Growing up in the shadow of the two most dominant female lycans of my time was often humbling. Like right now, I bit the dirt once more. My body fell to the ground weakly, Ele and Jenna had been taking turns working me over in the training yards again. I felt so drained, I did not even have the strength to stand once more. Roars erupted from behind me. Through my red-orange hair, I could see the crimson beauty of my alpha.

Elanor Cambelle was thirty now, but she had not aged a day since I first met her at thirteen. She held the air of power and grace of a fully developed lycan female alpha now. Her energy was like being in the middle of a massive electrical storm. She was the very primal beast that the backwards male lycans feared the most. She was a pure-blood lycan alpha.

She was wearing simple black cargo pants and a white tank-top. She wore no shoes, never when she spared and like any true lycan, that did not make her blows less deadly. My ribs were cracking, the proof of her power.

"Is that all the will power you can muster Camila Moss?"

I snarled at the use of my full name. Ele always seemed to know how to push my buttons—everyone's buttons.

"You try fighting two alphas back to back!"

Ele rolled her eyes and then the thunderous aura of the other alpha female rose to my side. I turned, Jenna was a long white-blonde haired beauty. She was only twenty-three-years-old, but the air of command weighed heavy on her shoulders. She had barely been seventeen when she became second. The youngest lycan female in history to hold down such a high-ranking spot and weather all comers.

"You think that Ele and I do not fight off multiple alphas pup!?"

Her voice crackled like a whip. She was the military might of the pack, the general if you will. Her tone bartered for nothing! She was as unbending as iron. She did not obtain her security by being nice. Jenna was ruthless, but she loved her pack. Even I knew that she meant well. We all griped about Jenna's "Lycan Games," at least until we fought off larger packs and weathered vampire attacks. You start to see an artistry to her dominance and purpose to her ruthlessness.

"I know that she has, I did not mean it that way!"

Ele flashed me fangs, dropping her human visage for just a second.

"Rise pup! Show me the depth of your resolve pup!"

Her words felt like they were trailed by a thunderstorm. Alpha command was something that could not really affect me, but as her sister-wolf, I responded to it. My heart would always respond to the thundering resonance of our mutual connection. Despite my fatigue, despite my dripping and bloody shoulder, I stood one last time. I roared and I shifted into a crimson furred wolf. Her flash of black fur spun around me and we tumbled to the ground, snapping and clawing savagely.

Ele never fought her own pack with the viciousness that she unleashed on me. Not even Jenna could coax her into such brutality. All the other lycans in the yard trembled in fear at the deathly and blazing aura of two alpha lycans in a life or death struggle.

My heart was pounding double-time in my ears now. I could not treat any match with Ele like it was just sparring. It had never been sparing, she truly meant to kill me, if I gave her one moment of vulnerability. I knew that she had become a monster for a good reason. She and I both knew that my time with her was running out. Unlike Angela, her predecessor, who had once kicked Ele off her land; Ele was furious that she was about to part with me.

I dug deep into the emotions that this sent surging through me, the injustice, the depravity and the raw male hunger! It was not Ele's fault that the whole of the male alpha community in the western world had united against her for one purpose. They would get their pound of flesh, in the form of me, the third and final alpha female of the Grayville Pack. They had failed to "obtain" Jenna or Ele, so now they had united to ensure that I would be forced to mate to one of them.

If I did not leave Grayville before the week's end, my sisters would be in a war they could never win. There is no stopping the whole of the male community. It is like trying to cut out a cancer that circles the whole body. The impossibility of my situation had been a constant since I was thirteen. I curse that Jamie Wells, his vengefulness and his gluttony for power and possession had sparked this unholy alliance.

Jamie was here right before Jenna turned Taylor—her mate—and gave her heart to him. Lycans cannot interrupt a marked pairing, since it would incur so much war if they did, but he still coveted the power. His desire for such power in a mate had driven him to demand me. His hate for Jenna and Ele runs so deep that he threatens war on a near weekly bases now.

Five years, I have lived with the shadow of these threats. Five years my lycan sisters have made me as strong as they can. Jenna and Ele tire me out daily, only to do so once more the next day. I love them, but I also loath my training menu. I have no doubts in my mind that I will use all my training, but that does not stop me from wishing to be another girl shopping for prom dresses, like my peers in school. They treat me with extra caution, because they have known about our pack for the past five years, due to a crazy master vampire plaguing the town. We came out of the proverbial closet to the locals then, less they all be drained or turned.

