Chương 25: WE THREE PACKS

You'd think that as a future alpha wolf, trying to balance my alpha leakages with my friendships and everything else, that I'd have enough on my plate without having to deal with school. But because of this, at least right now, school had become my alternate dimension... Or at least a space away from the less-than-easy feelings I was dealing with at my home pack. Mainly, I'm worrying over my behavior at training last night.

I'm wondering if Flynn or Hank would see me in a different light now that I've gone alpha on them. Or maybe, in their eyes, my alpha stint was more like a spoiled brat acting up, and they were too polite to say anything. I'm also worried about my friends last night. Was I too sensitive when I felt they had looked at me differently when they left the hall to shift for their wolf run? And Dean — it's not that I needed that jacket back.

I mean, it did look good on his lean frame, but what Jessica said about him wearing my jacket to school made me feel uncomfortable. It was the way she said it, like there was something more to it than the fact that I lent him my jacket, or that Dean is openly wearing female apparel. I didn't like the feeling that I'm being so involved in his school life - his school life that all my pack friends were at. I hope he returned it over the weekend; otherwise, knowing him, it would be lost in his mess for weeks.

And the Morning Light goons — their Beta was okay. And he was probably the least perturbed face besides Hank and Flynn that left the hall last night. With a lifted hand and quick bow as he passed, he left with a polite smile. But I worried that I was being hated by everyone in our next-door pack now. Morning Light Pack and ours had been joined at the hip since before I was born. Before I was born seems to have been a time where lots of things went wrong. Anyway, before I was born, there used to be a lot of rogues.

You see, our Green Packlands was home to quite a number of packs. The three largest were up here in the North, surrounded by woods. We were the top of all of Green Packlands. This was the safest of all the packlands in the plains.

It may not be as cultural and traditional as the White Packlands, or as glitzy and commercial as the Gold Packlands, but since the great war, our packlands has grown into a haven surrounded by woods, with towns for each pack and a small shared commercial Gate City connected to other cities outside the packlands. We were a safe place (for our pack wolves, anyway). There was a zero-tolerance policy for vampires, hunters, and rogues.

In fact, the only outsiders we allowed visas for into our packlands were other pack wolves, and also humans, who were usually housed in Gate City — or in the Lorent Pack. The Lorent Pack was arguably the number-one pack in our packlands. It was the largest, with slightly more than a thousand wolves. Their Alpha, James Lorent III, came from a very ancient bloodline of white wolves.

I don't know why the pack was named after the Alpha's family and not something like Black Moon, Crimson Fang, Shadow River, or some other traditional respectable combination of moon/forest/blood/elemental/nature wolf pack name. I guess the first Alpha Lorent had decided to mark the pack as his family's inheritance in no uncertain terms. Besides having their pack named after their glorious alpha family, there were three things that distinguished the Lorent Pack from all the others. FIRST: Extravagance and wealth.

As pups, we were told that a Lorent Pack member never had to clean their rooms or wash the dishes. They kept a small army of humans in contained quarters as low-level workers for jobs like that. And if a pup in our pack did not do their chores, the adult would say, "Do you think you're in the Lorent Pack?" Whenever Jessica grumbled about cleaning her room or whatever, her mum liked to say, "If you want to daydream and look pretty all day, then mate a Lorent." I've always taken this as a threat.

But one day, when I was hanging out in Jessica's room, she showed me some magazines called NEW LORENT. They were full of pictures of fancy events, elegant men in suits and ladies... Woah, when they said Lorent men chained their women down with diamonds, they were not joking.

The women were wrapped in a glittery array of stones and metal, bangles on their arms and ankles, necklaces wrapped around their bodies, diamonds dripping from their ears, and their hair braided intricately with jewels and flowers arranged in each braid. The more bling, the higher their mate's rank. The bigger the bling, the greater their mate's wealth. It was the stuff of the Colored Mountains, where according to legends, the first wolves ran.

The she-wolves of Lorent never followed the fashion and trends of the human world; instead, much like some very old vampiric families, they were wrapped in their own fashion bubble. Their traditional dress was probably designed by a man. It was not made to walk or move in. In fact, I doubt it was made to sit in either. I imagine all the ladies could do in these dresses would be to do exactly what the magazine showed them doing: standing and posing together, or on their mate's arms.

The dress was tight-fitting, and the top was modest. The collar line was tailored around the neck, and the sleeves fitted down to the elbows. Their backs and shoulders were fully covered in varying colors and fine fabrics like lace or brocade... Worn with impossibly high heels, it was very short and tight — mid-thigh, with a slit even further up, showing a lot of leg, like maybe they worked with limited fabric back in the day?

