The Wannabe Warrior Novel – Madison POV ‘Mummy, Mummy.’ I called as I left the school grounds. In my hand is the painting I painted today, my face bright and happy as I hand over the painting with pride. ‘Hello Luna.’ I belatedly greet our Luna, who laughs and greets me back with a hug. We started to walk back home. I am holding mummy’s hand and Luna is holding my other one. Mummy and Luna are talking. About half way home, mum stops walking and starts sniffing the air, then grabs me by my waist and pushes me into a tree, yelling at me to stay in the tree, as a really bad smell arrives and I want to gag. Ten big smelly men came out and stood in front of mummy and Luna. I saw Luna’s face go blank for a moment, and I knew from that look, she had called for help.
‘Well, today is our lucky day, hey boys. What we have here is the Luna and Betta. What do you say, we have some fun?’ one smelly man said. The men circle around mummy and Luna, getting them to separate, then one jumps at mummy and mummy starts to defend herself. Somehow, mummy managed to rip one man’s throat out. Blood gushed over my mummy, covering her, it was awful. I screamed and then put my hand over my mouth as mum glanced up at me, and then was tackled by another man. Luna has two men come at her at the same time, and one manages to bite her on the back and she is thrown to the ground as she screams in pain and tries to roll away from the man. Two men that jumped on Luna’s back started ripping her to pieces.
Her screams of pain are loud and terrifying. She loses her head and it rolls across the ground and finishes at the bottom of the tree I am in, her eyes open and staring back up at me. They start pulling her arms and legs off her body and cheer each time another limb is removed. I am terrified, as I watch from above, as the men grab my mummy and she screams, as she tries to fight the men, but there are too many of them for my mummy and one rips out her throat, her blood spurting over the man, and they start to remove her head and then her arms and legs, just like they did with the Luna. Cheering as each piece is dismembered from her body. Then one of the men comes over to the tree I am hiding in, and looks up at me, with a sneer on his face. ‘Come on down little one, we won’t hurt you.’ he tries to get me to climb down, but I don’t believe him, he will take my head off, like they did with Mummy and the Luna.
One of the smelly men calls ‘to the van, the Alpha and warriors are on the way,’ and the smelly men, taking their dead and injured with them, ran to a van that had pulled up as they were killing my mummy and Luna and the van took off backwards away from us. Alpha falls to his knees, when he sees the Luna, and my dad does the same, they both let out a loud woeful cry to the sky, their voices crying out in pain for all to hear. A warrior hears me crying in the tree and gathers me out of the tree. That night was my first night of my nightmares, where I watched my mum and Luna get torn to shreds over and over and over again. I vowed I would find those men, whose scent will never be forgotten, and learn to fight and track.
My mum was a born tracker and her skills would be passed down from mother to daughter. I am going to train and hone those skills, so I can find those men myself and get revenge on my mum and Luna. My training began. At first it was a struggle, but I refused to give in. My twin brother and I joined our older brother in training, and dad encouraged us both, he was hoping I could defend myself if I needed to, just like mum tried to protect the Luna. We trained every morning before school and then again after school. When I reached sixteen, I joined patrols and fought and killed rogues, learning and getting stronger and working hard to be the best. I had to be the best, anything less would get me killed and I would not give up, until I found those men who filled my dreams with nightmares.
At our next pack testing, I came top of the pack in tracking, even beating veterans, my special abilities outshining the men, and came top of my age group in fighting, even beating my twin brother, who was not angry about losing to his twin. He clapped me on my back, congratulating me on how good I was. I excelled at school, being top of my class in science and technology and chemistry, in chemistry I won an award for my spray that hid your scent, and in science and technology I won an award for an anti-bugging device. My school work was for my mum to be proud of me, and the training so I could get revenge. Then Alpha announced he had a call from the king. He wanted twenty good warriors to go to the palace to join an elite team to tackle the rogue problem that had escalated lately and plagued our kingdom. I intended to be one of those joining that team.
