Alpha Training - Chapter 2: The Training begins

Niera waited for her turn. Exhausted she looked at the other candidates eat. It was the first big catch of them in the last weeks.

Finally, the young wolves had their team work down to move like one body and they circled the deer. Split it from the herd and while Niera and Chael chased it, Bahg, Jeliso and Paqu waited in different directions for the ambush.

It had been Bahg that got the kill. They had chased the deer right into his fangs and the strong young wolf killed it fast and efficient. Khara had praise for all his students.

"That was good work. Remember, team work and trust is important as an alpha. The hunt needs you to work as one." The old alpha lectured them, while they dragged the deer back to the den.

Even though Niera had been exhausted, she had no time to rest when they arrived at the den. While Khara started to eat, he had them fight for the right to eat next. It was like every day.

He had them figure out the ranks by fighting and like every day, Niera had no chance against the older wolves. She and Chael felt the one year between them and the others and even though the young wolves trained even harder than the rest, it was not that easy to catch up.

Niera's stomach growled and she watched Chael slowly approaching the carcass after all the others had their fill. She knew the rule. The strongest fighter could eat first.

The times, where she could get the first bite because she was a pup were gone. Here she had to fight for the right to eat. Khara explained them, that this was the path of the alpha. They had to learn how to fight for their place.

Finally, it was her turn and hungrily she dug her fangs into the flesh and gulped it down. Luckily, even though it was a small deer, there was enough left and so she would not got hungry like in the last days, where there had only been a little left.

It was thanks to Khara, that she had have food at all in the last week. He taught them, that an alpha needed to regard the wellbeing of all and make sure that even the weakest had enough to survive.

Niera did not like being called the weakest. She had always been the best in her age group. Her brothers and the others had never been a match, but here she was the lowest rank. Between all the other alpha candidates, she had to admit defeat every day.

This push into her pride was the hardest to bear for Niera. She started to sneak away at night to train in secret, but the progress she made was only very slowly visible. Because of her lack of sleep, her body felt weak and she seemed to lose more easily.

There was no comment by Khara for that. He knew that she was training half the night, because, unbeknown to her, he followed her and made sure she was safe.

During their training at daylight, he taught them tricks and made them run for miles to gain more endurance.

They spend hours of jumping over the small river back and forth for miles, and it was not only once but multiple times that one of them fell into the water.

It was not a nice experience, because winter was coming, and the first snow already started. The water was freezing cold and when they got wet, it meant running extra hard to get warm again until the fur was dry.

With the snow slowly covering the land, it became even harder to keep the balance in the fights and to get a firm grip on the ground to jump.

But without noticing, Niara got used to the hard training and her body started to steel itself. Her legs did not shiver and wobble under her in the evening anymore and even after miles of jumping back and forth over the river, which she managed with very few incidents of getting wet now, she did not get out of breath.

But still she had to admit defeat every day the male wolves when fighting over the food, because they too got stronger.

But Khara saw, even if the young ones did not notice yet, that the fights got much closer each day. With her body picking up the endurance and her mind getting used to the lower sleep circles, Niera made progress fast.

At some nights, Niera also just lay outside the den and looked to the sky. She had a bit of home sickness for her mother, her father and her brothers. But between the exhaustion of the increasingly hard training and fighting for the food, she had less and less time to think about her home.

"Listen, you have improved a lot since coming here. I can see the right attitude in all of you."

Khara was again giving one of his speeches to the pups, after they had eaten. They just lay there, satisfied from the food, and listened to the old wolf.

Chael licked the snout of Niera to help her get rid of the blood from when she had pushed her nose into the deer, that they managed to hunt this day. She let him be, thankful for the help as it was more complicated to clean her own nose alone.

"You fight for the rank every day here, but don't think this will stop when you get back. There will be fights for the ranks every week and you will have to find your place and defend it."

Khara smiled at the sudden attention he got and looked into the eyes of everyone. Just Chael was still occupied with cleaning Niera, but his ears twitched and were turned into the direction of the older wolf, so he knew that his son was listening.

"When you are finished with the training, you will not become alpha. After all there is only one alpha male and one alpha female in each pack." He explained.

"You will start as Beta, the closest rank and only ones that can become alpha. All that you learn here will be, what you will do as a beta. You will hunt, you will fight for the pack to protect them and you will defend your rank under the betas."

He chuckled and finally Chael was finished with cleaning the face of Niera and he directed his full attention to his father.

"If you want to become an alpha one day, and I am sure you want, you need to never stop training. You need to grow stronger than any other beta. Only then you will have a chance to become the alpha."

Khara looked into the eyes of the young ones and smiled.

