Chapter One

2012

I folded my knees to my chest and buried my head in them. The silence of the woods behind me calmed me down, and so did the solidness of the tree trunk I sitting against. It was pouring rain, but only a few drops touched me; the mass of leaves and branches protected me from the downpour.

Two months ago, when I only started college here, I found this place. I needed peace and quiet sometimes from friends and school - and from the entire world, really. After all, it wasn’t always fun to be a part of the minority no matter where I went, especially in a world where humans were like ten percent of the population, and the other ninety percents were werewolves that never even pissed our way.

I sighed, feeling the cool wind caressing me. I always loved winter. I liked the cold and the accompanying rain, the broody weather, and the fact the sky was almost always cloudy, meaning the annoying sun wasn’t burning my skin. Besides me, no one in my college liked winter. Not only the other four humans here with me but werewolves, too. Wet fur got their panties in a twist, you see.

The thought made me scrunch my nose. Werewolves were the most beautiful creatures in this world. To humans, all of them looked beautiful, even the ones they thought to be ugly - to our human eyes, they just looked less pretty than the others. Of course, there were the ones that didn’t just look good but were utterly, completely, devastatingly gorgeous.

Humans, next to such creatures, looked so horribly bad it was sad. Even the pretty humans looked bad when standing side by side a werewolf. But the worst of it was, the humans who even we saw as much less than pretty, they were revoltingly disgusting for werewolves, although it wasn’t really an indication because werewolves treated humans as invisible and never really acknowledged us as a part of the world. Because they were bigger and stronger than us, we also didn’t try to make them acknowledge us.

Therefore, humans needed to band up together if they didn’t want to be left alone. We needed to be a united front against the condescending, annoying werewolves, and it applied here in college as well.

I took a deep breath and raised my eyes to the city. I had a great vantage point from the little hill I was on and I recognized the college, which was closest to me considering it was built on a nearby hill. It was a big, white structure with male and female dorms on each side of it. I didn’t want to apply to this college at first, but because my friend Charlotte insisted she didn’t want to be alone in the middle of a den of wolves - literally - I join her. In college, we got a room in the dorms with the two other human girls besides us, with whom we became fast-friends thanks to our only common interest: our humanity. There was only one human boy at college, too, and the poor guy had to share a room with werewolves. He was also our only dating option in here, and after every girl tried her luck with him, only Jane, one of our roommates, succeeded in capturing his heart, and now the two were wildly in love. Lucky bitch, I thought, considering no one else was an option in this goddamn college, considering all male werewolves wanted female wolves, and likewise.

Which, all things considered, pretty much sucked ass. But it wasn’t like I would’ve caught anyone’s attention as it was. I wasn’t pretty or overly smart, and my personality was less than appealing. Who would want someone like me?

Not that Charlotte, for example, was in a better position. She was short and round with messy blonde hair and a pair of watery blue eyes, and her face was ruined by a severe case of acne. She, too, wasn’t bright, but at least she had courage, even if usually that specific trait came out in the worst situations.

Of course, she was my best friend, and she was nice when she wanted to be, but sometimes she made those comments that I wanted the ground to open wide and swallow me whole. There were also many moments in which she tried to actually befriend werewolves - and failed epically - and I always wanted to disappear and say “I have no idea who she is” but we’d been friends ever since forever wand within time I learned to accept her as she was, even if it was extremely hard to do so more often than not.

Besides, she had to tolerate me too, so I guess it was only fair.

My phone went off and jolted me out of my thoughts. I took it out of my jeans pocket and studied the screen; Hazel, one of our roommates, was calling. Hazel, unlike the other humans here at college, was actually beautiful - in human standards, of course. But while she went under the werewolves radar as just another human, none of us could ignore her beauty. She also got straight As. She didn’t rely on her brains, considering there weren’t much of them to rely on, and instead she actually studied her butt off to get those marks.

“Yes?” I responded after accepting the call, my voice raspy with misuse.

“Where are you?” Hazel asked, and I could hear the smile in her voice. Rare were the times she didn’t smile.

