Holt

 

My father had begun preparing me to take over the Pack when I was too young to think or care about that type of responsibility. I was his only child, and I knew I would be named Alpha if anything happened to him, but I didn’t understand what his sense of urgency was about. I was still in high school, and my father was young, strong, and full of life. The way I saw it, I wouldn’t be taking over anything for at least another forty years, and even that seemed like a stretch. Why was he forcing me to grow up so fast, I wondered.

My father’s Beta, Trey, or King as he preferred to be called, had no faith in me as a youngster. He told my father he thought I was too weak to lead a group of kids to pick up sticks. He said he doubted I’d ever be able to lead a Pack. I’d also been told he was talking to some of the others in the Pack one night where he said if he were alive when the day came he would challenge my position as Alpha. He said even my name was weak. Bar-ry, he’d mocked, and he placed a lot of emphasis on the last syllable. He’d told some others my father was delusional to think I’d be able to fill his shoes. He even said he thought a She-wolf would make a better Alpha than me. He used to make me so angry with his comments.

Why my father kept him around I’ll never know. In my opinion, Trey should have had his teeth knocked down his throat for talking about my father and me like that. My father laughed and told me to ignore him, but he really irked me and I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Trey was my father’s Beta.

It was shortly after hearing all of the shitty comments that I decided a change had to be made. That’s when I asked everyone, including my parents, to refer to me from that day forward by my new name. It was then that I became Holt. No more ‘hairy Barry’ or ‘scaredy-cat Barry.’ I was taking a stand. A strong Alpha needed a strong name. One day I was going to prove to everyone that I was able to be a leader, and as Omega waiting to become Alpha, my name change was a start.

Between my father constantly badgering me to live up to my new image and become a man, and Trey continuing to question my manhood and strength, there were times that I felt like I was losing my mind. I understood my father’s motives even if I didn’t like them all the time. And as much as I despised Trey, I wanted to believe his challenges were an attempt at reverse psychology to help make me a strong Alpha one day.

On top of those two hounding me, my mother kept telling me about some crazy thing called a Hunger. She’d told me confusing and sometimes gross stories about it, about a soul mate, and kept saying this Hunger thing would make me feel like I was out of control. She said I’d feel anxious, and jittery, and like I needed to eat a lot of food. She said something about the soul mate satisfying me and being the key to stopping the Hunger. I didn’t fully pay attention to everything she would say and sometimes I had no idea what she was talking about. Was I supposed to eat a soul mate? Can a soul mate be bought at the store? But when she started talking about her and my father, and when they met, and about mating, I completely stopped listening. Gross, and way too much information about my parents!

After my mother and I would have these special little chats, I’d tell my best friend and guard, Paul. We’d laugh and then go raid the refrigerator in hopes of keeping the great Hunger at bay. We thought if we stayed full we’d never have to eat a soul mate, whatever that was.

It hadn’t taken long after I’d changed my name to Holt that Paul decided he wanted to change his name, too. His new name became Dolph, after one of his favorite wrestlers.

Everyone quickly adapted to calling us as we’d requested except my friend, Daci.

Daci was a really cute girl who loved to hunt and play in the parks with me. She was fun to be around. She also was best friends with the mean girl and bully-leader, Veronica. Their personalities were completely opposite. Veronica loved being mean for the sake of just being a bitch, but Daci was always nice to everyone, never allowing peer pressure to force her to be mean.

Veronica especially loved talking trash about me. I couldn’t quite figure out why. I had never done anything to her. But she was relentless with her teasing and name calling. She infuriated me beyond words, but I knew there was no way I could do anything or retaliate in any way. That’s all Trey, king dick, would need to take off on yet another rant about me.

Daci never talked about me, though. Instead, she always stood up for me. I never understood why she did, but I was grateful to have someone else seemingly on my side besides Dolph.

After we graduated high school we all went to college, and I didn’t see Daci for four long years. I thought about her a lot, and wondered how she was doing, but never could find the courage to call or visit. I felt a peculiar emptiness being away from her.

I saw her a couple of times after college graduation, but after not talking to her for so long, I still couldn’t bring myself to approach to her. Maybe one day, I remembered thinking.

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of years later the Pack was hunting in the National Park when we noticed some men creeping around and getting closer to us. Dolph and I, and a couple others, had been asked to serve as guardians to make sure no hunters or any human kids got too close to any of the Pack as they hunted.

The ravens that typically stayed nearby in the trees were cawing louder than usual, signaling something wasn’t right, and the sound of snapping twigs had me on high alert. I had no idea what the men I saw in the distance were up to, until I saw one of them with a stick looking thing behind his back. Because of the angle, I couldn’t get a good look at what he had.

Without realizing it, one of the men got really close to Trey and he immediately got Trey’s attention before I had a chance to howl a warning. Trey bared his teeth and growled; but the man didn’t leave, instead he eased closer until the stick thing was hooked on his neck. It was a restraint. All hell broke loose at that point.

More men stormed into the woods with restraint poles in their hands, and corralled several wolves and coyotes from the Pack, dragging them into huge cages on their trucks. We noticed they were pulling at strings, closing traps on our Pack mates.

“Run!” our Wolves howled to the others. We kept screaming and running so the men couldn’t corner us.

They’d have gotten more of the Pack if Dolph and I, and the rest of the guardians hadn’t howled a warning for everyone to run.

I frantically searched and howled until my throat was raw trying to find my father, but I had no luck. I checked in the brush, behind trees, in the small nooks left by other animals, and nothing. My Wolf ran after the trucks as they began to drive out of the park, and that was when I heard him howl. Those no-good men had captured my father and several of the others from the Pack.

Fuck! I curled in my claws and pounded my paw into a nearby tree, then yowled in pain. The blood gushed from my broken skin where the bark tore through.

“Come on!” I howled at Dolph and my mother. They were the only two I saw. We raced back to the house where we could be safe from any lurking men, and shift without anyone seeing us.

As soon as the front door closed I rushed to the back room and transformed to human, yanked on a pair of jeans that lay crumpled in a heap on the floor, then ran back to the kitchen. My mother and Dolph joined me within minutes.

“I saw the name on the side of the truck,” I said much louder than I’d expected.

“It doesn’t matter,” my mom said.

“It matters. I’m going to get my Dad and the others.” I huffed.

“Those men are too dangerous.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to get my Dad.” My voice cracked. “I’m going to free him and the others, period.”

“Son, you can’t go charging in there and wreak havoc,” Mother replied. “You won’t get anything solved with a hot head.”

“I know where they’re taking them. I know it won’t be as easy as just walking in, unlocking a gate, and freeing them all, but I have to do something.” I pounded my fist like a hammer on the countertop. “They have my Dad.” My tears couldn’t be contained any longer. I picked up the mug I’d drank from every morning and threw it across the room, shattering it into tiny bits when it hit the wall. I watched my mom and Dolph flinch at the sound of the crash.

“Clean that up now,” my mom said in her always calm voice. “And get yourself under control. Haven’t you learned anything from your father? When was the last time you saw him behave like you are right now?”

“I haven’t. But this is different, Mom.” I stood in front of her and held her by her shoulders. “They have my Dad, your mate, our Alpha! I have to save him.” I watched as tears welled in her eyes, then ran down her cheeks in a jagged stream.