Takes place between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

Disclaimer- I do not own this. I only own my OCs.

Annalia watched the girl go with trepidation. She was an anomaly, Annalia could sense it, and she knew that her brother could tell as well. To come up with the correct answer so quickly as to what had happened to her and to be so blasé about it...

"I am amazed that the girl isn't a slobbering, feral mess right now," Pierre said, scratching idly at his chin.

"What do you mean?" Sweet Annabelle asked, confused, because despite being part of the family for close to 7 years now she still couldn't grasp some things about werewolves. She was only human, of course.

"He means that that girl, Moira, just killed an Alpha after she was bitten by him. She obviously transitioned or she'd be dead otherwise, but as you know, one of the only ways to become an Alpha is to kill the Alpha. That means..." Annalia trailed off, that terrible feeling of trepidation returning.

"That means that she is most likely an Alpha as well, one that gained the power of the position mere minutes after being bitten initially. She hasn't had time to adjust to being a werewolf and has gained that power. Most people would be feral, attacking anything that moved right now, but she's right as rain, if a little overwhelmed. It's remarkable," Diederick said, popping a piece of bacon in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. "Do you believe it might be because of her heritage? That she's so well in control, I mean."

Pierre and Annalia glanced at each other. Their father had had dealings with the Albrecht's before, but never once had Johan ever mentioned any family living in the States. Then again, they weren't privy to everything that had been discussed at those meetings.

"If she is, in fact, a descendent of the Albrecht pack then it might, but the name Albrecht is not only confined to that family," Pierre said slowly, obviously thinking it over. A bright gleam entered his eye at the thought of this puzzle. "It would also explain how she survived in the first place. It's extremely rare for anyone over the age of 20 to survive the transition, but perhaps because she carries the werewolf genome it didn't strain her physiology like it would a normal human."

"Yes, but what about the stories? Human children of shifters dying during transition is the reason no sane Alpha would bite anyone over the age of 20," argued Annalia, thinking back to the horror stories told by her mother growing up. As the Heir to her father, she was expected to know these things for when she took up his mantle.

"That was centuries ago, though. True, human children in packs were much healthier than not, but they could still be infected with sicknesses that we can't. There could be any number of reasons they didn't survive the transition while Moira did, starting with the fact that humans nowadays are generally healthier," Diederick riposted, glancing to his right to see Pierre nodding in agreement.

"It doesn't really matter how she survived, what matters is that she did," Dierdre calmly stated, hoping to break up the brewing tensions. Sebastian looked at her gratefully, not keen on witnessing another famous Loup argument. His father and uncle would whine for days after getting thoroughly trounced by his mother in the inevitable brawl.

Anything else that might have been said was cut off by a stampede of little feet coming up the stairs. Henry and Harvey skidded behind Annalia, hiding between her legs while Amelia and Apolline glared, soaking wet and very angry.

"Boys! What did you do to your cousins?" Annalia barked, red flaring through her eyes. Both boys cowed back, instinctively baring their necks to her. After a moment, however, the boys glanced at each other and smirked mischievously.

"Nothing! Swear. They just had a bit of dirt..." Henry said, trailing off at his mother's glare. "...all over their faces?" They both winced at the low growl that escaped her throat.

"After you apologize, you're going to come with me shopping for today's cookout. No buts!" Annalia sternly said, cutting off their indignant responses. Heaving a put upon sigh, she turned back towards the rest of the adults. "We'll finish this discussion later, after dinner."

She resolutely ignored Pierre hiding a smirk behind his coffee mug.

Dierdre walked into the house, frowning in thought. Her mother had asked her to befriend Moira, which wasn't really hard in retrospect. They had a lot of similar interests, including a huge one in mythologies from across the world. The poor girl was a bundle of self-consciousness and uncertainty at the start, only some of it from her recent change of species, so Dierdre being friendly with her was very welcome. That wasn't what was bothering her, anyway.

Moira seemed to be...changing, and not in the sense that she had become a werewolf recently. The more that Dierdre talked to her, the cockier the girl became. When Dierdre was advising her on techniques to control herself closer to the full moon, the girl had dismissed her, saying that she already had a good handle on it. Their 'girl's night', which included a lot of wolfsbane laced alcohol, showed that she was good at controlling the beast, even when intoxicated out of her mind.

True, Moira's self control was admirable in the face of her situation, but Dierdre wondered if she wouldn't become so confident that she could control her emotions that she would put herself and her family in danger on a full moon. Despite that arrogance, Dierdre knew that Moira cared about her family and could never live with herself if she hurt one of them. That was evidenced by her continued agony over what had happened to Miles McMurphy.

