(no subject)

[sanguinemoon]

The back yard of her grandparent's property was full of sheds and workshops painted the same rusty red-brown with black tiled roofs, ivy climbing eagerly up their sides and the wild rose bushes her Nan so adored sticking their spindly twigged branches out at the corners. They were crafty people, her Nan and Papa, and needed the space, the storage; she'd spent the entirety of her youth running tame around this yard, fetching tools and glasses of iced lemonade, watching her Papa pull apart a hunk of twisted black metal and reforming it into a sleek motorbike or her Nan take grains and fruit, time and patience to make them into homemade moonshine and wine.

There was only one building she'd never been allowed to enter. One that always stayed locked up tight. Curious and active child that she'd been, she'd never disobeyed that order or tried to sneak a peek, for one simple reason: she'd loved her grandparents too much to break the few rules they set, and even at that age, she'd known they wouldn't have forbade her entry without good reason.

15 years later, she'd learn the reason why. When there came a day the door would be unlocked, for her, and her grandfather would turn on the flickering shop lights, and lead her inside.

It was a simple room, spartan even, just workbench, a rolling tray, and a few chairs in the center of the room. The walls, however, were covered, ceiling to floor, in sketches, some of them yellowing with age to the point of obscurity, some still fairly fresh and white. Her grandfather set a bag down on the table, and she heard the clink of glass bottles while she slowly walked around the perimeter of the small room, making the full circuit, starting from the oldest scraps of paper and ending with the newest. "This is really all of them?"

"Yep." Her grandfather barely even looked up from his work, carefully blending different colored solutions drop by drop into a shot glass. "To the best of our knowledge and recorded history."

"Wow." Every Alpha of the Pack of the Sanguine Moon...every single one of them had stood where she stood now, before a member of her grandfather's line, to embrace their role. "How many have you...?"

"You'll be my third, Ty-knots," He finally looked up, a half-cocked grin on his lips. "Your gramma tell you the story of hers?"

Tyleigh smiled back, then turned to study the sketch of the design she'd seen adorning her grandmother's right wrist for the entirety of her life: Lady Justice, sword at her side, eyes covered, scales held high. "She said it hurt like piss, and you got her through it--and when you were bandaging her arm, that was the moment she knew you were hers...the first time she'd agreed with the wolf that you were meant for her. Cause before then, she couldn't stand you most of the time."

Her Papa chuckled, setting the shot glass down on the table, putting the glass bottles back into the case one by one, carefully turning them so the labels faced outward. "That's her story. She only couldn't stand me because she knew it was right, and that pissed her off."

"Sounds like Nan." Nervous energy pulled her to the center of the room, her teeth worrying at her lower lip as she studied the contents of the shot glass. Her grandfather replaced the case full of bottles back into the bag, pulled on a pair of gloves, and carefully removed a battered old leather case. Implements, she imagined, carefully crafted from silver alloys, that could force the ink into a werewolf's flesh and make it stick--after they voluntarily poisoned themselves with an equally carefully crafted potion to stall their accelerated healing, of course. "How do I--how does this work?"

With a vague grunt, her grandfather gestured to one of the chairs in the center of the room, while he carefully arranged tools on the tray. "Who are you, Tyleigh Silver?"

Ty blinked, turning the chair around backwards to straddle it, propping her chin on the top rung. "You know who I am, Papa."

"What I know isn't important, kiddo," her grandfather replied in that intense, sharper tone he used on rare occasion, when something was important. Ty sat up straighter, instinctively, angling her chin and squaring her shoulders. "Tyleigh Silver, soon to be ascended Alpha of the Pack of the Sanguine Moon...Who. Are. You. Who will you be? How will you lead us?"

Why did her gift never kick in when she really needed it to? Why did the certainty, the knowing not sweep over her when she wanted certainty the most? She couldn't say something generic, like she'd lead well or try to be a good Alpha--that was trite, useless, a platitude at best. How would she lead? What would she be?

Who was she?

"I don't know," she finally replied, hating the vulnerability in her voice, hating the perceived weakness.

Her grandfather, however, looked pleased with it. "That's a wiser answer than you realize." He sat down in the rolling chair, facing her, gloved hands resting on his knees. "What do you think your grandmother's mark meant?"

"It's Lady Justice," Tyleigh replied, blinking at her grandfather when he merely raised an eyebrow at her. "She'd be fair. Fair and just."

"Not quite how she put it, but that's the gist, yeah. And would you say she was fair and just in all things--not just as Alpha?"

Tyleigh nodded immediately; that was an easy question to answer. "Yeah, definitely."

"I think so too. And Gunner's?"

Ty tried not to make a face as she glanced back at the wall unneccessarily, as their former Alpha had displayed the large black tribal design of a snarling wolf that had decorated his back as often as possible. "Strength...which became violence. Which was who he always was and how he always lived."

"Right again. Now...look inside yourself, Tyleigh. Who are you? How will you lead us?"

Ty lowered her head in thought, closed her eyes, and thought, really thought, about the person she was, how she'd lived her life up until now...and how that translated into how she would lead.

"I want to lead by example," she replied quietly. "I want to...to never ask anything of our people, that I'm not willing to give of myself threefold. Not just guide them down the right path, but to...to be their shield."

Her grandfather nodded slowly, and when she looked in his eyes, she saw nothing but pride. "Drink the potion, Tyleigh Silver, and bare your left arm."

Taking a deep breath, Ty cautiously picked up the shot glass, braced herself, and downed the bitter contents in one gulp. The effects were immediate, her body rebelling against the poison, her wolf snarling and howling in rage and pain...her eyes shifted to gold as she forced herself to sit down, shed her jacket, and pull up her left sleeve.

It was agony, the whole thing, the poison churning through her veins and the silver needle pricking her skin, over, and over, and over. More than once she bit down on a howl, or sank her fangs into her lip and tongue so hard that she tasted blood. Sweat covered nearly every inch of her skin...but when it was done, she looked down, and saw the mark that would define her standing out in brilliant blue and black ink, covering her shoulder from the top curve and stopping just above her elbow. A kite shield, adorned with stars and constelations, and in the center, a stylized compass.

"You will be our guiding star, Tyleigh Silver," her grandfather murmured as he wrapped the bandage around her arm. "Our star chart, our compass...and our shield."

"I will," Tyleigh breathed, her voice a low, growling blend of wolf and woman, but somehow as calm and even as it was fierce. "For as long as you'll have me."