This would be the preliminary chapter for a book idea I have, centered around werewolves, of all things. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love werewolves and the lore that surrounds them, but the werewolf fiction on Wattpad leaves something to be desired. I'm also mostly writing this because I'm trying to catch up on Teen Wolf and I don't think I could write the characters enough to just do fanfiction. Thus I'm getting out my wolfy feels with something relatively original! 

The one positive thing Wyn chooses to take out of this situation is that her brother wasn't involved.

At least not directly.

He probably influenced the mayhem, said just the right thing to egg on some of the more volatile wolves, but his scent isn't at the scene and from what Sophie is saying (ten feet away, hedged in by Louis and James, the overprotective bastards) Jeremy's been at the library for most of the day. If she felt so inclined, Wyn might call bullshit on that alibi, but more than once this week she's caught Jeremy tearing out his hair over a history paper; he might actually be at the library for once, especially considering his teacher is Mrs. Williams, who's lived as the last surviving member of the campaign to keep book research alive in the golden age of the Internet.

So. Jeremy is probably not a factor in this, and Wyn probably won't have to skin him alive later, when he comes home.

"Okay, okay, everyone settle down," Wyn huffs, clapping her hands together to gain the attention of the wolves who are still glaring daggers at each other, teeth far too sharp and eyes way too red for the time and place. She can feel the migraine coming on, and it isn't even noon yet. "Ally, Neil, take three steps back and retract the claws before I rip them off your fingers."

Ally's hands twitch just once before dropping down to her sides. The claws slide back into her skin, melting away with the ease of honed control; it takes significantly longer for Neil to un-wolf himself, and from the smug smirk dripping from Ally's lips, this was the point of contention between them. Neil might be younger, might have an excuse, but he's the son of the alphas. And apparently that gives him the ego of a tragic Greek hero without skin thick enough to match it.

"Ally started it--" Neil growls, only to be cut off by Ally's disbelieving snort.

"You're the one who couldn't keep up with the rest of us!"

"Sophie couldn't either!"

"Sophie is a nature spirit," Wyn interrupts dryly, rubbing tender circles into her temples as she briefly lifts her gaze to the sky before settling on the snarling wolves again. Their red-hot resentment looks so laughably out of place in Walker Park, with its freshly trimmed grass and jogger-moms and ultimate frisbee playoffs. They're far too wild here in this manicured paradise. Alice and Ben are so going to have their work cut out for them with these two. "Therefore Sophie is not required to keep pace with us werewolves. And anyway, that's not the point of the daily runs and I could have sworn I've drilled that into both your heads more times than I care to count. We run to burn off excess energy, not to show off.'

The pointed look she shoots at Ally isn't lost on the girl. Far from it. That doesn't mean she listens, though, because what does it matter that Wyn has seniority in the pack when faced with the developing hormones of a tween? Ally is pissed, possibly (Wyn sniffs discreetly, hides a grimace), no definitely dealing with her time of the month, and something about Neil just rubs her the wrong way; nothing Wyn could say is going to pull her out of her hazy anger until she herself decides it's time for it.

Which is just great. Fantastic, really. This is exactly what Wyn wanted to do with her free time today.

She'd been excused from the daily runs over a year ago, when she proved to Ben and Alice (mostly Ben, because Alice hadn't cared much one way or the other) that she could handle the energy that buzzed beneath her skin without stripping down and shifting in the middle of town. Her control had improved remarkably once she'd graduated high school, which didn't surprise her one bit, seeing as she'd pretty much blamed all her stress on exams and prom and the unsettlingly close proximity she'd had to boys who reeked of sex and girls that smelled equally of desperation.

Not to say she was above all that; she'd had her fair share of rendezvous with relatively attractive people and chased after just as many hard-to-get assholes. But with her nose and her ears? Nothing was left to the imagination. Nothing.

Well, anyway, no more three-mile runs for Wyn. Problematically, though, that meant someone else was in charge of them. And that someone else has historically never been the most reliable of people - wolves - whichever.

She'd questioned Ben's choice to give the training over to Matthew, of course she had, but Ben had told her Matt needed to learn responsibility one way or the other, and maybe this would be good for him, good for everyone.

Wyn's regretting giving in so easily now.

"Matty," she sighs, twisting around to bring Matt into her line of sight. He straightens under her gaze, lowering the foot he'd kicked back against the tree he's leaning into and uncrossing his arms. It's a stance that isn't quite as defensive as his previous one, but it's fooling no one - not even Sophie, who sends Wyn another pitying glance from where she's huddled between her personal idiots.

