Chapter 5: Alphas

Artemis had gotten close to the shiny object to understand that it was silver. She was hesitant to pick it up. Was this a prank? No one lays out pieces of silver amidst trees just to be a good Samaritan. Artemis kicked the tiny metal and it bounded over a few steps, she walked over to it again and knelt down beside it and squinted. There were engravings but the dirt was making it hard to decipher the words. Very carefully, Artemis reached out and held it between her thumb and forefinger waiting for it to combust or burst into flames or something to show her that it was in fact, just a prank.

Nothing happened.

She placed it on her palm and emptied some of the water onto the piece, letting the dirt get washed away to reveal 3 words.

Congratulations!

Token 383

Artemis remained confused and stared at the words. She stood and began walking back towards the bricked path wondering why those words seemed familiar. Token... Artemis's eyes widened and she stopped in her tracks.

She had found the token she was supposed to search for later tonight. She was supposed to decode the clue they gave her before finding it, wasn't she? Was this a trick? She looked around hoping to see another one of the girls playing some kind of a joke but no, she knew no one was awake yet... as her gaze wandered around the trees, there was no one to be seen. She placed a thin piece of silver on the waistband of her sweatpants before turning to leave.

She took a double take of her surroundings, she was sure that the path had been right there... with widened eyes, Artemis walked forward hoping to catch sight of the red-bricked path but all she came away with was more and more trees lined up behind each other. This seemed like a horrifying way to become lost. Had the token been some sort of booby-trap? Artemis' claustrophobia began taking effect as her breathing became shallow and her vision began to darken around the edges.

I'm not trapped. I'm not trapped... I'm not trapped.

She repeated the sentence over and over again in her mind hoping to make the place seem wider and not endless. The trees had an end, she convinced herself, and they had to. She leaned her weight against a tree hoping to justify that this was real by the feel of the bark but it made it worse, the more real it seemed... the more everything seemed to be closing in on her.

"Walk!" a voice commanded her. She jumped at the sound and was about to turn around but a hand clamped on her neck making her gaze stay firmly in front of her. "Don't turn around... just walk," it commanded. It was definitely male, but the demand and authority in the voice made her question his status. There was no guard unless she was mistaken... he was either a high commanding officer or... the host of the show. She felt the latter suited the way her will was bent to his commands because she began walking without really realizing.

You couldn't ever deny an Alpha's wishes even if you wanted to, it was built inside you, it was the only way to control the animalistic side or wolves would reign and kill anything in their path. Artemis felt a hand on her jacket, guiding her forward when the flashback of her first time shifting happened. It was similar to Rose's but much less gruesome.

She remembered it was only four years ago, a year before Liza found her mate. She remembered seeing a little girl and her parents from a distance at the top of a mountain. Even from a distance, she could tell the parents were being careless with the little girl playing too close to the edge. When the girl slipped and began tumbling down the hillside, something inside Artemis had broken, literally. She barely remembered jumping off the mountain behind the girl. Her senses had become better, at the time she had thought it was adrenaline but when she grabbed the girl's coat and reached the bottom of the mountain at record speed she had realized that she was no longer human. She left the little girl confused but safe at the bottom of the mountain and went to hide in the trees until her dad found her.

Her bones had begun to break and she remembered screaming when she had to shift back. It had all happened quickly but she still remembered the pain. Almost too clearly for her own liking.

She wanted to stop walking but Alpha's order bore down her will and she couldn't stop.

"Why are you here?" she asked as the hand guided forward. "I didn't think Alpha was supposed to be on the premises until someone won," Artemis interjected.

"Smart girl," the voice was incredibly deep and it sounded out of place. It was as if someone had discovered his secret too early. She wasn't sure why he sounded so surprised, he couldn't just expect to give an order and when people were forced to obey even if they didn't want to, surely someone would've figured it out.

"Doesn't answer the question," she blabbed.

Did I just smart mouth an Alpha?

Artemis felt like slapping herself for her stupidity. The only other time she'd ever been faced with an Alpha was Phoenix, but he mostly stayed out of everyone's way while he watched Liza. She never had to watch her moves with him because he liked to stay private. He barely ever spoke to her unless it was of necessity. She, however, did know how authoritative an Alpha could be, and it didn't work on Liza much to Phoenix's distaste because she'd never turned and Artemis would prefer it if it stayed that way.

However, this Alpha in particular clearly liked to meddle in, she was glad in a way if he hadn't distracted her from the start of her panic attack than she would probably be asphyxiated on the floor, feeling completely lost.

"In such an issue, it doesn't. In the lunar cycle, the full moon is in a week and in a place where there'll be 450 functional shape shifters, I don't want there to be any deaths," he explained.

