The Hidden Pack

For centuries America was the home of over a hundred packs of shifters.  Shifters were common as the normal humans that they protected.

Over the years the shifters had been dwindling in births.  The packs were starting to fight against something more than what they had been bred for.  There were pack wars where every member was killed.

The Births were dwindling for one main reason: each Pack was very insular and didn’t mesh with other Packs well and they didn’t like bringing in normal blood if they could avoid it.  They feared that the diluted blood would weaken the shifting ability.

The Pack Wars were very bad as they refused to do their standard protector jobs.  The fear of one pack being stronger than another was part of what caused the issue; the other was to get the best territory that had magical nodes that would protect their existence.

During early times Packs didn’t merge and when things happened where a person fell for a member of another Pack they were exiled from their family and pack and sent out into the world.  If seen again they would be killed on site.

In the year 1980 a young man fell in love with a lady from another Pack.  Secretly they had gotten pregnant hoping that this would unite the Packs.  It didn’t and the families were both upset.

The male ended up being killed by his own blood relatives as he had brought dishonour to them.  The woman was exiled pregnant and had to flee with the knowledge that there would be no happily ever after.

She gave birth to a beautiful baby boy she called Joseph who she always called Joey.  Joey was more because she loved the nickname and she thought of him as her little kangaroo.  

It was tough for Mama and when Joey was two she left him, she just couldn’t care for him and deal with the grief of losing the one she loved.

Joey also was different; he smelled of a sweet mixture of sweet mint and eucalyptus which was so different from the other shifters.  His eyes were not normal and had silver flecks in the brown eyes.  Very unique and mama knew that she would be hunted down eventually by the father’s family for the dishonour of creating this unnatural shifter.

She left him with a gentleman who used to be a member of a Pack but was born without the ability to shift.  Boundborn was the common name for those who couldn’t shift, however the impolite name was Falseborn.  He gladly took in the little one to be raised as one of his own.

His wife was loving and wanted more children but during the birth of her second baby she ended up becoming unable to bear children again.  Their baby boy died three days after he was born.

Sometimes the family you were born into and the family that raised you are both exactly what you need to become who you were meant to be.

—————

Joey sat at his desk studying economics for his university business degree.  He was not happy in business and wanted to be one with wilderness.  He had never felt comfortable in cities or even in his own skin.

It felt like his skin was too tight and that is he grew anymore it would tear away leaving just a bone monster.  He wanted to be anywhere other than studying but what could he do as his mother was insistent that he study something that he could live off of.

Originally he wanted to take something similar to forest ranger but neither of his parents was happy with that idea and he was very tired of fighting with them over what he was to take.  This was stressful to say the least and felt a beast enveloping him, attacking his parents.

He had always felt like an outsider even to his parents.  He didn’t really understand them and they didn’t understand him.  He was always stressed with school, with fighting with his parents and with all the obligations he had such as martial arts that his parents insisted he take.

He was getting frustrated with his economics class so he decided to go for a walk.  There was a nearby woods.  As he walked he could smell the evergreens and the sage that was planted there.  The mint was the strongest scent and it overpowered his brain as if he was intoxicated on booze.

Indoors he always felt trapped as if he was a wild animal.  It was hard to feel this way and it made him feel more aggressive towards his family and what friends he had.

He entered the woods thinking of how much he was disappointing his parents by struggling with his business course.  It is the most prominent emotion that causes the most conflicts.  He never understood why he was so different from everyone else and all he wanted was just to be normal to avoid the constant conflicts in his own mind and with his parents.

As he walked through the woods, darkness made him slightly nervous.  He had never had fear of the woods before, though he did have a healthy respect for them drilling into him by his father.

He heard howling which seemed to come from everywhere around him.  This wasn’t possible; there was no way that he could have been surrounded.  That just isn’t possible and wolves weren’t really around at this time of day.  How could they have been awake and ready for a hunt?

The leaves rustled around him.  Why had he gone this deep into the woods?  Was he about to be attacked by a pack of wolves that were somehow awake during the time they should have been sleeping.

He saw grey blur that he didn’t really see anything other than what seemed life fur.  He got a strong scent of oregano.  He could hear running on four feet and could feel hot breath on the back of his neck.

Joey quickly dropped to the ground and felt the teeth snap just where his neck would have been a second before.

Shivering he was feeling off and he felt that he was about to die.  He saw saliva dripping off of sharp teeth that glinted silver.  He felt something breaking from within him.