Zane POV ‘When do the warriors start to arrive dad?’ I asked my father the Alpha King. We have been busy in his office for about three hours now, collecting information and other daily Alpha duties. Dad has been slowly pushing more of the office stuff onto me, with the hope I will hurry up and take over, and at the same time, is worried about giving me the title because of this huge rogue problem, that seemed to be growing by the day. ‘In about two weeks we should start seeing the first arrivals. We need to make sure the barracks are ready and a training schedule set.’ King Ezekiel says while flicking through some papers on the desk. The piles of paper never seem to diminish. The more I help, the bigger the piles seem to get. I was starting to wonder if he was creating work so I would spend more time there beside him each day. ‘I suggest we appoint warrior Peter to sort out the rooms and warrior Harrison the training schedule, anything else father?’ I asked, already dreading what he had to say next. It is the same every opportunity he gets and it never gets any better. ‘After the rogue issue is dealt with, I would like you to travel between the packs. It is time to find your mate. I am not getting any younger and it is time you stepped up and took over. Your mother and I would like to take some holidays together and I am sure your mother also wants you to have grand pups.’
Yep, I guessed it, dad brings it up at least once a month since I turned 18 and now at 21, he has hinted a few times about a chosen mate, but I refuse to take a chosen mate. The goddess has a mate out there for me and I will find her, and the power-hungry girls that hang around me make my stomach churn, too much make-up and don’t let me start on the stench they call perfume they pour on themselves. Don’t get me wrong. I like a little make-up and perfume, but these girls that try to get my attention tend to go overboard and you can’t see their real face or smell their natural scent, and it is the natural scent that my wolf wants to smell. ‘After we have the rogue issue under control, and I have had some time to recover. Maybe then I will go look for my mate. I heard the trackers have found a camp site, and we have heard that they have appointed a rogue alpha to guide them, but so far it is a bit crazy. I always believed that rogues are not known to take orders well, so maybe the alpha has made some promises to get them to co-operate and work together, or they have some joint goal in mind.’ ‘I agree, son, it makes no sense at all, since when do we have organised rogues? It baffles me too. Could it really be a pack that is pretending to be rogues, having some sort of body spray to make the smell so foul? Have the real rogues taken the blame for their handy work?’ ‘That is not so far-fetched dad, let’s hope we have got some good trackers in this group of new warriors coming.’ I sigh, ‘How long are this new lot staying?’ ‘I asked for six months. I don’t believe it should take longer than that, no rogue is that organised.’ The King retorts belligerently. We talk about other packed stuff and I leave his office exhausted.
I headed back towards my room hoping to have a long shower before dinner. The woman, Karen, stops me on the way down the hall. ‘Hi Zane, you look stressed, care for some relief?’ she strokes her hand down my chest and I grab her hand and squeeze it till I hear her whimper in pain. ‘Never with you, now move.’ I growled. I was drunk one night not long after I turned 18 and woke up to find her in my bed beside me. I still don’t believe we did anything, as I still had my pants on. I was wearing it that night, but she insists we did. Who in their right mind make out and then gets dressed again before falling asleep in those said pants? And I was so drunk I doubt I could take them off, let alone put them back on, and that woman has tried to get into my bed ever since. One reason I don’t bed woman, I was trying to save myself for my mate, rare I know for a male, but I don’t want the guilt I saw my beta go through and am glad I stuck to it. ‘Oh, come on, Zane, baby, you know I am good at it.’ She pushes with a sickly voice, which I am sure she thinks is hot, but it just grates on my nerves and my wolf is howling insults at her in my head.
‘Don’t lie to me, I know we have not made out. You may have snuck into my room and pretended we did, but I know better, now leave me alone or I will order you out of the packhouse.’ I growl at this girl, she just flicks her hair and walks away swaying her hips in the hope it looks provocative, however it just makes me sick. I am over that girl trying to get into my bed and spreading lies. I make it to my room and have a long-awaited shower, my thoughts thinking about how I can get rid of Karen, and then as I am drying myself, I come up with an idea. I can talk to dad about the staff and discuss the barracks and cleaners and cooks, that should do it. With my mind made up, I went downstairs and went to the dining hall. I am starving and need food now. Sitting by my father, talking about the different packs that had offered to send more than twenty warriors we had requested. Some packs are large enough to be able to send more, but to be fair to the smaller packs, we only asked for twenty and said send as many as you can spare to the smaller packs, knowing even twenty could be hard on them.
