Chapter 1

I shut off my alarm clock the moment it started beeping. I'd been up for about two hours. Normally I would have been downstairs eating or going out to pick up my best friend so we could grab coffee before school. Unfortunatly that was not in the cards.

I was currently avoiding leaving my room. I'd been ready for school for over an hour. I had worked on the little homework that I still hadn't done and finished reading a book. I really did not want to go out.

It's my birthday.

It's not that I don't like my birthday. Usually I enjoy it. Just not this year. In my family turning sixteen is special. We aren't like everyone else. We evolved to shift between two forms. The form of a wolf and the form of a human. Werewolves, though we just call ourselves wolves.

There are many of us and we live pretty similarly to humans. We have jobs and families and parents that make their children attend high school. Most of us are organized into packs much like actually wolves. The leaders of these packs are called Alphas. Alpha families protect the members of their packs and in return the members of the pack are forced to obey the Alpha.

Forced seems a little strong but with a direct order from the Alpha you have no choice to obey. Most Alphas rarely ever use Alpha orders.

Another factor that makes us much like real wolves is that we have mates. Unfortunately we do not get to choose our mates. Once a wolf turns sixteen he or she can recognize his or her mate if they are also sixteen.

My mother is particularly excited about my new ability to discover my mate. I guess it's like that with your first-born. Sadly, I do not share her sentiment. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that I don't want to find my mate. I just don't want to find my mate right now. Maybe a few years from now when I've finished college and started my career. I will be Beta, second in command, of the Silver Moon Pack. My pack. My father is the current Beta and as his first born I have been train as the heir to the position.

"Dee!" Tyler yelled loudly outside my door. "I know you're awake! You'll have to come out sooner or later, might as well get it over with!"

I groaned grabbed my book bag. "It's not necessary to yell if you are aware that I'm awake," I informed him darkly as I opened the door.

He gave me an overly sunny smile. "Happy sixteenth birthday!"

I glared. "Utter a word about it being my birthday at school and I will end you."

It was bad enough that my baby brother was taller than me despite being a year and a half younger but I just knew he was going to make today so much longer than it needed to be. If any male wolves realized I was now sixteen they would try to see if we were mates. There were several signs but the favorite among hormonal teenage boys is contact. Once both wolves were sixteen supposedly when they touched they would feel sparks.

I'm not really a firm believer but what do I know.

I followed Tyler downstairs. "It smells like food," I observed.

"I made myself pancakes while you were pouting up in your bedroom," Tyler explained jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter and placing a plate with three large pancakes.

"We make food on that counter," I said making a metal note to wipe it down later. I saw he go for the syrup and swooped in, stealing a pancake before it could be drowned in maple-flavored liquid sugar.

"Hey!" Tyler cried is mock outrage. "I was going to eat that!"

I rolled it up into a burrito. "It's my birthday. Consider it my present." I took a huge bite, moaning dramatically despite it was dry and slightly undercook. It was stolen and stolen food tastes so much better.

"My pancake was not your present," he grumbled. "You know when you're in jail and the documentarists ask me where it all began I will tell them it was this thievery."

My eyebrows rose. "A little dramatic there, Tyler."

I keep telling him that he should take drama. He won't listen to me. He thinks it's a girl class. Sexist little pig.

"Deanne!"

I cringed as a streak of red and blonde flew towards me. Mom swept me up in a hug. She was dressed up in a red sundress and her blonde hair hung down her back. "Morning Mom," I said as she released me.

"What are you wearing?" she cried as her blue eyes widened in horror. "It's your birthday. I know you have a dress that you could wear and I have lipstick that would go perfectly with your skin tone!"

I tensed. She'd trying to turn me into a girly-girl. "Uh, why would I dress up?"

"Deanne Nyala Iris!" You could hear the hint of her Russian accent whenever she call Tyler or me by our full names. She'd never even been to Russia but her grandmother had been from there and some of the accent was passed down. Dad called it cute. I disagree. "You could meet your mate today! You don't want his first image of you to be blue jeans and a Bon-Jovi T-shirt!"

I kind of did now that it was on the table. "Mom even if I do find my mate today, which is highly unlikely, he will have seen me a thousand times before now so it won't matter what I look like today."

She pouted. "But a little makeup won't hurt you."

"Oh leave the girl be, honey," Dad said laughing from behind her.

Dad gave me a wink and I grinned. "Hey Dee we have to go," Tyler said.

I glanced at the stove for time and cursed mentally. "Bye Mom, bye Dad! Tyler come on." I grabbed my bag and car keys. In our state we got our driver's licenses at fifteen. I ran out to my one true love. My truck. She was a beauty. Dad and I bought her after she'd been all but scrapped in a wreck and rebuilt her from the tires up.

I ran my hand loving along the hood and I walked around to my side. "Tyler if you think those pancakes are coming in my precious you are dead wrong."

Tyler huffed and ran back inside to throw them away. "Happy now," he said grumpily as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"Ecstatic," I said tossing my bag into the backseat. "Did you ever find out if Ethan could give you a lift after school?" I asked as I started driving. Ethan is our future Alpha and while I'm not particularly fond of the spoiled log head he and Tyler were friends.

"Yeah," Tyler said fiddling with the radio. "He said he could. We were going to take Greg and Billy and go shoot some hoops before the party."

I groaned at the mention of the party. It was my mother's idea. "I completely forgot about that party. Dammit." There'd be no hiding that it was my birthday now. Fuck a duck.

Tyler laughed, "Yeah, I know how much you love social gatherings with large groups of people. Remember the barbeque at the pack house last summer, though?"

I chuckled. "Yeah, you and Mitchel dumped a cooler of ice all over Ethan's head. It was hilarious."

"It was so worth being ground for the next month," Tyler said. "Hey, are we not picking Alex up?" Tyler asked as I turned towards the school and away from her street.

"She said she was meeting me there."

"So we left early for nothing?" Tyler exclaimed. "I could have finished my pancakes!"

"We left for my sanity," I corrected. "I wasn't not going to have Mom try to doll me up again. It was awful enough the last time. Besides I did you a favor by make you ditch the 'cakes. That was more syrup than anything else. So not healthy for you."

"It was healthy for my soul!" he argued.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that."

He grumbled the rest of the ride and up until we split up at the courtyard. I made my way inside hoping to stop by my locker before the halls became filled with people who wanted to just stand there and talk.