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  A Day with Werewolves

  By K. Matthew

  Text copyright 2013 by K. Matthew

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  The Blackfoot Werewolf Reservation was abuzz with excitement about the upcoming hierarchy trials. Never before had I heard or seen so much activity outside of my suite. Compound staff walked to and fro, setting up booths for the trials. Armed guards stood sentry at the main gate while the staff carried their supplies inside of the reservation.

  There couldn't possibly be a better time to mount a mass escape. It was a treacherous thought though, and one I definitely would not be bringing to the attention of the werewolves. Besides, the open gates were so tempting that I imagined someone had to have tried it before.

  Promptly at ten o'clock in the morning, I was required to go to the recreation room to have my weight taken. It seemed like a funny thing to have to do for the trials, but I was sure that it would factor in somehow. Thankfully, they weighed us behind a room divider so that the other contestants couldn't see our weight.

  Most of the female werewolves were fit. While I had lost some weight since being inside of the reservation, I still felt that I had a little more padding then a lot of them. Hopefully, it wouldn't work against me.

  I half expected Chris to show up on my doorstep before the trials, letting his social anxiety take over and needing me by his side for support, but he never came. Surprisingly, neither did Devon. The hierarchy trials must be keeping everything occupied. Since it was considered a holiday for the werewolves, most of them had it off of work. Perhaps even Devon managed to escape his duty of being my guide for the day.

  At eleven, we were all to gather in the cafeteria for the first part of the trials, the intelligence portion. We were seated on the picnic benches in rows, as evenly spaced out as possible. While the trials were supposed to be a fun time for the werewolves, it seemed that the compound staff were taking it very seriously. Several of them walked around, monitoring the room for cheaters.

  A small stack of stapled together papers were handed out to each of us with cheap ball point pens. We weren't allowed to begin writing until the clock struck exactly eleven thirty. At twelve thirty, we were to put down our pens. Anyone still writing would be immediately disqualified.

  Like hawks, we all stared at the main clock that hung above the food line. With a couple of minutes left, my eyes darted around to look for the people that I knew. Chris looked across the room at me, and I could tell that he wasn't very thrilled about this portion of the trials. Tension was etched plainly on his tanned face. Devon seemed more than eager to start, wiggling in his seat with overwhelming excited energy. Emmett and Rick looked cool and calm, like they had done this dozens of times before, which they probably had. Even Margaret and Terry looked relaxed, whispering to each other back and forth with one eye on the clock.

  And then it was go time. As fast as lightning, I flipped over my stack of papers to reveal the list of questions. When my eyes flitted across the first one, my lips curled into a smile. Oh yeah, I had this part of the trials in the bag.

  The test was comprised of fifty questions, half of them math related, the other half reading and writing related. Both were my strengths in college. Thank God there hadn't been any history or science on there, or I might have been sweating.

  I finished my test in forty-three minutes and slid it to the end of the table to be collected by the compound staff. Once I was done, I stepped back near the guards to take a few pictures of the werewolves that were still testing. It would make a good photograph for my journalism piece.

  That was the only bad thing about me actually participating in the trials instead of just watching them. My time had to be split between taking part in the games and doing my actual job, which was to document them. It made things a little stressful and my day a bit more hectic than it should have been, but who was I to refuse the offer to participate. Refusing probably would have come off as rude, and I definitely didn't want to offend the werewolves or the compound staff.

  Lunch was served late at one o'clock. We had an hour to eat before the next trial began, the skill trial. I grabbed my sack lunch and sat with the alphas and betas and Chris. The cafeteria was alive with chatter about how each werewolf thought they did on the test.

  “Easy as always,” Rick commented before taking a bite of his turkey sandwich.

  The meat of your sandwich was a mystery until you opened it up. Since there was such a hurry to feed us all and continue the trials, we didn't get to decide what we wanted to eat, which was a bit of a bummer considering that I actually hated ham and knew I wouldn't eat it if I got it. Luckily, I parted the wheat bread of my sandwich to find roast beef. Still, not my favorite, but anything would be better than ham.

  “Do they use the same questions every year?” I asked while I worked to tear a mayonnaise packet open.

  “Nah. It's different every year. I think they keep up with whatever is in the local college assessment test,” Rick replied.

  “I guess that's a way to keep you guys educated.” I didn't realize how arrogant the comment sounded until after I said it, now wishing that I could eat my words and put something less downgrading in their place. Luckily, no one at the table seemed offended by it.

  “The only problem is that there's no way to practice for the test,” Rick told me. “I mean, all we really have got here in terms of study materials is television. So basically, you have to rely on what you learned when you were in high school or college. For some of us, that was a really long time ago.”

  He certainly made a point. Rick looked to be around the same age as Emmett, in his late thirties. Margaret wasn't exactly young either. Age seemed to be an unfair advantage or disadvantage in the intelligence trial. I couldn't help but wonder if the compound had rigged it that way so that it would give the younger pack members a better chance to succeed at the power positions.

  “How do you think you did, Emmett?” I looked to the alpha, who seemed as cool and collected as ever.