However, some larger packs offered more and we were okay with the extra. If everyone sent at least twenty, we would have over 300 hundred new warriors to help the rogue problem. Hope the men are good and a couple of natural trackers are desperate for more good trackers. ‘Oh, father, if we get that many, we shall need to look at cooks and cleaners etc for the barracks.’ I used this opportunity to bring up the needs of the barracks, and hoped to get him on board with getting Karen out of the palace. ‘Agreed, are you offering to help me work that out?’ the King asked, surprised that I had thought of it. Yeah, dad, I can think about other things than just avoiding your push for a mate. ‘Yes, I would like to see the list of our staff and see how many we can shift over there to work. We can do this together, if you are okay with that dad.’ I asked dad, as I took another bite of roast beef. ‘Glad to see you are interested in the alpha duties. I like that. Come see me in the morning as we will work on it.’ ‘Okay, dad.’ I said, glad to see dad happy about the offer of my help, and not being suspicious of my reason behind wanting that list. ‘Oh dad,’ I asked as I thought of something else I wanted him to do.
‘Yes?’ he filled his glass of drink and took a long gulp. ‘Can you send out a message to the Alpha’s to send us a tracker if they have one to spare, we are going to need at least three good ones, and waiting with fingers crossed that one is sent is not doing my patience any good. I need to know if we are going to receive some.’ I suggested we needed confirmation that we would get some new trackers. I think ours are over stretched and getting worn out. ‘Excellent idea, will do that too in the morning.’ He chuffs and gulps down the last of his drink and leaves the table. Zane POV I finished my meal and polished off another glass of drink. Satisfied, I rubbed my full stomach and headed off to find my beta Kyle, see if we could hang out together. ‘Hey buddy, want to go to the club for a few?’ my Beta asks me, before I had a chance to hunt him down and ask. ‘Gina is out having a girl’s night out and I am bored.’ He adds ‘Sure, I need to get out of here for a while, dad is on my back again about finding my mate.’ I moan, the beta found his mate a couple of years ago, and he is all for me finding mine. ‘Got to get out to find her. She might be just around the corner.’ Kyle laughs and thumps me on the back with a bro hug pat, as we head to my car. We go to a club in town. It is run by werewolves, so it is fine to let your hair down.
I watch the she-wolves dancing on the dance floor, gyrating and trying to entice men to them. I am not interested, but don’t mind watching. A few drinks later, I see Karen walk into the club and suddenly I no longer wanted to be there. ‘Time to go Kyle.’ I spoke loudly over the music booming in the room. ‘What? we have hardly been here.’ I nodded my head towards the table Karen had just sat down at. ‘Karen is here, I am not interested.’ It seemed to piss me off that she seemed to know where I am so often. ‘Dam is that girly still trying to get into you?’ ‘Yeah, she is still working. “”I have been in your bed”, even though I did not sleep with her, she makes sure everyone knows she slept in my bed, which I can’t deny, as I do not even know when she climbed into my bed. It could have been only a few minutes before I fully woke. The more I thought about it, the more I believed she was on house cleaning duties and climbed in when she saw I was still asleep in bed. I still had my pants on from the night before, so I know I did not do the deed, you know I am saving it for my mate.’ I said as I started walking out the club through the back door before that woman could see me. We go to the pizza place in town and get a pizza and coffee to go. We had just climbed into our car, when Karen and a couple of girls walked into the pizza place.
