Chapter 1

Randolf is a German name meaning literally "noble wolf" and his last name, Fuerst, means "wolf prince".Originally his name was Nathaniel.

Chapter 1

 

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

It feels like more than an eternity ago. Like some other lifetime that wasn’t even mine at all. But it was, even if I should look in the mirror now and feel that I hardly know myself at all. Things will always change. It doesn’t matter how hard you might cleave onto what you have, time will always slip through your fingers like sand through a sieve.

            My world, our world, is held together by a web of subtle threads. Thin as spider-spun silk and just as naturally perfected. To look at us, you might never imagine such threads existed at all. You cannot see the silver strands glistening in the sun, connecting us to the rest of the universe. But they exist, nonetheless. Their existence is secret just as what they are contrived of is entirely secret as well. That knowledge is such that it might snag and snare and kill. These invisible threads of secrets that have spanned centuries, woven by the hands of our kind since the dawn of our creation.

            All that I’m saying now probably makes little in the way of sense. But it will, of that I’m most certain. Perhaps I’m only indulging myself with pretty words. But when these words could very well cost me my life, I might as well make them worth the while to speak. I am the first, you see, to speak of any of this. To unveil our world of silent threads. Of secrets. Of lies. So I will start with this, in the utmost hope that I can afford more clarity in the future. My name is Randolf Fuerst and I am Lycanthrope.

            My life began as all of our lives do, deep in the northeastern parts of the Ural Mountains in Russia. There are no roads that might take you there, nor is there any sign of civilization that might lead you to believe that anyone or anything could survive there. But our kind has gotten quite good at staying hidden. Call it a necessity. Through the forbidding terrain, amidst the rock and snow and evergreens, is where we have carved out the very core of our civilization for hundreds of years.

            I was born a healthy pup, but nothing more. But it was more than most of the pups of my generation might hope for. My parentage was not a proud thing; it was more so a scandal. My mother was mated to another and he proved to be unable to provide her with a daughter to whom she might pass her bloodline.  So she sought out a secret affair with the man who was my father. Their litter entailed that I was the firstborn of two. My sister, Aleksandra, was weak from birth and did not survive to see her second month. It was sad, yes, but it was something that we had all come to accept as an inevitability an expected risk that not all pups should survive. With so few of us left living, the selection of mates was slim and inbreeding left litters small and sickly. We were grateful for any survivors. So I was their first and only pup. My mother wasn’t thrilled, of course, since females are preferred and her entire purpose behind her scandal was to provide her with a female. We are, as our feral kin the natural wolves, are matriarchal and so the females are the dominant gender. She wished, plainly, that my sister had lived instead of me. But I think she did spend a lot of time wishing for the improbable fortune that never befell her.

            My father was different and he loved me better. He probably did wish somewhat to have had a daughter to bring him honor and value as a mate, but he didn’t seem to feel shortened by my having lived. He said that I reminded him of his father, which suited him well enough to keep me and raise me when my mother, in her disgust, refused to acknowledge me and take me as her child. Coached by his affections and hidden deep in the warmth of the caves and catacombs beneath Latibul, I was raised along with the other pups without a mother, which in turn caused me to be easily overlooked and intentionally ignored. A male pup without a mother in which to ground his relevance is one left to the dire situation of having no family pack to own him.

I should say that Latibul is, was, will evermore be our home. Our den, if you will mind the crude term. It is a gray-stone carved structure, it’s jagged, uneven peaks mimicking those of the surrounding mountains so that it blends in more readily. But it is still, more or less, a castle. There are rooms enough for several hundred of us and our families to live comfortably and secretly, without threat of discovery. The caves and secret passageways wind deep into the stone beneath it and go on for miles. There is where Mother sits enthroned. Mother is the alpha, you see. Not just of our particular pack, but of all Lycans...everywhere. There is no one above her and not a single rogue or heretic can deny her the rights set upon her by the goddess, our goddess. She is, put simply, as the goddess used to be to us. The holy, most supreme alpha. Her word is law and no one, apart from her daughters, can refuse her commands. If we were to have a queen, she would be it without objection.

