The Making of a Dark Gamma - Book 1

Saturday dawns, and as the sun starts to rise, Toni looks out on a new day, no longer an Omega, grinning, she can see in the early morning light there are only soft wispy clouds, gently caressing the light blue sky, it’s going to be a good day.

This morning she’s on kitchen duty, this isn’t part of being an Omega wolf, in this pack there is a rota that everyone who lives in the Packhouse takes part in, they all eat there, so at some point in the week, they all help there.

Today she’s on breakfast duty, so it’s a five am start and Clara, who’s in charge of the kitchen, realises there’s a buzz in the pack over what happened yesterday, so she’s given Toni the most mind-numbing job in the back of the kitchen, and not upfront serving, for that Toni is eternally grateful.

She’s on dishwashing duties, rinsing and loading the industrial dishwashers for the pack is easy and keeps her out of the limelight.

Clara also knows Toni needs to be in front of the Alpha at nine am, so it’s also a task she can slip away from easily and not being in front of house service, means she’s also protected from the stares of the rest of the pack.

Clara is a goddess in hiding and Toni truly believes it.

First, since you are still here, let me clear something up, Omega is a status, it doesn’t automatically mean a person is ill-treated, regardless of what you’ve heard, I’ve heard of no pack that abuses Omegas, there are laws against that in this kingdom.

In this pack, Omegas just have additional pack duties, cleaning, laundry etc, it’s a way to work your, or your family's, reputation back.

So, while I heard some of you take a sharp intake of breath when Omega was mentioned, there is no reason to think that, far from it, if anyone bullies an Omega in this pack... they are given the same status, amazing how that simple rule stops trouble from starting.

Anyway, let me tell you about my original pack, the Nightshade pack, they were set up about one hundred years after the great interspecies war, one of the two strongest beneath the Royal Pack, the other pack up there in strength is the Iron Claw pack, created by brothers to support the Royal pack at the time, it was an unsettled era, lots of fighting, not like today.

Both packs were originally set up to support the Royal pack, and they still do, but where once they were brothers in arms, now the two packs hate each other, although I can’t tell you why, the pack line is ‘they are led by a treacherous Alpha’, beyond that, no one is allowed to ask.

The Nightshade pack is steeped in traditions from centuries ago, because of that, every child born to our pack is eventually marked with the pack symbol.

Unranked wolves and warriors usually go for a tattoo but they can opt for the branding iron, unsurprisingly, none do, but it harks back to when packs stole pups to disrupt bloodlines or bring a stronger one into their pack, it was easy to find them that way, something that hasn’t happened for over six hundred years, not since shortly after the great inter-species war.

Normally this happens when a child gets their wolf, tattoos can be extended and look part of a single continuous tattoo if they are mated to someone outside of the pack, not that many are, but there’s one or two each year I’ve seen some of the altered tattoo’s and they are really beautiful.

However, if you are a child of the Alpha, Beta or Gamma, you are branded at birth, no hiding or disguising it, but it’s not something we remember, we were babies after all and marked on the day we are born with an electric hot iron.

Yes, I hear you screaming that Gamma isn’t hereditary at me, I know, that shit isn’t new to me, but the Nightshade pack’s motto is breed strong, breed true and the same bloodline has always been in the top three positions, ever since the pack was set up, so for them, it is, get over yourselves!

In our pack, the only ranks that aren’t hereditary are Delta’s, there have been three challenges in our history for the top three positions and none succeeded

Anyway, back to the brands, when you take your final position, you are expected to take the larger brand, sealing your life to the pack.

Trust me though, not many packs mess with someone bearing our mark, we make a fearsome enemy.

People in the Nightshade pack accept the regime they are run by, not that there’s much choice, any dissent is dealt with visibly, and being chained to the post in the square and whipped is both a pack event and a clear deterrent to others.

Those who move to the pack are the ones that often struggle most, but if you attend training, learn what respect means in our pack and don’t rock the boat, it’s easier than it seems, the reputation is worse than reality, but maybe I was biased.

Brands or tattoos are normally placed on the left shoulder, but my parents and the Alpha decided mine should be on my left hip.

I started my training around two, my dad was my teacher; mum wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t from the pack, she felt children should be allowed to be kids, but that’s not how my life had been planned for me, unsurprisingly, Dad, and pack tradition won.

But training at that age was a kind of game and I loved it, so this is probably why I am not a ‘normal’ pup in the eyes of others.

At four, I made my first solo kill, a deer, gutting and cleaning it, all supervised, but survival training at its finest, my dad had to help, but tracking it, and killing it with a bow, was all me.

