I could only blink in confusion, my eyes turning to gaze at the people milling about around us. I was on information overload. And this topped the cake. A little bit of fear  puddled in my stomach.

With a sigh, I sat down on a simple blue couch. This was becoming too much and taking longer than I expected for things to be explained. I knew for this next part, I'd need to be seated.

Jessica and Dylan followed me.

"Okay." I finally said. "What does that have to do with anything?" I couldn't keep the surprise from my voice.

I wasn't stupid. I knew Alpha was the first letter of the Greek alphabet and I knew that it held a very large importance to wolves. Clearly, werewolves were no exception. However, I was surprised that this boy, who may have only been a couple years older than me, was in charge of what seemed to be a pack of wolves. He was very, very young.

With my thoughts, I hadn't realized I had started to stare again. His eyelashes cast light shadows across his soft cheeks, the blond lashes as gold as wheat.

"Alphas can often Change into pure wolves due to the amount of strength and power that resides in our blood. We have to have an extreme amount of control. Whereas, like Jessica, she can partial-Change. Any werewolf could become a pure wolf with enough strength and effort, but if the wolf is not strong enough, the Change could kill them. It takes a lot of energy out of Betas," Dylan's voice barely registered in my brain. He was speaking a foreign language to me. From what I've read of wolves, there's only one or two Betas and they were the second-in-command. He made it sound like there were many.

After asking, he quickly explained that all werewolves that are not considered Alphas are considered Betas. A Beta not within a pack is an Omega, otherwise known as a loner. To determine the rank of the wolf, the eyes of the two ranks were different; Black for Alphas, and Silver for Betas.

Suddenly, Jessica and Dylan's eyes made sense.

Almost.

At my frown, Dylan sighed. It was obvious he was beginning to understand I was becoming flustered and confused. I felt my heart rate picking up as I tried to think through everything I had just learned, my eyes taking in the appearance of the room around me. The cracked wallpaper suddenly became very interesting and I tried to think of anything else by suggesting to myself a different wallpaper they should use.

It didn't work.

I could tell Jessica was beginning to become concerned as my breath hitched in my throat, air stalling in my lungs and choking me. It felt as if a giant hand was twisting itself around my chest and squeezing with gnarled and old fingers.

My vision became blurry and everything was a haze as the noises my brain managed to pick up became distant echoes of suggestions for me to lie down.

I was starting to hyperventilate, my breath coming out in short wheezes.

After a minute, I could only hear one thing despite the silence in my brain screaming at me.  "Comfort her, Alpha! Quickly." I thought that was Jessica but I wasn't sure. Comfort me?

Suddenly, his voice blocked out the defeaning silence and through the haze a shadow of a face was blocking the light. He was an Angel, surely. Was this what it felt like to die?

"Reagan, hey. It's going to be okay. Hey, I'm here. We're here. Just calm down and breathe." His voice was very different than when he had been talking moments before. Fingers gently touched my hands, filling me with warmth, as my eyes began to close and a panicked voice sounded. "No, Reagan. Keep your eyes open. Come on. Open them."

It was becoming difficult to listen.

But then suddenly, it wasn't. It was as if his words had dulled the ache and throb in my chest. It was still there but on a much more manageable level. The hysterics I had been falling into seemed to disappear and my breath evened out dramatically.

It felt like something was pulling all the stress and confusion from me in a long stream that upon its exit, caused my body to slump in my seat. Relief seemed to rush through my veins at the freedom I felt.

My eyes opened and the haze was gone. In its place was Dylan's familiar face, his eyes no longer the pristine and electrifying blue that seemed to electrocute me upon contact. One eye was gold and one was black, just like before.

If what he said was true and Alphas had black eyes, why was one of his gold?

He offered a smile, his teeth seeming to be in perfect alignment and lighting up the room as well as lightening my soul.

Without meaning to, my fingers reached to touch the corners of his eyes like a feather brushing across smooth sand. The gold eye next to my fingertips crinkled upon contact, his smile finally reaching the black and gold irises.

"Reagan," he mumbled after a moment, blinking like he had suddenly realized something.

The strange colors disappeared, leaving that petrifying blue behind. His hand came up to grasp mine gently, as if he was holding someone's grandmother's antique china, before moving it away from his face. My hand tingled.

A strange calm settled over me at the contact. That strange pull of something flowing out of me, what I realized to be confusion, appeared again. I knew he was doing something. It was him.