(As a side note, Wyn doesn't even want to touch that dynamic with a ten-foot pole; why Sophie puts up with James the not-so-clever wolf and fae-born Louis, she'll never know)

"Are you going to make me ask?"

"I'd actually prefer that you don't say anything at all," Matt mutters, pitching his voice just loud enough for her to hear him loud and clear. It makes her scowl, but she smooths over the expression as he looks up at her again, eyes narrowed. "I got them apart, didn't I? What more was I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to watch them, Matty." She drops her voice, even though she doubts it's necessary; Neil and Ally are back to squaring off against each other, and Wyn might as well not even be there for all the attention they're sparing her. "You're supposed to make sure that they don't expose themselves and get themselves jailed. Or worse."

It's cliche and it's horrible, and she hates saying it with every fiber of her being, but it needs saying, and clearly no one else is going to put the very real threat that they face into words.

Werewolves have lived alongside humans for millennia with very few incidents marring their track record. Because they're good at hiding, good at blending in. Because they know with sickening clarity how little effort humans put into understanding each other, let alone a completely separate species. If werewolves came out and declared themselves separate from the myths and urban legends they populate in the minds of humans, well... personally Wyn thinks the world would turn into an amateur horror movie pretty damn quickly.

"Nobody saw them!" Matt snaps, throwing an arm wide to indicate that, aside from the magical creatures here in the shelter of the trees, no one else is around. "I got them into the woods before anything went wrong, and I stopped them from maiming each other. That's as good as anything you could have done!"
He might be right. Maybe Wyn wouldn't have reacted any differently, maybe she wouldn't have seen the signs of aggression until it was too late. The difference, though, is that Wyn wouldn't need someone to reprimand her afterwards, because she'd already be doing it to herself.

She nods after a moment, a short, tight movement, and something in Matt's expression changes. Sophie looks away from the conversation going on above her head and frowns, and Wyn rolls her eyes, settling back on her heels. She's giving off quite the furious aroma right now, she knows, but it's harder to control that than it is to keep the fangs at bay. She hasn't mastered her emotions the same way her alphas have, and it's times like these where her inexperience bleeds through the charade of maturity she usually presents to the world.

God, does she hate being a teenager.

"Just... make sure it doesn't happen again," Wyn says tiredly, waving off Sophie's concern and Matt's evident confusion. It's not like her to pass up on the chance to ream him out, that much is obvious, but it's not like Matt needs another dismissal. He's quick to latch onto Neil and Ally's shirts (flashing past Wyn without so much as a deferential dipping of his head, not that she cares all that much) and drag them onto the path that cuts through the park, herding them back home. He'll probably drop Neil off first and slip out before Ben can ask him how things went and walk Ally back to her neighborhood afterwards.

"Don't give me that look, Sophie," Wyn sighs without turning to look at the fair-haired nature spirit, hands on her hips as she cranes back her neck to peer through the tangle of tree branches above her at the blue-toned sky. "I'm not in crisis-mode or anything, there's nothing wrong. I'm just not in the mood to manhandle Matt back to Ben's house."

She's not sure when it happens, exactly, but one moment Sophie's sandwiched between the two posturing assholes, and the next she's clinging to Wyn's arm, her mouth pursed into a disturbingly off-putting pout. Her hands are warm on Wyn's skin, her grip not so tight that she can't feel the genuine concern radiating off the blonde. Wyn doesn't shake her off, partially because she knows it's a lost cause (Sophie's stronger than she looks, and using force would just get her hurt, and Wyn's not in the mood for that either), partially because she's letting herself take comfort in the spirit's proximity. Sophie isn't pack, per se, but she's close enough, and with how high-strung Wyn's feeling, Sophie's presence helps in abundance.

"Soph, really, I'm--"

"Wyn, I love you dearly, but either you're getting dull in your old age, or you're entirely too used to the smell of blood, and that, frankly, is a whole other matter we should be worried about. Later."
Wyn's head snaps up, pinning Sophie with an incredulous look even as she's flaring her nostrils, burrowing past the natural, earthy scents around her - but she doesn't even have to, she realizes with a jolt, because the air is saturated with the metallic scent of blood.

Wyn nearly gags, it's so overpowering.

How could she not have noticed this before now? How could Sophie have sensed it first?

Maybe she really is letting herself get dulled.

James and Louis are instantly running up to snatch Sophie back (probably having caught the scent themselves now) and for once, Wyn is grateful for them and their ridiculous duel to win Sophie's love; she touches her friend's shoulder briefly, squeezing with just enough pressure to say that she'll handle this herself, before James has an arm around her waist and Louis is boxing her in from the other side, his keen eyes flickering about the park.

