I took a shaky breath and turned away from the mirror. I tried not to think about my mom or that night too much, but sometimes, it snuck up on me anyways.
I had been so confused then, although my dad tried his best to break things down for eleven-year-old me. He was very angry after that night – not at me, but at my mom. She had never told him about me, so he had no idea 1 existed until that night. He told me several times that I would’ve been living with him sooner had he known, but since he hadn’t, we were just going to have to make up for lost time.
@
I had never known about him either. I’d asked my mom questions about where my dad was a couple of times, but she had always deflected. She told me that he wasn’t around, that he was apart of a whole different world I didn’t need to be involved in.
To be fair, she had been right-my dad was apart of a completely different world. I later learned from Sebastian that I was the result of a drunken one-night-stand between my mom and my dad.
It was the only time he ever cheated on Grace – that one night he met my mom in a bar and went home with her. He’d already come clean to Grace about the encounter years before I ended up on their doorstep. They were mates, so of course, she forgave him – although I doubt my presence helped her forget.
Not only did I look just like my mom, but I was a breathing reminder of the fact that Grace and dad’s relationship wasn’t perfect, that my dad had done something awful that caused a lot of hurt.
Grace never said these kinds of things to me, but I still felt them. Q
She tried to include me in the family as much as possible, but there were still times when I’d catch her looking at me with this dejected expression on her face.
I took another deep breath, and pulled on my jacket.
Way to set the mood for a Monday, huh, Clark? Just rehash the past until you depress yourself.
“Clark! Last call – I’m literally leaving this second.”
“I’m coming! Just hold on!” I grabbed my backpack and took the stairs two at a time. Lily was positioned at the front doors, keys in her hand, and the same angry scowl on her face.
“I told you that I had to meet Ashley early today,” she grumbled as we walked out the door, “I literally haven’t seen her all weekend. If I’m going to be gone next week, she’s got to fill in for me as cheer captain, and that’s not easy, so…”
I turned out Lily’s lecture about my tardiness as I climbed into the Jeep, and we headed towards school.
*”I was a handful growing up.”
Olivia Wilde*
“Were we supposed to have a test in Biology today?” Lily asked as she drove.
“Yeah,” I shrugged, “It’s on the anatomy of the wolf form, and what genetic factors. play into the size of someone’s wolf form.”
“Shit,” Lily cursed, “I totally forgot about that. Guess I’ll just have to copy off Brody. He’ll let me do it, I’m pretty sure he’s obsessed with me. I can practically see his canines drooling whenever I walk by.”
I rolled my eyes playfully, although Lily was right. Brody was definitely obsessed with her, and he salivated like a dog or more like a horny werewolf whenever she walked by.
Ugh, I am definitely not in the mood for a test or school today.
Remember how I said that the pack had its own grocery stores and infirmaries? Those weren’t the only things on pack lands we also had our own school too:
Blacktooth Primary School.
Here’s the thing. When you’ve got hundreds of adolescent werewolves with heightened emotions and the ability to shift at will, you can’t exactly throw them in public school. Sooner or later, someone would shift in front of the humans and expose werewolves to the rest of the world.
Apparently, some former Alpha King made a law hundreds of years ago that declared each pack had to provide its young werewolves with an education.
Packs made their own school curriculums, of course. Why teach teenage werewolves calculus when you could teach them warrior training? Why bother with World History when you could teach Werewolf World History?
You still got most of the bare-bones classes you’d get at any other school – like math, history, science, and English – but most of them had a werewolf twist.
The custom curriculum made plenty of sense for the werewolves, but unfortunately, as the only resident human in the Blacktooth pack, I was just along for the ride.
When I started living with my dad, he insisted I attend the werewolf school with my siblings and the rest of the pack. I had protested about it for a long time. Living with my dad had already broken most of my ties to the human world, and the last thing I wanted to do was leave my human friends behind too.
We fought about for a while, but eventually, he got his way.
I tried to keep in contact with some of my human friends, but without any real way to see them, those friendships eventually faded.
“You’re so quiet this morning,” Lily commented, glancing over at me from the driver’s seat. “You’re being sulkier than usual.”
“Sulky?”
“Yes, sulky,” she said, “I can always tell when you’re sulking, which is most of the time, by the way. So, what is it this time? Are you worried about this big diplomatic meeting next week?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m worried,” I replied, “I don’t really have anything to worry about – not like you and Seb do. Am I dreading it? A little bit. I could think of better ways to spend my weekend than locked in a stuffy room with a bunch of angry wolves.” Lily smirked at that last sentence.
“I’m sure it’ll go fine for you,” She said, and then she paused. “I’m kind of dreading it too.”
I looked over at Lily, surprised. Her eyes were fixed on the road, but from her furrowed brows and the way she chewed her l*p, I could tell she was being honest.
She was worried.
“Really? Why’s that?”
Lily sighed like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open up.
“Promise not to say anything to anyone, not even Sebastian?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know, I’ve been thinking…there’s a good chance that my mate will be there,” she said, “I already know my mate isn’t in Blacktooth, I would’ve met them by now. So that means they’ve got to belong to another pack. And this weekend? Every single future Alpha, not including any pack members they bring with them, is going to be there. That ups my chances of meeting my mate by, like, at least 50%. Maybe more.”
As she talked, I could see Lily’s knuckles tighten around the steering wheel until they were white.
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