DEAR WESLEY,
Thank you for being honest with me. It’s not a surprise that you don’t want me as a friend. I’m used to people not wanting me.
You see, I’m an orphan. My parents left me when I was a baby. I was only a few days old. I have lived in pretty much one home a year since I was a baby. So I guess that would make it nine homes now, since I am nine years old. And since I move so much, it makes it harder to make friends.
I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I just wanted to tell you I know why you did it, and even though you didn’t ask for it, I forgive you.
I hope you get your A. Haven Kenway
 |
WESLEY
The reply letter came in our packhouse mail almost a week after I sent mine. I didn’t realize I wrote my home address on the envelope instead of
the school’s address.
I arrived home to find the letter already open. It was on the small, round dining table in the kitchen of the alpha suite where my family and I lived. My mom sat in the chair facing the doorway, giving me “the look.”
Every kid knew that look. It was the look that put the fear of Selene in the toughest of wolves and lycans. The look that made even my dad, Alpha Harrison Stone of the Crescent Lake Pack, tuck his tail between his legs and say, “I’m sorry,” before he even knew what he did wrong. The look that said, “You done messed up.” That look.
Don’t get me wrong. My mom, Luna Emily Stone, was the best mom any lycan could ever ask for. I mean that. She was truly the glue holding our family, and our pack, together, just like any good luna should.
That’s why the ancestors of our pack made a rule that the alpha heir could only take over the pack once they marked their mate—be it fated or chosen
—so they had the person who could balance them and keep them from being too overworked or stressed.
Obviously, the pack had the beta, gamma, and delta positions to help the alpha as well, but those people couldn’t calm down an angry, irritated lycan in the same way a mate could. Even if something happened to the current alpha, the next highest ranked member with a mate would run the pack until the heir found or chose their mate.
Not all werewolf packs handled succession that way. Some packs designated an age at which they handed the pack over, and others let the current alpha decide when their heir was ready. But this was the way our pack had done things since the beginning.
With that look on my mom’s face, I was likely in for an earful. I didn’t get in trouble often. I was well-behaved and a rule follower, but like any kid—
wolf or lycan or human—I messed up occasionally.
I sat in the chair right across from her, folding my hands on top of the table as I eyed her. She gestured at the open envelope on the table, so I picked it up, took out the letter, and read it to myself.
With each word, I shrank further and further into my seat, my mother’s eyes boring a hole straight into my brain, as if she might extract the words I had written to this girl for her to respond so coldly to me.
We didn’t get names when we got the assignment. Mrs. Appleton said her sister would just distribute the letters randomly to the students in her class. How was I supposed to know my letter would be given to the one student in her class who needed a friend more than anybody else did?
That didn’t change that I shouldn’t have written what I did. It wouldn’t have mattered who she had given the letter to. Even if the student was someone who had tons of friends, my words would have been rude.
I lifted my eyes to meet the stern gaze of my mother’s gray eyes, and she could already see the remorse in mine, could already see that I understood I had made a huge mistake.
She softened a bit, leaned across the table, and placed her hand over mine. “You know what you need to do.”
I nodded. She was right. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to do what any true alpha, any alpha worth his title, would do: own up to my mistake.
So many alphas thought they never needed to apologize when they were wrong, or even worse, that they couldn’t possibly ever do anything wrong. One of the most important things my father had emphasized during my alpha training was to own up to my mistakes.
We were just as imperfect as any other person—human or wolf. Being an alpha didn’t change that. We were just as prone to mistakes—or fuck ups, as
Dad liked to say when my mother wasn’t around—as the rest of the world.
What made us different was showing that we realized we’d messed up, how we reacted to that mistake, and whether we changed ourselves or if we kept making the same mistake over and over and over. If we truly learned from our actions, we could grow and move forward. If we kept repeating our errors, well, that showed we were stuck in our ways.
These actions affected our pack as well. If the alpha was stubborn and set in his ways, then the pack would be stuck in the past. They’d plateau and never rise above the others or continue to be successful. But if an alpha was open-minded and able to learn and grow, then the pack would thrive and succeed in all their endeavors.
My mother stood up from her chair at our small table and walked through the doorway of the dining room. Her heels clicked on the wood floor for several steps, and then she paused, picked something up, and headed back towards me.