So it was just all legs, but right between the neck and shoulder, there was a slitted row of delicate buttons; on some dresses they were embroidered, on others they were jewelry pieces in themselves. No skin showed, but Jessica explained it was the sexiest part, because "everyone knows" it was direct access to where their mate's mark would be — where the neck and shoulder met. After studying the magazine together, Jessica told me something I could never forget, even though we never mentioned it again.

Her cousin had mated a Lorent wolf. That's how she got her hands on these magazines. She showed me a pair of small diamond studs in her ears, a gift from her cousin after her first shifting.

"I hope my mate will be a Lorent Wolf too." I had never for a billion years thought Jessica would desire such a life. Growing up, my dad had always made it clear: being a mate to a Lorent wolf would be nothing but a life of bondage. Because the only thing that outshone their luxurious parties, stone mansions, shiny car collection, and general pomp and grandeur was their bondage to tradition. SECOND: Tradition. It's not just their fashion trend that was trapped in their own time and culture; everything else was too.

From their celebrations to their policies, my dad had to endure long hours of grueling discussions with their alpha to come to some kind of understanding, but that was back when the Green Packlands Council was first established. Now the Lorent Pack no longer used human slaves (just lowly-waged human workers housed in very basic dormitories).

They still had their own privately run schools, but now the syllabus included other world views, and a standard history course was used across the entire Green Packland to unify all our packs (at least in our historical understanding). Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. She-wolves could go to school now too, but of course they could not be warriors, although as you can see with Morning Light, this was not uncommon among wolf packs.

But till today, she-wolves in the Lorent Pack continued to have no rights to own property or hold ranks. They partook in everything with their mates, and instead of jobs, were encouraged to take care of their young or do charitable works. They did not speak unless spoken to, and they only spoke very softly. My dad had told me a lot about what she-wolves could not do in the Lorent Pack. It's as if he was warning me off from a young age. But I wished he would talk to the goddess instead.

I mean, she was the matchmaker, right? There was one thing, and only one good thing about the Lorent Pack: THIRD: Their research and advancement into healing and medicine was second to none. For some reason, despite all their white elephants and stone-aged regulations over their society, the Lorent had one of the most advanced hospitals and research facilities in the Lycan world.

White wolves were a rarity in themselves, and while, like in our pack, it was commonly passed down the female line, in the Lorent Pack, there were more than five distinct white wolf bloodlines, strong enough to be passed down through both male and female wolves. In fact, their current Alpha James Lorent III was not just a white wolf of some ancient healer bloodline, he was also an avid contributor to the advancement of healthcare in our continent.

While my dad was the Father of Modern Lycan Education, their Alpha was the Father of Modern Lycan Medicine. They were the two very great Greats that were hidden behind the mysterious veil of forest in our Green Packlands. And perhaps due to the Lorent Alpha's resolve to improve healthcare or whatever other historical reason, there was not a stone-carved rule or paper red tape to prevent scientific research and medical advancements in their pack. Our pack was number two.

We were about 300 wolves strong and considered one of the most open-minded packs in the Green Packlands. My dad built this pack and our town from the ground up after the Great War. He often told me how he was born straight after the war. They were so poor that he was nursed with diluted condensed milk. Dad's generation suffered a lot of hardship, and moving out from his home pack and starting all over again out here in the wild Green Packlands was really rough.

But that kind of suffering was unheard of in our pack today. You'd only find it in our history books. In many ways, my dad had been radical in his ideas, and this pack was his playground where he got to set the rules. In our pack, who you could become was beyond your birthright, your bloodline, your gender, or age. Your worth was proven by your merit. And you could pretty much be whatever you wanted as long as you proved yourself capable. So theoretically, an omega could be a warrior.

And a girl like me could someday be the alpha. Our pack also had very fluid movement and travel policies. Our wolves were free to come and go within the Green Packlands. Many work in Gate City, which was half an hour by the shuttle bus. And with a regular permit, like I had, I could take the train daily in and out of the Green Packlands for work and school.

There was a reasonable tax on income from outside our pack, but overall, we had more freedom than any other pack wolf in the Green Packlands to gain education and meaningful employment. Here at Night Leaf Pack, it's not uncommon to meet normal wolves who earned equal or more in their city work than our most elite warriors. My dad saw no reason to stop them. They contributed more to society, excelling in their field of expertise, which they could bring back to our own development.

Plus, their tax contribution paid the elite warriors their nice salaries and living expenses. Dad thinks it's spiteful to deny others a chance at a better life because of their rank in the pack. Many wolves from other packs visit my dad to try to learn how some of our policies might work for their own packs. And my dad was always happy to help. I guess it's because my dad grew up in the aftermath of war.

So it burned in him a passion to rebuild lives and evolve the Lycan society to move forward with the rest of the world. The Morning Light Pack, aka home of the goons, was the third and more moderate pack.