Karen looks around and frowns. Then she gets her phone out and looks at it for a little while, then turns and looks straight at me. I knew at that instant my phone was bugged or she had a GPS of me on her phone. ‘Did she just locate you on her phone?’ Kyle asks incredulously, as I drive off. ‘Yeah, going to have to get dad onto this one, that is not acceptable behaviour.’ I replied and grabbed a slice of pizza. ‘That girl has it bad, and that locator thing creeps me out.’ Kyle says through a mouthful of pizza. Early in the morning and I found myself sitting with my dad in his office. He had phoned around to see if he could poach some trackers. While I went through the list of staff members, we needed to sort out who we were going to send to the barracks, usually when we have a ball or some other large event that had us using the barracks. We have a system already in place. However, this was different. The staff who were to be on the roster for the next ball, which is in a few months, should not be included in this task. If the rogue hunt was still going on, we needed to separate the two groups.
The needs for the ball were different to the needs of the rogue situation. Lucky, we had a huge area for this. Eight buildings, all three storeys high, housed three hundred people in each, surrounded a large dining hall that can seat over one thousand people at a time, the kitchens were huge and the amount of food to cover the ball and the rogue hunt was going to be unimaginable. Sighing as dad hung up from another failed attempt to find trackers, I continued to work on the roster. I found Karen at last and she was not on the roster for the ball. It seems she had requested not to be rostered on duty at the next ball with hopes of attending. I put Karen on the roster for the barracks kitchens, along with a number of other male workers. We didn’t really want to put any females cleaning the barracks with a whole lot of tired warriors, mainly to serve and clean up the kitchens. That in itself is a large job. That should keep Karen out of my hair. We normally have the barracks staff be housed on the ground floor of barracks number one, keeping all staff together. We will put all the warriors in barracks 2 and 3, depending on how many we get. From the figures dad has gotten so far, we will have about 600 men starting to arrive as early as this weekend and over the next week, depending on how far they have to travel to get here.
I had just finished the list and put it aside for dad to go over, when I heard him whoop, and thank an Alpha from the Blue River Pack over and over again, it sounded like we got a tracker at last. We had almost run out of packs to ask. Guess one is better than none. I sat and waited for dad to finish the call, he was saying “really” and “that good?”, “okay”, “wow”, “well I will put Mad in the pack house and not in the barracks”, “yes”, “yes”, “I understand, will do the best we can.” “Yes okay”, “thank you again”, “when will your group arrive”. “So, this weekend”, “excellent.” I was itching to know what the other side of the conversation was, it was annoying the heck out of me, hearing just dad’s side of the conversation. ‘Well son, we have good news at last.’ My father beamed as if he had just won a great prize. ‘Tell my dad who we did get.’ I asked, glad we got a tracker at last. ‘The Blue River Pack’s best tracker, a lass called Madison.’ Dad replies as he picks up the list for the barracks cleaning and starts reading the list. ‘A girl? You can’t be serious. Why would they send a girl?’ I asked in disbelief. We can’t send a girl out there. ‘What is wrong with a girl? If she is half as good as the Alpha states, then, we are very lucky the pack allowed us to use her. You chose only men for the cleaning in the barracks and only a few females in the kitchen?’
Dad asks, the tracker talk done. ‘Yeah, we are going to have six hundred unmated males. Do you want me to send unmated females to them? Do you think they will want to go out and fight when a warm bed and body is waiting for them back at the barracks?’ I asked. ‘Good idea, did not think of that. Now what is this about that girl, Karen? You mentioned her earlier but I was too involved with phoning the Alpha’s for the tracker and I forgot. I notice you have put her in the kitchen.’ Dad says, still hyped about getting a tracker and that will keep him happy for a while, well until we see how good this girl really is. Madison POV ‘Come on dad, you know I am as good as the guys, why can Graham get to compete in the competition and I can’t?’ I wailed at my father for the umpteenth time today and, not to mention all the other times I have argued about being a warrior. ‘Come on Madison, you know the answer to that you are a girl and I don’t want to see you get hurt.’ Dad counters back, with that, we are done with this discussion voice. ‘Dad, I am going to go, whether you like it or not, you will have to lock me in the dungeon for the next six months to stop me from going.’ I yelled back at my dad and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind me. Dad knows I will too.