"W-What..." my throat was dry and I tried again. "What did you do to me?"

I could feel Jessica's intruding gaze on us as she reached out and gripped the hand Dylan had just let go of. She watched with an emotion I couldn't decipher.

The background noises seemed to fade away until I realized that suddenly we were alone; Dylan, Jessica, and I. Where did everyone go?

Dylan looked downwards, almost bashfully as he fiddled with his own fingers, picking his nails. His golden eyebrows furrowed slightly as he thought of how best to explain it to me without overwhelming me to the point of that strange panic attack I had started to have. A breath left his lips.

"Wolves are naturally empathetic creatures and protect their own because of that. Because we are partially wolf and that instinct resides within us, we can access it to feel others' emotions through touch or through words. Touch is much easier to do and much stronger as well as faster but voice can work as well. With that, we can also alter emotions slightly, sort of like taking them from you, but only the negative ones. So, I took the anxiety and the fear from you." Dylan's explanation was slow and calculated and those blue eyes never left mine as he explained. It was like he was worried I'd freak out again and I couldn't exactly blame him.

"Where did it go?"

"Into me. Now I understand what exactly you were having anxiety from and can better understand you because of it. And if you get really good, you can hear thoughts relating to those emotions if you focus in on it. But that usually only works on pack members because of the bond that's formed. It's unlike anything human." His eyes grew distant as he spoke, as if he was no longer with me.

My mouth opened, as if to ask another question before I decided against it.

I think I had enough questions for the day.

****

"So... ya'll believe in that Moon Goddess stuff, right?" I was an avid reader and werewolf books were one of many different genres I had read before. But I was curious to see how much was true. After all, it's not every day you find out you're a creature that shouldn't even exist.

Melody looked at me with wide chocolate eyes, almost seeming offended. Her black hair fell to her shoulders, and her flawlessly tan skin seemed to glow with health.  "Oh, honey. God, no. I'm Christian!" came her incredulous response.

Dylan and Jessica had put Melody in charge of me, specifically of showing me around the house. They called it their Pack House, or simply 'Camp.' Melody made sure that every single room was thoroughly explained, straight down to the wash room where I could count at least thirty washing machines and dryers standing at attention. This was obviously a very large pack, and as I learned more and more, my curiosity grew.

Melody even went over how she painted each and every painting in the front hallway I had come through earlier. But I didn't mind; she was very talented.

"Well... how does that work?" I struggled to come up with the right question.

"Every werewolf has their own Creation belief but this pack generally believes we are Fallen Angels. It may seem far-fetched. But it's true." Her unshakeable belief had me nodding my head in agreement.

Melody finally stopped in front of a room, reaching out a hand to push open the smooth wooden door with a neatly painted hand. Her finger nails glinted bright red. "This is where you will be staying." I couldn't help but notice how close it was to Dylan's room and how far it was from Jessica's. I didn't really know where they had gone.

I moved inside, hesitantly. Melody simply watched expectantly, like she was waiting for me to ask something. My eyebrows raised suspiciously. "Yes?"

"You're not going to ask?" I knew exactly what she was talking about and let out a sigh.

"When am I going to Change?" I finally forced the question through my gritted teeth. My fingers wrapped themselves around a strand of my red hair.

Melody's lips lifted in a dazzling smile. "Tomorrow night. Your smell is continuing to change. When it stops is when you will Change to accommodate it. But don't worry, we don't have to chain you up; you're not a Bitten. You're a Born."

Confusion filled me. "What does that mean?"

"You were born a werewolf, not made."

"You can actually do that?" My eyes widened drastically. I didn't know whether to be happy or frustrated at that.

"Only Alphas have the ability to make more Betas. No one else can," came her simple response as I sat down upon the dark blue bed. Melody shut the door behind her as she did the same.

There goes trying to keep my knowledge to a minimum.

"Okay... what about that whole mind telepathy thing?" My hands waved in the air as if to demonstrate what I was talking about. A short laugh let the brunette's light pink lips.

"Reagan, you've been reading too many werewolf books or seen too many werewolf movies," she assured me, winking before standing again. She was easily eighteen, with the curves of a twenty year old. "But yes. Only when the beast is in control can we speak to each other through our minds. We call it a mind-link. We also can Comfort and 'speak' through that." I vaguely remembered Dylan saying you could hear thoughts surrounding a certain emotion. Maybe one day, I could learn.