 I should, perhaps, explain our connections to the goddess. Our existence stems from a legend, like humans and the Garden of Eden. But I suppose everyone has their own respective creation story. Something that no one has any real proof of but is believed fervently in spite. Our legend says that we were once the faithful followers of the Moon Goddess, Diana. Humans and nothing more, who served her dutifully in the time of the Roman Empire. Now her rival was said to be the Love Goddess, Venus, who was jealous of Diana’s beauty and purity. Venus devised a vicious plot against her, which caused Diana to accidentally murder her lover, Orion. Diana was stricken with grief and fury and called upon us, her followers, to fight for her vengeance upon Venus. She gave us the speed, strength, instinct, and prowess of the wolf both in body and soul. She made us, creating a new being to be her perfect hunter that would track down Venus’s own lover, Adonis, and slaughter him. We did, as the legend tells, and the Goddess Venus cursed us and Diana alike, creating her own personal version of the perfect hunter from her own blood; the Immortal Lovers. You know them, more likely, as Vampires, I’m sure. They are our natural enemies, borne of such a vile purpose which is to infect and destroy the pure, and so we have ever waged war upon them. But like us, their existence is one wrought now in shadow. Creatures of the night. That aside, we are said to be the servants of the Moon Goddess, fashioned by her to be the perfect hunters and protectors of purity and humans. Of course, it became necessary for us to make our existence secret and so legends have been altered, changed throughout history to erase our existence from the pages of time. To weave threads of secrets that built a silken barrier between our world...and everyone else. I’m sure any Roman or Greek myth you’ve read doesn’t say anything about Lycans and Vampires, but that is by our design. In this case, as in many others, what you know might certainly kill you. Ignorance is bliss. It’s far safer. Especially for humans.

 

 ~>*<~

“Someone’s moving into the old Dervyshire place.”

            Charlotte Montgomery looked up from where she sat, perched in a kitchen chair with her knees pulled up to her chest so that she could drape the sale papers across them and peruse for coupons to clip. Her mother was deep in the throws of canning preserves, her assembly of jars and more figs than anyone would ever eat in a lifetime spread out across the counters. But this didn’t prevent her from spreading the gossip that, like a wind from the mountains, swept through the tiny speck of a town where they lived. Charlotte smiled knowingly, looking back to the sale ads and lifting her brows, “That’s odd.” She commented distractedly, baiting her mother with her disinterest.

Her mother was eagerly predictable and turned around to jab a spoon in her daughter’s direction, “Odd? Of course it’s odd! Not just odd, completely irrational! Can you imagine all the repairs that would have to be done? Not to mention it’s nearly impossible to get a good contractor to come this far out of the city. Just think, Charly, at the money it would take to get that place looking decent again. Whoever bought it must be horribly rich.”

“All the more reason not to dwell on it,” she answered. Charlotte, affectionately called Charly by any who knew her well, flipped the pages past her, occasionally pausing at one and carefully tearing it from the paper. “Why would anyone with that much money waste it on that ragged old place? They must be out of their mind. Not worth knowing at all.”

Mrs. Montgomery huffed, whirling around again to rattle her jars busily, “You have no imagination at all. It’s a good public service, restoring a historic place like that. It’ll raise the property value. And if they have money to throw around like that, what’s to stop them from promoting the local businesses here?”

“People with that much money don’t care about local businesses, mom.” Charly answered dryly, placing a few new clippings in a series of piles on the kitchen table. “Have you lit the fire yet?”

Her mother shook her head, having nothing further to say about it as she turned her focus back to canning the figs for jams. She tired quickly of her daughter’s unwillingness to engage in the gossip and took to flicking on the small television that was positioned on the counter in a corner of the kitchen.

The sound of the news channel was enough to drive Charly from her chair, folding up the sale papers and gathering up her clippings to put them away in one of the kitchen drawers. “I’ll go start it then. Dad’ll be home soon.” She sighed, going through the den with soft footsteps creaking on the old wooden floorboards. She paused at the front door, stepping into her tall rubber boots and pulling a fleece-lined gray jacket from a hook to wrap it around herself tightly. She opened the door to the cold night air, her breath hanging in it only slightly and an urgent breeze blowing down from the mountains through her dark gold hair.

