Chapter 1
Giant Sequoias were all the eye could see behind the overly large house built, seemingly, in the middle of nowhere.
A large circumference of space had been cleared for the large living structure, trees taken down in the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The green trees towered miles from the ground, their points breaching the beautiful sky with the tips of their fingers. When the wind blew threw their branches the mountains sang. This home was no more than fifteen miles from the nearest town, far from the mundanes, where all the residents seemed to be oddly beautiful.
The people of Townsend, a small community built into the side of a mountain- far from any major California city- were all abnormally tall, with skin that glowed a deep tan even in the longest of winters. Their limbs were lined with muscle- even the women- and all of them had the most angular features. Jawlines that could cut glass, eyes that could pierce through your soul, noses narrow and pointed. Their body's held strong by an unidentifiable force, and each a glint in their eyes of knowledge mundanes would never hope to grasp. If you didn't know better you'd think they were all related, every single person, in that small town of six hundred.
And though the humans of the world knew nothing of the truth of that house buried fifteen miles deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the people of Townsend did. And they would protect that home with their lives, that was their one true home. It was where their hearts lie, where their spirits yearned to be and protect, where their leader and young were housed. To the rest of the world, the people of Townsend were odd and seemed to never let anyone into their small community, though within the façade of a cliquey town, they understood the truth.
Townsend may have been the government given name for the land they lived on, but inside every one of their hearts and souls, they were the people of Malkún. The fourth largest Werewolf pack in the Northern United States. They wore their pack name with pride and were vicious in protecting their pack lands against any who sought to take it as their own. That house was their pack house, where their leaders- the hierarchy- called home. The Alpha male and female headed the pack as mates, a face to the Malkún pack to any others (enemy and allied packs) looking in, and the ones who made any decisions regarding the safety of the people residing under their care. And though their loyalty was strong to their Alpha male and female, for so many within the pack, an even stronger reason prevailed as to protect that house with their life. Any and all unmated male and female wolves resides within those walls. Majority being the people of Malkún's teenage children. At the age of eighteen all teenagers are moved into the pack house to form bonds with the members of their generation, along with searching for their mate; though not every mate is found within their own pack. They are separated from their schooling and placed into their program to ensure the survival of their people. They train and forage, they are cared for while they learn the history of Malkún.
The young men and women stay there until they discover their mate, whom is given to them by the Moon Goddess, the ancient being who died for her creation: werewolves. Her spirit is who all werewolves in the world pray to, who they turn to for guidance, who they look to for their mates. Every soul of a werewolf is only half of who they truly are, or have the potential to be, until they cross paths with their mate, their other half. And until they cross that path, or have gained permission to venture from the pack in search for their soulmate, they remain at the pack house under the care and guidance of the Alpha and Luna (the Alpha Female).
All, except for one.
And standing in the backyard, behind the giant, navy grey painted, surprisingly large Pack House, Giant Sequoias were all her eyes could see.
The sun had fallen behind the rapidly building multi-cell storm clouds, casting her irises the color of shaded ocean waves. Her body swayed lightly with the flow of the wind sweeping through the trees with which their home was contained. Wind chimes lightly danced in the air, hanging on the dark brown oak porch dozens of feet behind her, and despite the roaring of the leaves in the wind, despite the whistling of the air howling against her ears, or the thunder beginning to crackle loudly in the distance, she could hear the small tinkling of the wind chimes as easily as one could hear a dear friend whisper within your ear.
Though the senses of werewolves were very advanced in comparison to a mundanes, she didn't know hers were on the highest scale of refined. She never would.
A light humming trembled inside her throat, following the pattern the wind blew the chimes in, her swaying swinging her long chocolate brown hair to and fro across her back in a numbing and relaxing motion. The wind swept her angular, and exceptionally gorgeous, features with the lightest caress, the top of her button nose tingling with the sensation and her full pink lips spreading in a peaceful joy. Her bare feet stuck in wet grass below her, enjoying the feeling of the earth, soft, beneath her toes while her fingers flowed through the sweeping wind. Comfort was nothing she felt often, the dull aches throughout her body more than enough proof of that, though Scarlet Leason always found comfort in the time just before a storm. Especially the bad ones.