"The strongest beta has the right to fight the alpha when he wants to take over the pack. But it is rare for an alpha to be challenged, because a responsible beta will not disturb the peace of a pack for his own gain, but only for a good reason."

"What is a good reason?" it was Jeliso, who glues his green eyes on the old teacher.

Khara nodded to him and continued. "That is a good question. Well, often an alpha, that is getting weaker, will step down. Then the strongest Beta will fight for the right to be the new alpha.

But sometimes alphas lose their strength and judgement but cling to the role. Only then a beta might challenge them. Only if the actions of the alpha are hurting the pack."

He looked around and all the pups still gave him the undivided attention.

"Strength is not everything as an alpha. A lot of alphas are accepted and respected for their experience and their leadership. Therefore, an alpha is rarely challenged until he steps down or dies from age."

"So, we should not challenge an alpha at all?" a bit of disappointment was audible in the voice of Paqu. His red eyes glimmered in the dark den.

"If it is for the good of the pack, you might challenge an alpha, but always think about the pack, not about yourself. An alpha is the soul of a pack. Every change of the alpha and any chaos created in the process will weaken the pack until the new order is set."

The big young wolf still looked a bit confused and the old wolf chuckled.

"This is hard to understand, I know. But how about this. When a new alpha takes over through a fight, there might still be others in the pack, that don't agree.

A pack has a big loyalty to their alpha and some might not accept the new alpha, even though he won the fight.

If this happens, betas will challenge him every day and it is not rare for new alphas to lose the position after a few days again in a fight, because they took it by force.

You can proof that you are the strongest but gaining the trust of the pack is not so easy."

Now all young wolves nodded and understood what their teacher meant.

"This is why a responsible beta usually does not fight the alpha if there is no direct danger for the pack caused by the alpha's actions.

They strengthen their position under the betas, to be second in command and when the time comes for the alpha to step down, they take the reins.

A good alpha also includes his beta. Going from a beta to an alpha means taking on more responsibility and the leadership over the other betas.

What you will learn in this camp here is to be great betas and rise in the ranks, but you will have to watch your alpha carefully and learn from him to really understand, what you need to do to become an alpha."

Even though Niera got tired and her eyes became heavy, she forced them to stay open and listening to the old alpha. Every word sunk into her and she tried to understand everything that would help her to become a good alpha and make her parents proud.

Khara continued to talk about responsibilities as a beta and an alpha and that even as a beta, they might have to assume responsibilities for the pack and proof their worth as alpha candidates when the alpha is not there, like Khara who was training them now.

The lecture of Khara only ended just before Niera was not able to keep her eyes open and drifted off to sleep. She did not even notice the other wolves looking for their favorite sleeping spot but just sunk into the darkness.

She was already sleeping when Chael snuggled up with her and kept her warm and shielded her from the wind that entered the cave in a gust every now and then.

Even though they all were rivals, and they fought hard against her when they had to, she was always the youngest and smallest and as such the others helped her.

In addition, she was the only female, and the affection of Chael might have had other reasons as well, but Niera did never spare any thought on that. Her mind was set to train harder and become stronger than any of the others.

The winter began to bare it claws and it became colder. Unbeknown to Neira, the valley where they lived always had milder winters than outside the protected mountains and soon she had to learn how to survive in an unfriendly environment.

Every day became a fight for survival now. Not only food was a concern, but also water, even though they could also eat snow to get a bit of moisture in.

The ground became hard and slippery and Neira learned fast to run on the snow. Even though her paws felt cold and became numb, it was better than running on the frozen ground directly, that hurt her frozen pads and, if she was not careful, even had painful spikes and edges waiting for her.

It were not just stones or branches laying traps for her, but the earth itself, hard and cold, became an enemy and for the first weeks she looked at every step on the ground.

The other pups were no different and she was not the only one licking her paws groaning every evening.

With the days going by and Khara taking them to hunts and runs around the frozen mountains, Neira and her companions learned quickly to avoid the dangerous parts on the ground.

They did not even have to look after the first week. The paths they ran every day were known to them by heart and they knew where they could run.

In addition, they developed a six sense where they could feel the right path to take without stepping on any stones, hard earth or branches. They started to even feel the ground beneath the snow.

Their paws also became more resilient, building corneal to protect itself. Not only did their paws not hurt anymore, when they came back exhausted from a full day of running, but they also moved much more silent.

Rarely, one of them stepped on a branch and made it break and echo in the forest with a cracking noise or they groaned from a misstep.

But the ground was not the only thing they got more sensible for. It was all their senses that improved in the coming weeks, and at the end of January, they knew every smell in their training grounds.

