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Running was always my favorite part of the shift. There was just something so freeing about darting between the trees under the moonlight. The feeling of the cold night breeze between my fur. I felt powerful.  I ignored the howls in the distance, my father signaling the pack to return home, I needed more time to run, or I'd never get to sleep tonight. I had separated from the rest of the pack wanting to be on my own. Exploring was more fun that way.

I came to a stop at the river that marked the end of my father's territory. As a child I was always told that the Alpha of this pack Kieran Quinn, was a cruel hearted monster and he wasn't to be trusted, but I was always curious. My father always told me my curiosity would get me killed, by mother always told me my curiosity was the best thing about me. After she died, my father did everything he could to keep me from running away even if it meant isolating me from the rest of the pack and keeping me in my room until I was old enough to find a suitable mate.

Every day, I'd stare out my bedroom window wishing for an escape. Before my mother passed, she told me that my life was beyond this pack if I would just follow my own stars and I never really knew what she meant but I would never find out unless I finally took a stand and had the courage to leave.

I backed up a few paces and the second I even thought of making the jump a large black and tan wolf jumped in my way snarling a warning at me.

Father.

I stood my ground and gave him a growl. I wasn't ready to go home yet. I was 19 I shouldn't have to.

He circled me, baring his teeth. Angered by my defiance.

I growled again baring my teeth back at him, mocking him. He lunged forward and his teeth snapped on my ear in one final warning that made me yelp in pain before I relaxed my stance and bowed my head. He nudged my side with his head ordering me to turn back and go home.

I whimpered and slinked away accepting defeat for now.

As soon as I made it home, I shifted back and wrapped myself in a robe hung up on the porch before I walked inside to meet the rest of the pack in the living room of our large mansion.

"Aw, did somebody get in trouble?" Colt, our pack's resident asshat, mocked as I held my ear that was bleeding slightly.

"Shut your mouth." I snapped

"Maybe if you learned your place, pup, you wouldn't have these problems." He sneered

I growled and stepped forward

"My place? You speak of my place, but you clearly do not know your own. My father is Alpha of this pack, and he could tear you to shreds for speaking to me this way. If you want to pester someone, Jamie, mating season is a month away I'm sure she's just dying to make you her bitch." I smirked.

Colt grinned and leaned forward.

"Haven't you heard? Jamie's old news baby." He said and ran his hand over my face. I pushed his hand away and reared my fist back to knock him on his ass. I was small, but there was a lot of fight in me.

"Amara!" I stopped in my tracks and turned to face my father, Alexander the pack Alpha. "To your room." he demanded.

"I'm 19 you can't just send me to my room!" I crossed my arms.

"I am your father and your alpha when I give you an order you follow it!" He growled at me and towered over me. "Go to your room I will be with you shortly!" he barked and just like in the woods I tucked tail and hurried up the stairs. The wolf in me, unable to defy the Alpha.

While in my room I dressed myself and sat at my vanity pulling twigs out and detangling my frizzy dark mahogany curls. Until my father came in.

"Mara, darling you know I hate having to be that way with you." He said softly.

"No, you don't." I scoffed. "You like power. Don't lie to yourself."

"It's hunting season! running is fine, but you stay with the pack, and you come home when I call!" he seethed

"I wasn't done! You don't let me run enough! I'm restless!" I groaned and plopped down dramatically on my bed.

"You are restless because you need a mate." My father said.

"Gross." I muttered

"What you call gross is long held tradition Amara, and you're already a year behind." He sighed "I'm tired of you shunning tradition and making a mockery of my pack! So I have chosen a mate for you."

I gave him an indignant look. "What?! Who??" I demanded

"Colt. Your mating ceremony is tomorrow, be ready." he said.

"I will not mate with Colt, he is arrogant, and selfish and he has had his eyes on Jamie anyways. You can't just choose my mate for me!"

"I gave you plenty of opportunity to choose one for yourself, but you were too busy eyeing the outside of our territory every chance you got." My father said.

"Maybe my mate isn't in this pack? It's not unheard of." I mumbled.

"Do you honestly think that the moment you step into Kieran's' territory you will be greeted with kindness? No! Our packs are centuries old rival's, and I can't bear to think of what they would do to you if they got ahold of you Amara, you need to settle yourself down and find a mate before the season and since you refuse to listen to reason I am forcing my hand. You are to be mated with Colt tomorrow night end of discussion!" He snapped before walking out of my room and shutting the door.

I packed a small backpack full of clothes and a few other things I thought I would need. I walked over to my bed and picked up a white teddy bear that used to belong to my mother. I held it close to my chest.

"We're getting out of here mum." I said. "I'm going to follow my stars like you said and see where they lead me." I gently placed the bear into the backpack and zipped it up.

I opened my window. There was no way in hell I was mating with Colt. He was a creep and I hated him. He had a twin brother named Connor that used to care for me when my father was too busy, I cared for him a lot, but he disappeared one day, and my father told me he was killed by hunters. It just made it all the worse that my father was determined to mate me with Colt.

