"You sure you're up for this?" Asks Ben as we walk out of the back door and towards the woods.

It's Sunday and four days have passed since I fainted from another fever. I spent the whole time in bed, barely able to move as the fever racked my body and left me delirious and sapped of energy. I don't remember much of what happened but according to mum; Ben, Anna, Michael and Zara came over to visit at every available opportunity and even skipped the assembly to come see me, which they all got in trouble for. Apparently, I had been going on about Laiela and people turning into wolves so they hadn't wanted to leave me alone. Yesterday around lunch time my fever broke and I've been slowly getting better. I was feeling good this morning so Ben suggested going for a run in the woods, the woods always calm me down. We were just about to head out so Ben was doing his last minute check that I was really ok.

"I'm fine. Anyway, I always feel better after a good run. Now come on let's go." I answer him as I jog towards the tree line.

We head down one of the well-worn tracks that crisscross the forest. After a few minutes, we come to an intersection and I take the left path that will take us around the mountain instead of up it. Brighthall is a pretty average city with a CBD full of shops and office buildings surrounded by suburbs and smaller shopping districts. It's bordered by forests to the north and the ocean to the west with rural areas to the south and east. The only thing not average about Bright hall is its residents. Some of the richest people in the world live here, buying up as much land and property as the can. The forest is almost entirely privately owned and only parts of it are open to the public, luckily the people that own the mountain allow anyone to come and go as they wish during the day and only close the tracks at night.

As we run through the trees I take deep breaths of the clean air that smells of life and growing things. I close my eyes and just let my senses guide me as I often do in the woods. I've run these trails thousands of times since moving here. Being outside helps me feel closer to dad because he loved nature so much. He was an ecologist and worked with endangered animals at the zoo back in Ashville where we lived before his death. He loved animals and said they weren't dangerous and were simply misunderstood. It was almost ironic when he was killed trying to protect mum from a pack of wolves.

I take in another deep breath of the forest air and stop dead in my tracks. Something's wrong, it smells different than before. I stand still and close my eyes taking another deep breath and scenting the air. I can smell the different layers of scents in the air, I start picking through them looking for the one that doesn't belong. I smell the green living smell of the forest, beneath that is the smell of exhaust and fumes from the city, then my sent followed by Ben's as well as the ever so faint smell of rot and decomposition coming from the leaf litter on the ground and then I find it, the scent of a third person hiding somewhere in the trees. I completely focus on that third person's scent, blocking out all other smells and trying to work out exactly where the person is hiding. Some part of me is screaming that this isn't normal, that I shouldn't be able to do this, but I ignore it because I can do this because I am doing this so it can't be impossible because it just happened. 

Just as I lock onto the scent Ben suddenly comes up behind me puffing and panting. He comes to a stop beside me and puts his hands on his knees bending over and trying to catch his breath.

"Just give me a minute." he breaths holding up a finger. "How is it that you're the sick one but I'm the one who's dying over here?"

Hering Ben say that makes me wonder the same. I'm not tired or out of breath at all even though we've been running for at least a couple of miles. This is weird, I just want to go back home and forget any of this happened. I turn to tell Ben we're heading back but that's when I catch a glimpse of the third person.

Their standing in the forest about 15 feet off the track to my left. They're just barely visible through the underbrush so I'm only able to make out parts of what they look like. They were tall and muscular with long elegant limbs and a slender figure. Their skin was pale and as far as I could tell they weren't wearing any clothes, that struck me as strange but I didn't give it much thought as I was too distracted by their shocking waist length, snow white hair. It was just like Layla's except where hers was wavy theirs was long and silky looking. 

I must have made some sort of noise because Ben looked up at me before turning to see what I was staring at.

"Oy! You! What are you doing out here?" Ben shouts at the person.

They turn, startled, before racing off in the other direction, but in that moment that they looked over at us I saw their face and I heard that strange voice from the other night again.

Alpha. Alpha has come.