"Watch her," Wyn says, and it's so unnecessary it's laughable, but she says it anyway because it's habit, and because she needs to know that Sophie will be safe without her.

"'Course, Wyn," James replies, his grin entirely too wicked to be seen in broad daylight, but there it is, just another extension of his obsessive love. "No way we'd let anything happen to Sophie!"

"As much as I don't want to agree with him," Louis mutters, rolling his eyes, "he's right. You can trust us to protect Sophie. So go on, go deal with whatever hellish thing that's managed to traipse into our territory."

Our territory. Wyn's lips twitch, the precursor to an untimely smile. Louis is as much pack (technically) as Sophie is, but it's not often that he chooses to acknowledge that, still holding tightly to his fae roots - even if it's been a century since his kind last thrived in these woods. Wyn sometimes wonders if that's why he sought out Sophie in the beginning, before he developed such obnoxious feelings for her; the nature spirits in this area are a dying breed, with only Sophie and a few others populating the trees in her pack's territory. Pollution has a lot to do with it, of course, among other things, but in any case, it would explain Louis' fierce need to see that no harm comes to Sophie (often to an infuriating extent, but Wyn tries not to think about the Needle Incident of 2013 if she can help it).

James, though, is a mystery Wyn's never had the patience nor the interest to solve.

Sophie huffs good-naturedly, twining her arms with both James and Louis and nodding her reassurance to Wyn.

"Like he said, go on, get going. I'll be alright here. And," Sophie adds, her eyes alight with her usual brand of worry - it's something Wyn would have teased her about under less abnormal circumstances, "you might not be as in need of those as you think you are."
Wyn's fingers curl reflexively into her palms, sharp claws nearly pricking through skin. She'd loosed them on instinct, gearing herself up for a fight without realizing it, and she can feel the unnatural press of teeth against her lips, signalling she's dropped her fangs. She just hopes her eyes aren't burning red - from a distance, that's much more likely to be noticed by a passerby than claws she can hide and teeth no one will see so long as she keeps her mouth shut.

So Wyn just nods, terse and tense, and then she's running, weaving her way deeper into the forest that borders the park, deeper into the heart of her territory, chasing after that harsh tang of blood she can't seem to rid herself of, even if she'd wanted to.

It's a relatively short run, but it leads her closer to her pack's meeting place than she's comfortable with. She slows as the scent of blood sharpens and converges; it's heavy, the air absolutely thick with it, but she can still point out the origin point. Ducking under a low branch, Wyn steps around a cluster of trees, her metaphorical hackles already rising.

But she draws to an unsteady halt the second she's able to process what she's seeing.

"What the hell?"

The figure lying prone in the dirt doesn't stir at her voice, nor does it so much as twitch as she takes a step closer. The heartbeat she picks up is faint, erratic and barely-there; likewise their breathing is shallow and soft. But there is a heartbeat, and they are breathing - that's what Wyn focuses on as she picks her way through the underbrush and scattered branches to drop to her knees at their side.

She may not be anything as pleasant as an optimist, but even a realist can look on the brighter side of things once in awhile.

The blood isn't obvious at first (aside from the stench of it), and it takes a moment for Wyn to put two-and-two together, looking from the dark, damp patch of soil underneath the figure (a man, she thinks, from the breadth of their shoulders, since their face is pressed into the earth) to the darkening stain adorning their already dark shirt. She wastes no time with courtesy, gently rolling him (she's going with male for now) onto his side, and - yeah, she was right about the guy thing and the wound thing.

The shirt is shredded over his abdomen, revealing the deep gashes in his stomach. She has to swallow back a mouthful of bile at the sight of it, because he can't be alive, that can't be the case when she's staring directly at his internal organs without even a thin layer of skin between them.

"Shit," she hisses, digging her claws into her knees to ground herself, to drag her thoughts away from the whirlwind that's sprung up in the center of her mind. Pain's always been such a good distraction for her and her kind. "Shit, shit, shit. Ben's gonna-- Alice is gonna-- Shit."

And then she stops. Just stops, her heart on pause, her lungs stilled. Because he's looking at her.

"Werewolves," he groans, his glossy amber eyes staring straight at her, and it sounds like the gravelly pitch of his voice is not just because he's bleeding out on the forest floor. "So... dramatic..."

Wyn doesn't know whether to laugh or scream.

She settles on shouting into the void that has become her mind and tuning out the babble of the dying man beside her as she tries to breathe through the panic clawing at her heart.

He should be dead. And he's complaining at her.

What the fuck.