It was late April and it wasn’t yet cold as it might have been. But it seemed winter wasn’t finished yet and the temperature was still hovering around 40 degrees, dipping below at night and rising somewhat above in the daylight. Not so abnormal for southern Colorado. It was still suitably cold for snow to stick on the ground and the grass on their lawn was still a drab brown and crunched as Charly trooped through the darkness to where a pile of firewood was positioned behind the carport. She dusted the frost and snow off a few logs lying at the top of the stack, dark jade colored eyes drifting to glance back over her narrow shoulder to where the grand majesty of the Sangre de Cristo mountains touched the earth, their stony faces visible under the generous light of the moon that made their snowy peaks shine, as if a platinum blanket had been cast over them. There, beyond the borders of the town to the west, where the lush grazing land stretched far and wide at the base of the mountains, was where Dervyshire house stood. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew it was there. She’d gone along with the other teenagers to drive past it or park outside, daring each other to approach the majestic old mansion that was rumored to be haunted. But high school had been three years ago now and those memories were fading; she hardly remembered what it looked like. Perhaps seeing it restored would refurbish any lingering thought of the old, shadowed haunted house it had once been.

Custer County, a narrow valley nestled between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the west and the Wet Mountain Range to the east offered little in the way of civilization apart from a few scattered mining towns and cattle-farming communities. Charly had grown up in Westcliffe, one of the latter, and had scarcely been further than Canon City, which served as the only real spot of civilization within a two hour drive in all directions. Her childhood had been simple, adolescence much the same, and now her young adulthood was beginning to reveal that same trend. It made her despair and wonder if there could possibly be any kind of a future for her on the other side of the mountains, where the world was said to have continued. Simplicity, while familiar, was becoming smothering.

Bellamy Farms had been the center of her whole world, as it had been her mother’s before her. This trend continued back for generations as it had been passed down from her mother’s family. Theirs was a cattle-raising farm boasting well around 700 head of beef cattle to which her father was amorously dedicated. He’d built several barns surrounding the house, restored the old corrals, and spent countless hours preparing grazing fields and herding cattle. It was as if he’d done it all his life and was content to do it forever, but in fact he had taken it up 30 years ago when the newly wed Mrs. Montgomery inherited it from her father. With no sons to pass it to and only one daughter, Charly’s grandfather had left everything to her mother. Her fate would be a similar situation, she feared, being that she was the only child of the Montgomery’s. Bellamy Farms would endure, somehow.

Charly loaded her arms with as many logs as she could carry, hurrying back to the front door and finally let them roll out of her grasp onto eaves of the brick fireplace. She stood back to take off her boots and coat, shutting the door and putting everything away before she returned to assemble the logs into a neater pile, stacking a few onto the old black iron grate inside the fireplace. From the kitchen, she could hear her mother’s laughter over the murmur of the TV; she was on the phone.

Taking thin strips of newspaper from a stack beside the fireplace, Charly began balling them up and setting them about the logs before finally taking a box of matches to strike one and light the corner of one of the balls of paper. Her dark green eyes were distant and thoughtful, watching the paper blacken and collapse upon itself as the fire spread and grew. It was like watching her life from a distance as it shriveled down to something black and shapeless, consumed by the flames of those who burned more brightly than she knew how.

She’d graduated only three years ago and yet it felt so much longer. She was now 21 and yet her mind was feeling as though it had atrophied, locked in place with nowhere to expand or grow. Many of her friends had moved on, gone to college, and began lives somewhere else. Others were learning a trade, usually a family trade, and preparing to take on a career nearby. But Charlotte Montgomery was doing absolutely nothing. Her days were spent at home with her mother, when she couldn’t find reason to escape, reading or hoarding pictures of sandy white beaches from magazines and online touring websites.

On better days, she drove into town and met with Kimberly James, the only remaining friend who hadn’t betrayed her to having a future somewhere other than Westcliffe. She had been a close friend with Kim since infancy, her parents owning a small woodworking and carpentry shop on Main Street where her father worked at making tables, chairs, and various beautiful furniture pieces. Scarcely a single person in all of Wichita Falls didn’t have a piece of James furniture in their home. But, being that there was barely more than 400 people in all of Westcliffe, it wasn’t really so grand a feat as the James family believed.  She and Kim had gone to school together since kindergarten, always inseparable as playmates, and finally graduated high school in the same class of a mere 23 students. Kim, as Charly, was destined to stay in Westcliffe and it was no mystery that Mrs. James and Mrs. Montgomery were in the market for handsome, well-off young men to marry their girls and keep them in the town.

