Rejected By The Pack, Desired By The Alpha

My protests only seemed to amuse Jim more-or maybe it was the scowl on my face.

"You hold your own better than most of the guys who train here."

"It's not that hard. Most people think size equals strength. They're wrong. It just slows them down and creates more weak spots. Worse, they don't even know how to use the power they have."

I kept the real reason to myself: they didn't have my edge.

Jim had to brace himself against the wall, laughing so hard he nearly lost his balance.

"That's why I like you, kid. You've got a mouth on you, and it's sharp. Now go get changed, or you'll be late."

I glanced up at the clock. He was right.

Ever since my grandfather cut off my old trainer, I'd had to squeeze my training in between college classes.

"See you next week, Jim."

I headed for the women's locker room, which was almost always empty.

As usual, I took a quick shower. I pulled my long brown hair into a high ponytail, letting a few strands escape to frame my face. They'd dry with a natural wave.

I pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, and a hoodie. The other girls, especially the freshmen, probably spent way more time getting ready for class.

I had neither the desire nor the time. And at this point, I was already late.

It was times like this I was grateful for my speed. I couldn't match the speed of my family or the rest of the pack, but I was still far faster than any ordinary human.

I had to consciously slow my pace as I headed for campus, just to blend in.

Thanks to that, I slid into my seat just as class was starting.

My other advantage helped, too: an innate ability to sense movement, to anticipate a presence at my back or an obstacle in my path.

All wolves had that kind of instinct, a gift from the Moon Goddess.

Well... almost all.

The professor walked in and started the class.

It was a required course, and frankly, it bored me.

I wanted something more stimulating, something that would actually make me think. But so far, nothing I was being taught went beyond what the tutors my grandfather had hired had already drilled into me as a child.

I'd been given a demanding, almost elitist education. That all came to a screeching halt the day I turned eighteen. Since then, he'd continued to help me financially, but in a much more limited way.

And that suited me just fine.

I felt better now that I was managing my life on my own.

I wasn't entirely under his control anymore. Not completely free, no, but not nearly as boxed in by his rules.

The only obligations I had left were to the pack. And those, I could accept.

~~

My name was Thalia Whitton.

My family was once prominent in the Red Springs Pack. My grandfather was the old Alpha's Beta. But that Alpha was killed in an attack a few years back, and his son took over.

For all that rank, it only took one scandal for our reputation to crumble.

"We are a proud people."

That was what my grandfather had repeated to me over and over since I was a child.

But that pride didn't stop my mother from vanishing for a weekend when she was fifteen.

When she came back, she had to face her father's fury.

And as if that weren't enough, they soon found out she was pregnant.

She refused to reveal the father's name. Naturally, everyone assumed he wasn't a werewolf.

In their eyes, I was a mistake. An anomaly.

Despite everything, I was still part of the pack. The old Alpha had demanded I be treated like any other member... at least, until it became clear I was never going to have a wolf.

For us, the first shift usually happened between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.

A lot of people believed the earlier the shift, the more powerful the wolf. That was not necessarily true, but it didn't stop the boys from constantly comparing themselves to each other.

And me?

I was almost nineteen. Nothing. No shift. No wolf.

And yet, I had everything else: the speed, the strength, the heightened senses, the instinct for a fight.

I belonged to the pack without truly being part of it. I wasn't human... but not truly a wolf, either.

I was trapped between two worlds, belonging to neither.

I never got to ask my mother who my father was. Maybe she was afraid of my grandfather. Maybe, with time, she would have told me.

But she never got the chance.

The humiliation, the weight of the pack's judgment during her pregnancy-it crushed her. She took her own life when I wasn't even a month old.

The only thing she left me was a pendant. She had asked that it be given to me when I was old enough.

Honestly, I'm still surprised they honored her wish. If it had been up to my grandfather, it never would have happened.

After her death, I mostly lived with my uncle, Warren, and his wife, Eve. They had two sons who always treated me like their own sister. They were the reason my childhood was bearable.

Without my grandfather, everything probably would have been simpler. I was pretty sure he could never stand the sight of me.

He demanded unrealistic perfection from me. He drilled it into my head that I must never repeat his daughter's mistakes.

For years, he imposed his rules on me. No public school with my cousins or the other pack kids.

Instead, he enforced a grueling schedule: etiquette, martial arts, ballet, boxing, fencing, foreign languages, music... and intensive academic studies on top of it all.

He paid for it all with a single goal in mind: for me to shift before I turned eighteen, marry into an influential family, and restore our family's reputation.

But the day of my eighteenth birthday came and went. And with it, any last hope he had for me.

It was now obvious I would never shift. No wolf. Just an anomaly. Something that should never have existed.

Despite that, I was still bound by the pack's rules. I still had to attend pack gatherings, obey the Alpha's orders, and bare my throat to him on command. His voice carried a power that no wolf could resist.

And yet, even obeying all of that, I was still kept on the fringes. The most prominent families looked at me like an outsider. Like I simply didn't belong.

I could tell class was ending by the shift in Professor Thorne's voice. It always changed in the final few minutes. I pulled myself from my thoughts long enough to jot down the assignment. As usual, it wouldn't be a problem.

The semester had started over a month ago, and I still hadn't found a single thing to challenge me.

Of my four classes, only Intro to Criminology held any real interest. I just hoped it would eventually get more interesting. As I left the classroom, I sighed to myself.

"Hey, Tali! Spaced out again, huh?" a guy's voice called out behind me in the hall.

"Seriously, Tali, could you at least try to pay attention for once?" another one chimed in.

"Leave her alone," Jelena said, her voice soft as she tapped each of them on the arm.