Hers (#1)

13| blood for blood

holy shit 5.7k reads I remember when it had only 14 and I thought about deleting.

Also, its been almost two months since my last update (sobs)

.....

After I had been deemed sufficiently healed by Fei (who apparently had let Logan chew her shoulder off), Lana took me to my first ever 'pack meeting.'

"It's one of the only official duties you have as Jaci," she explained. "You don't have to contribute--and even if you do, the other Alpha's won't take you seriously. They aren't as, we'll say, liberal as I am when it comes to gender roles. They think anything a man will suggest will lead to conflict and war."

"Monthly meetings aren't what most envision when they think of wolf packs, but you're a genetically modified wolf x-men who's on the run from a secret government organisation. So I'll believe anything. And why won't they let male wolves contribute?" She eyes me playfully as we walk down the corridor on the way to the meeting room.

"Is that your coping mechanism? Believing I'm a comic character? " She smiles at me and continues.

"And the reason they won't let male wolves contribute is because the Alpha makes the decisions. No matter what humans have said, the Alpha is supposed to be the most level-headed and least violent one in a pack. Alpha's rarely fight--and when they do it's only when the pack is truly in danger. Therefore, if a male wolf--a volatile, impulsive male wolf--is given the position to input ideas or strategies, they believe that all the Packs would have killed each other off over silly things like power, status and land. We have a bigger enemy to face, anyways."

We soon approach the mahogany doors. "Listen, there's no need to be intimidated. Try and listen carefully, you'll learn a lot."

We walk in and come face to face with 5 other Alphas, all powerful and intimidating in their own aspect. A spot next to one of the alphas was empty and I concluded that it was Alpha Aine's.

"She went mental," A black haired Alpha spoke to my left. her Thai accent thick. "However, she did leave us something useful before she died." She faced a skinny boy to her right and whispered something in Thai.

The boy reached underneath the table and brought out a silver briefcase. Opening it, it revealed around 30 tubes of black liquid. "Wolf's blood directly from the Kraken Base in Dublin. Around 4 months old. My Gamma has the remaining vials in our pack."

"Wolf's blood," Lana begins, I assume for my benefit, "Is extracted from the wolf before it undergoes the Trail. Wolves who survive the trail aren't fully transitioned yet as they still have some human left in them. Galdoni immediately have to be injected with the blood to completely strip them of their humanity."  A dark-skinned man, who I assumed to be Jaci like me, questioned, "I wonder what that must feel like."

"Imagine your humanity being like a sort of skin and having it ripped off with a scorching iron press. The only thing that renders Galdoni being able to heal normally is if they are rescued before they are injected."

"What happens when they are? How do they--how did you transition?"

The Alpha who I gathered to be his mate, glared at him as if asking him to shut up. "It's fine Jacqueline, I'll answer. I've kept most of you in the dark about this and I realize that it was a grave error on my part. If the blood gets into your system, your humanity is completely shut off. What you can do however, is turn back.

"It's a slow, antagonizing process that takes months to complete. And when you do shift, you aren't the same. Your whole body is covered in raised scars, you can't speak, you can't walk, you can't talk. You can't function. And as you start to recover you pattern of speak and walking ability, the nightmares, the PTSD, the anxiety attacks all come. You can't seek professional help because you can't risk the secret. I had to do it alone. I was the first one to transition and suffer the effects. With my knowledge, I slowly transitioned all the Alpha's in this room. Then they and I transitioned others.We got a number in which we could fight back and stop more wolves from being captured. We travelled and lived in groups. Packs. And that's how we're here today."