But that’s also when my dad introduced pain tolerance training, which is a polite way of saying learning not to react when he purposefully hurt me, or I got hurt in training, not that he’d allowed tears when I was hurt before that point.

Anyway, he did nothing that would leave permanent marks, I choose to believe he did it from a place of love so that I could soon receive a second brand, one that marked me as special in front of the pack, and take it without crying.

On my fifth birthday, I passed the initial Gamma assessment, far earlier than expected, normally that’s the age you start training for your role, but as a female, my dad had told me I had to start learning earlier, train harder and use my brains to beat the stronger pups as I’d always have a size disadvantage in fights.

I guess even he didn’t realise just how large my wolf would be, I do wonder what he’d say if he saw her, she’s a natural hunter, dammit, digressing, sorry I just don’t get the chance to talk to new people that much!

That day, my fifth birthday, was the day I got my initial Gamma brand in front of the pack, I didn’t cry, and I remember the pride on my dad’s face, I just stared into the distance and thought of the food treats I could ask for, I cried that night alone in my room as it hurt and throbbed, but never, ever, in front of others.

When I whimpered yesterday, trust me, it’s part of an act, I’m trying to make people think I’m an unranked wolf.

Those brands are the marks I don’t want people to see, if they understand what they mean, they would be obligated to return me to the Nightshade pack, remember, they make a formidable adversary and not returning what they perceive is theirs, is akin to a death sentence.

It’s also the reason I wouldn’t move to the Royal Pack, because they would recognise what those marks were and my life would become, complicated.

Now something else you may need to know, wolves are really good about telling if you are lying, your inner wolf is driven by its desire to live within the pack rules, even when it hasn’t shown itself, the mentality pervades the human form, so you or your wolf's body language gives it away.

If you are facing a skilled tracker, or someone trained to detect lies, then they can also literally smell a lie, there’s a slight sweat response and that salty smell gives away lies.

Here’s the key thing, wolves think in black and white only, but if you don’t give a direct lie, you can make your wolf believe you are on the white side of the black-and-white line.

So when I am asked by those in the kitchen how I took down the hunted, these are the standard responses, and by telling the six people on kitchen duty the whole pack will know in a few hours.... that’s not an exaggeration in this pack!

My answers go something like this...

I meandered off and got to the clearing and tried to remember the animal traps my dad had taught me to survive to pass the time (stretching the truth, but technically not a lie, I’d guessed the endpoint after all.)

Bow experience came from my dad, he taught me to hunt from an early age so I could survive (true)

I was sat in a tree in the clearing when they arrived, (true) so I guess it was just good luck (kind of true, I’d worked out his pathing, but that also involved a little luck right.)

I scaled the wall of the pack house (true) as there appeared to be some areas where the brickwork allowed me to grip better (true even if I helped make them, but I don’t need to add that latter part for it to be true!)

The guards seemed to be distracted as I went past them. (true)

Remember, obscure the truth no outright lying and with a werewolf, you’re usually golden unless they are highly trained.

Anyway, I’ve chatted with you for too long, I’ve got to prepare to see the Alpha soon and be a submissive wolf once again, technically Omega was removed from me, but you can’t change overnight or people will notice!

Today the kitchen is alive with people asking Toni how she managed to win the challenge, so she’s given them the stock brush-off answers, trying to play it down is succeeding, the showboating arrival from the balcony isn’t even part of the questions.

James has come to the pack house to eat today, normally he eats at home and gives her the look that says, ‘We have to talk’.

He’s a friend and fellow Omega but only as his dad insulted the Alpha when he was drunk and all minors take the rank of the parents, he’ll lose it at seventeen in six months, and his family in nine months as long as his dad remains sober.

Toni understands why he’s upset that she didn’t tell him she was entering the competition, normally they don’t hide a thing from each other and she’s hidden more than he expected.

Taking a two-minute break, she heads over and promises she will find him once she’s spoken to the Alpha and taken her reprimand, but he knows she’s been hiding things from him, hell she’s hidden pretty much everything about her past and she can tell that it hurts him now that he’s realised there’s so much more to tell, a pang of guilt eats away at her, she never planned on hurting him of all people.

At quarter to nine Clara sends her to get ready to see the Alpha, plenty of time to take off the apron, dry her hands and straighten her hair back into the neat ponytail, it’s not one of those long flowing ponytails everyone waxes lyrical about, her hair is brown, straight and a little shorter than shoulder length, so as a ponytail, it’s a short stubby one that is barely there, but it’s a requirement for hair to be tied back in the kitchens.

But doing a final check of her appearance, she heads off to see the Alpha.