"You would regret this," the man said as he coughed blood.
The masked figure had sped into his bedroom.
He couldn't mistake the scent of these blood sucking creatures.
He bared his fangs at the hooded figure as he tried to get up from a pool of his own blood.
"It's over Clive." The masked figure said as he rushed towards him to bury a silver knife in his chest.
Clive screamed at the top of his voice in a guttural growl that rent the air.
He grabbed the vampire's hands, leaving a claw mark on it as the figure wrestled his hands away.
"You're already done." He said as he took a couple of steps back.
He watched as the hooded figure stepped back from him.
"Your time is over." He said as he held his left hand to stop the blood from flowing.
Clive had gotten him good. He knew why he did that. Wolves could smell a lot stronger than any other creature. He was leaving them a clue as to how he died.
The night was wet and moist. He could still smell the blood as he was slipping into unconsciousness.
He missed Jace, he thought. He didn't know where he went wrong with that boy but he hoped that he found what he was looking for.
Was he ready to take over, he thought. Did he even want to take over from him.
Clive felt sorry for his son. He didn't understand why he had made the decisions that he made he understood trying to find himself.
He felt pity for him. Whether he was ready or not, the power of the Alpha was going to transfer to him.
It was the inevitability of all first born sons or daughters.
His father had given him the talk when he had turned and he made sure to let Jace know what the future would hold for him too.
He had not planned on dying anytime soon but he guessed that it had a way of finding them all when the time was due.
He wouldn't have pictured this as the way he would die but it was his reality.
He summoned up the last strength he had inside him to howl.
He howled with all the strength that he had left in him as he watched himself slip into the embrace of nothing.
The Alpha was gone.
It was a fine night for murder, the man thought as he slinkied into the Alpha's bedroom.
He didn't stand a chance against him. He was an old man now.
Maybe he did in his prime but those years were long gone now.
Clive McCain, once the Alpha was no more.
No one had heard from his son in almost a decade. It was time that the vampires took their rightful control of Belmont.
No longer were they willing to share their home with these wild mutts.
The elders were senile and had lost their way. They wanted to coexist with their natural enemies. Impossible! He thought to himself. This was the first step to asserting their will.
Next stop, those senile old men that were so stuck in their ways.
* * *
Jace McCain could have done anything else with his life but he chose this path.
He didn't believe in destiny or anything of that sort. It was all he could do to still maintain that he had some sort of control over where his life was taking him.
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
He had gotten so much by inheritance. He didn't have to work too much. Actually, he didn't have to work at all.
His inheritance, he thought as he stood at the balcony of his penthouse.
It was the full moon and the ambience of its glow cast a bright light across everything that walked the earth. Well, at least that was what he thought for as far as he could see.
The moon used to be something he loved staring at until it meant a little more to him. He hated that he now saw it differently. It was like a portion of his innocence had been ripped away from him. A chunk that he knew was not coming back as he turned for the first time.
He could recall when he was thirteen. His friends were worried about hairs on their pits and he was sure that he would get his any day now.
He got a surprise the following year but it was not the sort that he had been meaning to have.
The first full moon on his fourteenth birthday was when he turned.
He remembered how he could smell things from afar away. Like the hotdog stand that was close to home. The smell of his mum. He remembered going through all the processes. It was heightened and it made him want to go mad.
It was like he could feel all the things he couldn't feel before.
One thing scared him was how he felt inside. He knew at that point that he wanted to tear something apart.
He was still a small werewolf at the time but the ferocity remained. He wanted to smell blood. He felt like relishing in it, then devouring his prey.
He didn't know where any of these feelings came from but they put the fear of God into him.
Jace was confused. He could feel fur all over him instead of smooth skin. He didn't know what this was and it made him frantic as his heart threatened to beat out of his chest.
He had been in his room, a few days after his fourteenth birthday. His dad seemed unusually concerned now that he really thought about it. He seemed like he wanted to know more about him which was something that Jace had never had the courtesy of.
