Tori
Once I was up the stairs, I let off some steam by putting my fist through the wall. Being the runt sucked. Stepping and fetching sucked. And never getting a scrap of respect sucked - I knew I could do just as good a job as the ugly mutt Fang.
A pang of conscience hit me at that thought, some remnant of the Tori I once was, I shouldn’t call him a mutt, it’s not his fault he’s Turned and not Trueborn.
I slammed the door to the room I had claimed - the smallest, if I took the smallest then no one would take it from me. I had torn apart the bunk beds and dropped the mattresses on the floor to make one decent-sized bed.
Fuck that. He’s a fucking mutt. He sure as hell wouldn’t spare my feelings if the tables were turned. He’d wait until everything died down and then come talk about it. He never stood up for me in the moment, when I needed it.
My hand whipped out, wrapping around the strap of my backpack the way I wished I had wrapped my hand around the Spike’s throat. I squeezed, seething. I might have forgotten what it felt like to not be angry by that point. I had always been angry, hadn’t I? The kid with no parents, shuffled around from house to house, switching schools, and always managing to end up with someone who didn’t mind showing a kid who was boss. Might makes right was the story of my life - but now I was stronger than any human. And I was going to prove it.
I’ll get Alpha’s beer and snacks, and a human pet besides.
Maybe then I’d get some respect - I wouldn’t be the bottom of the pack, I’d be stronger than whatever human I took.
Before that pang of conscience could come at me again, I walked to the master suite, similarly modified for a wolf’s comfort - the bed destroyed, the king mattress on the ground. Sleeping as a wolf was just so much more comfortable than awkward human bones. I’d done more than enough sleeping in the wild by that point to know it. I knew where the money roll would be. Alpha kept it in plain view, a dare for anyone to take it without permission.
Like I could run away with it or something. They’d be able to track me, and a lone wolf died alone. That was a lesson that had been drilled into me harshly. I shoved that thought away as I climbed out onto the roof of the posh little cabin we had found by the lake. Shutting the window behind me, I stripped, tossing my clothes into the bag before forcing my body into the wolf-shape. My wolf-self was pretty, at least. I had the coldest blue eyes out of all of us, and my fur was almost entirely white with only a few tufts of gray here and there.
I didn't like the change, but I did like being the wolf - Alpha had made me stay as the wolf for a month once to try and teach me how to speak Wolftongue, how to appreciate the wolf... but life was easier with thumbs. Nuzzling my head through the straps, I bit down on the leather part of the bag for good measure before I leapt onto the tall rocks on one side of the house, bounding easily from rock to rock before I found a comfortable gait toward the town.
It wasn't even that I liked being human, honestly, I hated humans - when Alpha found me, when I finally learned what made me so different and why everyone seemed to instinctively dislike me, I learned to hate humans. Not as much as Alpha hated them, mind - but then again, my wolf-mom hadn't been killed by humans... at least, not that I knew, anyway.
I didn't know which of my real parents was the wolf, I didn't know if either of my real parents were still alive. And frankly, I didn't care.
In the soft moonlight, padding over the brown grasses and rocky terrain alongside some nothing road in the middle of nowhere, I remembered when I wasn’t angry.
Now.
Being alone, in the quiet of the night, completely secure in the knowledge that I could either fight or escape anything that the world threw at me? That’s when I didn’t feel angry. As always, my mind turned to pondering what it would be like if I did leave the pack… but I always came to the same conclusion. I wouldn’t make it. Or worse, I’d go mad and a pack would have to put me down.
We’d killed two in the last four years. Lone wolves that were a danger to themselves and all of us. I liked that a lot less than killing humans. It felt dirty, it felt wrong. Again, I forced my mind down a different path, focusing on the stones as I loped along the ground, laughing at the memory of me learning how to run the first time.
Running as the wolf had taken me weeks, walking was easy enough but running? It wasn't like running as a human, it wasn't one foot in front of the other. Walking, you had two feet on the ground at all times. Left leg, left arm then right leg, right arm. Left side, right side, one side then the other.
Running was completely different. You only had one foot on the ground at a time if you were running flat out. Fang had teased me mercilessly when I was learning, I had tried just... walking faster and tripped over my own legs more times than I could count. But now, it was almost natural... if I didn't think about it too hard. The second I thought about which leg was moving, I'd stumble.
Which I did.
After I picked myself back up, glad my pride was intact since no one had seen me, I continued towards town. The little nest of glowing lights down the hill. Sniffing as I went, just to see if there were any threats, I pushed through the rustle of leaves as I forced my way into a bush and changed.
I looked like a bum. My clothes were dirty, my hair was tangled, and I was all lean muscle now. I swore my tits got smaller since the change, which hardly seemed fair, and thanks to my baggy clothes, I was shapeless.
I mean, it made sense. I was a thousand miles from home now, and I had run most of it. This town was a shithole just like the last twenty towns we had lived outside of. Alpha preferred to be away from humans and liked the cold. The fact that she was near Flagstaff four winters ago was my good luck... it wasn't generally like her to go that far south. I didn't want to think about that camping trip again right now though, I’d pushed away enough dark thoughts, I didn’t even want to start down another path.
I slung the backpack on my back and started walking. Alpha didn't seem to realize that stealing was a lot easier in the city. This town had two pubs, a shitty motel, and a handful of shops. They probably had three cops total, and it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone. If I got caught, it was going to make winter a lot harder.
And it didn't help that I still looked seventeen - aging was weird for wolves, or at least Alpha hadn't been able to explain it to me. Getting her beer was always a pain in the ass.
Not that she gave a shit.