The beginning.

“Tomorrow we will begin the final selection of the youngest warriors that will be inducted into the Betas programme,” I said, my voice projecting into the night. 

I moved my gaze to each individual wolf looking at me and watched the passion reflect in their eyes. I wanted them to be strong, to have unwavering confidence.

At this stage, the pack needed strong Betas, so we started recruitment from an early age. The training was rigorous and I felt a wave of nostalgia go through me clearly remembering how it had been for me.

“I want each and every one of you to believe in yourselves, believe in your abilities and believe in what you can do,” I said my eyes still on the small group.

“And even if you fail it doesn’t mean you’re not strong or you’re not good at what you do. It’s just a message to pick yourself up and start from the beginning.”

From the onset life hadn’t been easy for me. Born as a wolf I felt happy to be part of something more.

Most of my teenage years were spent daydreaming on what it would feel like to shift for the first time, the color of my wolfs fur, finding my mate, some general oddities here and there.

I could still remember my 18th birthday. The unforgettable experience was one that was burnt into my memory.

Every wolf that turned eighteen that night was expected to shift for the first time in front of the whole pack and I could never forget how hard my heart raced, how sweaty, my palms had been how i was feeling so light headed with nervousness.

We had been arranged into a line facing the pack and when the full moon rose out from behind the cloud casting its silver rays onto the ground, lighting everything in the pack grounds with a silver tone, we all started shifting..

I could still remember clearly when it got to my turn. I gathered the power the moon was offering and morphed.A gasp from the crowd followed when I was done.

I  emerged as an Omega, not just any Omega, a weak one judging from the color of her fur.That day marked the beginning of my struggles.

 “So go into your training, fighting like the warriors that you are, is that understood?”

“Yes Luna,” they all echoed.

“You may all return back to your settlements.”

The crowd dispersed, an excited murmur following them as they took the route back to their individual homes.

Yes I was Luna now. A feat I had accomplished after I had slaved so hard, with a little bit of help from the moon goddess 

Another memory popped into my head. The night the old Alpha was looking for a mate for his son who would replace him as Alpha in the coming weeks.

I had always had a crush on Zane right from the time I set my eyes on him when we were little. Back then he was the son of the Alpha, and wasn’t much to look at. As a teenager he had been a very lanky guy.

But it had all changed when Zane shifted for the first time. As soon as his eighteenth birthday reached and he took on his wolf Zane was forever altered.

Heavily muscled, the wolf genes that ran through his veins became even more dominant, shaping him into the Alpha that he was today.

When I was chosen to be his mate it was like a dream come true. It felt surreal that me a lowly Omega had been chosen to be the mate to an Alpha.

I loved Zane very much with every fiber of my being but as the years rolled by I knew that that love was never going to be reciprocated.

The reason was simple. I wasn’t able to give him a child.

The lineage of the Alpha was dependent on the fact that I was able to produce a child that would fill the position of Alpha when Zane decided to step down. Yet I couldn’t and it hurt me every time because I knew that Zane didn’t respect me anymore.

The look in his eyes in the bedroom when we made love was so mechanical, so detached that sometimes I cried myself to sleep late into the night.

I was willing to stand by Zane’s side, to be with him through thick and thin but I knew I was fighting a losing battle. Several times he complained about my inability to give him a child and there was nothing I could do. 

The moon goddess who had made me, a lowly Omega to a Luna, didn’t want to bless me with a child one of the worst things a Luna could ever experience.

I sought the help of the pack’s healers yet none of them were able to help me. I had done everything I could think of doing and in the end with no result to my efforts I gave up.

After the group had dispersed I gathered the training equipment and instructed one of the pack Betas to return them to the correct location.

Nobody in the pack knew but I and Zane had a small disagreement last week and since then things between us had come to a pinnacle of tension.

I knew I was slowly losing him but at the same time I was clueless on what to do to change it, to draw him back. He wasn’t returning to the Pack house early anymore, he stayed out late frequently and when he came home he was a grumpy mess.

It bothered me to a great extent but I didn’t want to engage in an argument with him.

Trudging slowly back to the Pack house I shared with Zane, these thoughts weighed heavy on my mind, pulling me into a whirlpool of self-pity and depression.

As I got closer to the house my wolf’s enhanced vision was able to pick out what looked like a flicker of light coming from one of the darkened windows. As I watched, I saw a dark shape move past one of the windows.

I instantly went into alert mode. If someone had broken into the house, I needed to intercept them quickly because before I left the house I had switched off all the lights.

I started at a jog towards the house summoning my wolf powers in case of any attack keeping them on the surface till a threat presented itself. As soon as I got closer to the door I opened it and cautiously stepped inside.

I was surprised to see Zane sitting down on one of the sofas in the living room, his head laid back on the sofa. I picked up an unfamiliar scent that lingered in the air of the den.

It smelt strange, but that wasn’t the only unusual thing. The lights in the den hadn’t been turned on and Zane was sitting in darkness.

I moved towards the wall where the light switch was located and flicked it on, simultaneously glancing at the clock on the wall situated at the south end of the den as the dwn was filled with bright white light. The time read eight fifty five pm.

That was three hours earlier than the time Zane usually returned to the house. I felt a glimmer of hope swell in my heart.

 “Zane, you’re back early.”

He lifted his head from the sofa and looked at me, his dark gaze sweeping over my face.

He didn’t say anything, merely moved his head back to the head rest and closed his eyes.

I couldn’t tell what it was, maybe a gut feeling but I instantly knew something was wrong.

“What would you like to eat?” I asked in an attempt to break the silence - silence that hung thick in the air of the living room like a poisonous gas

“Sit down Ava, I have a confession to make” Zane said, his voice a low whisper.

 His voice confirmed it, something was terribly wrong.