A Stranger in Wolf Territory
Dear Angelina,
Thank you for your interest in the Financial Analyst position at Unit Company. While your résumé and past experience are impressive, we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates who are more aligned with what we need at the moment.
We appreciate the time and effort you put into your application and wish you much success in your career.
Sincerely.
I shut the laptop with a sigh, swallowing rejection number… honestly, I’d already lost count.
The position was perfect: a different state, far from the pack, a place where I could simply… exist.
But not this time.
“Angelina!”
Aunt Betty’s voice could’ve been heard from across the ocean, even if I wasn’t surrounded by wolves with super hearing.
I trudged down the wooden stairs until I found my aunt in the kitchen, leaning over the counter while chopping vegetables. Pots were already steaming on the stove with what would be our dinner.
She looked like she’d stepped straight out of some vintage tomato sauce commercial: her brown hair, streaked with a few grays, was tied up in a loose bun, and she wore a red polka-dot dress with a frilly kitchen apron on top.
“You called, Aunt Betty?”
“Could you unload the dishwasher and put the dirty dishes in, sweetheart?” she asked, flashing me a genuine smile as she pointed at the mountain already piling up in the sink.
Nodding, I opened the dishwasher and started stacking the clean plates away while she hummed a tune and kept cooking.
Aunt Betty was the perfect woman: skilled homemaker, devoted wife, doting mom — exactly the model of a Luna that the pack they lived in praised.
We. I corrected myself. The pack we lived in.
When I was twelve, I lost my parents and came to live with my aunt and uncle in the Crescent Moon Pack of the West, in Carson City, Nevada.
The pack was strong, considered one of the biggest and most traditional in the country.
My uncle James was the beta here, and he welcomed me with the gentle smile of someone trying not to scare a freshly traumatized child. So did his family: Aunt Betty, and my cousins Joshua and Caleb.
This whole werewolf thing might sound like fantasy or folklore to most humans, but not to me.
I was born human, raised human, but now I lived inside this crazy world of wolves… because my father was one. My mother, obviously, wasn’t.
The story of how my parents met and fell in love was one of my favorite bedtime stories.
He was a strong warrior in Alpha Jeremiah’s personal guard, and he accompanied him to a meeting at a casino in Las Vegas.
My mom was a waitress at that casino, and she accidentally spilled a drink on the alpha.
My dad stepped in to pull her away from him, but the second he looked into her eyes, he fell in love.
The fact that she was human didn’t exactly thrill anyone — especially the alpha.
Actually, it didn’t thrill anyone, period. Our alpha believed humans were beneath werewolves on the social ladder — which is hilarious when you consider that humans have no clue they even exist, to begin with.
The ending couldn’t have been more romantic: my dad chose to give up his post in the guard and his place in the pack rather than live without his mate, and moved into the human world with my mom.
Now that I’ve studied at the pack’s school and learned everything I know about wolves, I realize the sacrifice he made was huge. Living without a pack weakens your wolf. Not everyone can survive as a rogue or a lone wolf, especially not in wolf form.
I had a normal, peaceful human life until I was twelve — when my parents died in a car accident.
I remember sitting in the back seat of the police car, holding the hand of the police officer who drove me to my relatives, as if clinging to her would stop me from sinking into that kind of grief only a kid who’s just lost both parents can feel.
Spoiler alert: holding her hand didn’t do a squat. The grief swallowed me whole anyway.
And that’s how I went from my human world straight into the wolves’ den. Literally.
There was nothing stranger than studying werewolf legends, culture, and training when you were never going to become one yourself.
Living in a pack house, in a pack, when you didn’t belong — and being looked at like a complete outsider.
Which wasn’t a lie. I was a weak human in wolf territory.
When I moved in, my uncle made sure to explain how things worked, all the rules and expected behaviors.
Under that roof, I had to attend the pack’s school, the pack’s university, the pack’s bars, restaurants, coffee shops, stores… because young ones weren’t allowed to leave.
Certainly not to buy books about werewolves in human bookstores — unless you wanted them to be pure fiction.
I had to attend classes about “controlling your inner wolf,” “full moon rituals,” “mate bonding,” and the classic: “what happens when you shift for the first time.”
All extremely useful for a regular human who could barely get up early for class.
It was like taking an intensive spaceflight course when you can’t even ride in a car without getting carsick.
At thirteen — the age wolves shift for the first time — my cousins Caleb and Joshua nailed their transformations.
Me? Let’s just say I was a disappointment everyone already expected.
No one could sense a wolf scent on me, and I didn’t have any of the “symptoms” that meant there was a second consciousness living in my head.
No supernatural strength, no sudden fits of rage, no eyes flashing another color. Nothing.
I was just plain human, with a plain human scent.
What did I do with all this supernatural knowledge, you might ask?
Well, I mostly slept through those classes.
And in the ones I didn’t, I studied human curriculum to apply to colleges, universities, and job postings outside of Carson City.
Which was exactly what I was doing before Aunt Betty called me to help her — not very successfully, obviously, since that email had just been one more rejection on my long list of rejections.
As much as I loved my aunt and uncle and was eternally grateful for everything they’d done for me, I couldn’t stay here forever or I’d go insane.
Sometimes I wonder if you can really belong somewhere just because someone put you there.