I am sure he is blocking me because he can. He likes to throw that “you’re a girl” nonsense at me every time. Well, it does not work with me. I know I am a girl, and yeah, my 18th birthday is the same day they select the team to go, and I am going to be there, whether dad likes it or not. Reaching the training ground, I saw about fifty of us, unmated warriors, all eager to get picked, some because they want to get out of the pack and see the world for a little while and hope to find their mates, others like to kill rogues, just like me, though my thirst to do it is more personal, I still have the occasional nightmare of that day mum died. I have two brothers. Graham is my twin brother, he is older than me by one minute, and that sucks, because he gets to pull the “you’re the baby of the family” nonsense on me. I just want to get rid of these nightmares and killing rogues. It is not like I have not killed rogues before. I joined the patrols night or day at least once a week. ‘Everyone, three laps around the training grounds.’
Luke bellows out as he walks towards us, the Alpha by his side. My pack was called in to help when the Alpha of a neighbouring pack advised Alpha that they had lost a group of pups out on a field trip. It had started to rain before the teachers at the school reported that a group of kids had not returned from a day out. With a really bad storm developing, the Alpha was desperate and called three neighbouring packs to help out. I arrived with the rest of our pack to help hunt for the lost pups. They gave everyone a run down to where they were last seen. I asked to smell some of the clothes of the missing pups. The mothers were so desperate they complied with my request, and those willing mothers hurried back with the shirts, and me, in wolf form, took in the scent of ten of the missing pups. The place was full of warriors and as a team we all took off towards the area where they had last seen the pups. The pack warriors were already there, and were slowly widening their search. I walked to a spot and Betsy put her snout on the ground, and started sniffing the ground. I picked up a faint smell that Betsy recognised from one of the shirts, and took off in a fast walk in that direction. Luke saw me moving away and mind-linked me. ‘I have a scent, going to follow it.’ I linked back, my snout on the ground. Luke soon followed behind me.
He had mind-linked the rest of our team to do the same. After almost an hour of slowly following the faintest of trails. Finally, I found the pups huddled under a tree. They were shivering in wet clothes, holding each other for warmth. Luke mind-linked our Alpha, that we had found them and they were all well, just cold and wet, and hungry. We took the pups back to the waiting mothers on the back of our wolf, and arriving back at the pack-house, the pups were taken off our backs and rushed to the doctor to be checked out. We were taken to some rooms where we could shower and get some dry clothes. We were to stay the night due to the storm that was now in full force. The Alpha made some speech about thanking us for promptly coming to his aid, and a special thank you to me and my wolf’s special snout, which had my team patting me on my back, and I knew the alpha would be pleased that the pups were found and we would have a party to celebrate when we returned.
By the time I had finished reminiscing about my best ever tracking day, I had run around the training field and came to a stop in front of Luke and the Alpha, excited about today’s training. The Alpha would watch and assess us today. ‘Warriors.’ The Alpha greeted us all in a friendly way. I stood with my team and bared my neck in respect to our Alpha and waited for his announcement. I was excited and hoped to be picked to go. ‘The king phoned this morning, early,’ he waited for the sudden murmuring to stop, ‘They required at least 3 trackers, and he has been phoning around the different packs to see if he can muster them up. These trackers are on top of the 20 warrior fighters he has requested.’ he looked at me and hope bloomed in my chest and butterflies fluttered in my stomach. ‘Yes, you have guessed it, I am sending Madison to go with your group to be a tracker, and not to engage in fighting. Madison, no fighting, they can’t afford to lose a tracker, you are essential to go and find these rogues and there could be more than one place they are hiding and leave the fighting to the warriors.’ The Alpha warned with a small growl. Congratulations were given, and slaps on my back. I did not know whether to be happy I was going, or sad I was not allowed to fight. The training session went by in a blur. I was excited and wanted to go see dad, before my twin beat me to it and I get lectured again.”