A modern and conservative pack, with about 300 members, and an average household income similar to that in our Night Leaf Pack, except that their richest household was richer than ours, and their poorest were far poorer than ours, including families in the destitute homes, mostly women and children, whose fathers had died in battle. The Morning Light Alpha and my dad were close friends, building their packs next to each other after the great war. Then a few years before I was born, there was a rogue problem.

They kept coming in from warlock lands to our east. It was worse for Morning Light because it was situated closest. The problem with warlock land was that you can't just trespass and kill off rogues there. It was filled with magic traps and enchantments, which for some reason, only caught Green Packland wolves. Rogues could pass through without problems. In a particularly bad rogue attack that year, many Morning Light warriors were slain, including their Alpha and Luna, who were just mated. They left no heir.

For a few years after, the Beta (Harvey's dad) and Gamma (Nix's dad) struggled to keep their pack safe and secure. It proved too much, even with regular help from my dad. We shared what we could with them — schools, medical centers, transport to Gate City, even warrior training manuals and techniques. But eventually, the rogue attacks got too much for an alpha-less pack. I remembered one night, waking up and hearing visitors. The Gamma had come knocking. Begging. Another rogue attack.

My dad assembled all our warriors, and there was a two-day battle to root out the rogues. At one point, Dad trespassed into the warlocks' realm and was almost captured in an enchantment trap. It was Beta Lucas who reached in from outside and pulled him out in the nick of time. But we won, and the large-scale rogue attacks ceased after my dad got serious. No doubt, Morning Light needed an Alpha, and for a while, there were talks of our packs merging. But the Green Packland Council was against it.

Too much power to a single alpha, they feared. The talks were long, I knew because Dad would miss dinner at home with us quite a lot. At the time, it wasn't just the economic numbers, our warriors were not something the other packs could contend with as it was, so there wasn't another alpha in the council who wanted to strengthen our fighting force.

They couldn't see Morning Light as families who needed a more protected pack structure, all they could see was their war-seasoned wolf warriors and our total warrior count. So now, my dad ran two packs: Night Leaf, and Morning Light, but only on an autonomous basis. Meaning that my dad represented Morning Light as Alpha but only took an advisory role in pack decisions to the Beta and Gamma there.

But it also meant that Morning Light, which was the third-strongest pack before the loss of their original alpha, would always be suppressed below ours. This fact always annoyed my dad because he didn't want to be the instrument to keep them down for the "Silly Green Packland Council," where he was also one of the founders — he just didn't always agree with their majority, which was kind of ironic, even to me as a dumb pup. I don't why Dad put up with it. Anyway Dad didn't let the Silly Council get him down.

He couldn't deny the council, but he could work around it, and Dad worked really hard. He set up pack policies and restructured Morning Light organization to give it a chance to prosper or at least survive until they managed to find a real Alpha. Eventually, the new alpha would have to be settled in the next two generations. Best Case Scenario #1: Harvey's sister mates an alpha male, who will move into Morning Light. Tada! Instant Alpha fix.

If she didn't, then they would have to hold out to a third generation and the pack moves on to Best Case Scenario #2: Harvey mates an alpha female and produces an alpha male pup. The point was they needed alpha blood injected into their pack within the next two generations or everything we had been working for would fall apart. Without intervention, a pack without an alpha would disintegrate eventually. Already, there had been families transferring to other packs.

Of course, the other packs would only accept strong wolves, so when all the strong wolves left, only the weak and defenseless ones would be left. Then they would really be sitting ducks for rogues and hunters. For now though, the stopgap measures and new policies were working out. Morning Light continued to prosper and grow, enjoying the same overall peace and prosperity of our pack.

Some even say they didn't really need another alpha, or that their next alpha must first be mentored by my dad to make sure he doesn't mess up their good life. But Dad said that Morning Light's success was only due to the hard work of their Beta and Gamma, who unselfishly cared for the welfare of their pack members. I remembered visiting the Morning Light Beta's house often when we were small and my dad had frequent meetings there. I guess that was when they ironed out all the new policies and stuff.

Savy and I played with a little boy with curly hair. He had a sister who was very shy and never spoke. Now I realized that must have been Harvey and his sister. All this... This was my world. Or at least it used to be my whole world.

But now at Winderhill, I was beginning to see that there was a much bigger world, one with vampires who roamed outside their covens, and a human majority, who weren't just manual labor or foreign expertise, and rogues who weren't always the bad guys (the two in Winderhill were just a brother and sister, who in most ways were just like the other humans, just more alert as if they were constantly under threat), and well... My world was expanding every day.

It's not just my pack, or the Green Packlands, or even just the Lycan society anymore. It never was... But for some reason, I never really noticed our world was shared. Until I stepped into this school…