The Beta’s Mate

The road to work was always calm and slow moving. My employers lived in the country-like area of my town, and that was definitely one of the perks of this job. I was currently working as a nanny for a young boy, he had reached his "terrible twos" and has wreaked havoc last time I'd been there.

Driving up the cement slope that led to their garage, I breathed a couple breaths to prepare myself for the worst.

They had a gorgeous house, three floors, six bedrooms and a matching amount of bathrooms. Their kitchen was to die for, I couldn't help but wish I had one like it.

Knocking on the front door my employer, Anna, opened the door. She was a few inches taller than me with long blonde hair. She was pregnant with a girl, I couldn't wait to see her son's reaction to having a little sister.

I stepped in, sweeping my braided brown hair over my shoulder. I smiled and asked how things were going with the pregnancy, her blue eyes gleamed with motherly pride.

It was always interesting when you find someone who is your complete physical opposite. If she wasn't pregnant, Anna would normally be a thin woman with warm, light skin. I had some extra weight to me and wasn't too comfortable with how I looked. But I dressed right and so that covered it up a little.

My skin was pale, my veins coming through on my wrists. But my cheeks were rosy, which had good perks but downsides. My eyes were so brown they looked nearly black.

Me and Anna chatted quietly, as Paul, her son was napping. Then she said that she would slip out before he woke up. This had been our routine for the past few weeks.

I went upstairs and stood by Paul's door out of habit, then went back down to decide what I should do. Robert, Anna's husband and Paul's father, had gotten an archery set awhile back and said I could use it anytime.

I had taken archery lessons when I was in grade nine, I think, I still remembered the basics of archery. So I clipped the baby monitor to my belt and headed to their mud room.

I found the set in the closet on their top shelf. Once I had gotten it down—with the help of a stool—I headed out.

Robert had set up a few targets in the field to the left of his house. It was bordered by the forest, and there was no one around that I might accidentally shoot.

I couldn't help the smirk that painted my face when I recalled shooting my brother—accidentally—when I tried archery before. He'd recovered since from the incident, but he'd found it rather mortifying.

I took out the blunted arrows and noticed that there was six pointed arrows in the quiver. I left them in as I'd never used them before. I laughed quietly to myself as I thought why on earth Robert would order pointed arrows.

Stringing the bow, I took my stance, notched my arrow, and shot. I missed, of course, and tried again. After a few more shots I hit the middle ring of the target. After I'd run out of blunted arrows I decided to switch to the pointed ones.

I didn't feel like running out to get all the blunted ones just yet.

As I notched the first arrow of my second round, I saw someone coming out of the forest. No, not someone, something. A huge silver wolf.

He, I assumed it was a he, stared at me, I stared at him my arrow still pointing at the target, I slowly moved the tip of my arrow in his direction. When I stopped moving, he charged.

He was getting closer fast, so close, I didn't want to shoot him but he was too close.

He was just three metres from me, when I loosed the arrow.