Joey screamed.  Something inside him answered. His heart stopped. For one impossible second, everything became silent. Then Joey heard another heartbeat. Not somewhere in the forest.

Inside himself.

THUMP.

Joey gasped.

THUMP.

His fingers dug into the earth.

“No…”

Something burned beneath his skin.

THUMP.

Joey screamed as his spine arched. His senses exploded. He could smell wet earth. Pine. Blood. His fear. The creature’s breath.

The mouse hiding beneath the fallen tree.

The deer running half a mile away.

Everything.

“No! What’s happening to me?”

His hands struck the ground. His fingers stretched. Bones cracked.

Joey stared in horror as his fingernails darkened, thickened and curved into enormous claws.

“No!”

He tried standing. His legs buckled. His bones weren’t breaking. They were changing. His body grew. Five feet. Six. Seven. Muscles rolled across his shoulders.

His clothes tore apart. Dark fur erupted across his arms, chest and back. His jaw pushed forward. Teeth lengthened. Joey tried screaming again.

What came from his throat wasn’t human.

It was a growl. Deep. Ancient. Powerful enough that the leaves around him trembled. The creature that had been hunting him stopped. For the first time that night, Joey smelled something different.

Fear.

But it wasn’t his anymore: it belonged to the creature. Joey slowly lifted his head. Golden eyes opened beneath the moonlight. The predator took a step backward.

Joey rose. And kept rising. He wasn’t a werewolf standing awkwardly between human and beast.

He wasn’t something from a horror movie.

He was a wolf.

A dire wolf.

An impossibly enormous one. Nearly the size of a horse, with massive shoulders, thick black-and-silver fur and paws powerful enough to crush bone beneath them.

He could hear his own breath.  His sight intensified and he could see flecks of red on the wolf that was in front of his fangs.  This was no ordinary wolf.  He had a sense of being from another world with magic.  This was not happening.

The wolf approached shifting into a half wolf, half human monster.  It had claws that were so sharp and pointed and the paws were part hands and were massive.

It swung its massive paw at Joey the Dire Wolf striking his shoulder.  The pain burst into his brain and felt like there was a pop and then his legs collapsed.

His shoulder is dislocated while  lying on the ground. The shifter approaches.

Joey winces in pain and expects the killing blow.

The shifter freezes and smells the air.   Mint. Eucalyptus. And something underneath it. The scene is immediately recognized.

“Jakub”

He backs away slowly, sniffs the air as if he doesn’t know what he should do.  This is not what he expected. How could this man smell of wolf as well as boundborn?

He grimaced, the smell of boundborn offended him deeply.  They were abominations and were never welcome in the pack.  “You smell of boundborn. You will pay with your life”. He walked closer deliberately not breathing in the horrid scent.  He raised his arms clasping them together like a hammer.

Joey looked up and saw the glee in the eyes as he looked upon his own death reflected in the eyes of the beast.  Joey felt something shift inside him and the instincts started to take control.  

Joey saw the attack coming.

He didn’t know how.

Worse, he didn’t know how he avoided it.

His body moved before his mind understood the danger.

Joey jumped out of the way as the hammer blow landed cracking some of the earth where Joey’s body had just been.

The power he could feel in his limbs and the jaw open to let out the growl that made all the birds fly in the air.  Joey let his massive paw stretched out and he swiped it across the neck area of the immense wolf thing.  He mk over at the last second narrowly avoiding a killing blow.

“The flea has some bite I see.  A new shifter like you with a boundborn parent can’t defeat me.  Jakub should be ashamed of you”

He had strength and speed.  The name Jakub was what made him feel even more alive.  He lurched forward snapping his jaw closed around the leg tearing it open as a hot knife slid through butter.

The hot blood spilled into his mouth and he could taste the iron of the blood.  It also has a bitter taste like hops, this is not what he wanted.

The shifter roared not in anger this time but pain.  He slammed his hand down hard on the back leg. He could hear a loud pop as the leg fractured.  Joey stopped biting and the red drool dropped from his canines.  

The wolf stumbled backward.

Joey smelled the change immediately.  Fear.

The creature stared at him—not at his teeth or claws, but at his size.

“No.”

Joey advanced.

“You’re extinct.”

Joey didn’t understand the word.

The wolf apparently did.

“There haven’t been Direborn for—”

Joey attacked.

Joey rolled forward  and whipped his claws through catching the carotid artery.  Blood spewed everywhere including into the muzzle of the wolf.

