Six years ago.....
The moon goddess finally reached the grand palace that was home to her former foe. The two had long since become friends in an attempt to save the two races. He became sympathetic to her when he found that she had fallen for her creation that she had made simply for the purpose of destroying the race of her foe and the two had then teamed up to save the two and end the bloodshed.
"Why do you think he has summoned you here?" her mate asked her while she walked up to the stairs.
"I don't know, honey, but I need you to wait for me here," the request was one that she knew he would not accept so easily. "You can easily know if I am in danger, so don't worry about me."
"Don't take too long." With that, she ascended the large staircase that led to the entrance of the gigantic palace. Her heart would not stop beating anxiously as she entered the palace. Something about Prometheus' summons made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on ends. Two of the guards at the gate led the moon goddess through the large hallways until she got to a small insignificant door. The guards stood on both sides of the door and said no more signalling that this was where she was to find the god of mankind.
She approached the door, her heartbeat rising even higher before she pushed the door open. "Celeste, I'm glad you could make it. Come and take a look at this."
Prometheus… of all the gods, was the most approachable due to his calm personality that seemed to light up the room and relieve tension whenever there was any. His cheerful mood quickly affected Celeste, bringing her heart rate back to normal. She walked into the somewhat small room. A quick survey suggested it was some kind of lab where Prometheus would carry out his own experiments for his own amusement.
Shelves lined both sides of the room, poorly stacked with most of the books randomly strewn across the floor. Pots, test tubes, some with chemicals and others without, some even shattered and left on the work surfaces… this was the current state of the room. The room had one window at the very front of it that was raised high probably to keep the room dim while it was mainly lit by a fireplace. One might say it was always nighttime in the workshop of the god of mankind. The state of this room however didn't bother him one bit… it was probably that way to fuel his creativity or simply because he did not care.
The closest thing to the fireplace was a set of sofas and a short glass table between them that could be used to view events that were happening on earth. Prometheus sat on the sofa, staring into the glass of the table looking like a child who had just found their favourite show on a kids' channel. Curiosity got the better of the moon goddess making her peer over his shoulder to see what it was that had caught his eye.
Her heart skipped a beat on seeing what it was he was watching. Tom and Marie Chase, the hunters that she had sent to rescue Katie Sirius were training the girl of now twelve years in the ways of being a hunter. "That girl is heavily talented."
"How…"
"I know what all my hunters do at all times… but that's beside the point. This is one of the two children that were supposed to put a stop to the war that has raged on for centuries, isn't she?" he asked, his eyes glued to the girl going through her training with her adoptive parents.
"Yes, that is her."
"At age twelve, without the powers of her wolf, she has been able to surpass many hunters that I have already granted my gifts," he said, a hint of excitement in his voice.
"What are you trying to say, Prometheus?" Celeste asked.
"I wanted your permission. This girl… She has earned the right… No, she is more than worthy of possessing my gifts," he said.
"But she is already a werewolf. You have never granted a werewolf your gifts," Celeste tried to reason with him.
"While that may be true, the girl is currently training as a human to become a hunter. She is completely oblivious to her nature as a werewolf. She is working hard and tirelessly to be worthy of my gifts, as a human. If you look at it that way, we won't have to worry about her safety if she got a gift. It would also be unfair to her if I didn't grant her a gift," he said.
"But still, what you are suggesting will create the most powerful creature born of the human race and the werewolves. She would be a monster, not to mention, she is a Royal."
"She will be the one to bring this war to an end. This only ensures that success," Prometheus spoke, "besides, I have been watching the girl since she was born. She has been raised well and strictly. The laws are ingrained into her mind like they would be carved in stone. With your permission, I will begin…"
....................
Present time….
Shaemus was now panting badly, having gone four minutes making futile attempts at hitting Katie in the face. His anger seemed to skyrocket every time he tried and failed to land a solid hit. Sweat beaded his forehead, his face contorted in a permanent scowl of hate as he stared at Katie, trying to calculate what way he could land a hit on her. 'The power gap between us is unreal… What's her secret? What makes her so powerful?' he thought to himself while panting. Earlier that day, one of the hunters that stayed out of the commotion had come to him to recount to him everything that Sandra had told him about Katie.
Thoughts of retreat had rung through his head when he heard this… but there were a number of reasons that he could not put an end to all this even if it meant that he was going to lose. Besides, if he backed out now after everything that he had said, it would have wounded his pride. Standing here now facing the monster that they had described to him did not compare to the stories. No matter how hard he pushed himself, to Katie, he was moving way too slow and it almost seemed like she had all the time in the world to evade him.
