Present Day...
Enya POV
All my life I have been training for one goal: to be the best Zeta warrior the Blood Moon Pack has ever had.
I will be the first female to become Zeta, and not just in my pack. I will be the first female Zeta in the history of the East Coast Packs. In all of werewolf history there has only ever been one female Zeta, and that was almost 600 years ago.
I have spent nearly 10 years studying, training, pushing my body past it's limits, all to make my pack and my family proud of me. Zetas are the highest ranking warriors in the pack. Although they take direct orders from the Alpha, they are in charge of the armies and war plans.
My father, Alaric, has been our packs Zeta for the last 17 years. His father was killed when our pack was at war with the Lycan Blood Pack.
They prided themselves on their blood thirsty, ruthless nature. They killed without conscious, slaughtered hundreds of warriors, women and even children. All of the neighboring packs banned together with us to put an end to their reign of terror.
We won the war, but it was at the price of great loss. My dad had trained for more than 15 years to one day take over the position of Zeta. But he always assumed that day would be after my grandfather retired, not because he was a casualty of war.
I have heard so many tales of my grandfathers victories. He has always been known as The General, even after my dad became the packs Zeta, he refused to be called that. That honor belonged to my grandfather alone. All the pack members addressed my dad as Zeta Anders.
I had quite a reputation to live up to. My training began on my 8th birthday. My dad had been trying to decide who to train to take his place one day, he never really considered me for the job.
Not because he thought I was weak, he knew I was one of the strongest pups in the pack, but because he feared for my safety. The job is far from easy. He didn't want to condemn me to that life if it could be helped.
I am his only child, and like I said, there has never been a female Zeta in the East Coast Packs.
Unfortunately for my dad, it couldn't be helped. I wanted that role.
It was my birthright, and I was not about to pass that to another lineage in our pack. I begged my dad to choose me, to begin my training as soon as possible. I even made him promise to not hold back on me.
I had to be trained like everyone else, harder in fact, because I would have one of the highest ranks of the pack. I had to be stronger than the others.
He gave in once he saw my passion to continue our family's legacy; he has told me countless times he has never been more proud of me.
I began my training the very next day. And true to his promise, he didn't hold back. My first Zeta training session was hand to hand combat with my dad.
In the first 15 seconds I was flat on my back. Granted, I was only 8, and so far I had only had basic training all pups go through. My pride was still wounded.
After my first week of lessons with dad, I started training with the future high ranking wolves: Erik Kingston, future Alpha. Lukas Ambrose, future Beta and Erik's closest friend. As well as Katherine and Kaiden Randall, future Gammas.
Normally you only have one Gamma in a pack, but Kate and Kai are fraternal twins, they are so in sync with each other that it was easy for Alpha James to declare our pack would have two Gammas when their dad retired.
Over the years the five of us have become impossibly close. Our parents told us when we were little that our bonds would only grow over time. We would come to depend on each other, much like our family. In fact we are a family.
Kate and Kai are the closest to my age, they are only 6 weeks older than me, and they have always been like my brother and sister. Even before we started training together. Because the three of us had a foundation of friendship, it was easy to transition into training together.
With Erik and Lukas, it was considerably harder. They are both a few years older than us. Erik was 12 and Lukas was 11 when we started training. They had years of practice on us, and we needed to catch up to them, fast.
Basic training was scheduled for 3 days a week, Advanced was 5 days, but Elite was 6 days a week. Guess which category we fell into?
I had been in Elite training for 3 weeks when I decided I needed to up my game. If I was ever going to catch up to Erik and Lukas, I had a lot of missed practice to make up for. I started training 7 days a week.
At first it felt like an endurance test, I would join either Basic or Advanced classes, whichever day of the week it was. I would push myself harder and farther each day. My muscles would scream how much they hated me at the end, but I didn't care. I had to be the best.
Eventually my body adjusted to the rigorous schedule, and on the few days that I didn't train, I still ended up doing something physical.
Lukas used to make fun of me for training so much, he would tease that my legs were gonna fall off if I didn't give myself a break. If Kate and Kai were considered protective, Lukas was patronizing.
He would constantly try to prove that he was stronger and faster than me. It went on for years, until my 15th birthday. Lukas had asked me a week before what I wanted for my birthday, I told him I wanted a race.
The winner gets bragging rights until my next birthday. Loser has to wear a sign in training that says 'I lost to' and then the winners name for 1 week. He easily agreed to the bet.
One week later we met in the training grounds. Kate had created a starting line and a finish line that stretched the entire length of the grounds, it was over 300 yards.
Lukas was high fiving all his brothers and Erik, gloating about how easy it was going to be to beat me. He even offered to let me back out to quote 'save myself the embarrassment'. I was instantly pissed. He has always been arrogant, what with his lineage and his close relationship with our future Alpha, of course we was going to win.
