. They banished her because of her strange gift, and told her if she ever returned to pack territory, she would be killed.
The girl who found me was named Platinum, because of her metallic hair. When she heard Aarien was being banished because of her gift, she knew the same would happen to her. She was only five when it happened, but somehow she understood.
Plaid (that's what I called her, we were sisters after all) could levitate things. Well, not exactly. She could bend the air around them to lift them up. Her powers were weak at the time but she did her best to show Aarien and convince her to take her with.
She was only nine when she found me, but she could feel my sickness because she could also heal injuries.
No, she couldn't cure me from whatever constantly made me sick, but she helped restore a little health. I still got sick often, but with her help, I recovered faster.
Dundee, our leader, had found fifteen others like us from packs all over Stula and formed our own mini-pack.
They taught me the basics of survival, hunting, gathering, how to track, how to know if water is safe to drink, everything. Together, we kept ourselves alive while running from the packs. If we ever got within twenty miles of a pack's territory, regardless of if we were trespassing, hunting their food, or even near their borders, they would kill us. We lost many of our kind that way since the area past their border didn't have strong enough markings to warn us.
But that isn't why I lost my family. There was a safe area between the packs, marked by trails, that we knew was off their territory. Still, we were always moving so we didn't let our guard down. We were ambushed, by my birth pack no less.
Remember how I mentioned my crush shunned me for being as weak as I was? (He is two years older than I am, btw, the same age as Plaid, but stronger) Well did I also tell you he was next in line to be the alpha, and that the day before his seventeenth birthday (a week from the next mating ceremony) he brought a hunting party to slaughter me and my family?
Yeah.
We were walking single file, there wasn't a particular order since we all respected each other and there was no competition. We were all in human form, except for Jade and Grant because they had their young twins riding on their backs. My ginger hair kept getting in my eyes, so I was at the front asking Willow for something to tie my hair up because she normally had leather cords to do her's. She handed me one and I started to skip back to Plaid so we could continue hanging out.
Yeah, bad choice.
Being closer to the trees made it really easy for him to sink his claws into my ribs. This wolf had the same beautiful, dirty blonde pelt as my crush. Because he was my crush. Or he used to be, at least.
The pack members he brought with him lunged at my family, ripping out chunks of their fur and muscle.
He pushed me onto the ground, all the air rushing out from my lungs. My flesh ripped and my blood dripped. I couldn't believe I ever had a crush on this sadistic wolf alpha.
But he wasn't my alpha.
We weren't even in the same pack anymore.
I was raised watching him practice fighting. I couldn't practice myself, so I always had to sit it out. Since I had a crush on him, all that time went to studying his every move and hoping he didn't catch me watching.
He wouldn't want a weakling like me even looking at him.
But hey, that paid off because I remembered that he relies on his right leg to balance when he pins someone. I went shift into my fox-
(DJ stopping noises; silence)
Yup. I'm a werefox. You didn't catch the clues? I was weaker than a wolf, couldn't shift into a wolf, Plaid wasn't afraid when she saw me, my hair is ginger, plus I never said I shifted into a wolf. Being a werefox... Well actually im the first. I'm quicker and more agile than the average wolf, but im still weaker and would lose in a fight. Let's get back to my past now, alright?
(Fighting noises resume)
I went to shift into my fox and knock his leg out from under him, but before I could, my mom tackled him off of me. She had fought her way out from two of his pack and was on her way to help me. They rolled on the ground, snarling and snapping at each other. She managed to get a chunk out of his side, but soon after-
No.
No, no, no.
NO!
That's the part I re-live every night.
The part where the boy I spent time fawning over rips out my mother's throat.
The part where his pack surrounds my sister, who even though she was a strong wolf, couldn't fight off six of them.
The part where I see my family dead.
The only people I had, dead.
The part where I cower as I watch my old pack slaughter my family, the part where I do nothing to help them,
the part where I run
like the weakling I am
And then I wake up and realize my nightmare is a reality.