I was born to the alpha of the pack. The only child he ever had. This meant that if my father should die, I would become the alpha. I hated that idea; that I was more worthy as a result of my birth. I didn't want to learn the ways of the pack, let alone the private things that only an alpha would know.

More than that, my father was the alpha of alphas. He had his own pack, sure. But every alpha answered to him. Not just in America, no, every alpha, everywhere. This was what I was supposed to gain when he died, if he died. He had been alive for well over thirteen hundred years, possibly longer. I was just rounding one hundred.

Now of course we didn't look that old. We could age ourselves appropriately. Aging allowed us to have more time anywhere, to fit in better.

Some rules about pack life that are very important and cannot be broken are the fact that you can't leave the pack, not on your own. You can be thrown out of the pack, but you can't leave. If you are thrown out, you lose your aging techniques, you lose a lot. So, how do you stay in the pack? You can't bring others in, no humans, no one outside of your species. You can't hunt in someone else's land. You absolutely cannot challenge the alpha and not win. Pretty much the last one can result in death. Though if you bring a human into the fold, that human can wind up dead.

I have been the model pack member. I followed the rules, caused little mischief after I turned fifty, and helped to train the younger pack members. My da oversaw the training, never trusting either me, or the young members.

Werewolves were not known for their sweet temperament. Yeah, a pack of werewolves, fun right? The thing is, most members mate for life. Of course if you are alpha you don't. You just can't. The alpha needs to be free to give a child to any she-wolf who is mated, that can't carry the pups to term. This only happened once for my da. With me. My mom died giving birth to me, and as is the alphas right, he took me in.

One thing that humans probably should know about werewolves is that we are hard to kill. Silver, yeah, that doesn't work on us. We started that rumor because silver is somewhat hard to come by. Pretty much to kill us you have to take our heads off, or rip out our jugular quickly. We don't like lead; it is almost like an allergy for us. We can stand all sorts of climates, and we tend to run hotter than normal.

The full moon, it's nice to look at, and yes we love to howl at it. However, we don't need a full moon to change, and we aren't forced to change with the moon. Another rumor we started. We wanted to live in peace, and be able to deny what we were. It helped that the stereotypes allowed the humans to think we aren't what we are.

But this isn't my story, just a way for you to understand the life I have lived. For you to grasp why I desperately wanted change. Imagine, if you will, living for over a hundred years without a girlfriend, all because of your alpha status. Imagine seeing everyone around you, even younger wolves, have pups to watch over; then having to teach those same pups how to be a werewolf. It can be very frustrating, add in the fact that weres tend to have a higher amount of hormones in our systems. It creates for a lot of lonely nights.