You guys may have noticed it's been a while since I put anything up on here; that would be because it's been a while since I've written. Like, anything. But stories are starting to trickle back into my head, so I'm tentatively sticking my foot back in. So there's that.

Then there's this.

Standard disclaimers, etcet. Enjoy!

~ Jack

When I was fifteen, I killed my first werewolf. Caroline. She was eighteen. My father had been monitoring her pack for three weeks, gathering intel, staking them out, watching. Then one night he put a gun in my hand, and I went with them.

There were four werewolves, teenagers, living in this abandoned warehouse. They had army-surplus cots and sleeping bags or piles of blankets and couch cushions salvaged from curbs. There were crates at a table, a fridge, a worktable with non-perishable food arranged neatly. Couple of lamps on the floor. A TV. They were just watching TV. They weren't doing anything. They weren't hurting anyone. As far as I knew, there was no evidence that they'd ever hurt anyone. But when I broke that warehouse door in and started shooting, I was seeing demons. I hated them.

Caroline was the first one I laid eyes on. I didn't see terror, although it must have been there on her face. I didn't see innocence. What does innocence look like? I swung my barrel up, and I shot her. And then I shot the one next to her, but someone else had already got him, and he was already dead. They were all already dead.

That altercation lasted, what, eight seconds. Not a single one of those kids had an opportunity to raise a hand against us. They weren't like Derek or Peter – not killers. Never forced to be killers. They were like dogs, domesticated strays, just trying to get by. We went in and we executed them, and I still didn't see it. I was shaking, I was full of adrenaline. I threw up in a corner. I'd just killed someone. But I wasn't sorry. It wasn't a person I'd just killed. A dog. I'd put down a dog that would have eventually gone rabid and killed someone, or worse, turned them into a monster. I wasn't sorry.

I'm sorry now. Here at the end of my bloodline. No family. Dead wife, dead… dead daughter. I can't even fix things by changing the Argent way, can't even teach a new generation to fight for all those people we killed. All I can do for Scott and his pack of kids in over their heads is hold a gun for them, protect them as best I can. Maybe die quietly for them. For Allison.

I wish I could teach them. The kids. What I taught Allison, only without the blind hate. But there's no time. It takes years of intensive training to become an Argent hunter. It's too late to teach them the code – not that the code was all that great, hypocrisy at its finest – and the art of hunting – not that they need that, when they're not hunting anything, just staying alive – and the fine battle tactics – not that their war is anything like organised…

Huh.

What do they need? They need a working knowledge of arms and handling. They need hand-to-hand. They need to know how to win when they're outnumbered, outgunned, and overpowered. Defence. Defensive offence. They need to know how to fight as a unit, as a pack.

Scott. Scott needs to know how to deploy them, how to best use each individual's strengths for the pack as a whole. He needs some war tactics – some guerrilla tactics.

He wants to save them. All the people on that list. He'll need a little help.

Please let me know what you think and how I can improve. It's been forever since I've had any input on my writing, and it probably shows. Thanks! First chapter up soon, probably, because I just had surgery and have literally nothing else to do. I may even do them regularly. *gasp*