“Taking a stroll,” I told her, which wasn’t exactly a lie, even though all I did was sit down and hug myself, “Why?”

“Charlotte and I need you,” she retorted with a chuckle.

I sighed. “Does it have to be now?” I asked, trying to hide my irritation and probably failing. I wanted to rest and relax, disconnect from the world, and she really didn’t help me with this request.

“Please?” she begged, “we really, really need your help!”

I felt a headache coming and started massaging my temple. “If the name Strider Luxford is uttered even once, I’m going to - “

“But of course it’s about Strider, silly,” Hazel said excitedly and I rolled my eyes because there was barely a conversation with them that didn’t include Strider I’m-the-shit Luxford lately, “it’s time he acknowledged Charlotte and me!”

Strider Luxford was the most popular werewolf in college for a few simple reasons: One, he was hot. Two, he was hot. Three, he was hot. And four, he was hot. Oh, and he was the only werewolf in college that got the title of Guard, even if he was still just a novice.

In every large city in the world, there was a Millennium Force, which was a unit of highly-capable werewolves that ran each city on behalf of the Alpha of the Millennium. The Alpha of the Millennium was a werewolf who was born once in a thousand years, who was stronger, crueler, smarter and wiser than any other werewolf. In addition, his wolf shape was bigger than other werewolves, and he could beat any werewolf he wanted with one hand tied behind his back, and mop the floor with them afterward. If his outworldly strength wasn’t enough, he was also immortal. Until now, there were only three Alphas of the Millennium who were living a nice life in the countryside, sometimes with a new family they wanted to build (none of those families were immortals, obviously) but mostly with a tightly-knit community they gathered around themselves so they wouldn’t be alone. Every time a new Alpha was born, which meant every millennium, the former Alpha took on the role of a teacher, so the when the next Alpha reached the age in which he stopped growing up and immortality kicked in, the previous Alpha would step down and pass the heavy title to the new one.

Now, Strider Luxford was part of the Millennium Force, which was in direct contact with the current Alpha of the Millennium. Therefore, from his high stand as the college’s heartthrob, he now reached a godly class in the eye of the students. Not only he was the best looking werewolf I’d ever seen, but the sonovabitch also reached a much higher level in the werewolf hierarchy, with him going from novice to a full Guard. Even though he was still studying in college, he was also having shifts in the local Millennium Force and went on missions from time to time. He also grew even more muscular and, if that was possible, sexier since he’d started at the Force, and if there was a girl who didn’t want him before, she definitely wanted him now, too.

Of course, there were exceptions to that. Take Jane, for example, who was head over heels for Ethan. And, of course, I didn’t want anything to do with him, because I’d never found arrogance and cruelty cute. Hazel and Charlotte, though, didn’t think the same, and they crushed hard on him ever since day one. They were dreamers, whereas I was a realist; he would never notice a human, not even Hazel, and certainly not Charlotte.

“Come on, Hazel,” I said, exasperation thick in my voice, “you’ve got to understand already he’s not in our league.” Not that any other werewolf was in our league, but that was beside the point.

“Don’t be mean, Angela,” Hazel said, still enthusiastic. She was always optimistic, no matter what. “Just come over here and help us, okay?”

“I’ll be back in an hour,” I said, this time not even bothering to hide my annoyance, “you can handle yourselves until then,” and before she managed to protest I hung up. The last thing I wanted was to go back and help them plan their own downfall. It would also be quite sad to watch them staring at Strider like the other girls when he passed through the hallway, with his golden locks, sea-blue eyes, tanned skin, toned, long-legged figure, and the million-dollar smile that was almost always stretching his handsome face.

But I knew Charlotte would throw one of her infamous tantrums if I refused to help her and Hazel with whatever new plan the two concocted, so an hour later, as promised, I forced myself up on my feet, stretched my numb limbs, and began my trip back to college while soft rain poured down on me.

When I reached the college, I had to force myself inside my room, knowing fully I was going to get a migraine before I could even say Strider Luxford.