I twisted in my chair so I could see her when she came back into the room. She carried my backpack, which I had left next to the front door of our apartment. She set it down on the floor next to my chair, her unwavering gaze boring through my skull as I tried to avoid eye contact with her.
“I am leaving to pick your sister up from pup care,” she told me. “I expect your letter to be finished by the time I get back with Madeleine.”
With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of our apartment, leaving me alone with the letter from Haven and my own thoughts.
I sat there for a few minutes, the only sound the ticking of our old grandfather clock in the living room. I thought about what I wanted to write to this girl. To Haven.
I slowly got out my pencil and a piece of paper from my backpack and set them on the table in front of me as I got into my writing mode.
At first, it was difficult for me to find the words to say to her. But the more I wrote, the easier it became, until the pencil in my hand could not keep up with my mind.
By the time Mom returned with Maddie, I had completed the longest letter I had ever written in my life. I had an envelope from my father’s small office in our apartment already addressed and sitting next to the letter on the dining room table. I stood straight and tall next to it, waiting for my mother to inspect my writing.
She surprised me, however, by only checking to see if I finished it. Then she nodded without a word and walked away. She was putting her faith in me to treat this girl with respect in my letter, and I was proud she trusted me enough to not check over every word.
I folded the letter and placed it in the envelope, sealing it and setting it in the stack of outgoing mail near our front door just as Maddie came barreling into me. Her arms wrapped around my legs, almost causing me to fall over on top of her.
Her tiny giggles echoed through the entry, mingling with my laugh that was becoming deeper as I neared the age of my first shift. I lifted her little three-year-old body with ease, throwing her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Her giggles turned into full belly laughs as I ran through our home with her dangling and bouncing around behind me.
“Wessy!” she shrieked, just as I threw her down on her back onto her pink princess bed, topped with the squishiest feather duvet and the most ridiculous frilly and lacy pillows I had ever laid eyes on.
She wriggled around, trying to flee. But of course, I was faster than her, and my hands tickled her belly before she even had the chance to attempt an escape. Her tiny legs kicked towards me as I continued tickling her, but I stopped before she became too hysterical or out of breath or, even worse, wet herself.
I turned to leave her room, hoping to wrangle Sebastian or Reid into playing a video game with me, but her little voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Wessy, pwease wead me a stowy?”
I sighed and looked at her, prepared to say no, but of course she gave me the wolf pup eyes, complete with the pouty bottom lip and batting eyelashes, her little hands clasped under her chin as she begged me. I couldn’t say no to that face. No one could. Maddie had perfected that look, further cementing her status as the princess of our pack.
Without a word, I moved back to her bed, grabbing our copy of The Goddess’s Tales from her bookshelf. The book of myths and legends and fairy tales was passed down through the generations in our family but had remained in decent condition, even with its age. It was well-loved, but the binding was still intact, the pages unmarred.
The tales in the book made up all the stories ever told over the centuries about Selene and werewolves. No one knew which of them, or which parts of them, were true. But every werewolf and lycan heard them growing up, just as human children heard their own fairy tales, such as Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel.
They did not know most of their stories were based on a sliver of truth. That most of the magical beings they read about were actually all around them, hidden in plain sight.
“Which one shall we read today, Maddie?” I asked, holding the book up.
She clapped her hands. “Wia! I want Wia!”
I groaned. She always wanted Asteria’s story. I liked it because of the part about the creation of lycans and alphas, but I had read it way too many times.
“No, we just read that one the other day,” I said.
I thumbed through the pages, looking at the titles as I flipped through them.
“How about ‘The Alpha Pup’s Best Friend?’” I suggested, showing her the page.
“No!” she shouted.
I sighed. That was one of my favorites because it told of the first beta, and I always thought of Reid’s and my friendship.
I flipped through the book some more until I ended up back at the very beginning. The first story, the story of our origins.
“‘The First of the Wolves’?” I asked, peeking at her from the corner of my eye.
Her eyes lit up, but then she forced a frown. However, it was too late. I had already seen her excitement.
“First wolves it is!” I exclaimed in triumph, and she giggled and settled in next to me as I began to read.
