Twilight and its characters are and always have been S. Meyers. I do not own nor do I claim any of her work.

R&R constructively please

The legends say that becoming a spirit warrior is a 'great honor'. The reality of it is that it depends on the person who has this life 'gifted' to them. The truth of our situation is that this 'great honor' has been forced on a bunch of overgrown, hormonal teenagers, that are having to grow up in a matter of months if not weeks. I'm the oldest at 20. The youngest, so far, is Seth. He just turned 15.

As of right now, there are eight of us.

To say that it's a big adjustment going from your average teen, who's biggest worries are how to beat the latest video game and how to get into a girls pants, to growing a foot and a half or more and putting on 35 to 40lbs of pure muscle in a month with the added painful bonus of turning into a giant wolf would be the understatement of the century.

Then there's Leah, the packs only female. She's only just a little bitter about it all. When she's sleeping that is. The rest of the time, well, that's a whole nasty can of worms that I can't even begin to explain.

Still, each one of us has dealt with and still deals with this 'great honor' differently.

My Beta, Jacob, hates it. Goes against everything ingrained in him. He viewed it as taking away every free will choice he ever had. To be honest, except for the small things, it does. It ties you to the res for the rest of your life, gives you the job of protecting it and all human life that surrounds it. Hell, it even picks your mate for you. That, in itself, was a huge problem for him.

Until recently, he'd been trying to get his best friend, who just happened to be the girl he was "in love with", to go out with him.

There were three problems with that. One, she loved him but not like that. Two, she used to date a cold one. Three, he imprinted. That last one pissed him right the fuck off when it happened. He doesn't seem to gripe about the imprint too much anymore.

Gee, wonder why.

It doesn't help that he's 17 and just found out that eventually he's supposed to take over the pack, along with becoming the tribal Chief and has now been handed by the great spirits or whoever controls this shit, his mate for life. It would be scary for anyone to look at our situation and know that they were going to play any part in it.

There were more than a few of us that had dreams outside of the res. Going to college, getting a good job and moving away from here. Those were squashed the day the lupine gene in our blood became active.

Jacobs's eventually going to have to emotionally and mentally grow up and get over this Bella shit or the entire pack is going to suffer for it. He is changing. It just seems to be slow going for him.

It hurts to let the inside of you catch up with the physical side that's already made you look 10yrs older. Sucks to say, but the sooner the better.

Quil took it in stride. Like it was just something that he was supposed to do. Kinda like going through puberty, I guess. At times it still knocks him on his ass but he just rolls with it. That's not to say that he doesn't feel the strain of it. We all do. He just seems to deal with it better than the rest of us. The difference is that he doesn't question or fight it. From the pain to the forced lifelong commitment to the res and the killing. He usually does it with a joke (generally at the most inappropriate times and almost always dirty) and a smile. It either makes us laugh or puts us on edge. More often than not, it puts one or more of us on edge.

Which he thinks is funny as hell anyway.

Quil even dealt with the fever, pain of growth and transformation into his wolf better than any of the rest of us.

That first phase is enough to keep the wolf on its belly panting in pain for hours. Even by the time that it's up on its paws, the pain sometimes drowns out anything that's being told to it.

With Quil though, he laid there in pain excited about the fact that he could hear us in his head and had paws and a tail. Then he started wondering if his tendency toward certain foods had anything to do with being a wolf. After that thought, he proceeded to show us in his mind just exactly what he's done with one of the girls on the res.

I'll never be able to eat peanut butter again.

Then there's Paul. It's like he was born for the wolf. I think if he could stay phased, he would. Problem with that is that he would lose any humanity he has. And Paul doesn't have much of that to spare anyways.

At first, he was so pissed about being given this 'great honor' that he lashed out at everyone. Between him getting into fights as a human and with us when he was phased and fucking everything that moved, he had me and the council going from one problem to the next trying to keep the packs secret and him out of jail.

After about 3 weeks of that, I had had enough. I knew that using an Alpha order on him would work but not gain his respect and obedience as a man or wolf. So, one sunny day when he was being particularly nasty, I turned without warning and hit him. It took him about half a second to get to his feet and throw his first punch. He fought me full out. It started with us being human and ended with us both phased and my wolf pinning his to the ground by the throat until he submitted. It sucked because he's been one of my closest friends since we were little kids. The next day though, he showed up at my door cracking jokes and talking about his latest piece like nothing had happened. After that, he stopped lashing out at everything and everyone and took orders as they were given. He still fucked anything that moved. But hey, you can't expect him to change overnight completely. At least now he's more discrete about it.

Most of the time anyways.

It's his anger and the ability to think quick that makes him strategically and viciously, the most dangerous fighter in the pack. We have his home life growing up and all the husbands and fathers that caught him screwing their wives and daughters for that.

It took him about a week after phasing to realize that he and his wolf had a whole lot in common. They both liked to run on their baser instincts. To feed, fight and to fuck. The pack, however, needed him to keep that part of him that he doesn't share with the wolf. His humanity.

The pack because we were stronger with him and Jared and me because we didn't want to lose our friend like we have already lost so much to this 'great honor'.

Currently, I'm sitting and watching the three of them from my back deck as they made their way through the trees. They were phased and Paul was snapping at Quils heels as they ran just inside of the tree line. As per usual, Jake seemed to be staring off into space. Probably trying to figure out a way to get Bella and keep the imprint. 'That's not going to happen.' He wouldn't be screwing his imprint all the time if he was still really serious about Bella. He just can't seem to let go yet.