But I just knew my mom was probably freaking out. I knew my dad would be in a panic and that they would probably call the cops if they hadn't already. Jessica had already told me I couldn't call them tonight, and because of that, as I climbed into the unfamiliar bed after Melody left, it was the loneliest night I had experienced in a long time.

Knowing you're so close to home but not able to actually be there was possibly the worst feeling I'd ever felt. My heart ached and my chest was throbbing. It took me a long time to start watching the back of my eyelids.

What was I doing here? Sleeping in a stranger's bed that I didn't even know I could trust?

I don't think anyone in Dylan's Pack could answer that for me.

****

"How old are you anyway?" I asked as I stuffed a piece of bacon in my mouth, allowing myself to savor the juices. "You're awfully young to be running a pack." My nose scrunched up in delight as I realized it was the perfect amount of chewiness. Sylvia could really cook.

Sylvia stood by the stove, working her magic and frying up an egg as easy as if it were breathing. Her silver-blonde hair seemed to sparkle from the sunlight sneaking through the cracks in the windows. To think she was only sixteen had me jittery.

Dylan's lips parted slightly and then pulled into a frown, an elbow thrown lazily along the counter of the marble kitchen table. His blonde hair was mussed slightly as if he had tried to brush it but then had messed it up by running his fingers through it too many times. His fork dangled almost daintily from the arm resting on the counter, golden eyebrows furrowed in deep thought. I knew he was trying to be careful around me, especially since my panic attack.

"Well, I'm going to be twenty on Thanksgiving," he offered after a moment. "But you're not exactly wrong. Most Alphas are easily in their late twenties, early thirties. But I guess it helps when you have to step up into it. I've been training my whole life for this." His fork pressed against his lips as he talked. I noticed he was avoiding eye contact with me.

He'd been doing that a lot recently.

I had read somewhere that wolves didn't make direct eye contact unless it was to show dominance or a strong emotion similar in strength to that. But everyone else seemed to be perfectly fine making eye contact with me. And he seemed fine with making eye contact with everyone but me.

"Your whole life?" I asked surprised, suddenly intrigued. "How'd you end up doing that?"

He fidgeted nervously in his seat, a movement that made the insides of my stomach flutter. His eyes finally lifted, his agonizingly light gaze turning to me.

"There was a war sixteen years ago." He cleared his throat. "Us against the Outsiders in the East. That's where your 'friend,' Mason, came from. He's Alpha of a pack there."

"He's young, too," I couldn't help but notice. At that, Dylan cracked a smile.

"He's actually twenty-five." My eyes shot wide. I'd thought he was eighteen. The pervert.

Another pice of bacon filled my mouth in embarrassment, cheeks flushing pink. "What happened in the war?" I asked after I had swallowed the meat.

Sylvia turned around to face us, plopping an egg on my plate. I couldn't help the small squeal of delight that left my mouth. Eyes bored into the side of my face as I took a bite, relishing in the egg as my teeth sunk into my food. After a moment, I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and turned with a pleasant smile to see Jessica sitting next to me, red curls pulled back into a perfect ponytail without a single stray hair.

"When the war began, Alpha Hawthorne, the Alpha before me, sent away pretty much all of the children. The Outsiders were a group of packs that had united under the belief that they all needed more land and more food as their ranks grew. This was before they were known as The Outsiders though." Dylan paused for a moment, eyeing Jessica strangely before continuing on. "To get us to comply, they raided Camps for children to take. They wanted young werewolves to Change near them so they could gain power and control the youth to be their soldiers. So that's what they tried to do. But I was not sent away. When I was young, the Alpha and my father had made a deal. I would become the next Alpha because Hawthorne didn't have any children ready to step up." Jessica tensed beside me.

"So I trained for this moment, and when Hawthorne believed I was ready, I stepped up. The deal was made right before my father died in the war." This time, it was me who tensed at Dylan's words. He had said his father died the same way you'd tell someone the daily news, casually and without emotion.

"W-Wait..." my voice came out shakier than I intended.

Dylan attempted to offer that award-winning smile again in an effort to comfort me with the newfound knowledge, those blue eyes tight. While his voice lacked feeling, his eyes spoke everything he could not say. "Yes, Reagan. My father was killed."

————
Author's Note:

Wow, poor Alpha Dylan. :( Losing his dad at such a young age and having to take on such a huge role. That's gotta be stressful...

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!

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I hope you have a great day!

Love,
Sydnee