OUT OF THE BLUE

17 FEBRUARY, WEDNESDAY, SHOULD BE DINNER TIME

Yes, I knew I couldn't stay in here forever. But I took the excuse of needing a shower before dinner to hole myself up in the bathroom.

Savy had come up earlier to ask if I was alright, she said Mum said to go down OR ELSE Dad and Bell were going to come up.

I said I needed a shower first.

She said I smelled fine.

I left her in my room and locked myself in the bathroom.

And there was no way I was going to release the mindblocks I had up. I'm sure if I unblocked my mindlinks, I'd be told to go downstairs repeatedly. I even kept Bell blocked out. ESPECIALLY BELL.

I know my family was worried after they heard about the vampire incident in school, but why was Bell here?

I mean why was he here, in real life, and not on dream mode? That's hardly fair! I thought he wasn't coming back to the Green Packlands till my inauguration, and maybe not even then.

Wasn't he the one who wanted us to keep a safe distance? Wth.

Popping out right out of the blue was totally breaking the rules. I don't know what rules, but there had to some rule that said you were not allowed to appear in your soulmate's home without prior warning. If there wasn't, we should table it down to be discussed in the next Green Packland Council Meeting.

Omo Wouldn't this be our first time meeting? The others were not really counted, because we met in a dream... You know, "I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream~"

I wasn't ready for this. I mean, if I had to choose between meeting Mate in real life and taking my exams now, I'd actually pick the exams. At least then, I would have an actual chance of not failing completely.

I was sure I was going to fail. Absolutely and completely without a doubt.

I mean, I hadn't really put in as much thought into this as I should, but just like with my exams, I thought I had plenty of time.

I had also pretty much assumed that I would be beautiful and cool when we actually met.

I removed my hood and looked at my reflection where a blue haired girl with two wolf ears stared back at me with startling blue eyes.

Obviously I hadn't been thinking this through.

Savy banged on the bathroom door (why was she still in my room?), "Mum says to come down for dinner! Everyone's hungry but Dad won't eat till he sees you!"

Wth? What had gotten into Dad?

Didn't he know how foolish it was to keep wolves hungry? Wasn't he the one who told me the story himself?

The time the wolves revolted against the human king... Way before the great war, there was a human kingdom...

"BANG! BANG! BANG!" Savy slammed harder on the bathroom door, "Hurry Sam! I don't here you hurrying!"

Only Savy could get away with something like that. But seriously, she was totally abusing her power!

Anyway, the human king kept wolves as slaves to do all the manual labor, but one day decided it would be a brilliant idea to reduce the labor budget and feed the wolves less and less, to the point where they were all hungry. And they revolted and raided all the food stores. Thus ending his otherwise uneventful rule. Morale of the story - keep your wolves well fed if you want them to run for you.

Anyway, I had already kept everyone waiting, and keeping them hungry wouldn't help matters.

I got out to complain, "I hadn't even gotten into the shower yet!"

Savy opened her mouth in an 'O' shape and then she grinned at me, "What big ears you have, grandma!"

Wth. I flared, and pulled my hood back over my head. But when I looked back at Savy, she was already ignoring me. Mostly because her attention was atm on an opened box of Vday goodies.

"What's this?" She asked me.

"Urm..." I tried to remember. It was from on top of my dresser, so I should know this... And then I remembered, "Vday presents... I think..."

Yeah, I remembered Ki reminding me that my vday loot was in some kind of air tight container.

"I know they were Vday gifts, but what I want to know was why you hadn't eaten them?" Savy narrowed her eyes at me.

"I forgot." I answered lamely.

Savy immediately took me to task, "If you don't eat them, how are you going to tell your friends you liked them?"

She picked out the purpled ribboned box of chocolate cake from Jasmine, "This one's pretty, but I think it's off."

Oh no.

"Now you won't know how it taste. And you can't answer your friend if she asks." Savy frowned at that.