I climbed out the window onto the roof and jumped down. One good thing about being a wolf was I was incredibly light on my feet and couldn't be easily hurt like humans. I looked up at the mansion one last time before running off into the woods.

It wasn't long before I picked up on the scent of another wolf. It was my father's beta, Elijah. He was likely doing the patrols. After Connor was killed, Elijah became the one who would care for me when my father was too busy, or just didn't want to. I slowed down, knowing I wouldn't be able to outrun him, I looked around trying to find something I could mask my scent with. However, before I could, a blade flew by and pinned me to a tree by my shirt.

I groaned.

"Very funny Elijah." I said and pulled the dagger from my shirt and tossed it at him as he walked out from behind another tree in front of me.

"What's really funny is you thinking you could just sneak away unnoticed. It never worked when you were a child, it won't work now." Elijah said and picked up his throwing knife from the ground and approached me.

"Oh, you've packed this time." Elijah said, noticing my backpack giving me an amused look.

"Elijah, just let me go." I said.

"And have your father skin me alive for letting you leave? Doesn't sound like me letting you go would work in my favor." Elijah said.

"Lijah. Please. You don't know what he has planned for me for tomorrow. I'm begging you. Tell him you never saw me." I sighed, hoping his nickname I've used for him since childhood would help him make the right decision.

"You honestly think he would believe me if I told him that?"

"I don't know. But I can't go back. Please don't make me go back." I begged.

"What is so bad that you feel you need to run away from your home?" Elijah asked.

"My father expects me to mate with Colt. He said the mating ceremony is tomorrow. I don't want to be put on display for the whole pack to see, and I don't want to mate with Colt. I won't mate with Colt."

Elijah sighed.

"I don't want that for you either. If your mother were here, this wouldn't be happening." He said.

"So then let me go. I know you'll come up with something believable to tell my father." I pleaded.

"Where are you planning on going?" Elijah asked.

"I'm going to go across the river." I replied.

"To Kieran's territory?" Elijah hissed. "Have you lost your last marble Mara??"

"What if he isn't as bad as my father says? Our pack and his pack haven't had an interaction in years." I said.

"I'd rather not use you as the guinea pig to figure that out Mara. What waits for you across the river may just be a worse fate than mating with Colt."

"I don't think anything could be worse than my own father subjecting me to mating against my will. A loveless mating at that. Colt hates me and I hate him even more."  I sighed.

Elijah sighed heavily and nodded.

"Go. I'll come up with something but be prepared for a war." Elijah said.

I nodded.

"Goodbye Lijah." I said and hugged him before I turned away from him and began making my journey to the river that divided our territories.

I knew that hunters were out. Hunters were groups of humans that knew of our kind, and thought we were a great evil taking over their woods, little did they know the woods belonged to us first. We could usually blend in with any other human if we wanted to, but I was told as a child that the leader of the hunters possessed magic that he shared with his followers that made my kind easy to pick out in a crowd.

I heard a branch snap behind me, and I gasped and spun around. A crossbow bolt whizzed past my head. How did I not smell them??  How did they manage to sneak up on me??  I thought and then shook my head. This was not the time to sit and ponder, this was the time to run.

I ran as fast as I could, no longer paying attention to where I was going. I heard a group of maybe 3 hunters behind me shouting.

"I'm going to mount your head on my wall wolf!" One yelled.

I knew if I shifted, I could run faster, but I'd risk losing my backpack and the only clothes I had to change into and I did not want to be running around the woods naked.

I heard a loud bang and felt something stick me in the thigh. I looked down at the tranquilizer dart.

"No." I whimpered as the tranquilizer's effects began to work quickly and my legs felt like they were weighted down with every step I took. I made it to the river and about halfway across before I collapsed in the cool water, paralyzed and hardly able to keep my eyes open. I saw three silhouettes around me. And heard their boots splashing in the shallow water.

"Look at her, She's a young one." One of them said,

"But she sure is pretty." Another said. "Maybe before we kill her..." he trailed off.

I felt calloused hands snaking up my shirt. I couldn't move, I couldn't fight.

I heard a very deep bark and snarl from somewhere in front of me and the three men backed away. I l rolled my head to the side looking at the huge jet-black paws that came to rest beside my head.

"That's the biggest fucking Alpha I've ever seen!" One of the men gasped

My senses were shot, and I couldn't smell, perhaps my father had come to save me. I could just imagine the talking to I would get come morning. I weakly reached up and ran my fingers through the wolf's fur.

He snarled and snapped at the men, and they hurried away, brave enough to pick on perhaps the smallest of the pack but not the alpha.

I felt a cold wet nose on my cheek sniffling, and then a low growl in my ear. I then felt the wolf's teeth on the neck of my shirt dragging me out of the water. The only problem was, He was dragging me to the wrong side of the lake, out of my territory. The panic set in as the wolf shifted and I was lifted effortlessly off the ground by two strong arms, and the only thing I saw before everything turned black was a set of bright blue eyes and a Cheshire grin.