What Lukas didn't know was that for the last 6 months, in the evenings while he was messing around with some random she-wolf, I was on the track making myself become faster each night. I had Kate time every lap and she kept a log of my times.
I gave myself the goal after each night to be 2 seconds faster. After one month I pushed to be 3 seconds faster, then 5 seconds, 6 seconds, 10 seconds. Lukas held the record of 2 minutes 12 seconds on the track.
I had beaten the record after 3 months, finishing at 2 minutes 8 seconds. But that didn't stop me. Lukas was known in the pack to be the fastest, even Erik wasn't as fast, but then again he was the strongest, so he always focused on his strength rather than speed.
I kept going until I landed the time of 1 minute 48 seconds. 24 seconds faster than Lukas' record.
Once he saw that I wasn't going to forfeit the race he stuck his hand out, an act of respect and sportsmanship that was always displayed before a contest. I shook it firmly while I stared him in the eye, a small grin appearing on my face.
We got to the starting line, took our stance and waited for Beta Caleb to give us the signal. I focused on my breathing, it was the first thing I did every night before running.
I forced my heartbeat to remain calm and even. I let the rest of the wolves watching us fall away. There was nothing but the track in front of me.
Beta Caleb shouted "GO!", and we both took off. For the first 100 yards I purposely stayed 2 feet behind Lukas, lulling him into a false sense of security.
When we got to the 150 mark I pushed my feet harder, bringing myself to 1 foot behind my opponent. At the 200 mark, I matched his speed.
I could see from my perifrial that Lukas was shocked I was running right next to him. He tried to push himself faster, but he hasn't been training like I have. He was breathing hard and I could hear his heart was pounding against his chest faster than I had ever heard it before.
Me on the other hand? I was barely breaking a sweat. My heart was racing, but no where near the pace that Lukas had. My breathing was even and smooth, I trained myself so hard that this race was the easiest run I'd had.
At the 250 mark I was ahead of Lukas. He was only a few inches behind me, but I was still in front. A wide smile broke out on my face when I saw the terror in his eyes that he might actually lose this race.
He tried again to push his body harder, but I wasn't even running as fast as I could. When he caught up to me, I shouted over the cheering crowd at him, "See ya buddy!". I then pushed myself to my fastest speed and gained 3 feet on him in 6 seconds.
I blew passed the finish line 5 seconds before Lukas. I started jumping up and down, screaming joyfully that I had finally beaten him. I proved to the entire pack that I was faster than Lukas Ambrose.
My family were waiting at the finish line for me. My parents, Kate and Kai, even Alpha James and Luna Lizzie were cheering me on. The crowd picked me up and started to chant my name. It was the best birthday I ever had.
From that day on Lukas showed me respect like never before. He couldn't believe how fast I had gotten, he wanted me to train him! When he gained his wolf, Ryder, a few months later, we made a pact that he wouldn't use his wolf speed until I could do the same.
My next 2 birthdays we raced, and each year I still beat him. He got better every year, but so did I. After last year he conceded that he would never be faster than me, he said his pride couldn't handle more than 3 losses to me. He wants a rematch though after I shift. I gladly accepted.
My relationship with Erik has always been a little more complicated than besting him in a race. His strength simply couldn't be matched. It was part of the Alpha bloodline, a Moon Goddess blessing that no one in the pack could surpass an Alpha's strength.
But as we all know, strength isn't everything.
After Erik shifted for the first time he told us that he wouldn't engage in training with us directly until we shifted. He felt that it wouldn't be a fair fight against those of us that didn't have the strength of our wolf to boost our abilities.
Lukas was pissed at first, but he turned 18 and shifted only a couple months later. The rest of us had to wait 4 years to train with him again. That to me is what was unfair.
I spent years in hand to hand combat, I had even more training in that than I did in running. I trained with all of our warriors. Every. Single. One.
Erik spent his private training days with his dad, he figured since he will be Alpha one day there is no one better to train with. I had a different philosophy. The more people you train with the more familiar you are with fighting styles.
It's actually quite easy to determine how an opponent will attack you just by their initial stance. If you read their body language, you can tell if they favor their left or right side and you can see if they will aim low or high on your body.
If Erik wasn't going to train with us just because he was now a shifted wolf, then I figured I would just have to train with every other warrior in the pack.
Admittedly it was a more daunting task than I realized, I lost way more than I won for the first year. Most of the warriors thought I was crazy to put myself through this, but I knew it was the only way I could keep up with Erik and Lukas.
I had finally reached a point in our training where I felt like we were evenly matched, but then Erik wrecked that by not training with us.
My one goal of being the best Zeta our pack has ever had took over my life. I was more than determined, I was single-minded and steadfast. I would prove my worth to the pack and to Erik.
No matter what it took.