They are good neighbors, don't get me wrong, but they are leery of the predators they share their land with. They all know who the alphas are, since it is obvious who our people defer to. Being an alpha, they began to keep me at arm's length very early. Some of them saw firsthand, just how powerful Ele and Jenna are, so they fear me too. (Though, they saw it, because my sisters were saving their lives—as was I!)

Five years later, Grayville citizens have not ratted us out to the tabloids, but they are still human. We have had some goth kids in their full guy-liner and leather come to our gates asking to have our "dark curse of the moon" placed upon them. We typically let Jenna handle those crazies, since she seems to have a way with putting fear into people and making it an educational experience.

Tumbling and snapping my fangs into Ele's left should, she snarled and launched her teeth into my snout and I jerked my head, tearing the wounds deeper. Finally, both bleeding and exhausted, Ele and I crumple into one another. We had been going at it for over eight hours. I was still amazed every time we finished and it was coming closer and closer to a draw, though she still avoided my neck completely in our wolf forms. Ele knew her power too well, she was the alpha of us all for a reason, if her jaws lock on a lycan throat, that lycan does not get up after the fight. She is loved and respected, but she is also feared—as any perfect alpha should be!

Jenna yelled for towels. Her mate and Clay—Ele's alpha mate—came forward and they each picked one of us up. Taylor—Jenna's mate—pulled me up into his large arms and begun to carry me into the infirmary.

"What have they done now!" Exclaimed a very irate Daemon—our pack doctor.

"Alpha Elanor, I thought I warned you against such exertion right after childbirth!"

I forgot to mention, Ele is a mother of two now! Her oldest is just turned four, Grace Elanor Cambelle-Wells. She is a fiery ginger just like her mother and she had her father's bright blue eyes. She is the pack princess and Ele is truly a remarkable mom! I can see that she is already worried for her daughter, Grace is every bit the alpha that her mother is, even at four, we can scent her aura of power. The pack knows she is their heir. Since our pack has a matriarchal structure, it is not a surprise that the men are ok with it.

Our men are unique, they see the logic and power in the female run pack. They see the strength and longevity it is breeding into our pack. Even the older lycans, they all admire the strength and wisdom of their female rulers.

Maggie came in, she is a brown haired lycan gamma, she does most the cooking. She handed Ele a crying baby boy. He is a month old now. Connor Cambelle-Wells, her son and an alpha. Even with his cries of hunger, I feel the pulse of lycan power in him. He will one day be the protector of his sister and his pack.

Ele cradled her baby against her chest and he was instinctively reaching for his food source. She had zero problems with breastfeeding her child right in the infirmary. We are lycans, nudity and hunger come with the turf, so infants were not going to neglected because "decency" was in question.

Clay checked Ele's closing wounds over. He knew that he could not pamper his mate, since she had the same level of power as him, but I could see the rawness of concern in his eyes. He loved Ele and she was so much more to him than the pure-blood alpha breeder in his bed. To Clay, Ele was his entire world! I hoped against hope, one day, if I were very lucky, I might find such love. Though, I would have to survive a lot of attempted rape, if Jamie Wells had anything to say about it!

Clay had sworn blood vengeance on his whole family, since his father was actively backing Jamie now. His father was just too steeped in the "old ways." To see reason. To him, it was an affront to his bloodline, that Jenna nearly killed his heir—defending her chastity, might I add!

Our lives are complicated. I am the rarest of wolves. My mother is a beta and my father a gamma, yet I am an alpha. There are three types of alphas. Pure-blood alphas, whose power is as innate as their DNA. There is Inherited "blood alphas" like Jenna. Then, there is the very rare "rising alpha." That is what I am, one who rises to the rank of alpha on the power of their own determination and their own strength of will and character.

This is a coveted type and it is very rare. Most cases of a "rising alpha" are male. To be a female "rising alpha" is to be even more coveted than the extremely rare "pure-blood" type like Ele. Males think that breeding a "rising alpha" will give them the most dominant pups, because we are so damn stubborn! News flash, all alphas are stubborn you morons!

Daemon acted put out, his worry over Ele and I was well earned. We had been regular visitors to the infirmary. Jenna had gladly passed the baton of most frequent flyer miles in the infirmary, to me. She did not seem to mind losing that title or "honor."

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