  “I think I did well enough to keep my position after the strength and skill trials,” he said, glancing up at Rick, the only person whom he felt was his competition.

  “I always beat him at the intelligence trial,” Rick informed me with a smile.

  I couldn't say I was surprised. Emmett was broad and thick with muscle, a picture of brute strength. Rick, on the other hand, was average size, though intelligence certainly shown behind his soft gray eyes. It would be interesting to see what would happen if he took the position of alpha and sent Emmett down to the rank of beta. Maybe I'd be lucky enough to witness it. To be honest, I kind of hoped for it. Emmett was such a smug bastard; it would be nice to see him thrown from his high horse.

  “And you Chris, how do you think you did?” I asked the newest member of the pack, who was clammed up as usual.

  “I hate math,” was all that he muttered before returning to his sandwich.

  “What about you, Ms. Journalist?” Rick addressed me. “I bet you aced it.”

  “Well, I don't think I did bad,” I admitted, recalling how only one question on the test had given me any trouble. The rest were easy peasy.

  After lunch, we were herded into a field where there were rows of targets set up on tripods. Five at a time, the werewolves were lined up in front of the targets and given a bow with a single arrow. One shot, that's all you got to make your mark. If you missed the target completely, you scored a zero. This was not going to be one of my strengths.

  Chris made an impressive shot, landing just outside of the bullseye. Both Rick a
nd Emmett hit the target dead on, giving each other nods of approval as they came to rejoin the group and watch the rest of the werewolves take their turns. Devon was a bit shaky, but at least he made the target, landing his arrow in the second circle from the end.

  I had to keep reminding myself that these boys weren't my competition though. While we were all being scored, the men weren't pitted against the women. What I was competing for was the female alpha or beta position. The men's competition had nothing to do with mine.

  When it was the women's turn to begin the skill trial, I discovered that few of the women were any good at marksmanship. Margaret's shot wasn't any better than Devon's, and Terry missed the target completely. She cursed under her breath as she walked away, handing me her bow. Surely, that meant she was knocked out of her alpha position.

  As I stepped up to the firing line, I glanced to my right. Sasha stood there, the Russian girl who seemed to have her eye on Chris, and she was pulling back her bow as if she'd done it a million times before. I tried to show no emotion as I returned my attention to my target, but I would have given anything to beat her. Hell, to be honest, I prayed that she would miss. All that mattered in that moment was destroying her as my competition.

  When the compound staff told us that we could shoot, I thought back to every movie I had ever seen that had an archer in it. Still, it didn't seem to help, considering that I hadn't shot a bow since I was about ten years old, and all of those times, it had been a play bow and arrow, nothing in comparison to what I held in my hands now.

  I took a deep breath, pulled the bowstring back to my cheek, and let the arrow sail. Thwack! But it wasn't my arrow that made that sound. No, my arrow sailed past the target, landing in the grass several yards away. It was Sasha's arrow that hit its mark. A square on bullseye. She raised her bow in the air, commanding cheers from the other werewolves. Sasha was the only woman to get a perfect bullseye that day.

  I sulked as I walked up to Chris. The hierarchy trials suddenly became a lot less fun for me. What would happen if Sasha became the female beta . . . or even worse, female alpha? Then she'd really have the right to go after Chris. And knowing that she was in a place of power and could offer him a better life, he'd likely fall right into her hands. The thought was depressing.

  “Archery isn't your forte, I see,” Chris joked.

  “Oh, shut it,” I barked at him.

  “Well.” He straightened himself. “At least you're not doing this for real. No matter how you place, you won't lose your suite or your allocated job points. So, just relax. It's all in fun.” Chris offered me a weak smile, and it did calm me a bit.

  In the end, he was right. These trials meant nothing to me. I shouldn't be getting so competitive over them.

  The final challenge of the hierarchy trials was the strength challenge. After my poor run at the skill trial, I didn't have much hope of placing high on the werewolf hierarchy. I had the strength of an infant, so I would surely fail this one as well.

  After a short recess, we were led to an area where the compound staff had spray-painted the dirt with white lines. Draped across the lines was a thick length of rope. As soon as I saw it, my stomach filled with dread. Tug of war. This was definitely not something that I was going to be good at.

  They matched us up according to weight. As luck would have it, I was matched with Sasha. There was no way that was possible, I thought. She was thin, sinew and muscle and bone. And I was . . . well, not in the best shape of my life, that was for sure. Damn you freshman fifteen, I chastised myself for weight gained long ago that I hadn't managed to get off. Since muscle weighed more than fat, I knew exactly how our weight would be balanced.

  The look in Sasha's eyes when we were placed at opposite ends of the rope was enough to frighten me. She seemed like an animal, hopping up and down before bending to rub her hands in the dirt for better traction. All the while, Sasha made strange huffing noises, grinding her teeth with a wild look in her eyes.

  I couldn't help but wonder if it would be less embarrassing for me to forfeit or to just let Sasha beat me. Before I had a chance to make up my mind though, the whistle was blown to signal that the game was on. Planting my feet into the dirt, I held onto the rope with all of my might.