Focusing back on Quil and Paul I realized why he was snapping at him. Quil was still carrying around that damn deck of cards in his mouth. No doubt trying to get him to play poker while phased. Again.

Shaking my head, I thought about the weekend prior. He'd somehow convinced Jared, Paul and Embry to play while phased. The 4 half-full 5-gallon buckets of Old Quil's moonshine around them had gone a long way into getting them to agree to it.

Jake had been at my house when he got the call to come get Billy and to take him over to Old Quils for some homemade medicine.

'Riigghhtt, medicine.'

I had decided to walk over with him to let Quil know to relieve Seth when he came off patrol. It was after we got there that Old Quil found out that not only was Quil gone but a large part of his shine was missing from his shed.

I phased to find out where they were and could only come up with some vaguely fuzzy images of a red house and what I thought looked like sticks. The only house on the res that was red was Billy's.

So, it was no surprise when Jake, Billy, Old Quil and I got to Billy's back yard that we came upon four drunken 'spirit warriors'.

What was surprising was that they were four fully phased drunk 'spirit warriors' and they were playing poker.

Complete with cards and sticks as money.

I thought Billy and Old Quil were going to piss themselves laughing. Jake and I were trying to figure out how to get the situation under control before someone saw their dumb asses.

We'd never actually had this situation happen before.

We knew a lot of alcohol could keep them from phasing into the wolf, which meant that it could probably also keep them from phasing back to humans. This also meant that they were at least partially sober when they phased and had kept drinking as wolves. Hence the reason for the buckets of shine instead of jars to drink out of.

Jared, Quil, and Embry didn't concern me.

It was Paul I was worried about. We all knew that he, the man, could be volatile sober or drunk, but his wolf was deadly sober and we didn't know what his wolf was going to be like drunk.

It was when he started leaning sideways and chuffing that Jake and I looked at each other and decided to go ahead and phase.

That had been a bad idea.

It was like 4 sets of beer goggles being set over your eyes. We'd phased back immediately only to see Paul on his back, belly showing, legs in the air, still chuffing.

Billy was laughing and wiping tears off his face. Old Quil had sat down in a lawn chair still chuckling and said, "Lahote's wolf sure does think somethings funny."

I was still watching Paul when I heard Jacob start laughing. I looked over and raised an eyebrow at him. He nodded toward the other three and said, "I think Quil is going all in." I glanced just to make sure Paul was still in the same spot before looking over just in time to see Quil nose the rest of his sticks into the pile in front of him. Embry had laid down at some point and had his head on his paws, watching, while Jared seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to take the bet.

I could not believe the ridiculous scene going on before me.

It was when Paul, who was still laying on his back with his feet in the air, tongue now hanging out of the side of his mouth had started snoring seriously loud enough to be a freight train that I came out of my stupor.

That's when I knew we had to do something quick before we had 4 passed out wolves the size of horses in Billy's back yard.

So, I did the only thing that came to mind hoping it would work.

I walked over, got the three that were still semi-coherent (enough to play poker anyways) to pay attention.

I almost lost it when three giant wolf heads tipped to the side in confusion. You know, cute puppy style. Jake didn't help by falling on his ass in laughter. I made myself stop chuckling, cleared my throat, used the base and tenor in my voice and issued the order. "PHASE". Fifteen seconds later, three nude, overgrown, drunken teenage boys were laying in Billy's back yard.

I asked Billy and Old Quil to stay out there and watch them while Jake and I phased and moved Paul.

We each grabbed onto a back leg with our mouths and pulled Paul into the woods.

Well mostly.

It was when Paul yelped and yanked his back paws out of our mouths and quickly rolled to his stomach and was belly crawling away that we saw what cause him to come around.

As we were pulling him into the woods we had to jerk him forward a couple of times to get him over some of the twigs, sticks, and rocks. I guess with the last jerk we didn't get Paul over the last stick. In fact, we managed to accidentally impale it into his backside. Right into what would be his right ass check once he was back to being human. Thankfully it didn't get jabbed in any further to the left.

Jake and I phased back to being human. I figured that he was semi-conscious that I might be able to force him to phase back.

But before I could get over to him and issue the order Paul's wolf had passed out again. We decided it would be way too dangerous to move him again. There was no way we were going to try with the possibility of having the same thing happen while he was on his belly. The only option my beta and I had was to take turns standing watch over him till he woke up long enough to phase back.

"You're up first baby Alpha." I said half laughing while walking back towards the elders.

"Fuck off Sam."

He hated that. I thought it was great. At least for me it was. When I found out he'd eventually take over the pack I think I actually shed a few tears as I did a happy dance. Well maybe not the tears but I definitely did the dance. I was so fucking relieved that I wasn't always going to have to be in charge.

"Hey, Sam!"

I stopped and turned to look back at him. "Yeah?"

"When are you coming back?"

I remember sighing and wishing I could tell him in 6 hours so that I could go home and get some sleep. But as the damn Alpha I had duties. "Once I get our idiotic pack mates into your house and go home to get something to eat. A couple hours maybe."

After a quick nod, he stepped back into the bushes and I headed toward the three idiot spirit warriors now passed out in Billy's back yard.