Moira was pretty good at hiding her emotions, either seeming neutral or happy in front of everyone else, but Dierdre was a born and bred werewolf, raised to be her mother's Heir in all things. She knew when someone was hiding something that could potentially be catastrophic to everyone, especially to themselves. If Moira didn't accept her part in McMurphy's death and start to move on, she would spiral out of control in her grief and guilt, which was never, ever a good thing for a werewolf, let alone an Alpha.

Another thing that bothered Dierdre about Moira was her narcissistic tendencies. Their superior physiology seemed to unearth a half-buried belief that she was above everyone else because of not only her looks and intelligence, but now her new, enhanced senses. Dierdre had noticed when they first brought the girl into their house, bloodied and unconscious, that she wasn't toned from exercise. Now that she had a 'beach body and a booty that kills,' in her own words, she seemed to soak up the attentions any half-decent looking man on the beach gave her.

Moira also seemed to be subconsciously pushing away the people in her life that cared for her. She spent less and less time with her family, while spending more and more time with Dierdre's family. Actually, in the past several days Dierdre had gone from hearing about her niece and nephew all of the time to nothing at all. Granted, it had only been several days, but she hadn't spent any time with them at all since she was bitten.

So yes, Dierdre was worried about her new friend. Despite all of the negative qualities the woman seemed to display, a lot of that was outweighed by her genuine care for her family and the intellectual discussions they had about the various pantheons of gods and the veracity of some myths.

Dierdre's face suddenly rearranged itself into a look of determination. Moira was a good person deep down, cynical and jaded because of the various unsaid things in her past. Dierdre knew that she needed someone in her corner while adjusting to life as a shifter and vowed that she would be that person. Now, to convince her family to do the same, and survive the family dinner tonight...

Anna Martinelli could tell something was wrong with her eldest granddaughter, Moira. Well, not wrong, per se, but different. Very different. Having known her since she was only hours old, when she'd been the first person to hold her besides her parents, Anna knew Moira like she knew her own hand.

Ever since she'd gone out to see that moon several days ago, every moment not spent with her family was spent with the one that she'd met, the Loup's. Anna normally would've suspected something nefarious judging by Moira's past decisions, like drugs or alcohol, but she seemed so vibrant that Anna could just tell that that wasn't it. She looked healthy, in fact. Even more healthy than she'd been when they'd come here on vacation, which pinged somewhere on her radar, but she just couldn't tell what it was. Perhaps she'd find out tonight, at the family dinner...

Emilia wasn't a fool. She was raised with Moira, she'd played with Moira, she'd fought with Moira. She knew Moira better than Moira knew herself, and suspected the same was true in return. So when Moira came back from those people's house, missing the shirt she'd been wearing the night before and seemingly 20 pounds thinner, Emilia was suspicious.

At first, she thought that maybe it was drugs. God only knew the type of shit Moira had gotten herself into when she was high, so maybe she'd consented to a good old-fashioned MacGuyver-esque liposuction with a shopvac and a garbage bag. The lack of open, leaking wounds attested that that was not, in fact, what it was. But it still didn't explain the missing weight.

Whatever it was, Emilia was both intrigued and horrified. Intrigued, because pushing out two kids before she hit 19 was not good for her figure, and horrified, because whatever it was was probably not healthy in the slightest. After a few days of watching her and a horror movie marathon, Emilia concluded that Moira had not found a really good plastic surgeon or diet pills, and the reality was far more fantastical. The fact that the notoriously skeptical man that was her boyfriend, Micah, agreed with her was just icing on the cake.

Emilia had never claimed to be as smart as her sister. Hell, she knew that for a fact, but there were few people who could claim to be smarter than Moira. The IQ tests proved that. That said, she wasn't stupid, either. She could put together a puzzle like everyone else, given enough clues. Like when on that first day she'd whizzed past everyone taking advantage of the unseasonable October weather and sprinted down the beach, not stumbling on the sand at all and even launching herself over a kid at one point. Or the time when their father had almost dropped a glass and she'd caught it midair. Or when, one morning, she'd wrinkled her nose and told their Pappa Lewis to 'take a shower for God's sake, you stink'- when she'd only just walked through the door. The clincher, though, was when Emilia knew that Moira had cut her foot open on a shell at the beach. Had seen the wound and the blood for a second, even, but when Moira said she was fine and Emilia was skeptical, she'd just showed her a cut-free foot and continued on.