And so worse days brought Samuel Elrod from Denver, always at her father’s request, to help out on the farm in the spring. He’d stay for what seemed like an eternity and sniff about her life, looking for a good way into it. Had his intentions been benign, she might’ve made less of an effort to avoid him, but he was a young man with an agenda. He couldn’t entirely be left to blame for it, though. It had begun as a parental conspiracy that they were now both entangled in. Sam was the son of one of her father’s old friends from Denver and came down every year to help with the herding, butchering, and a whole host of things that Charly might’ve helped with. It would have been a pleasant excuse to get out of the house more. But her father approved of Samuel’s attitude and work ethic and invited him back time and again, making subtle remarks to his wife and daughter at how glad he’d be to have a son in law like that. Mrs. Montgomery rejoiced in this idea and did applaud her husband’s cleverness.

Charly frowned at the thought, sitting back with her legs crossed Indian-style on the little hearth rug in front of the fire place. What had started out as welcomed company had devolved into a relentless love pursuit. Her mother was absolutely giddy at the idea that Sam had designs on her, regardless of how anyone else felt about it. Charly had no ally even in Kim, who agreed that they would be a good match. Her one hope had been that Sam might be equally appalled at the idea of being forced into some sort of distorted matchmaking scheme, but that had fallen flat years ago.

It wasn’t that he was unfortunate looking or had some sort of personality flaw that made him undesirable; Sam was good-looking and very amiable. He made friends easily and was well thought of in the town. Other girls her age wished they had his soft blue eyes look with desire in their direction. It made it all the harder to resent him. But the idea of being coerced to marry him and live here for the rest of her days, trapped behind the same walls where she’d grown up as a girl, horrified Charly. So she was resolved to resent him and thwart his every attempt to please her.

The front door opened, letting in another blast of cold night air. The sound of her father’s groaning as he took off his work boots and jacket didn’t make her turn away from where the young flames were now climbing the logs in the fireplace; her father wasn’t a talkative or overly affectionate man. To those who knew little of him, he might have seemed sour and oppressive. He rarely smiled and his own tired green eyes were always pinched up into a half scowl. But for his impending presence, he spoke very little and Charly had no memory of him ever being harsh or raising his voice to anyone. He always slammed the door so hard that it made the house rattle whenever he came home. Old as it was, it might’ve been better if he stopped that habit, but it was as if he was putting the period at the end of his daylong sentence of working the cattle.

The house itself was over 100 years old and had only been renovated when her parents had married and moved in. They had replaced the tile in the kitchen and bathrooms, installed new granite kitchen counters, and remodeled the bathrooms; amongst many other little cosmetic updates. With 5 bedrooms and three bathrooms, it was a charming little farmhouse with a broad front porch, a slanted gray tin roof, and two brick chimneys, one on each end of the house. The first warmed the kitchen and living room and the second warmed the master bedroom and most of the upstairs. Of course, there was a central air system to keep the house warm, but her father was dead set against using it unless it was extremely cold outside. Spring temperatures, though chilly, didn’t warrant its use in his mind.

“I’m making meatloaf.” Her mother called into the den as she leaned through the doorway, her shoulder cocked up to keep the phone pressed to her ear. “Don’t track mud in here.” She chastened him, disappearing back into the kitchen to talk excitedly into the phone.

Her father groaned again, mumbling something better left unintelligible as he shucked off his work boots and came into the den, looking over his daughter without comment before he finally sank down into his favorite recliner. He let out a long sigh, like the releasing of steam and flicked on the TV across the room; the barrier to prevent any unnecessary conversation.

Charly sat before the fire, listening to the sounds of the two rivaling TV’s, her mother chattering at the phone, the cracking and popping of the fire in the hearth, and the clattering of dishes as her mother set the table. It was a well-rehearsed barrage of sounds, one she heard every night and had for many years.

Her father might’ve entertained a few questions to her; how her day had been, if she had had a good time with Sam. But he was an essentially introverted man, not stern or unpleasant but reserved in his own way.  She could sympathize with him in that, being of a similar mind, but a bit more engaging and curious in nature. She had his dark green eyes and his courageous work ethic, but not his need for routine and simplicity. She had her mother’s sprightly, petite build and flowing dark gold hair that curled slightly down from the crown of her head near the base of her back, but not her intense need for quick conversation or her affinity for gossip.

Charly stood alone in most aspects of her intimate self, or at least she believed it to be so. She had no other living relatives or grandparents that lived within an easy distance for comparison. She was as a drifting skiff upon a sea of stars, searching for a point of light that she might tether herself to.

