A/N: I have had this chapter sitting in my computer for months now, and as I was rereading my story Solitude to begin it up again I came across this and decided that maybe it was time to share it with you guys on here. I have been absent for quiet awhile but I am hoping to be back on a more regular basis, and for those who are waiting for Solitude I am hoping for it to be up later tonight or sometime late tomorrow.

Anyway, let me know what you think, please. Should I continue? Should I leave this as a one-shot open for reader interpretation? I leave it in the hands of my readers

The Beast I Hide

Chapter 1

Epilogue (Emma)

It was said that years ago, thousands of years ago, a human child's first memory was of their mother or father reading them a bedtime story. But that was a long time ago, back when humans ruled with their democracy and their nuclear weapons and their armies, they thought they were safe, but they had no idea what was hiding right under their noses.

A war. A war that started centuries before man sang tales of werewolves and vampires. A war that was kept away from the human eye…until one day it poured out of the seams and first into the streets of New York and then spread like a disease. Vampires and werewolves killing each other in quiet suburban streets and big cities, even Disneyworld, the happiest place on earth was not spared from the bloody war.

Vampires wanted to rule, to farm humans, their numbers growing so large that it became impossible for them to hide the lives they took.

Werewolves, they just wanted to live in peace alongside humans, they wanted to protect them like they did for the rest of the supernatural world, for they were defenseless against the blood suckers.

The Thousand-year war spilled into humanity a thousand years ago, hey I didn't come up with the name, I am just repeating what they call it. it was a constant tug of war between the two rival forces, natural enemies not because one side did something to the other. No we hated each other because of circumstance, because it is what nature told us to hate, what nature told us to hunt.

In the thousand years that we have been fighting humans have been on the cusp of extinction, those who came to us, the werewolves, seeking protection were placed in out protective custody, those who distrusted us went out on their own…they were all eventually found and placed in blood farms. Kept alive for years as their blood is collected to feed the vampires.

Basically, for a thousand years the world sucked, and even that is an understatement.

It was somewhere in the 1,023 year that I came onto the scene, just a mere babe screaming and crying on the side of a dirt road. I was alone, hungry and worst of all human. See the enemy had no qualms of farming a newborn, sweetest blood around they would whisper.

But due to my immense luck I was found by a patrol of werewolves who were scouting the Maine wilderness. My mother and father would tell me years down the road that when I was first brought into their care I smelled like something they had never encountered. "A mixture of forest, vanilla, apples and darkness."

Anyway, the patrol brought me to the High Alpha of the time, a woman, Cara and her husband Alex, who later became mother and father to me. They protected me, and they bestowed upon me the greatest gift a child could have, a bite, a chance to fight and protect, they turned me into a werewolf and declared me their heir.

I was safe…well as safe as I could be in a world torn apart by war.

Growing up I was always fascinated with tales of another realm much like the one we live in but where humans thrived and there were no vampires and werewolves, no angry gods, no fates…a simpler world, a world that existed but cease to exist when the war started. I always toyed with the thought that if I was human in this other realm I would have a job finding people, a bail bondsman they used to call it, maybe drive one of those yellow bug looking cars, maybe wear a red leather jacket…well a girl can dream because the sad truth of this world is that the business of finding people is dead along with people, cars a deadlocked and empty on the sides of roads and in parking lots and I have to constantly wear armor fashioned out of old police bulletproof vests and old police uniforms… the truth is that there is no economy, there is no NORMAL, just war.

Now somewhere around my eighteenth year I got knocked up. I do not remember his name, hell I do not even think I knew it to begin with. He was a convenience after a rather harsh fight, I lost half of the unit that I was deployed with and I needed a distraction so I picked a random dude. He didn't say no because who would say no to a quickie with the Alpha's heir; blonde, tall and athletic, no strings. But the war was coming to a head, vampires were getting bolder; apparently they were killing off their humans faster than they could find them, so they were attempting to kidnap the ones we were protecting and raising a child during this time when you are your sides prized warrior you do not have the time nor the mental capacity to be a mother….at least I didn't.

I took one look at my growing belly and made arrangements to have the child taken to a place I had only heard about from my friend Ruby or Red as she said her name used to be.

See Red was the leader of a group of wolves used to gather intelligence, the Stalkers we called them. They could mold themselves to the shadows, and some were so talented that they could actually pass themselves off as human and be captured intentionally to gather information before breaking out unseen and unheard. And Red was the best of the best. The royal family's protector and advisor…my best friend.

She years before my birth with this knowledge of another world, another realm she would call it. She never spoke of her home just that it went through a change a few years after she left. Now you may wonder why she did not age in the 30 some years she has been with us? Well honestly no one knows. Werewolves in our world age, though slowly, and it usually that age that kills us, not disease, not hunger. We grow normally until our 23rd year and level out and slowly age till time decides it is our time to pass on the torch. But Red seems an exclusion to that rule, she thinks it is because where she came from is different, still…. time no longer moving there, and though she may be here she is still a part of that world.

Our world is confusing, and I have gotten off topic. Back to the baby, Red said that she could hide the babe from vampires and werewolves alike; the child would be safe from the war. And while it was hard to watch as Red took the boy gently from my arms I know it was what was best for the boy.

"I will make sure he is watched over by someone who loves him Emma. One day you will see him again, you will find them..." Them?

Her eyes that day told me that she knew more than she let on, there was something in her tone, it was a prelude to something that I did not know at the time...then she was gone, the sounds of the boy's cries tearing apart my heart but my head was right….there was no room for a child in my life, I had to many responsibilities…to many enemies….

That was ten years ago….

Seven years ago the Alpha was murdered…

My mother and father…murdered…

I became High Alpha seven years ago….

The war ended five years ago…..

I had been searching for Red and the boy for four….

Today was my 28th birthday….

And again, I was alone….

Searching…

Missing….

Missing something that went far beyond that of a child….

Something that the wolf in me needed….Someone…

So I walked into my apartment, kicking the door closed in frustration at another dead end. Pulling out a single cupcake with a single candle I made a wish…something I never do. I was done with the world of magic, it had never been anything other than a pain in my ass, it was everywhere I went, and it was in my wolf….but wished anyway.

I wished to not be alone….

To be loved….

To be normal…

A human…but they were gone….eradicated just before the war ended. The last a man that would forever haunt my dreams.

A ghastly, greasy man he was, his breath pungent, but he was trembling, knowing he was the last of his kind, standing in the grasp of the last vampire. The last of both breeds….

Pulling from those thoughts I blew out my candle and almost immediately there was a small knock at my door….

A. Grayson