Alpha Gray

1

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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

*Before you begin, please note that this is only a eight-chapter sample of my book, Alpha Gray. The full book is available for purchase on Amazon Kindle.*

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Fallon

I barely slept last night. The past few days have been exhausting, with high school graduation and all of the celebrations that accompany that milestone, but I was too keyed up to get any real rest. In a lot of ways, I feel like I've been waiting for today for my whole life.

"Brooke!" I call out, throwing a pillow across the room. It lands on my sister's sleeping form and I hear her groan in protest.

I pad across our bedroom to the en-suite bathroom, kicking her bedframe as I pass. "You'd better get up, or we're going to miss the bus."

I flip on the light in the bathroom, yawning as I study my reflection in the mirror. My stick-straight blonde hair is a tangled mess, so the first thing I do is brush it smooth until I can sweep it up into a long ponytail. Then I trade my geeky black glasses for contact lenses, brush my teeth, and pack up the last of my toiletries. By the time I exit the bathroom, Brooke is sitting up in her bed, blinking sleep from her eyes.

Brooke reaches to the bedside table to retrieve her glasses, settling the large black frames on the bridge of her nose. We have the same glasses, and even though we're identical twins, I swear she pulls off geeky-chic far better than I ever could. "What time is it?" she asks sleepily, sliding the comforter off of her body.

I toss her a grin over my shoulder and waggle my eyebrows. "It's time to blow this popsicle stand."

Brooke and I have lived in Summervale all our lives. Our sleepy little town nestled in the Colorado wilderness probably wouldn't seem like anything special to someone passing through, but all of the residents have something in common; a closely guarded secret. We're wolf shifters.

Most people think that werewolves are the stuff of fairytales, but there are packs of shifters all around the world, hidden in plain sight. As a species, we tend to keep to ourselves, flying under the radar. Most packs have their own territories, towns, and schools so we can stay separated from the general population and live without the fear of being discovered. We're generally wary of outsiders, because from youth it has been engrained in us that revealing our secret to a human could ultimately lead to our extinction.

As a kid, I remember a lot of hushed conversations about our pack's safety in our little town. Shifter packs generally keep a pulse on one another and don't have much conflict, but about six years ago, one power hungry alpha in the pacific northwest started launching coordinated attacks on other packs, taking out their leaders and absorbing their packs and territories. In doing so, he started to form one massive pack- which he dubbed the 'shadow pack'- and seemed hellbent on continuing his reign of terror until he usurped power from every other pack in north America. When it all started, we lived in a constant state of apprehension that the shadow pack would come after us next. Brooke and I were still young, so we weren't privy to a lot of the details, but I remember our parents sitting us down several times to go over escape plans just in case our pack was targeted.

Everything changed for us about five years ago, when our pack formed an alliance with five others. They moved into the surrounding territories and we formed a sort of 'super pack', where each individual pack remained autonomous but worked together and had each other's backs. All of the packs joined together out of necessity to protect ourselves from the ever-growing shadow pack, but it has actually worked out really well, because our little corner of the world isn't so small anymore. With the influx of the population came more opportunities and the place built up really fast. Throughout our territories, we now boast a successful brewery, ski lodge, and countless businesses. The tourism on the outskirts brings in a lot of cash, and we're able to keep that area sequestered from the rest of the pack territory so that we aren't actually bringing outsiders in. We formed an alliance to survive, but now we're thriving.