Kyren stood on a thick branch high up in a sturdy oak that overlooked the huge, wooded hills that dominated the area. Supposedly, when settlers had first come to the area, they had named it Redhill after the sea of red leaves that caked the hills every fall. Right now, though, it was early august, and the leaves still clung to the trees.

Kyren gave the air a sniff. His sense of smell was…better than others. To be accurate, it was several thousand times better. This gift came courtesy of his heritage. Kyren was an ach-der-maat—or in its English translation, a wolf-blooded one. In fact, as far as Kyren knew, he was the last ach-der-maat alive.

Hundreds of scents filled Kyren’s nostrils. Everything from deer to rabbits wandered the woods and Kyren could tell where all of them were. Right now, though, Kyren was only interested in one scent, his adoptive father Hawkthorne’s. It wasn’t hard to pick up, Kyren had spent the last eight years living with Hawkthorne who always went by his last name—something that wasn’t all that unusual for werewolf hunters.

Kyren could tell that Hawkthorne was still at the local Guild branch. Kyren could also smell Drakesmith, Redhill’s only other werewolf hunter. It had been 8 years since the last werewolves had been found in Redhill, the exact same day in fact that Kyren had started living with Hawkthorne. Despite what everyone else thought though, no werewolves had died that night.

Assured that Hawkthorne was out of the way, Kyren quickly descended the tree. The descent was made much easier by Kyren’s training. Guild hunters were trained to have full control of their body’s adrenaline. It allowed them to move with greater agility and exert more strength. It was one of the biggest tricks that humans had used to defend themselves from the darker supernatural forces. There were limits though, Kyren could lift a car just by controlling his own adrenaline for example, but he would tear every muscle in his body in the process. In Kyren’s case though, that might be changing and that was why he was out here tonight on the edge of his real parent’s old property.

The property had a lot more significance than just being the place Kyren had spent the first eight years of his life. Beneath the ground there was a network of underground passages, and in those passages, the history of the ach-der-maat, a history kept entirely secret from the wider world, was written in stone murals and tomes in their own unique tongue.

Tonight, Kyren was here on a mission. For roughly the first 15 years of an ach-der-maat’s life, they were largely human. There were a few unusual things like an enhanced sense of smell, but for the most part they were identical in every way to the average human child. Around the time they turned 15 though, changes started to happen. At first there were small signs, a slight distortion in the color of their eyes when they were under strong emotion, a sharpening of their nails and teeth, and a slight increase in their strength and agility.

Kyren had been carefully monitoring himself for those early signs for years in case they came early, and he had started seeing them a week earlier. These weren’t too dangerous on their own, Kyren had long since gained a strong control of his emotions out of necessity for his living situation, but the later changes were what worried Kyren.

There would come a time when he started to fully change, not into the abominations that werewolves could change into, but into a full-blooded wolf. Unfortunately for Kyren, this change would come on a full moon and he wouldn’t be able to stop it. When that time came, Kyren needed to be sure that he was far away from everyone, and especially his adoptive father.

The entrance to the caverns was on the side of a cliff face about 100 yards behind the burned husk of his parent’s old home. The way in was hidden with great care. Eight years ago, the hunter’s guild had combed the area carefully after hawkthorne had found Kyren’s parents. Despite all their efforts though, they had missed the entrance along with the caverns themselves.

To enter, you had to be an ach-der-maat. Kyren wasn’t sure how it worked, but when a wolf-blooded one put a drop of their blood on the cliff face, a small section of it swung open. Kyren pricked himself with his knife and pressed his finger against the rock. The hidden door swung open on its own. Before he entered, Kyren made sure to carefully wipe away the blood. Hawkthorne rarely came to the property—he hated thinking about that night almost as much as Kyren did albeit for different reasons—but the property had long since been seized by the guild, and if someone saw a cliff face covered in dried blood, it would immediately raise a red flag.

