Chương 36: WOLVES OF THE PLAINS

-History with a side of Family Drama As I made my way along the upstairs corridor to our study group classroom, Jessica caught up with me.

"That was pretty intense just now."

"Yeah, I guess," I answered vaguely.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm just shaking off that last dream," I told her. And I was. I understood why the other guys had radiated such strong emotions now. I was too. It was as if the only way to recall the dream was to surface the emotions that came with it—a dream stored in the heart, instead of the mind. Perhaps that was what Dean meant when he said, "you'd just know it." Prophetic dreams were different for girls and guys. For some reason, I had both, but the first one was probably my mate's, and I had glimpsed into his future.

I remembered it took me a whole day to shake it off. The second one was mine. Although I would imagine seeing one's mate covered in blood to bring about traumatic feelings, I could only imagine it—because, quite unexpectedly, recalling the second dream did not bring about the feelings I had feared. Instead, it was surprisingly soothing. Even as I remembered it now, the intensity of the first dream was steadily rubbed away.

When I remembered my mate in the forest, despite the copious amount of blood, his reassurance kept echoing in my mind: he was going to be okay. Well, those were not the words he used. I forgot. Oh, right.

"This won't kill me." And if something like that didn't kill him, I suppose he was not the kind to die easily. It was a twisted type of reassurance.

"Sam?" I realized Jessica was trying to tell me something. Our tutor was already at the door of our study room. She greeted us with a warm smile. Today our tutor was the Beta's wife, Willow, or Mrs. Beta as we grew up calling her. (I was told this nickname was my doing, but it was so long ago, I don't remember!) I entered the study room and took my usual seat. Jessica slid in next to me. Dean's seat would be opposite mine, while Mrs. Beta sat next to him.

"Yeah?" I asked Jessica once we were both seated.

"Nothing." I could hear Jessica's faint annoyance. I must not have heard her for quite a while.

"What?" I persisted.

"I just asked what you were doing after this."

"Shopping with Savy. Wanna come?"

"Ohhh..." Jessica looked tempted, "but I can't." She didn't sound too unhappy about missing the shopping trip, but the reason for that was apparent when she explained, "I'm going to visit my cousin at the Lorent Pack today."

"Cool," I said.

"Have you girls seen Dean?" Mrs. Beta had given up waiting by the door for Dean. She sat down in her usual seat. I shrugged.

"He was at breakfast with us." Jessica was a little more helpful. Mrs. Beta nodded.

"Let's wait a bit more." While we waited, Mrs. Beta asked us how our first week of school went. I found myself surprised that it had only been a week. It felt like a lifetime—or at least several weeks by now.

"School makes time go by really slowly," I told her. When Mrs. Beta laughed at that, I added, "When I come to the end of my life and want an extension, I'll enroll myself in high school again." I was gratified by amused chuckles from Mrs. Beta and Jessica. Hearing them laugh around me lifted my mood. I felt better by the time Dean slunk in—I'm not sure how he managed to be late for study group when he was on time for breakfast downstairs.

"Sorry I'm late, Mrs. B."

"It's fine, take your seat, Dean," Mrs. Beta told him. We started on our lesson. Today, Mrs. Beta told us the legend of the Colored Mountains, where the first wolves originated from. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. We'd heard various renditions of this tale since we were small pups. But we were not small pups anymore, so Mrs. Beta was showing us pages from ancient scripts that painted and wrote about it in poetry.

Because it wasn't hard enough to understand those ridiculous pictograph words and ancient grammar as it was, they had to be in poetry and include cultural and historical references from life on the Colored Mountain.

"The poet does not want us to forget our past," Mrs. Beta had said, but it's more like he didn't want us to understand it. And then she showed us a map, and we played a quiz game with clues and markers to trace out the migration of the first wolves that came out to the plains. This was fun, almost like a detective game, but having to memorize it was somewhat unrewarding. The migration paths didn't make all that much sense since the Great War pretty much uprooted or decimated most of those packs.

After the Great War, the remnant wolves rebuilt their packs, now demarcated by the various pack lands. So it was like we had to learn one map that showed the original migration paths, and then erase it all and relearn the map all over again for the postwar territories. Many of the postwar packs were considered new, like ours. Our Night Leaf Pack was only two generations old. BEFORE NIGHT LEAF PACK (What you won't find in our history books) My grandfather was the Alpha of the Night Forest Pack.