'Hey, Chase, could you teach me as well? The way I saw you teaching Sandra yesterday,' the memory of a time when Shaemus had been close to Katie and learnt from her, training together with Sandra even then under Katie's instruction. One thing that made them more jealous of him was that even as they worked their butts off to try and catch up to him, he kept getting further and further, widening the gap between them like he was some sort of superhuman. This discouraged Shaemus as the talent that worked hard was hard to compete against, but that didn't bother Sandra one bit. She kept pushing on even when it looked hopeless, a trait in the girl that he deeply admired. Two years… that's how long it had been since he had trained with him. Taking in a deep breath, Shaemus made a fist once again. There was a lot he could not say… why he was doing this? Why he couldn't give up on doing this? The reasons behind his actions fueled his next attacks against Katie.
He attacked Katie in a flurry of controlled fists and strokes… strokes that he was only able to perfect because of the help he got from Katie back then. If only Katie could see through his actions, maybe then she would know what it was that he was trying to tell her. The thought ran through Shaemus' mind, a tear escaping his eyes before he stopped attacking, his body now reaching its limit. The stop clock in Katie's hand rang then. Shaemus' energy had been spent in the span of five short minutes, but still, he didn't back down. Katie was now free to attack him, and with how weakened he was now, there was nothing he could do to stop her.
The crowd had gone silent when they realized how one-sided the fight had been. It was clear who the winner was going to be before long. 'Shaemus has no reason to do any of this,' Katie thought, 'or doesn't he?' she froze on seeing the one minuscule detail on his face that didn't fit the picture he was projecting… a single stray tear. It was hard to see within the sweat that covered his face. Something else was going on here.
Shaemus stood, his legs shaky, barely supporting him. His vision kept blurring in and out of focus as he looked at Katie. Katie stared him in the face, her blue eyes trying to discern the reason for the stray tear that fell down his cheek. "You're an idiot, Shaemus," Katie said to him, drawing upon her Prometheus and dashing forward at an unperceivable speed, for a normal human anyway and with how tired this hunter was, there was no way he would be able to follow her actions. She struck the nerve in his neck with a swift chop knocking the exhausted hunter unconscious.
Shaemus' last words registered in Katie's mind the moment she was done knocking him out, "I'm sorry, old friend." Her eyes widened on realization, confirming each and every suspicion that lurked within her mind. Her heartbeat went into overdrive as well as the senses that she had been honing since she was a child. Every single person in the clearing at that moment was in grave danger and they had no idea.
"Everyone, get to the centre of the clearing now," Katie yelled putting all the urgency she could into her voice. Silence took over the clearing, the low sound of werewolf growling breaking through it, the silence of the crowd was enough to let the growl get heard by everyone in the vicinity. Panic filled the whole crowd like a storm. The lot of them ran to the centre of clearing in no particular order. The one most barred by their fellow humans were the safest as logic would have it. "Hunters, surround the group and take on defensive stances. Do not let the rogues anywhere near the civilians." Katie yelled her orders while she got Shaemus' body out of the fray of panic and placed him beside the gathering crowd. It would have been easy to get him trampled in that chaos. She then stationed two hunters to guard his body.
The rogues did nothing to attack and only came out once everyone was cornered in a tight circle. A quick headcount of the snarling wolves gave seven as the result. The delay in their arrival was something that Katie still didn't understand. "Katie, how did you know they were coming?" Cole's voice came as he walked up to her, leaving his alphas to guard different sides of the group.
"A hunch," Katie said, keeping the fact that she had received the clue from Shaemus to herself.
The rogues that surrounded them were seven in total. Katie's eyes darted back and forth gathering all the necessary information and his mind working faster than it normally did to find the best effective way to solve the problem at hand. The Seven wolves that surrounded them flanked them from the seven different directions all around them cutting off all routes of escape. Katie currently stood with Cole by his side, facing one of them, Sandra not too far to the right, facing another. The two alphas whose names he was yet to learn were each blocking another one. Dexter, along with the other six wolves he was with covered the others while the rest of the hunters stood around the crowd in one defensive circle, their numbers easily reaching twenty.
Despite the good defences, rogues would only stop attacking once they realized that this path only led to their demise. Unfortunately for them, Katie had no intention of letting them live. "Cole, help the others, there is a team of werewolves under Dexter on that side," Katie spoke up.
"What's our primary objective?"
"Kill them all," she said, without a hint of malice in her voice. It was just plain and simple, that's how the hunters worked. There was no room for tolerating rogues when they attacked humans or werewolves alike. Any rogue found was to be killed immediately to cut off communication between it and the rest of the pack.