—–

The fight was over and hasn’t lasted long.  The wolf was in heaven and it has killed its rival.  Joey was horrified and was feeling ill because of what he had just done.

This was not normal.  He still had not returned to his normal human form.  What was this and why had the wolf said the name?  This was mysterious.

He heard the heart pounding but it was slowly calming and he could hear the double beat.  As he began.  The pain wasn’t as bad as what he thought.  He felt the wolf’s presence and he moved his upper arm and it popped the shoulder back into place.

The fracture and the shoulder started to feel whole again. What magic was this?  One moment this beast has burst out from his body like in Alien the movie and the next moment it starts to heal him from injury.

He slowly started to shift back to normal, the area where claws had been was some nails cracked. His teeth were sore from biting that fracture and he slowly probed his tongue around his teeth feeling no cracks or breaks.  His shoulder was bruised and all purple.  His ankle has swollen up but the pain was manageable.  The worst thing is he was naked.  One didn’t go out without clothes.

He heard and felt his stomach growl. He was shocked at how ravenous he had become.  Lunch wasn’t that long ago. He shouldn’t be feeling that he was 3 days without food.  His throat was parched as well and he felt exhausted and trembled with each step he took.  

He managed to make it home, thankfully there was no one home.  He snuck in and got into jogging pants and a short sleeve shirt.  He grabbed a huge amount of food and a glass of water.  He scarfed the food and water down so fast he thought he was going to drown himself and explode at the same time.

He smelled something odd that hadn’t been there before.  It has a lemony scent to it that is more powerful than any cleanser.  It was too strong and more bitter.  This was not normally how the house smelled.

He knew something was off now and somehow his adopted parents knew something.  Who was Jakub and what did he have to do with him?

The unmistakable sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and he waited patiently till he heard the click of the tumblers of the lock open as the key was turned.

He waited and as his parents came in he approached them. His father looked at him “What has happened?” his father asked.

He pulled up his sleeve to show the bruises that even now had started to become less purpley.  “What am I Dad?”

The Father looked shocked.  “You are injured” he said and as he approached he saw some of the bruises fade away even more.  He swore in Polish.  

Jakub doesn’t answer.

“What the hell is a Direborn?”

Silence.

“And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

Jakub finally looks at him.

“Your mother made me promise that you would never have to find out.”

Joey’s anger disappears.

“My mother?”

Jakub closes his eyes.

“Your real mother.”

—–

Jakub grimaced.  “My son, you always knew you were adopted.  I am from your biological mothers clan.  She knew you were going to be hunted.  It’s why she left you with us as my scent would protect you.”

Joey had never heard much about his mother.  He always had thought she left because she didn’t love him.  Now hearing the words from his adopted father that she left to protect him from those who hunted them.  He gulped and cleared his throat.  “What is my mothers name?”

“Your mother was Zuzana.  We aren’t sure what happened to her as she left but she kept in contact for a year.  Then nothing, it was as if she disappeared.  We believe that it was probably she got caught by a hunter and killed.”

He looked at Joey, this is not what is really to be talked about.  We need to find a way to protect you.  This is why I had you trained in martial arts.  I knew one day they would come and you would need to protect yourself.  You are special as you hold two clans with very distinct strengths.  Being raised by two boundborn members of Zuzana pack gives you some protection as they can’t scent through it easily.  It’s why I didn’t want you to take on the Forrest Ranger items as you would be putting yourself into the danger that your mother never wanted.”

Joey was shocked this was crazy and the fact that his parents had known he was going to potentially become a shifter “Why did you never explain what I was, I always felt different and drawn in other directions?”

Jakub just nodded “It was for your protection.  The less you knew the better it would be.  Zuzana was not wanting you to be a catalyst to war.  She wanted you to live a life as normal as possible.”

He knew something was off but he couldn’t really figure out why or what was wrong.  He left the room and slammed his bedroom door.

After he left Jakub sat down and put his head in his hands.  Should he have told him about the family connection?  Zuzana was not just Joey’s mother but was also the sister of Jakub.  

Would knowing that he was a blood relation change anything or make matters worse?

He looked around and could see some of the ornaments on the walls and around the house that were made by a local wizard who had cast protection spells so that this house would be the most secure place that Joey would ever live.

He didn’t want to think too hard about that as he knew both packs and the family Joey was born into had recessive genes of the direwolf.  Could Joey have become a Direwolf and just didn’t know what that was?

The time was nearly there when he would confess all to his son, the man who he raised for all his life.  What was coming was a civil war one were the packs would have to determine where they would side and who would they back.