Alpha Featherstone (Book 1- Completed. Offline Editing)

22

I watched as she instructed them carefully, her eyes darting to the prey every now and again as she spoke through the link with every young wolf separately, some of the older trackers adding their opinion here and there after watching the younger wolves shift. She instructed them each on what type of attack would be best suited according to their wolf's build. Some of the younger wolves she grouped together and some of the others who had been in the pack longer she gave tips on how to improve on their previous hunt.

She then watched as the young wolves went after their picks, her voice instructing them further through the link, her eyes seeming to follow all their movements at once as she encouraged each and every one. Her smile was one of pride whenever a young wolf or a small group would haul their kills closer. When finally the younger wolves were done the Gamma told us that the rest of us had free reign to hunt. Victoria herself was calmly speaking to the young wolves, complimenting them and giving them advice on future hunts, after which she told them to take the kills to her house. She left, allowing the wolves to hunt and take their own kills.

She was haphazardly busy skinning the kills in precise movements, using a large knife with skill as she instructed the young wolves to take the skinned meat to the butchery to be cut. Her eyes solely on her task, she barely noticed anything around her, but the sharp air around her made it known that she was hyper aware of her surroundings. Some of the older hunters and other wolves joined in helping relieve her task of flailing twenty three deer and eight elk. Four of the other wolves entered her house and came out with large stacks of salt bags. With everything she did she seemed to teach, giving the young wolves her attention whenever they wished to know what she was doing.

Jackson, Helion's sixteen year old son, was watching her hands move intently for a time before he approached her.

"Alpha?" the chorus of "yes" would have been funny if not for her irritated expression. 

She turned her eyes towards Jackson, her hands continuously working the pelt.

"May I try?"

She nodded  as she set down the pelt she was working on and grabbed the pelt of the deer he had taken down. She waved him closer, her eyes moving between him and the pelt as she seemed to instruct him. She took the knife, showing him how to hold it and then how to move it over the skin to remove the excess fat. She handed him the pelt and then the knife, watching as he moved the knife over the pelt, adjusting his hand on the knife's hilt and allowing him to continue.

"She's really interesting." Helion said beside me, watching his son and my mate.

"She's a little too great..." Sao said as she tilted her head, her own eyes trained on Victoria alone. "Are we sure she's a wolf?"

"You know she's a lycan, not a wolf like us. She has a different type of DNA set up." Christina said, resting her arms over Sao's shoulders from the back.

"Yeah, but think about it... How does she know a two thousand year old witch and what is that whole portals thing? I mean, how can a witch that old and whatever-he-is that can bring up portals and shit like that  listen to her like we do to an alpha or an elder or even the royals? And who knows what happened to her after she was taken in Greece?"

Craig sat down by us, joined by Darion who was sipping on a bottle of water.

"It could just be a peace contract..." Craig started, only to be interrupted by Sao again.

"No, my senses are telling me that that is not what it is."

Some more joined them, some being elders, some Alphas and others were some of the royal wolves. 

"Well, sometimes, I've seen her eyes change color before she tells us there will be wolves entering our lands or passing near. Alpha Victoria usually tells us long before we can even catch a scent whether to recruit the wolves or leave them be." An older warrior said. "Her father, who had obviously been a Lycan, never had that type of foresight."

"It's strange now that I think about it, but she's also been using the blood vial  instead of the chalice to initiate new wolves into her pack."

"Also, we have no idea where the money is coming from, she just tells us that we should not worry. We have all these great new things happening, but we barely know how she manages to find the money. Our pack's resources were running out with her father's illness."

"Illness?"

"It started the first full moon after Victoria ran away. His wolf was refusing to come out and he grew ill overnight. We could never find a cure, but every full moon he would suffer through horrific pain and nightmares, and as the years went on he started blaming Victoria for running away."

"Then the question is, why did she run away." the King said.

I pulled a face at the large crowd we were now, barely able to keep up as more and more came and sat down. Why are they all flocking?

"She ran..." I almost threw my neck out as I twisted to see the witch. "Because of what her father did the night she first shifted."

"And what did he do?"

"To answer that I have to first explain why her family is the only whom has a Lycanthrope heritage down to its last descendant." The witch sat down opposite me. "You are the mate she saw back then before the hunters grabbed her."

"Hunters?!" Sao exclaimed beside me.

"Yes, hunters. No, they have not all vanished, they just work in the shadows now." she sighed as though she was irritated. "And before I can tell you about the lycans, you should know one thing. You have been asking Victoria what happened to her the past nine years, but she cannot tell you. It's not that she refuses, she physically cannot remember anything between the night before she shifted and about seven months ago. When I met Victoria, she had already gone feral, due to the trauma she had been through, as well as another reason that You will come to understand shortly. I cannot tell you everything, but you have at the least the right to know as to why she left.

"You see, the Lycans had wanted to extend their power onto their heirs, seeing that their children and wives did not live as long as they did. They came to me about three hundred years after I gave them mates and children. I researched it... It involves black magic and a pricey ritual that... well, to put in terms that you will understand, it is a sick, sick ritual. Most of them decided against the ritual and instead asked for something to shorten their life spans, all except one took the medicine. The lycan has to do this on the night of the wolf's first shift, and it can only be done to a child of the opposite gender. And Victoria's family, the Featherstones, believed in this ritual so much that it was done to every generation and got to the point that they would have only one child every generation, one of opposite gender to the previous generation.

"Like his mother had done to him, Alpha Featherstone took his daughter to an abandoned part of the pack lands, at the summit of the Penacle peaks. Most of you know that that part of the lands have been forbidden for a long time... but not because it is sacred grounds. On the summit is an ancient carved altar with enough ingredients to do a seance and ancient silver chains and shackles. The child has to be chained down on top of the altar, after the predecessors are called forward, they wait for the child to shift. And after the first shift, the child is forced by the long dead to shift again and again and again until the child is physically about to die.

"And then the parent rapes the child and bites the child as a mate would during the mating ritual, injecting the venom that a lycan's teeth carry. This does not pass the gene on, this forcefully removes the lycan from the carrier and passes it on to the next carrier. The previous carrier is then terminally ill, as something that has been vital to its existence for years had been suddenly removed. The wolf itself cannot be blamed actually, as the lycan has a consciousness of its own. This lycan, against it's original carrier's will, forced a takeover in order to gain strength, because it merges with the wolf of a new carrier. Think to yourselves, a wolf that has merged with others, an Alpha bloodline specifically, for the generations from about a millennium... did you truly think that the power she has been displaying was everything she had? Victoria is an army on her own. And that power was locked away as she suppressed it until the hunters broke her.

"When I took her worst memories, Victoria begged me to make her forget everything... and to take her ability to conceive or perceive her mate. The lycan... it's very much evil, and Victoria is until now battling to suppress it so that she can achieve her goal." she sighed as she leaned closer to Vladimir. "You would do well to learn from her examples. Gather an army and train them vigorously. A battle lies ahead. It is the only reason why she returned."