They could tell the different smells apart, even the anticipation of their alpha, when he was about to jump, had its own smell and they reacted to it and followed without a command during the hunt.

They got more efficient and got their prey without major sprints now. Every day another adolescent wolf took the lead and they became a trained team that was as deadly as they were silent.

Neira's muscles did not ache at the evening, even if they ran the whole day and she could feel how her strength increased with every day.

At the daily fights amongst themselves, the fights got much closer and she noticed that she caught up to the others.

She could still not match them with raw strength, but she enhanced her agility and flexibility and used it to outmaneuver her opponents and dodge their attacks.

Her yaws and paws had become so strong, that unlike in the past, the others could not ignore them anymore and they yowled when she bit harder after they ignored her warning fangs.

She was happy when at the end of January, she finally managed to beat Chael in a duel and got very close to beating Jeliso.

Neira did not notice the time flying by. She was so occupied by the training and her own goal to become stronger, that she did not notice the weather getting milder. She thought it was her getting used to the cold.

They left the den before the first light now and went a round through their training grounds. This was for training to patrol the pack grounds later and they took in any change and reported it.

Khara sent them out alone a lot of times now, in teams of two. One always went with the experienced alpha and got a special training to improve their fighting skills or to get a lecture on how to lead a pack.

There was no fight amongst them or jealousy because Kahara made sure that he gave them each a personal training every day and the order was decided by their daily fights for the ranking every evening.

Neira's mind and muscles became like steel in the next weeks and she finally managed to win against Jeliso and Paqu a few times as well.

It was not like she won every fight against them. The only one she still had problems with was Bahg, but for the others she was about as strong as they were and at some days she even managed to get the second place of the daily fights.

Even though Neira was much stronger and did not need any protection anymore, Chael still snuggled up with her every night. They had become like siblings during the camp, because they were both the youngest and when the others rested, they still were out training their fighting abilities.

They became comrades in arms and analyzed the fighting style of the other wolves and even of Kahara, when he showed them a few tricks in combat training, and tried to come up with strategies on how to beat the others.

Neira only noticed the end of winter and the warmer weather, when on the morning rounds she and Chael discovered, that the small river was not frozen anymore and that the ground around it was nice and soft.

But there was something else Neira noticed. There was a rock near the river that they passed every day, but now she noticed how much she grew over the winter. In the past, she had not even been able to look over it and now she could easily jump over the rock with ease.

But not only she got bigger, but the others as well. The most noticeable was Chael, who was good a head higher than she was and even outgrew his big brother and was nearly the size of his father.

The older pups had grown a bit, but not as much, as they were older already, and therefore the difference in their size was less now. This could have been one of the reasons, why Neira gained the upper hand in their duels more and more.

Her biggest rival right not was Chael, who improved his fighting, also thanks to their secret personal trainings together, and he even beat Bahg every now and then, something that Neira still did not manage.

Chael himself still lost regularly to Neira. His father Khara scolded him often, saying that he should not hold back against Neira, but she knew that Chael did not hold back at all.

The reason she outmaneuvered him most of the time was, that she knew his fighting style very well from their everyday training and she knew his weak spots.

Naturally she did not tell Khara or any other about it. Telling them his weak spot would not only make it harder for him to win against the others, but also diminishing her chances to beat him, because he would then work on covering them.

The hunts became much easier now, that the ground was not frozen anymore, and the snow retreated more and more. With the same accuracy that they used in winter, they now evaded branches or small plants to avoid any noise when moving around.

Neira's daily routine now started with an intense grooming, because they lost their winter fur, and a nice and refreshing bath in the river.

She noticed, that the other wolves followed her with their eyes, whenever they rested, and she felt that they finally acknowledged her strength and that she was on the best way to become a good alpha candidate.

Khara changed the daily schedule a bit. He now went on patrol and training with one of them for a full day and let the others patrol in teams of two.

Neira enjoyed the times when it was her time to learn from the old alpha. She learned so much from him, that she looked up to him like a second father now.

She soaked in all the lectures he gave her, and she was a fast learner. So fast, that she managed to soon beat Bahg for the first time and for once got the leader role for the hunt, which was now decided by the daily fights, and was proud when they came back with a big deer this evening.

She enjoyed every day, even though the training was still as hard as in the beginning, but with her improved fitness and endurance, the training was more like a daily walk for her now. She did not feel right without running a few miles every morning and her body was eager to run free after a longer rest.

Most of the times, when it was not her turn to go with Khara, she was accompanied by Chael, who still was her closest friend of them all and cuddled with her at night, even though there were no cold winds he needed to protect her from anymore.