The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Night Terrors

Elijah Midas picked his way back through the woods. He longed to transform back into his wolf form and run back to the pack house, but he couldn't be sure the human was far enough away. True, if he happened to see anything Elijah would tear him limb from limb, but attacks were messy and left a lot of rumors. Too much suspicion from the town was the very last thing the pack was in need of at the moment.

The forest was Elijah's home, his one sanctuary, and he loved it even more than his pack house. There, there were endless responsibilities and expectations he knew he'd never be able to meet. In the woods, nobody expected anything of him, and that was how he liked it.

Wolves were much faster than humans so Elijah covered ground quickly, and once he was a few miles away from their meeting spot he bent over to change. It was a difficult and painful process, but being a wolf just felt right to him. Once fully in his form he tore over the roots, increasing his speed all the more. Even the fastest of humans, which that particular one didn't seem to be based on the exertion Elijah could smell just by being near him, would have been left in his dust, so his worries of being discovered faded away.

As he drew closer he could smell the scent of wolves in the distance and knew he was approaching the gates. Once there, the tall wrought iron fence stretched in the distance. Behind it sat the well trimmed lawns of pack house, with the stone structure jutting up out of a wolf-made lake behind it. His mother had told him before that the pack house used to be some kind of fort during a war for the nearby village, but to Elijah it always looked more like a chateaux. It was made of a darker stone and had ivy growing up most of the walls. Rectangular turrets marked the center and two corners of the structure, with the entrance located in the central tower. Windows lined the three stories with dormers coming off the roof, marking the rooms of the many wolves who called the building home.

It was a stately building, one the pack was quite proud of, but it was clinical, not homey, and a bit cold. The window panes and every inch were kept impeccably clean by the working wolves and Elijah's mother. It was a bit stuffy for Elijah's taste, but he wasn't the official alpha yet, so it wasn't up to him.

Werewolves were arranged into a rigid hierarchical structure, with an Alpha being something like a governor for the pack, betas serving as his direct servants, a group of middle class wolves, sometimes referred to as Deltas, and at the bottom being the Omegas. In the pack house, the rooms reflected this. The second floor had the nicest room, those belonging to the most important wolves, with it declining up until they reached the dormer level Omega rooms. It was class-est, perhaps, but it kept everyone in line, and Elijah liked things that way.

The guard wolves nodded to him as he approached and opened the gate to allow him passage. He entered slowly and made his transformation back, groaning at the pain. He wished he could've remained in wolf form a little longer, but his mother wouldn't have him in the house like that. Groups of wolves stood on the lawn and trained in combat. He nodded his approval as he passed. Though his mother was currently Alpha, everyone knew Elijah was ready and waiting in the wings for his chance to ascend.

There was a gravel path that led past the lake and to the large staircases before the entrances. There was something of another story below the first floor complete with training facilities, stables, and a detention center that had large barn doors around it. Two large curved staircases bypassed the ground floor and led up to a stone patio with the main entrance. When the pack house had been a fort the ground floor had likely been used almost entirely for horses, but as werewolves they usually traveled themselves, and only had a few horses for going into town. Elijah hated horses, and as soon as he became Alpha, he wanted to sell them off and get some damn cars. He passed through the great front doors into the foyer to see his mother, Delilah, pacing around the hard wooden floors.