Monday, January 22

(Cole’s POV)

It’s the jarring of the bus as it turns off the main road onto the gravel drive that wakes me from my slumber. It’s been a grueling twelve hour ride from my home pack, Red Fang, southwest to Crimson Dawn. I’ve heard rumors about this pack. Both from those who have visited through the warrior prospect program and just the general rumors that float around about every pack.

It’s one of the hardest packs to get into through the prospect program and a warrior from Red Fang has yet to be offered a position here. Now that I think about it, I don’t think any of our warriors have ever made it into the second run anywhere, at least not during the year and a half since my father started allowing me to attend. This makes me wonder how much of the selection process is based on skill versus the negative rumors that float around.

Crimson Dawn is said to be a strict and unforgiving pack. That, just like my own, it’s easy to find yourself laid over a desk on the receiving end of a thin leather belt. These are the only packs my father allows me to go to. The ones with the harshest reputations for killing rogues and intolerances for anyone weak or different. The rumors I’ve heard about us are no different. That every pack, within the maximum twelve hour drive, sees us as barbaric and cruel. I can’t help but agree as my father is both, at least he is towards me.

Every pack that joins the prospect program has three choices; accept warriors into their training program but don’t send any out, send warriors out to other packs but not accept any in or they do both. After five years of no one from other packs requesting to come to ours for training my father changed his status in the program so that he simply handles warriors from his own pack plus White Fang and White Moon packs. This year is the first time Crescent Moon has joined since we allied with them.

This particular run is the first time that my father has one hundred and twenty wolves between four packs participating, which means we have a full roster of twenty-four wolves, between Red Fang and our newest ally Crescent Moon, on this bus. My understanding is that membership in each costs money and it was cheaper for my father to change to simply sending warriors out then to continue waiting for warriors to come in.

I am the youngest son of Alpha Charles Redmen, the alpha and sole leader of the Red Fang pack. I am the youngest of his six kids. I was born prematurely and, unlike my twin Chloe, struggled to breathe on my own. I guess that’s where everything started. My father wanted nothing to do with a weakling like me. So I became the son he didn’t want, the son he felt was undeserving of my very life.

I yawn and slowly stretch, careful to stifle the yelps desperate to jump from my throat as the injuries from the beating I sustained Saturday night have yet to start healing. I peek outside the large window of the charter bus that had been sent to my pack to pick us up for the ride to Crimson Dawn. It’s the first time I’ve been on one so large and comfortable. To cut down on the amount of time prospects were on the road the council recently mandated that only charter buses could be used on trips over three hours so drivers only had to stop for meal breaks.

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