Savy shook her head at the rest of the box, "I don't think any of the homemade stuff is edible anymore. Most of the chocs are melted too."

She wrinkled her nose up and replaced the lid. The air-tightness of the box Ki used turned out to be a very practical touch.

Savy continued to examine the pile of items on my dresser, "At least you knew to take out the cards and notes... And separate the foodstuff from the other stuff...you didn't do this did you?"

She knew me too well. I shrugged and gave her a sheepish grin.

Savy decided to let it go, she had more interesting things to do. I got changed while she checked the expensive white paper bags and boxes, "I'm guessing this is from your Lorent boyfriend?"

My what now? Bell, right.

And then for the first time in her life, Savy hesistated, "Do you wanna open them?"

"Why?" I asked. Technically, they were just paperbags, and two boxes.

Savy shrugged, "Okay, I'll open them then. Let's find something you can wear since he's downstairs. Don't panic or anything, but Bell isn't dream travelling."

"Tell me something I don't know." I smirked at my little sister.

So she did.

The moment he got the call from Henry, Bell had mindlinked Fluffy to report. Then he sent orders to his warriors on duty at my school gates to charge up to the computer lab. He also mindlinked Ki who was otw, to make sure to "take care of it".

Meanwhile he rushed through the meeting he was at, handing the underground over to Stephan, and tried to fall asleep so he could dream travel to me.

But Mate couldn't fall asleep.

Mostly because Fluffy had to report that Lord Kosan had arrived. Lord Kosan... Even though he drank only packeted blood, he was still quite infamous among the fight dogs, and was a patron of the sport. In fact, he personally owned a few trophy fightdogs across his very long lifetime. They were treated as his special pets, and he was very selective. His last fight dog was Keys.

Wow. So now I knew I "stole" my classmates' dad's prized show dog. Opps. #sorrynotsorry.

Anyway, Savy didn't know the details about what Mate knew about Lord Kosan, but he totally freaked out.

"I only know what I heard, okay?" Savy shrugged, "He's your mate. You ask him."

As if I could!

Anyway, Mate was so freaked out that he could not fall asleep. In his desperation to see me, he got onto a motorbike and sped over to the Green Packlands.

From here he would change to a suit and take his car out to fetch me. Because no matter how freaked out he was, he was quite aware of the paparazzi outside my school and knew better than to try motorbiking me home riding pillion. His level headed thinking earned him much praise among the elders he met when he arrived.

Yes, because Dad was at a meeting too, when report of Maria's dark cycle reached him - except it wasn't said like, "Maria, the teenage vamp is entering her dark cycle, so your daughter will be home late from school." It was reported as "There has been a critical incident at Winderhill high. Your daughter is held hostage, along with her classmates, by a ranpaging vamp on dark cycle."

Who gave that report? Tell me!

But Savy was busy telling me all the other details as I changed out of my school uniform and she explored the treasures found in the paper bags.

"This is cute." She pulled out a white horse - a la Sir Sparklalot, but white with wings and caramel colored eyes. AND GRANDMA LUNA'S RING!

Which I might have completely forgotten about. I was still sad for Sir Sparklalot though. But oh, I luuvvvv this one. It even came with Mate's scent! I grabbed it from Savy's hand.

I sniffed it a little and squeezed it just to be sure. Fluffy's Papa was right, Grandma Luna's ring had a very distinct magic signature. And then I sniffed it some more because my mate also had a distinct scent... At least to me.

"Come on, let's do your hair so you can go smell the real thing." Savy grinned. I flared... No! I'm not ready! Aloud I said, "No!... Urm... Tell me what else happened."

So Savy continued her report: Mate had arrived at our Packlands in his full warrior get up and motorbike. But he wasn't allowed to go fetch me, just as Dad wasn't allowed to go fetch me.

Poor elders and Mum who had to reason to two over-reactive alpha wolves. Luckily, they had already gotten through to Dad when Bell showed up, and Dad was like, "If I can't go, you can't go either."