So, her sister was a werewolf, and Emilia'd bet all of her admittedly meager funds that the Loup family she'd met were, too. God, their name even meant 'wolf', how unsubtle could they be? Instead of confronting her about it and risking getting her throat torn out, Emilia and Micah both agreed to wait.

Moira never could keep anything from her long, anyway.

Theo didn't know his daughters as well as he should. Having your first kid when you were only 24 didn't make you grow up, which he'd found out quickly. Having your second only 2 years later, with your wife divorcing you soon after because of postpartum depression, made it even worse. So he'd basically pawned his kids off on his mom and got on with the party.

4 years later, he had a shotgun wedding because he'd gotten his girlfriend pregnant and immediately got a job far away from her, only stopping long enough to pop out another before leaving again. Never mind that he'd left his two oldest with a woman that encompassed the evil step-mother AND step-sisters from Cinderella in one great package.

He tried to make up for it by buying tons of Christmas presents and teaching Moira to hunt and fish. He actually really enjoyed that time with his daughter, because he'd never expected her to like those things and it actually gave them something to bond over. Eventually, though, his job had him working more and more away from home, so even that fell to the wayside.

He'd seemed to come to his senses when Moira was 14 and started dating her first boyfriend, an admittedly nice guy named Nick. At first, he'd hated the guy, not only because he was 2 years and some change older than her, but also because he was supposed to be the only man in her life. It was at that point he started re-evaluating his life and his decisions, trying to make up for them. Of course, it wasn't that easy. He divorced the harpy woman, but now his two youngest, Shiloah and Isley, seemed to hate him. Moira was dating a guy older than her and Emilia was practically a devil child in sheep's clothing.

Everything became even worse when Moira was 16 and he fell on ice and broke his back in several places. Not enough to become paralyzed, but enough for it to hurt like a bitch all of the time. It took a couple of years, but with pretty much everything shit and hitting 40 years old, he turned to the bottle and pills. He made the mistake, one night, to call Moira to pick him up from the bar after he puked his guts out. Once she got him back to her house (the traitor not taking him to his dad's, who had lived several blocks away from his mother before he'd died), he'd gone inside where his girlfriend at the time confronted him. He couldn't excuse what he did next, ever, but he definitely pushed her away pretty hard, making her stumble back into his mother, who was shocked and appalled at his behavior. No one was more appalled, however, than Moira, who'd witnessed the whole thing.

He'd really come to his senses right at that moment, because the next moment he was being lifted up by the collar of his jacket and slammed into a wall by an enraged 18 year old girl. He couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to him as she jerked him forward and then shoved him back towards the door to the living room, several times before he got over his shock enough to stumble away from her lest she clock him like she looked like she dearly wanted to, but he knew that it was Very Not Good. After that, he'd made an effort to get to know her better, and he quit the drink and pills for good measure.

Now, 5 years later, he knew a lot about her, but not a lot about what made her tick. Even so, he could tell that something was different about her in a good way. She seemed... happier. He was glad that whatever it was was good. He knew that if anything else bad happened to her she'd probably crack.

Annalia tried very, very hard not to strangle the girl in front of her. Not only was it poor form for a host to strangle a guest, it was also grounds for a war between Alphas. No doubt that Annalia would win that fight, but a lot of members of the supernatural community were curious about the new Albrecht Alpha. Annalia was curious about the new Albrecht Alpha. What kind of Alpha was she going to be when she had full control and started building a pack? The only downside, right now, was that the girl just couldn't get it through her mind that no matter how much control she seemed to have, the first full moon would take a lot out of her.

They'd been spending a lot of time with her whenever available, usually on the weekends. Moira would drive out to their compound and take lessons on everything from Politics to control, which she seemed to excel at, which was promising. However, like Dierdre had noticed, Moira had gotten way more arrogant these past couple of weeks than she'd been before. Added to that, Annalia had been contacted by Mile's lawyers, hoping that she'd know who was to inherit his fortune. She'd had to tell them about Moira and the new situation, but had advised them to wait until after the first full moon to go through with the transfer.

She had a feeling they ignored her. This girl's sense of entitlement was going to skyrocket the second she signed those papers. Still, Annalia felt like she had an obligation to the girl, since it was essentially her fault Moira had gotten bitten in the first place. Moira just needed a lesson in humility, which with the upcoming full moon wouldn't be too hard to do. They just needed to get through the meeting this weekend without an incident and everything would be fine.

'Here's to hoping,' Annalia thought.