Chapter One: I'm Still Here

"And I want a moment to be real,
Want to touch things I don't feel,
Wanna hold on and feel I belong.
And how can the world want me to change?
They're the ones who stay the same.
They can't see me,
But I'm still here.
They can't tell me who to be,
'Cause I'm not what they see.
Yeah, the world is still sleeping while I keep on dreaming for me;
And their words are just whispers and lies that I'll never believe."
--- John Rzeznik's "I'm Still Here"

This was one of my off days.

I had my good days and bad days, just like everybody else, but, unlike everybody else, my good days and bad days determined my whole demeanor. On a good day, I was proud, I was happy and loveable. On a bad day, I was pessimistic, and I was terribly moody.

Today, I wanted nothing, absolutely nothing, more than to be normal. To be average. To be human. And to make things worse, tonight, I couldn't run. Tonight was the full moon, and I didn't want to be at the mercy of the whole pack. I wasn't one of them, and I wasn't a part of the pack - couldn't be - and I was in danger on the full moon, if I stepped outside of the hotel I was boarding in.

But, as I'd often been told, I couldn't change who I was. And I was actually pretty proud of who I was and what I was. I just wished I could have fit in with some group of creatures. Whether it be humans, wolves, or walkers (not that there were many of them.)

I was Emlyn Valencia James. I was a seventeen-year-old girl, and I'd only just graduated high school. My mother had been a walker, and my father a werewolf. I was something between the two.

I was staying in the local motel until the Marrok was available to help out in my case. At the moment, he and his son, Charles, were straightening things out somewhere in Texas, where a pack had taken over a town, and the Alpha had murdered most of the humans. The survivors were supposed to be relocated to Aspen Springs, seeing as they knew about the dark side of the wolves. He was making it look as if the man had just gone on a murderous rampage.

So he was pretty tied down at the moment.

I'd been in Aspen Springs for two days. I was starting to get cabin fever from only leaving the room to go to the store across the street for food. I was itching to shift and go running, but I was too afraid to go running in the Marrok's territory without the Marrok's permission.

When I'd showed up and asked for a room, the lady at the front desk had said, "Where are your parents? I can't rent a room to a minor."

I'd told her the truth. "They're dead. I'm waiting to meet with a Bran Cornick. I need a room until he gets back from wherever he is."

"Oh!" She'd said. "Waiting on the Marrok? I'm sorry. I think I heard about you. Your dad was killed by his Alpha, right? I'm sorry, child."

I didn't tell her that my dad's death hadn't upset me too much.

My mother had died when I was born, and my father had remarried when I was six. She hadn't wanted kids, so in the typical fashion, after the wedding, he hadn't wanted kids either. I hadn't been treated bad or abused by them, but I'd gone to boarding schools and summer camps all my life. And I'd had a hard time. I was kicked out of each of my schools, and some of the summer camps, usually yearly or every other year, when they'd found a wolf in my bed or in my room.

When I'd started high school, they'd set me up a small house in a small town with a housekeeper to look after me. Not too long before my graduation, my father had challenged his Alpha and been killed in the process. My stepmother had taken her fifteen minutes of fame on the local news and milked it for everything it was worth. In the process, she had pretty much given me a free ticket to the pity party that was my hometown. I'd called the only other wolf I knew.

Nathaniel was in my dad's pack, but he was a submissive - the lowest in his pack. When I'd first been sent away, I'd gotten in the habit of calling Nathaniel and his family, rather than my father and step-mother, to keep in touch with home.

I'd gone to his house when I left my dad's.

"What do I do now?" I'd asked when he'd answered. "I can't live with her, and I don't really have anywhere to go."

And he'd told me my only viable options. "You can go to the Alpha's," Nathaniel had said. "But I'd have to advise against that. As far as I can see, your other option is to go to the Marrok."

So I'd come here, with nothing but a small inheritance and a need to make my presence known to the Marrok. A need for me to figure out what I was and how I was supposed to be.

A/N: I've always kind of wanted to start a story about the Mercades Thompson novels.

This takes place after Bone Crossed.

Reviews would be really nice! Please and thank you!

-Em.