i'm going back over this story as i know it could do with some tweeking, so i will be uploading the chapters as i finish them off and hopefully will be able to dig myself out of the hole i'd found myself in with it. Huge apologies to my fans for not writing for now but it's only since i found my new Roshi that i've had the motivation to start writing again, so you can thank Him. i hope you enjoy the revamp.
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Prologue
I was three days old when I was picked up off the streets with my mother and two brothers. Mum had been caught out in a storm when she's gone into labour with us, so she moved under an abandoned house to wait until we were old enough to be moved somewhere safer. Unfortunately, some curtain-twitching do-gooder had seen her creeping in and out when she'd gone hunting, and called the animal rescue people. They found us when Mum was out one morning, and put us in a cage to wait for her return. We didn't know what was going on; we were still blind and totally dependent on Mum for everything. When we found ourselves out of the warmth of the blanketed nest she had made for us, we started crying out for her.
Mum was a really smart lady; she was clever enough to live on the streets of London for years without being caught but when she heard us whimpering, she came racing back without thinking and ran headlong into the catching pole. She was bundled into the cage beside us, and we were put in the back of a van and driven off to the rehoming centre. I know the rescue people were only doing what they thought was best; it was just too bad that the whole experience was so stressful for my little brother that he changed mid-journey, so that when the driver opened the door he found two pups and a human looking baby curled up around the leg of a very protective hound. I don't know what he must have thought. He went running into the building, and came back out with one of the vets. Siggi was in the middle of changing back into a pup at that point, his body was sprouting hairs and his nose had begun to elongate into a snout, and soon he was snuffling round Mum's nipples looking for more milk.
The vet had stood open mouthed watching all this, and when he finally got his wits together he told the driver to take the cage into the quarantined area while he made a few calls. In the end, we were only at the centre for a few hours before we were picked up by the Army, and moved to a camp in the middle of Cumbria. There was nothing around us for miles except the fifteen foot high chain link fence that surrounded the entire garrison. My brothers and I ran wild there for eighteen years, hunting in all weathers, only coming back to the relative civilisation of the barracks when we had to. I can think of worse ways to grow up.
Chapter 1
Mum was a were-wolfhound, but there was a problem with the little switch in her that controlled her ability to change. This meant she couldn't move from hound to human, she was stuck as a dog. Her parents had been too closely related -- half-brother and sister -- and all but one of their pups had been born without the ability to change. The whole family had been expelled from the clan to rid themselves of the bad blood, and Mum had been living on the streets since she was fourteen. She had found it better to live alone where she wasn't pointed at, wasn't bullied or sneered at. It had been hard for her to understand that she didn't have to be afraid of these soldiers, who were there to watch us, to guard us, not to harm us in any way. We lived together in one of the barrack rooms that had been converted into a mix of play and school room with big soft squishy beds behind curtains at one end, and a huge flap in the door at the other.
At first we lived as pups, only changing into our human forms occasionally, and mostly by accident or when we were stressed too much. By what would have been our eighth birthdays, we could all switch between human and hound forms as easily as sneezing, which made our rough and tumble games very interesting. Siggi and Froh particularly were in love with the soldiers the way only little boys could be, and they would go off for hours, practicing stalking and tracking. At first they wouldn't let me join in; it took me tracking them silently through the woods for five hours before I could convince them I was just as able as they were. It was like Froh said, "Flossi, you're just a girl. You can't expect us to know you're any good without proving it."
I was ten when I got my own room; the boys had moved out long before then as their mess would get everywhere. Mum had gotten so sick of it all, she'd asked me to get permission from the Major in charge of us to give the boys a separate sleeping area, where they could create as much noise and chaos as they liked.
Once that change was made, the boys ended up building a fort with the help of some of the soldiers. Going in there without a map wasn't advisable. My room was at the other end of the hall from the boys, with Mum right in the middle. I didn't want a girly, fluffy pink place, just somewhere quiet and peaceful where I could curl up and read my history books. The Commander of the garrison, Major Williams, had insisted that each of us have tutors. As a result, the boys could read, write and do a little bit of math, but unless it was to do with guns or machines, they weren't interested. Strategy was straight over their heads. If they couldn't go in with infantry, then they thought you should just blow the shit out of it with missiles.
I loved the assessment side of strategy, though; thinking through the next move, planning ahead. When Captain James introduced me to chess one wet weekend, I was hooked from the start. I wasn't a bookish girl, hiding myself away from the big bad boys; I simply liked using my mind to boost my chances against them.
The night we turned eighteen, the whole camp threw us a party. Siggi and Froh were going to be going off to another camp to do basic training; I was staying put to learn more from Captain James about history and strategy, as well as basic training in small arms. It never occurred to us not to join the Army. We'd lived in and around it for so long, it was part of our lives. To be honest, there wasn't anything else I would rather have done.
The weather the night of our party was calm and clear, perfect for hunting. The boys had come in straight from the field and thrown on their normal camouflage combats before romping into the mess hall with mud and grass still in their hair and on their feet. They looked so sure of themselves, tall good looking boys with short black hair. Siggi and Froh looked so similar that, at times, the only way to tell them apart was to look at their eyes: Siggi's were amber and glowed yellow in torchlight; Froh had one amber and one pale blue eye.
My eyes were like Siggi's, only they reflected green light. I had had long hair until I was sixteen (at one point it reached my waist), but it was forever getting in my way, so I cut it all off. Now it was no longer than an inch anywhere on my head. Combined with a slim figure from hard exercise and good genes, I looked, as Mum called it, gamine.
For the party, I had made an unusual effort with my appearance. I was wearing a pair of wide-legged, black linen trousers, and a little lacy vest top. I'd ringed my eyes with dark brown liner, and added mascara in the same colour, making my eyes look huge in my tiny face. I so rarely bothered with how I looked. It wasn't like there were many other women on the site to trade makeup tips with. Most of the time I was either studying or roaming around the woods, and I don't think my books or the trees thought too much about how I looked.
Captain James certainly noticed the difference in me. He came over as soon as I entered the room to claim me for the rest of the night, never letting me out of his sight for more than a few minutes at a time. I thought it was quite sweet actually til Mum came padding over to speak to me.
"You know he likes you, don't you?" Mum asked.
"Captain James?" I responded, "Yeah, I know. He's a really nice guy."
"No, sweetheart," Mum insisted, "Captain James likes you as in-- " and then Mum sent me a mental image of a human couple having sex.
"Mum," I cried, "Eww -- that's gross."
"We did have a talk about the birds and the bees didn't we?" Mum replied.
"Yes, and I got the picture," I said. "I just wish you hadn't coloured it in. I didn't think he liked me that way though."
"I don't think he knew until tonight," Mum responded.