I’d graduated middle school, then high school, then spent three more years studying accounting and finance in college.
And now I worked in the pack’s finance department.
Which is just a fancy way of saying I spend my days fixing spreadsheets for wolves who don’t know how to calculate taxes, deductions, or payroll.
Everything I lived and did was tied to the supernatural world.
And all I wanted was to be a normal human.
Knock, knock.
“Anybody home?” Aunt Betty waved a plate in front of my face.
I blinked, snapping back to the present, and realized I was holding two plates in my hands and had been staring at the dishwasher, lost in thought.
“Sorry, I zoned out,” I muttered with an embarrassed smile. I finished loading the dishwasher and started setting the dinner table.
“Are you making pot roast?” I asked when the delicious smell of her special-occasion recipe hit me, making my mouth water. “Who’s our special guest tonight? The alpha?”
Since Uncle James was the beta, it wasn’t unusual for Alpha Jeremiah to come over for dinner.
And every time he did, I was forced to sit through a meal under his disapproving gaze, since the presence of a human at the table wasn’t exactly welcomed.
“Today your uncle and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary.”
From her dreamy, romantic look — and the fancy tablecloth — I should’ve guessed.
She was smiling in that unique way wolves always did when they talked about their mates, with blind devotion, as if they’d stepped right out of a Hallmark movie, no matter how long they’d been together.
“You look beautiful, Aunt Betty. I’m sure Uncle James won’t be able to take his eyes off you,” I teased, giving her a wink.
They were crazy about each other — embarrassingly so, especially in front of their kids and me.
It didn’t take long for me to be proven right, because Uncle James walked in carrying a massive bouquet of red roses.
They hugged, and he whispered something in her ear that made her blush.
She smiled like a teenage girl in love, and I couldn’t help but smile too.
It was sweet to watch, even if it was a little cheesy and corny.
“Do you guys mind remembering that other people have functional ears?” Caleb groaned as he walked past them, dropping his backpack on the couch. “Moments like this make me wish I was deaf, like Lina.”
I rolled my eyes — not at the PDA, but at Caleb, who never missed a chance to act like a brat.
He was the epitome of a teenage wolf: cocky, loud, competitive, and full of snarky comments — even though he was way past due to grow up.
The dumbest remarks always came from him, and he made a point of reminding everyone that I was a human in a wolf pack — especially when we were around the Alpha and his old-fashioned advisors.
“Deaf, sure. Still way more polite than you, though,” I muttered under my breath, not needing to raise my voice since I knew he’d hear me anyway.
“That’s only because you don’t have super hearing,” he shot back, tossing an apple into the air and catching it in his mouth.
God, if you’re listening, please get me out of here.
“You’re only insufferable because you haven’t met your mate yet,” Joshua cut in, dragging an amused Lily by the hand to the table and pulling out a chair for her. “When it happens, I’ll be the first one laughing at the sheep you’ll turn into. Remind me of this later, babe?”
“With pleasure,” Lily smirked, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder and smiling like a cartoon villain.
Unlike Caleb, Josh had always been like an older brother to me, even though we were the same age.
He was the opposite: grounded, responsible, following in his father’s and uncle’s footsteps.
Josh was a strong warrior in the pack, part of the Alpha’s personal guard.
And unlike Caleb, he’d found his mate right at eighteen — the age wolves were ready for bonding.
Bonding. A weird word for a weirder thing.
How could you fall blindly in love with someone chosen for you?
What if they were a total jerk? What if you were in love with someone else, and the Moon Goddess decided you belonged to another? Did love just… die?
None of it made sense.
Luckily for Josh, his mate Lily was gorgeous, kind, funny, and overall amazing.
I knew that because Lily was my childhood friend. My best friend.
The one who stood by me when I first walked into a werewolf school as a human and defended me from all the stupid comments.
She was always at our house, friends with Josh too, but neither of them had ever crushed on each other as teens.
But when they both turned eighteen — the age wolves meet their destined one — and discovered they were mates, everything changed.
Now they were glued together, a disgustingly cute couple.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for them.
My best friend and my brother were both amazing people and I loved them — but it was still strange.
Like flipping a switch, their bond had lit up, and now they were inseparable.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. I don’t have a pathetic streak,” Caleb shot back.
“Hey, hey, kids,” Uncle James boomed, his deep voice cutting through with that natural authority even when he was smiling. “Can we eat in peace?”
I sat next to Lily at the round table. She squeezed my hand and rolled her eyes at the dumb scene, and I did the same.
With the whole family gathered, Aunt Betty served dinner.
The talk revolved around Caleb’s classes, Lily’s job at the clinic, and Josh’s training.
Until Uncle James pulled a black envelope from his shirt pocket.
“We’ve been invited to an alliance dinner this Friday.”
“We have?” Josh frowned.
Those invitations were usually only for the Alpha, the Beta, and the top advisors — never the families.
Well, never until now.
“Apparently this one’s special. Families are invited. Everyone has to be there.”
“Everyone in the family?” I asked, trying to sound casual, though my stomach twisted in warning.
“I’ve got plans Friday,” Caleb said with that smug grin that meant he had a date.
“It’s not optional,” Uncle James cut him off, ending his little party.
But when his eyes flicked straight to me for a second before continuing, I knew there was no way out.
“Attendance is mandatory.”