Artemis was surprised that he'd answered her at all, let alone tell her his wishes,

"You're going to lead us?" she asked. "When will we shift?"

"That is the plan," he confirmed.

She felt extremely on edge for talking to someone and not knowing how they look. She wanted to turn around but he had clearly told her not to and she couldn't disobey. Her feet kept walking and she grew impatient for not finding the path yet. His hand felt incredibly hot through her jacket despite the mild windy weather. She tried to shrug it off without much difference but he seemed to have gotten the idea and took his own hand off her.

"What if you imprint?" she asked.

"On the girls?"

She shrugged. "It's entirely possible that in a week 450 girls will be in the competition, and one of them might happen to be your mate,"

"I am aware of that," he sounded almost robotic.

"Well... what are you going to do?"

"I don't really have another choice do I?" he asked. It was rhetorical, she knew, but she was also going to answer anyway.

"You can always get another Alpha to man the shifters," she suggested thinking about Phoenix.

He snorted. "Clearly you don't have a very good understanding of Alphas,"

"Enlighten me," she said, stepping over a fallen branch and hearing it snap behind her, clearly Alpha wasn't scared of a branch making him trip. Artemis was surprised she'd walked all this way to retrieve the token, it felt cold against her hip.

"You won't understand the feeling completely... but when an Alpha first shifts, it's... it's more painful than you can imagine because he can feel the pain of all those who've shifted within his territory?"

"His territory?"

"Let me finish," he barked. Artemis wanted to say sorry but her lips sealed together. "When other people shift for the first time, we can feel a percentage of it and when a new shifter comes into your territory, you instantly feel authority over them and in turn, they feel like a member of the pack," his words were almost like silk, slipping out of his mouth. "That's why this place is so far away, I made sure that we weren't anywhere near another Alpha's territory, Alpha's can never be within about a thousand miles of each other,"

"Why?"

"Because it feels very... restrictive, if another Alpha ever steps foot on your territory then they're also in the power of all the other shifters, they get confused about which leader to follow and it feels... wrong,"

Artemis took all of this with interest. "And have you ever been in a close proximity to another Alpha?"

"Once, it ended badly,"

"Why?"

"He tried to take control of my pack, you see we can feel the strongest emotion resonating out of a shifter, for example, I can feel extreme curiosity radiating off you, and that time it was all anger, my own mixed with a lot of other people's and I lost control, and so did he,"

"What happened?"

"Deaths, a lot of them, but that happened years ago, 150 in fact,"

Artemis gawked at that. 150 years ago?

"And?"

"Being an Alpha comes with a lot of responsibility and taking care of every shifter in your territory is one of them, if I leave my territory then their aura is shifted to the closest Alpha and since usually, it's more than a thousand miles away, the connection feels very weak to almost non-existent and it's dangerous for a shifter to turn without proper guidance,"

Artemis thought about this, she'd had no control over whatever had happened that night, perhaps it was because she wasn't in close proximity. She knew she always felt stronger and more relaxed when Phoenix was around but she didn't realize it was because of his status.

"It seems very... hard,"

He chuckled. "Oh, it is, but to an Alpha, it's just nature. We're born with the capability to handle pressure, sometimes people with the Alpha bloodline who never turn into a wolf can still stand the pressure and you'll usually see them excel in everything naturally without having to try... it's in the genes,"

"While we're here, we're under your control?"

He chuckled again, "I can't control you, to be exact, more like bend your will to my wish. I can't control the authority of my voice, it's natural," he explained. "But there are certain restrictions," Artemis nodded at that, not quite understanding but not quite wanting to question it either.

"Doesn't it ever feel like... too much?"

"Never," he said almost immediately, "it feels very wrong... when I don't have power over shifters after you've been doing it for as long as I have, it's very normal... easy in fact,"

"How are you alive? I mean... after so long?" she felt a little timid about outright saying that, but he didn't seem to mind.

"A curse," he answered simply.

Artemis felt bold after he'd answered all her questions. "A curse... how does that work?"

She felt the tension in the air shift almost immediately and had a feeling it was his doing. She knew she'd crossed a line.

"That... is for me to know, and for you to never try and understand,"

Artemis felt the softness under her feet change to a completely hard surface. She looked down to see herself on the edge of the bricked pathway. She hadn't even noticed that they were here. She felt incredibly brave and turned to face him but her sight was only showing trees... just like before. No other person was in sight. She took the token out of her waistband and stared at the words engraved on the piece of silver but when she turned it she was surprised to see something she hadn't noticed before.

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