The Shadows 18

Book1 Chapter9 

New Life 

I woke up long before anyone else who lived in the pack house. Not that many people lived there. Most had their own homes. I stayed in bed for a moment as I tried to force back the strange dream I’d had. It was more of a memory than a dream, and it wasn’t bad. It was of my childhood and I didn’t much like dreaming about my old life. It’d been about seven 

and a half years since I’d left my birth pack. 

The only reminder I had of that life was the picture I had taken before I left. It was one of the few decorations in my room 

at the pack house. The only other picture was a family portrait of Jason, Lily, and me. 

It was still dark outside the window. Sunrise wasn’t for another hour or so. I turned on my bedside lamp and got out of 

bed. I grabbed a pair of yoga pants and a singlet before entering the bathroom I shared with my little sister, Trinal 

Greenfield. 

The cold water chased away the remnants of my dream. I dried off and got dressed. I slipped the familiar silver necklace 

back over my head. It had been a gift given to me years ago. The pendant hung at the start of my breasts and was the 

head of a wolf howling wrapped in the outline of a crescent moon that was filled with tiny stars. 

A gypsy woman had given it to me soon after I’d become Beta after I’d helped her pack out with a Rogue problem. It’d 

been a strange gift. Even stranger because of what it could do. When we shift into our wolf-forms we shred our clothing 

in the process. The pendant preserved my clothes so that when I shifted between forms they weren’t lost. 

I could never figure out how it accomplished this task or why the woman had given away such a useful trinket but I was grateful for it. The woman had told me it was an artifact, a gift to an Alpha centuries ago from the moon goddess. 

Jason often teased me that it was magic that could also heal the dying. I regarded that notion in the same way I regarded the moon goddess. It simply did not exists. Whatever mystery force the pendant had, gods and magic had no part in it. 

I made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled out a frying pan along with eggs and a package of bacon. I heard the rustle of the few other occupants as they woke halfway through cooking the bacon. I smiled to myself. The aroma of food 

never failed to get them out of bed. 

“Morning,” Justin said as he sat down at the kitchen bar. Justin was the black man who’d been part of the group that found me when I first came here. I’d been wrong in thinking he was fighter. He was actually the next Theta. The position was passed down to him a couple years after my arrival. 

I set a plate of food down in front of him. “Who else is up?” 

“I heard your brother and older sister getting up, and I passed your boy toy as I was getting out of the shower,” Justin 

answered. 

I rolled my eyes at his nickname for Tristan, the other wolf who was at the diner that day. He actually was a fighter. “Tristan is not my boy toy.” 

“Sure he isn’t,” Justin said with a tone that made it clear he thought otherwise. He was forever childish in that sense. He was forever trying to label my relationship with the combat trainer and often switch from names like boy toy to boyfriend to friend with benefits. Not that there were benefits, at least not the ones Justin’s dirty mind thought of. Which Justin Book1 Chapter9 

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knew but he’d turned it into a running joke over the years. 

I finished cooking and made plates for everyone. “Do you know if Trina was up yet?” 

He shook his head and spoke around a mouthful of scrambled eggs, “She was still in her nest when I walked past her 

room.” 

I sighed. “If one bite of food is missing when I get back I will skin you like the mongrel you are.” 

Justin put a hand to his chest. “I’m hurt.” 

“Yeah well the truth hurts,” I replied turning off the stove and putting the frying pan in the sink. Justin had a knack for 

stealing food off plates when anyone turned a blind eye. The kleptomaniac. I went back upstairs and looked into Trina’s 

room. She was a tangled mess of limbs and sheets. She really did have a nest of pillows and blankets on top of her bed. I 

occasionally came in just to see if she’d laid eggs in the bundled mess. 

She was rarely amused when she caught me doing this. “Tree,” I said loudly, “it’s time to get up.” I got a groan in reply. 

“Trina! Rise and shine!” 

Book1 Chapter9