The first half of the caverns had clean walls. An icy reminder that ach-der-maat history was supposed to have extended well past the time when Kyren died. After he reached the halfway point, Kyren walked past the history of his people that he had long since memorized. The werewolf epidemic and the response from humans and other supernatural creatures alike was at the very start. It was the most recent after all. Kyren had been told that his parents had actually helped put on the finishing touches to those murals when they were still young.

After nearly half an hour of walking, Kyren finally reached the last room in the caverns, the den. This was the place where Kyren’s parents had spent their full moons. It was also the place that told the oldest story of the wolf-blooded ones, and the place where Kyren planned to escape to when the full moon came. Right now, though, it was a mess. Kyren took out his supplies from his bag. It was time to get to work.

As Kyren began working on the air shoots which had accrued a dangerous amount of dust over the years, he thought back to the night he had lost his parents and officially became the last of his kind. He had been sitting in the house when his father had gotten a text. It wasn’t until the guild was questioning him later that he had found out what the message had said. As it turned out, it wasn’t much. An unknown number had sent the message. It had read: I’m sorry. They found out about you. Run.

Kyren’s dad had shot out of his chair in the living room and ushered him and his mom out of the house. They all knew exactly what to do. They had planned for something like that. They would make for the border to leave the country by boat. Their origins may have been in Redhill, but if they stayed, they would be hunted down.

They had been too late though. Even back then, Kyren had known Hawkthorne. He was a renowned werewolf hunter as well as their neighbor and oddly enough, a long-time family friend. Kyren remembered his face back then. The expression he wore was one of undisguised horror. He had come with his partner Drakesmith, who Kyren hadn’t known back then. They were both in full Guild uniform.

Hawkthorne hadn’t attacked on sight like Kyren had been trained to do by Hawthorne himself. Instead, he had asked a quiet question. “Why? Why would you keep this from me? You know its curable early on.”

Hawkthorne had thought they were werewolves, abominations of unbridled aggression responsible for countless atrocities throughout the world. He had assumed they had been infected, that they had chosen the thrills of werewolf blood, superhuman strength and senses, rather than getting a cure. He thought they were killers like every other werewolf, and knowing they couldn’t prove otherwise, Kyren’s parents had gone along with the act.

Kyren’s mother’s eyes had started to glow, her nails had turned to claws, and her teeth to fangs. Partially transformed as she was, his mother had looked nearly identical to a werewolf. “This is the only way, Victor. We’ve been like this since we were young, and we’ll continue to be like this after you die.”

Kyren’s parents might have won if they had truly been fighting, but they weren’t, they were acting. They had had a goal. When Kyren had stepped forward in fear, intending to help his parents, his dad had thrown him to the ground, baring his fangs at him. “Stay out of the way, meat!” His dad had barely finished before hawkthorne had shot him in the chest. His mother’s death followed soon after at the hands of Drakesmith.

His parents were dead, but their act had worked. Kyren was rigorously tested and interrogated, but by the end of the night, all the evidence the guild had found led them to believe a horrifying story. They all thought that his parents had kidnapped him from the family of one of their victims. They thought they raised him out of some sick perversion.

It had been late that same night when Hawkthorne had come to him in tears, apologizing profusely. He had been fully convinced that he had spent countless nights over the years in the company of two murderers who were holding a child against his will.

Kyren had little difficulty forgiving Hawkthorne for his parent’s murder. Even when he was only seven years old, Kyren had understood that Hawkthorne was a great person. Kyren’s parents had themselves been fierce opponents of werewolves. They had helped to hunt them down in secret on occasion. Kyren knew that Hawkthorne’s only sin had been ignorance of what the ach-der-maat truly were. Still, even knowing that, there were times when Kyren had to suppress his anger towards him.

As Kyren finally finished getting the air ducts reasonably clean, he shook off the memories. He needed to get back to Hawkthorne’s place. He knew from experience that Hawkthorne wouldn’t be back for hours, but Kyren had a big day coming up. Tomorrow would be his first day of high school and the last thing he needed right now was to be tired and irritated in an unknown environment.