Hey everyone! this is my first story, so please dont flame me too badly :) thanks! read and review!! and sorry if the first chapter is short, in my time zone it is after midnight and I need sleep! thanks! Also, I am planning on starting a different Fic, where Stella meets the La Push gang (if you have read the twilight saga you will know what I say when I say that Jacob will have found his imprint in this fic)

Disclaimer: I do not own Victoria, she is Stephenie Meyer's creation, i am just borrowing her for my fanfiction :) Oh, and to prevent confusion, yes, Victoria is in the story, just not in the first mini chapter ;) thanks!

My name is Estella Katharina Poulos. Or, Stella for short. Here is my story:

I am one of a race that you have probably never heard of. We are one of the myths that you never learn about. We have been hidden for generations. We are the tiyiris. The reason you don't normally hear about us, is because very few people know about us. We can shape shift, into tigers. We aren't born with stripes or anything weird like that, but once we are old enough, we can change. It isn't at a set age, it just happens.

We live with our pack until we are old enough to choose to leave if we want to. My pack normally stays in our forest unless something threatens us, but that rarely happens because we are known as the strongest of the packs. My ancestors even made an alliance with the witches long before I was born! The witches were our mortal enemies because they were unhappy with our powers and wanted them for their own, and if they had managed to kill all of our kind they would have gotten it! So my great great great great great( you get the idea) grandfather made a pact with the witches that his people would never use their powers against the witches. So now we get along very well. That is where my best friend Nichta comes into the story, she is a witch, and we have known each other since birth, it was her great great great great great (as I said you get the idea) grandmother who made the treaty with my great great great great (oh whatever) grandfather.

Another person you will probably need to know about is Petros, he is my best friend in the pack, and the person I spend the most time with when I am not with Nichta. he is also the kindest and most corageous person ever when it comes to defending his pack. I am next in line to be the pack alpha. The pack alpha can be male or female, depending on who the oldest child of the alpha at the time is. It is a lot like a wolf pack really, only with stripes! but as i said, we only attack when we are attacked, that is where the story begins to get interesting...

Flashback

Stella! Would you hurry up! We are going to be late!

I am hurrying Petros!

Well hurry faster!

Just because you think we are going to be late doesnt mean that we will...the patrol wouldnt leave without me, i happen to be leading the patrol today! so stop worrying about it!

End Flashback

Well, on that patrol we discovered something that we did not think we would find in our forest ever again... a set of tracks that only belonged to one thing. Uncia. they are the race of people who can transform into snow leopards. They are just as rare as us. And they are one of the few things that can destroy us.