Like most fathers, his was a distant man. He always seemed to be lost in his study or at the verge of some new discovery. His father was a very complicated man, he thought.
He didn't know it at that time but his father was the Alpha of their pack.
It would later explain why his father was so busy and always troubled.
His troubles would later be Jace's but he had no idea.
Jace smelt the ground for something. He could smell blood in the air. It felt like the perfect thing for him. He sniffed the ground and picked up a scent. He was not going to give up on it.
He tracked it to the nearest location when he met his father.
They captured him and put him in a small cage.
The first transformations were usually out of sync and it took a while to get better.
He hated the first time it happened so bad that he considered ending it all.
It slowly got better after a while. He didn't wait for it to happen while he was at home.
Jace saw the potential of what he was being called into. He knew how stressful it would be to take up the task from his father.
He left home when he was eighteen and never came back until now.
Jace knew that it was only a matter of time before power was passed on to him. He didn't know when it would happen but he would know while it was happening.
The McCains were a family of purebred wolves that had been alive since almost the 1200s. His family went as far back as the fall of Egypt.
His home was a pictorial representation of their rich history and all the things that they had stored with every passing generation.
The werewolves of Belmont Falls were a proud clan who protected their own with their lives.
He had run from his duty for far too long. He knew that the messenger was coming when he felt that surge of power coursed through his veins.
He was the first born son of three.
He had a brother and a sister.
Jace was twenty eight years old now. He had not seen his family in over ten years and he wasn't sure these were the best circumstances to see them.
He didn't know if he was going to be able to carry on the duties of an alpha.
He knew that his father had died when he gained the powers of the Alpha.
He automatically knew it in that Instant. He had felt the power take him over as soon as he drew his last breath.
He had to take over from his father. He knew it was only a matter of time before someone found him and brought him back home.
He groaned inwardly as he mentally envisaged the idea of coming back to Belmont.
It had not been his home for almost a decade or even more. For him to go back home right now and act like nothing had happened was nothing short of ridiculous yet here it was. The very thing that he had been avoiding had come to pass.
Jenna was here. Jenna was his best friend growing up.
He knew exactly what they were trying to do, sending his best friend to try to get him to come back home. It was a desperate attempt. If he didn't know any better, he would have said that they wanted to seduce him back home with the feminine charms of a woman and by God almighty, she was looking so different.
He couldn't believe his eyes when he actually saw her. It was now that he understood why the pack had sent her.
They had history and he didn't exactly want to punch her in the face. He was sure that someone else would have elicited that precise reaction.
He stared at her delicate nature as he tried to steel himself to whatever tactic she planned to lure him away with.
He knew they would have found him eventually and he was not surprised when someone came for him. He didn't even fight it. He had been running for years but he knew now more than ever that it was important that they get through to him.
They were wolves after all. He didn't have the strength to evade capture for the rest of his life.
He had tried to stay under the radar but he could only do so much.
He didn't need to open the door to know who was behind it. Keen sense of smell and all that. He was glad that it was her and not anyone else.
He opened his door, leveling a smile at her.
Things had changed since he last saw her. He was eighteen then.
She had begged him to stay. He couldn't.
He needed to get away from the family. He had become so overwhelmed that he didn't know how else to deal with it but find his own path and that was what he had done. He found his own path and made a name for himself but now the place that he had run from all his life was calling out to him.
He was needed. He didn't want that responsibility but it was thrust on him anyway.
He bet that she didn't forgive him but she seemed to have aged very well.
He admired her curves as she entered the house.
Jace mentally slapped himself. This was Jenna. She was like a sister to him. Jenna had also turned about two years after he did. He had gotten a lot of practice in all the four years that he had stayed at home.
His father had taught him all that he needed to know.
The pack was loving but he didn't think he could stay there.
He knew the answer he was going to give to Jenna but she didn't have to get it right away. He couldn't stand going back to that town where he would become cooped up. His whole life had been scripted.
He didn't know about anybody but he always preferred not to know what the future would hold.
It was the one thing he never seemed to be able to stomach.