THE PAIN OF AN UNTROUBLED PAST

25 FEBRUARY, THURSDAY, CONTINUED

Ki and I followed Ben down to the depths of his underground lair... Okay, we just followed him to his basement, but what fun was that to tell?

I tried to imagine some kind of dramatic past of Ben too. My imagination was reving up today. I imagined...

Ben was born the only son to the Beta of the Night Leaf pack. His parents tried their best, sometimes he felt they tried too hard, and he grew up with a hundred rules - at least when they had the time to enforce them.

From a very young age, his brilliant mind had already grasped the gaps in the systems and rules around him. He watched his dad not lie without revealing the truth. He watched his mum, the champion of teachability, completely fail to follow a simple recipe - repeatedly.

And of course, he learned very early on that rules were only kept if they were enforced, and no rule was ever set in stone. It depended on who was in charge.

So naturally, he had set his heart to be the one in charge one day, but until that day came, he would unearth every loophole and bend every rule - because any idiot could break rules, it took a true genius to test it's flexibility.

It's not like he had competition. He was the brightest mind in the pack - and probably the whole of the Green Packlands. Alpha Kingsley had no son, and for a long while, the adults would worry in hushed tones about Night Leaf falling into the same unfortunate circumstances as Morning Light, whereby young Ben might have to shoulder a alpha-less pack unless Sam or Savy mated an Alpha wolf. There was even talk of Ben mating Sam and leading the pack together.

Ben hadn't been too worried about it himself. The adults were always worrying.

"Ben, bring an umbrella, the weather station says it's going to rain."

It never rained when it was supposed to.

At any rate, Sam was great fun to run with. Sometimes, when he wasn't busy with his own stuff, he'd join her and the other pups. She always had a "bright idea" and it was one of the only things that wasn't boring in his life.

Basically, Ben's life was very boring. Night Leaf was a very peaceful place. Despite the trouble along the borders, life for the average wolf in the pack was rather mundane. The daily excitement Ben had growing up would be squabbling with Lizzy, his twin sister, and getting into trouble with his Beta dad.

Even the consequences were boring - in winter, it would be shovelling the driveway, in spring, it would be digging out the flowerbeds, in summer, it would be mowing the lawn, and in fall, it would be... No prizes for guessing, raking the leaves.

So yeah, his dad liked to train him to help with the beta work, but Ben was good at most things. His black wolf gave him an athletic edge, and the rest of it... The worst he'd ever done in anything wasn't too bad. He learned to play the guitar by watching youtube videos, he picked up rifle shooting over a trip to the range with his best friend Jonah, and Jonah's dad, Gamma Harry. Riffle shooting was fun, but nothing that needed his level of brain function. School was tedious but otherwise unchallenging. His stubborn beta dad wouldn't let him skip any grades even though Delta Charlie, his principal often recommended it.

"You need to take your time and enjoy the growing up journey." Beta Lucas has told him.

The growing up journey was very boring.

Sam, on the other hand, got excited about everything. Her face was like an open book, so it wasn't hard to tell. Sam had always been different from the other pups. Every childish game, every new discovery - an old shed turned into clubhouse, a snow day became a town wide underground maze, a backyard challenge turned into a waterbomb ambush against grown warriors on patrol. Sam was straightforward, and impulsive, and strong, and daring and happy. Sam was almost always happy.

It had to be an ignorance-is-bliss thing. Ben had rationalized that the world naturally would seem more wonderful for stupid happy-go-lucky types. And to be honest, he somewhat envied that. He was never stupid, or particularly lucky either.

Sam, on the other hand, was both, and no matter how stupid or dangerous the game, she always emerged unscathed and surrounded by friends. It was like her happiness was contagious - either that or her stupidity.

There was a time - just for a season or two, when he was a pup that he had followed her around every weekend. Sam never seemed to mind it. Nor had she noticed that it was far too coincidental that he just happened to have nothing better to do.

What he was thinking, he could never tell. His mum had called it puppy love, but since when did Ben ever take what the adults told him to heart?

But everything changed when Sam shifted. Suddenly the girl next door who ate anything with sugar in it, who was too scared to sit through a horror movie, and who was too naive to question whatever the adults said, that girl became the alpha.

And what an alpha! Her wolf was huge and fearsome, her powers were awesome like the legends from the Colored Mountains, and of course, it was impossible to slip a lie past her anymore.

