The Human Pup

🐺 t w o 🐺

Nova stayed in her room after dinner, curled up in a blanket on her window seat, reading a book. After being forced to hold ice on her foot for about ten minutes, she had had it bandaged, and by the time she had reached the dining hall, everyone was already there. Her brothers had made fun of her for, basically, being a human, while she ate. Fortunately, her oldest brother, Theo, and their mom had been on Alpha duties and hadn't come down for the meal, which saved her from even more attention. She wasn't planning on going downstairs for breakfast tomorrow, either. She'd rather starve. Or so she thought right now.

She had always hated the attention people would give her, especially if it was from her family, but deep inside, the girl appreciated it. They weren't just ordinary family members—they had chosen for her to be a part of them. She would always be grateful to them, and to the whole pack for taking her in as a tiny human being who didn't even know where she lived and whose birth hadn't been documented anywhere.

She had been a real mystery, and apparently, she still was.

A knock on her door pulled the girl out of her thoughts before she could fall deeper inside the dark space in her head, and the door was pushed open right after. "What's the point of knocking if you just walk—" she had intended to say, but she couldn't even finish the rhetorical question before her eyes set on the guy closing the door behind himself. "Hey." Her voice was softer now, a bit relieved, as her eyes lay on her oldest brother, Theo. Her lips turned upward.

The guy snickered at the change. "Hey, sunshine." He looked around for a moment, breathing in the sweet scent of her room, and then plopped down onto the bed. "What's up?"

Nova shut her book and shrugged as she placed it on her lap. "Just reading." She ran her eyes over him, taking in his face carefully. There were some scars and bruises on him that were still visible, covering his cheeks and even splitting his lip in one place. Nova shifted uncomfortably, her smile gone by now, and looked out of the window into the darkness that surrounded the packhouse. Her brother wouldn't tell her what had happened if she asked. But because some warriors had also been absent earlier, she could tell there had been rogue sightings.

What if they had come a bit earlier? Had she not been in the woods today? What would have happened if they had seen her? Would they have attacked, hungry for blood? She shuddered at the thought.

Theo's arms suddenly wrapped around her, and she let out a small squeal as he threw her over his shoulder. She giggled when he dropped her onto the bed. "I heard you won the race."

Her cheeks hurt from smiling when she climbed under her sheets. "You wanna try next time?" Her voice was teasing, but Theo probably noticed the apprehension on her face, which was why he only gave her a tiny smile as an answer as he shook his head.

"I did some final research."

Nova rolled her lips inward and bit down on them, waiting for him to continue. There was a slight wrinkle between his eyebrows, which clearly told her he was worried. She didn't know if she wanted to hear what he had found out. "Okay..." she slowly said.

Her brother sighed, leaning forward on the bed, and placed his elbows to rest on his thighs. "Here's the thing, sunshine. As a human, it should be one hundred percent impossible to run faster than a werewolf in their human form, not even mentioning the wolf one."

Nova's heart started beating faster. She had already known that, but the way he seemed to highlight "human" in his sentence, told her that he had other theories about who she was. She knew now that she wasn't a normal human girl, but she definitely wasn't a wolf, either, or she would have already shifted.

What was she? Her whole life she had been wishing to have a bigger appetite like all the werewolves around her or to heal faster, but it had never happened. She had been hoping to shift till the very last second of being sixteen years old. That hadn't happened either.