Katie darted forward after relaying the order, vanishing almost instantly to the normal eye due to her Prometheus gift. The battle raged on for a short while, the civilians in fear the whole time as they were forced to watch wolves fight wolves and hunters alike in an effort to strip them of their lives. Katie made swift work of her kill, dashing forward and hitting all weak points that were the joints of the wolf's limbs before it had time to react. While the wolf was on the ground, Katie looped her hand around its semi-thick neck and with all her might snapped it without a second to waste. It had been swift and easy because she had kept the element of surprise and killed the unsuspecting wolf under the span of thirty seconds.
She turned around in time to see Sandra evade the jaw of the wolf she was engaged with, backing her up a few meters and not allowing her to recover before attacking again. She was on the defensive, only being capable of evading the wolf's attacks. The skill with which she avoided the wolf probably told it that this was someone skilled and therefore kept her on her toes the whole time. A quick assessment of the situation told Katie that she would be just fine in the end, not like she could have let her step in any way.
"Agility, is that the Prometheus gift she possesses?" one of the hunters in the defence line asked his neighbour, speculating based on how fast he was moving.
"That's what I want to believe, but by the way, she snapped that Rogue's neck like it was nothing. Is that strength even human?" the friend close by laughed shivers running through them.
"I know… that's what makes it so hard to believe. Is it possible for her to have both…"
"Shut up, that's not possible and we both know it."
"And yet, look…" the comrade pointed a shaky finger at the unstoppable hunter as she rushed over Dexter's wolves, grabbing the throat of the wolf they pinned down and smashing it before vanishing from sight, in pursuit of yet another target.
............
Katie returned to Sandra after finishing off the wolf that was giving Dexter's comrades a hard time. She couldn't blame them since neither of them had ever had to take a life before. It wasn't something that could come naturally and the purpose of the hunters was also to make sure that no one would be forced into taking such an action out of necessity. Humanity still lived on even within werewolves, as they were born that way and did not choose it. Taking a life wasn't easy on anyone, whether human or werewolf and Katie knew that completely.
She rushed back to Sandra just in time to see the rogue she was fighting turn tail and run, heading for the forest. One other rogue darted in the same direction, and the last one walked up to Katie and lowered itself to the ground in submission. A quick scan of the clearing confirmed that four of the rogues were dead, one had surrendered and two were escaping. Cole came up to her jogging, "Hey, Katie, shall I initiate the Prometheus evaluation?"
"Yes, please do. Sandra, we are going after them. None of them shall escape," Katie said getting ready to follow in the directions the rogues were headed.
"KATIE," someone yelled from within the crowd… Kyle. His hand hastily rummaged through the bag he had been given to hold, producing a black leather sleeveless jacket. He threw it at Katie who wasted no time in putting it on and darting into the woods, in pursuit of the rogues, Sandra in tow close behind.
Cole snapped his eyes away from the two hunters that had given chase and put his hand on the forehead of the rogue that still stayed down, head bowed in submission with its eyes closed. White carving lines began to trace all over the rogue's forehead, sketching an image of a howling wolf before glowing blue. This was the mark of the Lycaon royal family and putting it on any Rogue is what could kick start the Prometheus evaluation. Through this process, the wolf that was put under it would be unconscious throughout the whole process making them practically harmless.
"Stay and guard the people just in case there are others lurking around," he ordered Jason and Caden before running in the direction Katie and Sandra were last seen headed.
"Cole, be careful…" Caden called, a hint of urgency in his voice urged Cole to look back at him, "that jacket…"
"Yes, I noticed," he replied, before calling on his wolf. 'The smell from that coat is one that no werewolf can forget once they know what it is… the smell of wolfsbane.' If there was any way he was going to catch up to them. His human legs would not make it easy with how much time he had used already used up.
A swift numbness took over his entire body preparing her for the change it was about to go through. He surrendered control to the wolf within him, leaping high into the air.
The sound of bones snapping and reforming rapidly could be heard while he was still shifting. His entire body was reforming and growing larger and taking on the animalistic form of a wolf. Cole's clothes fused with his body while fur, pitch black fur, burst forth from his pores covering his entire body while the transformation ended. A large pitch-black wolf, easily towering to two and a half times the size of a normal one landed with a heavy thud, vanishing into the cover of the forest as soon as it landed on its paws. The transformation froze everyone in the crowd including the werewolves that saw it.
Cole ran through the forest, the scents of the four people he was chasing along with the wolfsbane in the jacket that Katie was carrying became clearer to him in this form. He pushed his powerful legs to go faster, zipping through the forest in hot pursuit. He could tell he was getting close. The heartbeats of the scared rogues were impossible to ignore. They too could smell the wolfsbane and no matter how fast they tried to push on, they were unable to outrun the two hunters tailing them. 'These two… are simply unbelievable…' Cole thought to himself when the chase finally came into sight looking as one-sided as this entire encounter had been looking so far.