“Dinner!” Her mother sang from the kitchen, the phone clanging back onto the hook on the wall as she carried an iron skillet of cornbread to the rectangular kitchen table.

That was all the encouragement Mr. Montgomery needed to spring from his chair and take up his seat at the head of the table, hastily dishing up meatloaf, green beans, and cornbread onto his plate. Mrs. Montgomery poured tea into the glasses and sat across from her husband, beginning to spoon out her portions too. Charly followed in less vigor, sitting back at her place and leering briefly at the chair across from hers that was left suspiciously empty. Sam would have sat there, if he were present. Normally, so late in April as it was, he would have been locked in a hypnotized stare at her from across the table, but he wasn’t here. He hadn’t come yet this year. Charly was intensely curious about this but she dared not ask, for fear of it seeming that she wanted him there or missed his company.

Suspended in that mystery, she filled her plate with modest portions and nibbled absently, watching as her father seemed to be raking his food into his mouth as quickly as he could without choking. He knew what was coming and his attempts to evade it were obvious.

“Did you go to the Co-Op today?” Her mother swirled her fork in her beans, delicate features calculating and piqued.

 Her father’s attempts to avoid her barrage of gossip-driven questions were vain and he surrendered, stopping his gorging to drink from his glass and begin eating again at a normal, surrendering rate. “No.” he answered.

“Oh.” Mrs. Montgomery deflated a little, but wouldn’t be put off. “Well, I was only going to ask if anyone had mentioned anything about the old Dervyshire house. Someone’s moving into it. I wondered if anyone had seen who it was or heard any names.”

Charly made a small smirk, taking only a small amount of pleasure in watching her mother circling the conversation like a lioness might a wounded gazelle. Looking for the best moment to strike and go for the kill.

“Nope.” Her father didn’t look up from his place, appearing as disinterested in the subject as he knew how.

“Well, that’s strange…that nobody should have heard anything or seen anything at all.” Now came the strike, her mother looking up at him and huffing, “You could at least take some interest in it, Harold. It could affect the whole town! Just think, someone that filthy rich living so close! Mrs. Clarke thinks it might be some movie star or country music singer, you know people like that always buy up a bunch of big houses and never live in a single one of them!”

“They do that to raise the property value by having their name attached to it so they can resell it for more than it’s worth, mom.” Charly intervened on her father’s behalf. Another gazelle cantering by to offer some diversion. “It’s a real estate scam.”

“It’s just as well,” Her father mumbled, “the last thing Westcliffe needs is some big shot Hollywood head bobbing around these parts. Bringing strip malls and smut stores and all that nonsense here.”

“Harold, that’s just an awful thing to say. It would bring money into the town! We might have a decent chain grocery store finally, maybe even a Wal-Mart!” Her mother declared, pointing her fork at him and squinting her eyes, “That type of thinking is why Westcliffe never grows and we never get any new families moving here.”

“We don’t need a Wal-Mart.” Her father retorted.

“How can you say that?” Mrs. Montgomery bugged her eyes in shock, “That! That right there is why nobody new moves here!”

The conversation continued with little in the way of progress or resolution, though it did get louder from her mother’s end. Charly’s meager attempt was lost to the yipping and bickering and she finished her meal, taking her plate to the white, farmhouse sink, and retiring upstairs to let them finish their meal and battle of wills continue alone.

Her room was the largest of the 5, apart from her parent’s master suite that was downstairs, and it faced the westward view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. With a small attached bathroom and a old iron-framed double bed, she didn’t keep much in the way of personal decoration in her room. A few pictures were placed in frames on her desk and dresser, one of herself and Kimberly even taped to the mirror, but apart from that and her scatterings of clippings in piles on her desk, there was little else of herself present in the room. The quilted cover on her bed had been made by her grandmother, a beautiful handcrafted blanket with little pink and yellow flowers stitched upon it. Her graduation cap still hung on the edge of her mirror, collecting dust, where she’d put it the night after her high school graduation three years ago. Her mother had taken her salutatorian certificate from that day, framed it, but the frame itself had been leaned against the wall in a corner and made it no closer than that to being hung on the wall. With one large window beside her bed that looked over the sprawling fields that led up to the mountains, the room felt bare and empty.