And this storm was going to be a doozy.
She had a sixth sense for these types of things.
Breathing was light at that moment. Her ribs, which always seemed to have an ache deep within her bones, felt free to move on their own accord. Expanding and deflating, rising and falling, she breathed in the scent of the rain before it fell. It flowed through her airway and soaked into her bloodstream, her rapid heart rate steadied into a calm rhythm, and her chest pains lessened incredibly. Circling through her body, each lungful was enough to give her a moment of clarity, a moment of peace within a world she only knew as cruel.
Her dress hung loosely off her shoulder, her clavicle protruding from the garment in an almost harassing way. Her breast bones were pressing tight against her flesh, begging to break free from the flimsy confines they resided under. Her skin, though a deep tan, was pale to the trained eye. It lacked the vitality and elasticity any nineteen year old woman would have, nutrients obviously lacking where they were so needed. She could feel her dress itch against the sides of her protruding ribs and hips, her spinal vertebrae rising and falling like mountains down her back. If her weight wasn't enough to show an obvious neglect, her injuries were. Werewolves contained a gene that allowed for rapid healing within both forms, wolf and human. Though the wolf was faster at healing than the human, the human was just as impressive at cellular regeneration as its spiritual counterpart. For Scarlet, no matter how fast she knew her body could heal as a werewolf, she knew it would take a few days for her limbs to be back at fully functional condition.
Her left arm, fingers lightly moving with the wind, was decorated in the darkest of purple bruises all along the limb. Especially dark in a few places, you could see where her arm had been broken in (only visibly) two spots. The pain, at first, had made black spots dance across her vision until bile crawled its way from her empty stomach to the floor. Though now, in the eye of an upcoming storm, she felt as though it wasn't so bad, more of an annoying ache that mimicked the incessant creaking of an aged floorboard. Along the very clavicle protruding from her body in that harassing way, fingerprints danced across her collarbone and wrapped largely around her shoulders, handprints dug into her skin. Her neck was, seemingly, permanently discolored. Always covered in varying forms of bruising, she had become used to the burning pain of suffocation, the digging of fingertips into the back of her neck while the palms of their hands crushed her trachea in rage. Her cheekbones decorated in split skin, lifted with bruising only matched the right eye of the young woman feeling so peaceful for a single moment in time.
Closed in a moment of oblivion, the swelling was enough to press her eye a little farther into socket, placing pressure on her iris that couldn't be good if she were a normal mundane. The bruising stretched high above her eyebrow, deep across her nose, and overlapped with the swollen skin of her cheek. The thick smell of rain swelled in the area around her aching body and soothed her pain to a dull thrum. She was in pain, a deep, undeniable, agony but she was content while standing by the perimeter of the Giant Sequoias. She was content under the shade of the building clouds, traveling all this way to come and make her feel alive again. She scent of a hard storm coming, the feel of the humidity in the summer air dragging with the wind against her skin. She was peaceful there, listening to the trees whisper to each other.
Until the sound of the wooden door slamming on the back porch sounded loudly through the storms orchestral crescendo Scarlet had been so intent to listen to.
"Get your ass back in here, you fucking maggot!"
She startled, before prying her one good eye open and giving a longing look at the sky, giving a silent thank you and goodbye to the Moon Goddess for that moment of peace, before skimpering back inside as quickly as she could. Her feet stepped down on the dry grass below her and a longing spread within her chest for them to have filled with puddles before she left. She wished she could have felt the storm, had those rain drops slide down her skin and soak the dirty fabric of her too-large dress. The sadness took root in her soul, her chest beginning its ache as though it had never had a moment of peace.
As the man's beefy fist clamped down on her neck, dragging her quickly off the porch and into the pack house, she could hear the wind chimes move to a new, different, rhythm before the wooden door slammed shut behind the both of them.
Did the storm miss her as much as she missed it?