Which was totally childish imao.

But Savy swore it really happened. She was in the meeting too, but doing homework. (She had homework?)

She was escaping Martha, our cleaning lady. But instead of escaping to Dad's office, which I would've done, she escaped to the empty conference room. She hadn't expect Dad and the elder wolves to come in the moment she settled down at the end of the table. They insisted she should stay and set up their laptops etc on the other end.

It was a good thing too, because she was around to mindlink Mum an SOS the moment Dad's wolf began regressing into King Kong.

Alphas did not like not getting their way.

Ki was even more against Bell showing up in school. We were two soul mates meeting for the first time. Anything can happen, and if you knew anything about "wolf romances", you'd understand why allowing that to happen in front of the hundred cameras parked around my school might be a bad idea.

Savy's eyes gleamed, "It would definitely have made more exciting TV."

In which she meant the Lycan News Channel, which was the default TV in the Alpha house while growing up.

I remembered Grandpa Silas showing me cartoons when we spent a summer week at his place. I had asked Mum, "Can we buy a new TV like Grandpa Silas'? Did you know his TV has cartoons in it?"

I can't remember what my Mum said, but our TV had cartoons after that too.

It was the most marvelous thing!

For me, because I used to wake up at the crack of dawn in the weekends, but nobody would get out of bed to play with me. But now, I could grab a bowl of cereal and watch cartoons till the rest of the fam dragged themselves up. Sometimes Savy would join me, and I would help her pour the milk because I was older.

For Mum and Dad, I think it was nice for them to be able to sleep in, and wake up to find their puppies still sitting in the living room, safe and sound, without anything broken or damaged. I didn't even spill any milk on the carpet.

Like I said, it was the most marvelous thing!

Nowadays, our TV seemed to be more junior channel than anything else though. The TV used to respect wolf hierarchy more before the human showed up.

News > Dramas > Cartoons > whatever Savy was into.

Unlike Dad and me, Savy preferred a more variable TV programming. It depended on her mood and the phase she was going through. So I knew a wide range of subjects thanks to watching with Savy.

There was anime, and MasterChef cooking, sitcoms starring grouchy middle aged men, and the occasional teen flick.

Anyway, all the elders present at the meeting, including Dad, had unanimously agreed that Mate was not to go to Winderhill, effectively grounding Bell.

Savy thought Bell might actually chi-ka-boom, but he managed not to.

This had to be credited to Beta Gerald. With the help of Gamma Harry, they managed to distract Dad and Bell with a hundred urgent matters that required the Alpha or Future Luna's input. From advice on where a particular sub-account should more appropriately fall into, to the program for my inauguration...

I was quite surprised all the frustratingly nitty gritty details didn't just cause Dad and Mate to blow up in their faces. It could have gone either way, but they bravely kept it up till Beta Lucas made it over to Winderhill and back.

Hahaha, our wolves worked hard today.

At one point it was everyone against Gamma Harry who was proposing a Maple Syrup Farm along Lullaby Route. Everyone except Bell who had smirked and counter-proposed a camp-farm model, for the farm to be also used for school holiday activities.... Until he found out where Lullaby Route was.

Then he said Gamma Harry might as well ask the rogues to help out and tap the syrup, since they were just next door.

And Gamma Harry nodded enthusiastically, "Yes, yes! Exactly! It will be very cheap to hire rogues!"

Omo.

Savy cackled as she related it. I wondered if she got any homework done... Then again, the fact that she had actual homework was still news to me.

Savy picked a few jewelled butterfly clips to braid my hair with. They looked really pretty, little diamonds set against tiny gold clips. Savy said they were probably "real".

For something so small, they were certainly heavy.

"They look like stars in the night." Savy decided when she was done.

I thought they were supposed to be butterflies. Now my hair looked too done up for the light grey cropped joggers, matching vest jacket, and striped t-shirt.

"Let's go quick. Mum's calling." Savy said.