My uncle Louis was the Alpha there now. When my dad started our pack, he took a leaf from his former pack's name—quite literally, a leaf. That's why our pack's name was Night Leaf Pack. My father was the eldest of four brothers. UNCLE PIERRE, THE SECOND SON My first uncle, Pierre, had mated an Alpha's daughter on the next continent and became the Alpha there. My grandmother, the Luna, was very unhappy about that move. She had wanted the girl to move over here.

But their pack would have been left without an Alpha, so how could she? Still, my grandmother had refused to see them again after that. And my first uncle could only keep in touch through my dad. UNCLE ANDRE, THE THIRD SON My second uncle, Andre, was mated to an Omega. His story was often told like a rags-to-riches Cinderella tale, except from the Prince Charming's point of view. And without the happily ever after, because my grandmother felt an Omega was beneath the Alpha family and objected too.

How could you object to your own son's mate? My dad used all his savings to pay for his brother's mating celebration. It was fit for a proper fairy tale ending. Dad also paid for their relocation into Uncle Pierre's pack across the sea. This gave them a happily ever after too, just far, far away. Grandmother was furious. MY MUM AND DAD But maybe the Moon Goddess saw my dad's selfless act, because my dad met my mum soon after. He always said she was a gift.

My grandmother was at first also unhappy with this match because my mother was from a Free Wolf family. This was almost rogue, but not quite, because her family was very large and lived like a pack, just without an Alpha. After the Great War, many wolves lived in fragmented packs for a time, so it was not uncommon or terribly unnatural. But my grandmother turned up her nose at Free Wolves. In my grandmother's opinion, the term "Free Wolves" was a grave misnomer. Wolves were meant to run in packs.

Free Wolves were technically only half a step above common rogues, who were half a step above criminal rogues… you get the idea. My grandmother was completely against my dad's choice of Luna until she met my mother's white wolf. This earned my mother a grudging acceptance. Yes, because a white wolf was half a step above other colored wolves, so it made mom averagely acceptable—but only just passably. UNCLE LOUIS, THE FOURTH SON My third and last uncle, Louis, was the youngest and also the greatest disappointment.

I had heard my grandmother bemoan this with her own mouth many times. His mate was human! My grandmother was so disappointed that she completely ignored the lady's presence for the first few years. I tried to understand why. I mean, mating a human wasn't really the worst-case scenario—it could have been a criminal rogue, right? But the thing about humans was that they weren't even a step up or step down. They weren't even on the steps.

Even so, my grandmother didn't object loudly this time (she only did so under her breath, and constantly). My mom thinks losing two sons was hard on her, even though it was her own fault they left. To this day, she still refuses to open their correspondence. Her pride wouldn't let her. So with her last son, even if his mate was human, she did not object to the mating. She even paid for the mating ceremony.

BACK TO DAD, THE YOUNG ALPHA All this while, my dad dreamed about changing the world—dreams that my grandmother did everything in her might to thwart. In her mind, my dad must be the next Alpha and continue in the pack's traditions and ways, not forge new ones. After a long struggle, my dad left my third uncle and his human mate to inherit Night Forest Pack.

Dad, the Young Alpha of Night Forest, took his Luna (my mom), and they abdicated their Future Alpha and Luna position and ran away to start Night Leaf Pack in a brand-new packland. So our pack name didn't just take a leaf from my dad's former pack, it also signaled a change—to turn over a new leaf. The Green Packland was considered a frontier for new packs. Although now, within a couple of decades, it had become one of the safest and most comfortable middle-class packlands on our continent.

We've come a long way since our forefathers left the Colored Mountains. We were wolves of the plains—the ones who ran away from the strongholds of tradition to build their own new world.

"It's in our blood," my dad had said when I asked him why he left, "to leave the old ways because we believed there was a better way. We were the mavericks. The rebels who were tired of being told it can't be changed." I didn't have that kind of feeling in my blood, though. I was quite happy with the life I had right now.

Well, I forgot about my mate covered in blood, or leading some sort of rebel army, or stabbing Ben, or my parents and Jonah surrounded by rogues, or Dean, or Shannon, or the jacket I didn't feel I could ask Dean to return so easily now… So I wasn't 100% happy with the life I had right now. Whenever I studied Lycan history, I was always sucked into the familiar stories set in a more colorful time and world, and I could happily forget the bad stuff in the present. Hahaha!

If my dad was someone who ran away to the possibilities of the future, I was someone who ran away to the predictability of the past.