It's All About Ceremony

Mira's POV

For the next few days I was excused from training.  I'd made it all the way up until the eve of my birthday going otherwise ignored by the Dark Moon pack.  Sam wouldn't look me in the eyes.  Atlas and the others Achilles had brought in to help train the pack ignored me entirely.  The only time I saw Achilles was when he was passing me in the halls of the pack house.  

Part of me couldn't help but feel that it was in part because of what I did to his beta.  

News of that spread as well to the elders.  Which made the anxiety I was feeling even worse.  Thinking that this was possibly one of my last days alive and free gave me such sadness.  What would my mother think?  Would she regret asking her Aunt to trade her soul for mine?  

Why would the moon goddess be so cruel to bless me with 18 years, then take it away? 

'You're getting ahead of yourself,' Skye growled, 'I promise once the elders meet us and see what we are...that the moon goddess really did bless us, they won't harm us.' 

'You can't promise that,' I sighed.  

I looked around at the pack house main floor.  Illi had the place decked out for my birthday tomorrow.  Meanwhile, Raphael was nervous at the news that the elders had said that they would arrive for my first transformation.  Tonight was going to be a full moon, which meant that I would shift at the stroke of midnight on my 18th birthday.  

I could see that while he wanted to question why the elders would come to a she-wolves 18th birthday, they must have had their reasons, so he didn't ask them directly...and of course, I hadn't seen them yet, as soon as they arrived, both Raphael and Alpha Achilles ushered them away from me.  

"You need to relax," Illi smiled at me, as she handed me a bowl of fruit, "I can see the worry on your face, and if you continue to stress it won't be good for your wolf." 

"Illi, you know I love you, but shifting isn't exactly your forte." 

"I may be human," she laughed, "but I did marry your brother and have a child with him.  I understand your culture enough to know what you're going through." 

I shrugged.  I didn't want to dismiss her, but it was hard to say you understand something, when you will obviously never get it.  

"Come on," she pleaded, "go upstairs, and relax.  I'll send some omegas up to do the preparations for the shifting ceremony."

I sighed, not able to argue with her.  That would be one thing I couldn't get out of today...the shifting ceremony.  It was for anyone that was ready to shift, and usually happened whenever the newest of the packs were ready to shift.  If you had a bigger pack you would end up doing it every month, but smaller packs like ours usually only did it a few times a year during certain full moons.  The last one had been about two months ago where a few classmates of mine graduated and shifted.  

The ceremony consisted of many parts.  First was the preparations.  You had to relax your human form so that when your wolf emerged, the two would be harmonious.  This was a process of bathing in perfumed waters and being massaged in oils.  Pretty much it  was a glorified spa day.  From there, you would see the shaman, where you were encouraged to go into the forest and smoke peyote.  This would put you in touch with the spirit world, where you could encourage communication with your wolf and our ancestors.  By the time night time arrived, you would be at the ceremonial spot in a crevice of the mountain's base.  The shaman would give you the ceremonial drink of wolfsbane, honey, and you guessed it, more peyote, where it would make your first shift less painful, and that you would be more in tune with your wolf.  Then they slice your palm open, and you ask that the moon goddess bless you and your wolf over an open flame or a bowl of water.  Once your body worked the concoction out of it's system, and your shift is complete, the shaman would bless you and your wolf.  Then everyone would let you go on your first hunt.  The alpha and some warriors would usually shift as well, just to make sure the newly shifted were protected, but only the newly shifted were allowed to hunt.  From there, they would be part of the pack. 

A few hours later and I'd completed the 'spa day part,' and had smoked with the shaman, but I'd yet to feel any effects other than being a little spaced out.  

"Watch where you're going!" she growled at me.  Janna knocked the bowl of fruit from my hands and went back to her cell phone.  I growled at her back.  She stopped what she was doing and narrowed her eyes at me, "what do you think you're doing?" 

"What gives you the right," I growled. 

"Well for one, I'm sleeping with the Alpha of the Dark Moon pack," she hissed, "you know.  Big tall, delicious looking hunk of man that's saving this sh*tty pack.  So you may want to watch your tone with me or I'll tell him to just wipe this pathetic pack of mutts from the map and take the territory for our own." 

'Stupid wh*re,' Skye growled, 'she's just a pathetic rogue who couldn't handle being on her own, so she latched onto whatever she could.' 

"B*tch," I growled, feeling my eyes glow ever so slightly.  

"What did you just call me?" 

"You heard me," I said in a lower tone.  I saw her own eyes start glowing amber as our wolves were trying to come forward, "or do I need to say it again, because you've been living as a rogue long enough that you'd forgotten what a shower is and you have mud in your ears?"

"You ungrateful lit-" she began.  She raised a hand to me as if she was going to slap me, but she stopped mid sentence.  It looked like someone was choking her, but I knew full well when I felt the breeze along the nape of my neck who it was.  

Like a frosty wind in a snowstorm she blew through me and her hands were placed over Janna's lips.  She whispered a 'shhh,' and Janna fell unconscious, dropping her phone to the floor.  

I chuckled, making the 'shhh' gesture at her.  

'I don't know what they're putting in the peyote now,' she laughed, 'but you're the first person to see me in over four hundred years...' 

"Are you who I think you are?" I giggled.  

She nodded, her silver curls bouncing against her body.  She reached out, 'follow me, little one.  We've much to talk about.'