WE THREE PACKS

You'd think that as a future alpha werewolf about to shift, trying to balance my alpha leakages with my friendships, that I'd have enough on my plate than to deal with school.

But because of this, at least right now, school has 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 if in their eyes, my alpha stint was more like a spoilt brat acting up but 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. 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 don't like the feeling that I'm being so involved in his school life. I hope he returned it this weekend, or knowing him, it would be lost in his mess and would take weeks to recover.

And the Morning Light goons, their Beta was okay. And 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 seemed to be 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 in the North. They were the top of all of Green Packlands.

This was the safest of all the packlands in the plains. Since the great war, our packlands have been built, and now it was a haven surrounded by woods, with towns for each pack and a small shared commercial city center connected to other cities outside the packlands, we call Gate City.

We were a safe place (for wolves of the pack anyway). There was a zero tolerance for vampires or rogues. In fact, the only outsiders we allowed on visas into our packlands were 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's the largest with more than 600 wolves. Their Alpha, James Lorent, 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 or some other traditional wolf pack name like that. I guess the first Alpha Lorent had decided mark the pack as his family's inheritance in no uncertain terms.

Besides having their pack named after their alpha family, there were three things that distinguished the Lorent Pack from all the others.

FIRST: Extravagance and wealth.

As children, 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 child in our pack did not do our 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. It was full of pictures of glitzy 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 Mountain wolf legends where the first werewolves originated.

They were only somewhat uniformed by their traditional dress. The women of Lorent never followed the fashion and trends of the human world, instead, 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 women can 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 is tailored around the neck, and the fitting sleeves down to the elbows. Their backs and shoulders were fully covered in varying colours 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.

So it was just all legs, but right between the neck and shoulder, there is a silted row of delicate buttons, on some dresses embroidered, on others jewelry pieces in itself. No skin showed, but it's the sexiest part, Jessica explained because everyone knows it is direct access to where their mates 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 magazine. 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 would be a Lorent Wolf."

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 traddition.

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 when he first became Alpha to come to some kind of understanding.

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 use across the entire Green Packland to unify all our packs (at least in our historical understanding).

The women can go to school, but of course cannot be warriors, although as you can see with Morning Light, this was not uncommon.

But till today, their women continued to have no rights to own property or hold ranks. They partook 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 women 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, was passed down the female line, in the Lorent Pack, there were more than five distinct white wolf bloodlines, strong enough to be passed down both male and female wolves.

In fact, their current Alpha was a white wolf. And while my dad was the father of modern lycan education, their Alpha was the father of modern lycan medicine.

And perhaps due to this 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 200 wolves strong and considered one of the most open minded packs in the Green Packland. My dad built this pack and our town from ground up after the great war.

He often told me how he was born straight after the war. They were so poor, he was nursed with diluted condensed milk. But that kind of poverty was unheard of in our pack today.

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 can 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 and hour by the shuttle bus. And with a regular permit, like I had, 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 elite warriors.

My dad saw no reason to stop them. They contributed more to society, excelling in their field of expertise, which they can 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. 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 home, 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 rogue 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 the 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. 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 did trespass into the warlocks realm and was almost captured in an enchantment trap if Beta Luca hadn't reached in from outside and pulled him out.

But we won and the large scale rogue attacks ceased after my dad got involved.

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.

So now, my dad ran two packs. Ours and Morning Light 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, which 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.

My dad worked really hard then. He couldn't deny the council, but he could work around it, setting up pack policies and restructuring to give Morning Light a chance to prosper or at least survive until they manage to find a real Alpha.

Eventually, the new alpha would be settled by our generation. E.g. Harvey's sister mates an alpha male, or if she didn't, then they will have to hold out to a third generation, and hopefully Harvey mates an alpha female and produce 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 leave, only the weak and defenseless ones would be left. Then they would really be sitting ducks for rogues and hunters.

For now though, the stop gap 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 mentor first under my dad.

But Dad said that Morning Light's success was only due to the hard work of their Beta and Gamma who truly 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. Savy and I played with a little boy with curly hair. He had a sister who was very shy and never spoke. Now I realised that must have been Harvey and his sister.

All this... This was my world. Or at least it used to be, 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 labour 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 pack lands, or even just the Lycan society anymore. It never was... But for some reason, I never really noticed that all the others who shared our world were real and still there.

Until I step into my school.