  Each spray-painted line represented a point. For every line that my feet crossed into, she got a point, and if she pulled me over the middle, that meant ten points for her and zero for me. We had one minute to battle it out, but Sasha had me over the middle line in about forty-five seconds. As she hollered out another victory over me, I gritted my teeth together in contempt. Without even tallying up the scores, I knew she had beaten me in the hierarchy trials.

  I found Chris waiting for his turn in the strength trials, staring nervously at the guy who would be his opponent. They were both about the same height, age, and muscle tone—a good even match, unlike Sasha and I.

  “You'll do fine,” I told Chris, swallowing my own psychological injuries to give him support.

  “I don't know. That guy looks pretty tough,” he replied, not even bothering to look at me.

  “Well, I'd give you a kiss for good luck, but you've seen how well I've done,” I joked.

  “Like I said, this doesn't really matter for you. It feels like the difference between life and death for me.”

  “You're not going to be an omega, if that's what you're worried about.”

  “It is. I don't think I did too well on the test, and my archery wasn't that great either.”

  “Your archery was better than most. I wouldn't sweat it,” I tried to calm him down.

  Finally, it was time for the men to line up for their tug of war. It was no surprise when Emmett did well. For Rick being a smaller guy, he held his own, though he wasn't able to make his competitor cross all the way over the middle line. Devon almost scored a zero, but he managed to hang on for the whole sixty seconds. After seeing him perform in the archery trial, I had hope that he wouldn't be omega again.

  Despite Chris's fretting, his competitor did appear to be an equal match. They tugged back and forth, gaining a foot or two on one another before the other had a surge of strength and took the lead. At the end, Chris was only able to pull the other guy over the first bar. I wasn't quite sure how that would be scored, but it had to be a pretty decent score for the both of them, since neither was anywhere close to losing.

  After the hierarchy trials were over, there was an hour-long recess before the crowning ceremony. It would take that long for the compound staff to total up everything, determine if there were any ties, and then have a tie breaker competition.

  Chris, Emmett, Rick, and I stood outside of the cafeteria, passing time. Emmett was more excited than I'd ever seen him before. His mouth was set in an ear to ear grin, and he kept shifting his weight back and forth.

  “I definitely beat you this time,” he told Rick.

  “Oh shove it,” Rick teased, admitting defeat. “I'll get you next time.”

  “I think you did pretty well too, Chris,” I said.

  “Oh yeah, Chris here will probably give us a run for our money next time.” Rick slapped him on the shoulder.

  “I don't know. I totally bombed the test portion.” Chris's lack of confidence showed through.

  “Well, luckily, it doesn't all rely on the test. If it did, Emmett would never be alpha.” Rick prodded at his friend.

  “Hey, the same could be said about you if it was all up to strength,” Emmett retorted.

  “What are you saying? I held my own pretty well this time around.”

  “But I still beat you.”

  “Do you think Devon is going to be omega again?” I asked.

  “I think he did pretty good this time.” Rick looked past me when he spoke, but I could tell that his words were genuine.

  “Pfft, that squirt?” Emmett mocked Devon, putting in his two cents on the subject.

  “Hey, that kid has got a bright head on his shoulders. I wouldn't write him off. Besides, he did decent in the
archery. Those two things combined will be enough to pull him out of omega.”

  Emmett thought back. “I didn't really pay attention to how he did in any of the events except for tug of war.”

  “Well I did, and he did well,” I insisted, though I couldn't recall who had done worst.

  “All I care about right now is the after party.” Emmett smiled in anticipation.

  Rick rolled his eyes.

  “The after party?” I asked.

  “Yes, the after party. All the food you can eat and all the beer you can drink. It's the best part of the hierarchy trials, except for me winning, of course,” Emmett boasted arrogantly. “I hope they don't cut down on the alcohol because you're here.” He narrowed his eyes at me for a second.

  “Oh, calm down.” Rick patted him on the shoulder. “It wouldn't be the biggest loss. We do tend to get rowdy after the hierarchy trials,” he told me.

  We bantered for a bit longer. Eventually, Margaret and Terry came to join us, and we had to listen to Terry cry about how she knew she had lost her spot as female alpha. None of the other werewolves offered her comfort via disagreement. It was important to do well in all the events if you wanted a power spot. Blowing one of them guaranteed that you'd be stuck in the middle on the hierarchy. I couldn't help but wonder what blowing two of them meant.

  At five o'clock, everyone piled into the cafeteria for the crowning ceremony. John Edward, the compound coordinator, somehow managed to sneak in unnoticed. He was standing at the front of the room, holding an envelope with the results of the trials. A microphone had been set up so that he could be heard throughout the cafeteria as he read the results.

  Once we were all settled, John began, “Welcome everyone to the thirty-fifth hierarchy trials' crowning ceremony. There was some fierce competition this time around and lots of memorable moments. I'm sure you'd all like to know the results, so I won't make you wait.” He tore open the envelope with his finger and pulled a card out from inside. “Your male beta for this hierarchy trial is . . . Rick Bettis.”