Charly sat on the edge of her bed, reaching to pull her cell phone off the charger on the nightstand beside her bed. One message blinked on the screen and she opened it, smiling at Kimberly’s announcement that she was bored and wanted to meet for lunch the next day. Silver Stone at 11. Charly punched in a reply, agreeing to meet, and flipped the phone shut again. She sighed heavily, lying back on the bed to stare at the bare wooden beams on the ceiling; every moment felt as though she were hanging in suspense for something to happen or some activity that was a diversion from an endless routine. Something more than a random celebrity deciding to restore the old Dervyshire house.

Changing into an old nightshirt and knee high socks, Charly brushed her teeth and braided her hair into a long gold rope down her back. A few wisps of curled bangs were left to frame her oval face and she stared at her reflection in her small bathroom mirror. She had the wide eyed look of a girl born in the wilds of the westward mountains; skin fair as a lily and dotted in faintly colored freckles. Her large pale colored eyes, rosy pink tinted lips, and round subtle nose were all positioned prettily on a smooth oval shaped face. Hers was a face that resembled the old black and white photographs taken of the western settlers outside their canvas covered wagons; windswept, earthy, and almost haunted.

The iron frame creaked as she settled into her bed, able to hear her parents mumbling and talking in the room that was directly beneath hers. It was an unfortunate coincidence that she should share a wall with her parents, even if it was the floor, but their voices carried up and she’d been able to catch hints of their secretive conversations since she was a girl. It was through this particular medium that she had first made the horrifying discovery about their intentions behind Sam’s continued visits to the farm. It was on that same subject that they conversed tonight and Charly lay awake, buried beneath a mound of quilts, listening to her mother’s insistent whispers and her father’s answering grunts.

“You’re sure that he does intend to come?” Her mother huffed, “Oh Harold, what if he has met some other girl? Some girl in Denver who dresses better and is more excited at his giving his attention to her? What if he doesn’t want to come? ”

“I’m sure that isn’t the case.” Her father’s tone was tired and savored strongly of defeat. He didn’t have much energy left to soothe his wife’s antics tonight. “He called two days ago saying he would leave as soon as he could. Some nonsense about college classes.”

That seemed to make her mother appeased, if only for a few minutes, “I’m so worried about her, Harold.” She paused, seeming sincere in a way that was most rare, “I am watching our daughter, our beautiful girl, wither away like an old woman in a nursing home. It isn’t normal. And here we’ve gone and sacrificed so much to bring this young man to her that could provide stability and honest love into her life and she will have nothing to do with him. I had hoped time would instruct her to see the possibilities. That she would inherit this house, this comfortable life. But it’s almost as if she doesn’t want any of it. Sam, god bless him, tries. He loves her, Harold, but she refuses to give him a chance.” No one could expect him to wait for her forever. One as sweet and kind and good looking as he is will attract other girls with better prospects. It’s only a matter of time before he realizes that himself.”

“I can’t force Charlotte to be practical, Susan. You can’t either.” Her father sighed heavily, “Neither of us can force her to make this choice. So let it go. He’s a good kid, I’ll agree with you there. I’d be happy to have him as a son-in-law and leave all this to the both of them. But Charly is a grown woman now. If she doesn’t love him…then it’s just as well that he moves on to someone else.”
            Her mother made a groaning sort of wail. “There could be no one else better for her. She’ll be the biggest fool in all Westcliffe if she lets him escape without a ring on her hand and the whole town will know it!”

Charly couldn’t stand to listen further, pressing a pillow over her head and shutting her eyes tightly. She lay that way until the mumblings downstairs died down into silence and she was able to lie again on her back, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for sleep to find her.

Reviews

[Eoin Lemon]

I wouldn't usually read fantasy but your standard of writing is excellent. Very impressed with the dialogue and the story of Randolph immediately grabs your attention. Are you published yet? If not, why not????!!! Well done. Really good, and promise to read more than the first chapter.
Best regards. Eoin

[a]

Hmm i really like this, but after Randolf's piece Charly's seems a little bland, but great thou. Don't get me wrong i'm interested in reading more and i like it so far. Its good. Your writing on the whole reminds me of the book Eragon which is really cool.

[WhiteWolf]

Well, it's nice to see a lycan/werewolf story that doesn't have anyone sparkling in it. :D that being said, your style has a certain tone that lends itself to me in an extremely interesting way. Your turn of phrases are very clever and your characters are very effective and tangible, something that lacks in most writers. I look forward to reading further.

[Charles]

intriguing work here. not really forcing anything while setting the exposition slowly.