Second Chance Wolfless Mate

Dark Sky Pack

She was mousy and plain.

Electra sighed as she looked at herself in the mirror. She looked the same. Plain brown hair, strange black eyes hidden behind brown contacts and skin that was pale from hiding in the library. She was not overly tall and was a little pudgy. Definitely not your typical beautiful werewolf.

Every year she said that she was going to start going to the gym, going to get in shape, going to….

However, she knew better.

She would go to school, the kids would be mean and cruel; especially, AJ, the Alpha’s son. She would hide in the library, get lost in a book and then come back home. Mom would tell her that she’s perfect. Dad would tell her that when she turned seventeen things would change.

Helena knocked on the door, “I’ve got to pee!”

Shaking her head, Electra pulled on her blue-green maxi dress and unlocked the door. Her fourteen-year-old sister was the epitome of young beauty. Her brown hair had blonde highlights, and her eyes were light green. And she was tall and skinny. Everyone loved Helena.

Electra left the bathroom as her sister rushed in. Their older brother, Troy, came up the stairs with their youngest sister, Athena, on his back. She was laughing loudly and urging him onward.

Just like the rest of the family, they were also beautiful. They all shared the same light brown hair and green eyes. The other kids were tanned from playing in the sun and fit from sports. And dimples. They all had adorable dimples.

Truly, Electra sometimes thought, the only thing missing was a sparkle when they smiled.

“Go finish getting ready,” Troy laughed as he sat the little girl down. Athena grumbled but went into the room that the four girls shared.

“Come here,” Troy said, pulling Electra into his arms. She rested her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. Kissing his sister’s hair he discreetly smelled her. “I promise, it will happen when it’s supposed to,” he whispered.

She nodded against his muscled chest as a few tears slipped out of her eyes. She turned sixteen without a wolf. Then seventeen. And eighteen.

Every birthday it was the same. She looked no different. She felt no different. She had no wolf.

By the time Troy met his mate, all the kids except Athena, who was still too young, and Electra had a wolf. On her nineteenth birthday, there was no hug in the hallway decorated for Yule and the Winter Solstice. No reassurances as he tried to smell her without her knowing. But he and his mate stopped by for lunch.

“I think Electra should go to college,” Troy announced.

“The Alpha will not allow her to attend college,” their mother pointed out.

“A human college,” Troy corrected. “Mom, do you know what life is like for someone who is wolf-less?”

“I know it can’t be easy…”

“It can’t be easy?” Electra said softly as she took off her cardigan sweater. Bruises covered her arms. “I’m a punching bag. Why do you think I always hide in the library?”

“Who’s doing this to you?” their father demanded.

Looking at her younger brother and sister, she whispered, “Who’s not?”

“If we don’t, then they attack us too!” Jason argued.

“It doesn’t matter. Once I turn twenty-one, if I don’t have a wolf, I have to leave. Or become your slave,” Electra said sadly, softly. She stood up and walked towards the stairs, “Happy birthday.”

“Please,” Claire asked her in-laws. “She’s endured so much already.”

“We’ve secured her a place in a college close to the pack lands. She can’t keep living like this,” Troy added. “The Alpha has taken so much from her.”

It was a low blow, one that struck his parents with guilt. They all knew exactly how much had been taken from their adopted daughter. And he was right; it was only going to get worse. If she remained, she would be forced into servitude.

Eventually, their parents relented and in January, Electra moved into the dorms of the human college, part of the University of Maine system. She turned twenty. Then twenty-one. Still, she had no wolf. She had earned a scholarship and got a part-time job working in a public library.

She missed living with a pack. Even when the pack members were horrible to her, she liked knowing her family was there. That her parents loved her no matter what. She had loved the weekends when she could still go home.

Now, they could only meet off pack lands. Thankfully, her brother worked for the council and lived just outside pack lands in neutral territory.

“Are we still doing dinner at Troy’s house Saturday after my graduation?” Electra asked her mom over the phone. She was twenty-three and still wolf-less. But the second Saturday in May, she would graduate with a teaching and library science degree.

“Oh, hun, we can’t. The council is having a meeting, and we all have to work.”

“I understand,” Electra said as she ended the call.

She sat the phone down and grabbed up her old ratty teddy bear that she had had for as long as she could remember. Burying her face in its faded velvet fur, she let the tears flow.

“Teddy, the good thing about not being noticed is that you’re not noticed. The bad thing about not being noticed is that you’re not noticed.”

As always, the old brown bear offered his comfort in silence. From the depths of her mind came the ethereal voice that she had heard all her life. The voice that her father said was her conscience, her self-guardian, if you will.

Electra never told her dad that there were two voices that she would hear. The ethereal one and the angry one. The angry voice would tell her that vengeance and retribution would be her gifts. The ethereal one would tell her that there was more to her life than what she was told.

She just needed to be patient. To hold fast.

As the sun dipped low outside the window where she lay curled in the fetal position, looking almost like a sleeping wolf, her dreams took her on wondrous adventures just as they always had. Tonight, when she felt low and unloved, they showed her as an army leader.

Giving the command to attack, Electra watched as the person she was dreaming of being shifted into a large angry gray wolfhound. Running towards the enemy, she bared her teeth and snapped at enemy soldiers who fell away in fear.

Reaching her nemesis, his face faded from an unknown one into the handsome and sneering face of AJ. In her dream, her large canine mouth opened and sank deadly fangs into his neck. She shook the body hard until she heard the satisfactory sound of his neck snapping.