And then Harvey appeared. Harvey - if Ben was not as proud as he was, he might have even admitting to idolizing the older boy. Even though, his friends largely believed that Ben picked up the guitar because of Dean's influence, the truth was, he had wanted to be just like Harvey.

If the lambo never came into his life, he would have driven a truck like Harvey.

Harvey became the one Sam referred to as her good beta. Where did that leave Ben? The not-so-good beta?

And then, as if to add insult to injury, Sam brough home a fight dog - and not just any fightdog - this was his favourite one. Keys! (Ahem, not that he watched the fight cages online or anything.)

But Keys was a genius, in every bloody fight, Key would rise up victorious, not so much because he was always the strongest fighter, but he was definitely the most cunning. He was one of the few fightdogs who had figured out that his survival wasn't dependent on his fighting skills, so much as his marketability. Even vampires want to make a profit.

This Keys became Sam's next beta.

Meanwhile, Ben hadn't even shifted. He couldn't even drive. It also turned out that he sucked at administrative work and anything that required patience or dealing with people.

Life had always been boring for Ben, and he had never taken the trouble to reach out for anything. He never really had to. It was always too easy.

Except now, he suddenly had to fight just to keep his rightful place next to his alpha. He was her true beta, dammit! Naturally, he shifted early.

And then suddenly, nothing was boring anymore. Sam, herself, was like a puzzle he couldn't quite predict. Everytime he figured something out, she'd evolve or come up with something else.

The other two betas weren't giving him space to slack off either. It was like, "Run or we'd leave you behind."

It's not like Ben would ever give up his head beta position. He got it by birthright, but he knew full well that he had to prove himself to keep it.

He'd sooner kick the other two out, except that he needed them. Ben was too smart not to know by now that they were in too deep for him to handle everything on his own. He needed Harvey's coolly calculated administration. He even needed the dog's flair and expertise to push his alpha's agenda forward.

And Sam's Luna... the adults thought Ben was bad - wait till they met their new Luna! Sam's Luna was like nothing he had ever seen before. One in a million. Ben had initially thought it would be best if Rebel became the alpha - powerful wolf, over-reaching ambition, and genius strategist.

But then, running with Sam had always proven to be far more interesting, so he chose to follow Sam.

And for some reason, Sam seemed to feel her mate was their opponent. Hahahaha. Completely illogical, but Sam was still Sam, afterall. And it was an interesting proposition.

And sometimes, it's like nothing changed. He was still following her around. She was still eating way too much sugar. Except that his wolf could sense when his alpha cried now - which shook him up more than he'd like to admit.

Sam had almost always been happy in his memories. Even when she was angry or sad, it would only be over stupid things.

And for some reason that even his genius brain couldn't explain, Ben wanted to keep that happiness in front of him forever.

Omo.

What the hell was that?

I had to stop there. It almost sounded like it was going to morph into a love story. Hahahaha. Luckily it was just my imagination.

But wow, my imagination was unexpectedly egoistic. I know I'm Ben's alpha, but this was really too much.

I would never allow anyone, vamp or otherwise to peer into my head now. I mean, it's not like I would have allowed it before. But now, I had new reason not to... It would be super embaressing if anyone knew what I had been imagining about my betas.

In my defense, I was going for drama...and probably reading too much manga.

Actually, as far as fiction went, I felt my imagined backstories for my three betas were pretty good. I should write webnovels about them. I might even earn a pretty penny for it, but anonymously of course. It would be mortifying if any of them irl ever read one of them and found out I pretty much wrote a novel-length tabloid piece on them!

Hahaha.

"Earth to Sam..." Ben's monotone made me flare, "What? I wasn't thinking anything weird!"

Ben and Ki exchanged looks. We were in Ben's basement. Ben smirked, "Yeah, whatever Sam. Pay attention. I'm only going to say this once."

Oh, okay, so I hadn't missed anything. Ben was sharp enough to make sure he got my attention first before wasting his breath to explain anything to us lower-intelligence life forms.

"Welcome to my new lab." Ben made a sweeping gesture around his basement and I had to admit, Beta Lucas' basement had taken on quite a new reiteration since I last saw it.

Guess my wolf wasn't the only thing evolving in Night Leaf.