2 HOURS LATER…

Another push on the small of my back forced me to take the half a step into the black portal. Since it was completely pitch black, I stumbled the next few steps before falling out unceremoniously into… Dad's office? Specifically, I was sitting up on his sofa.

"She's finally awake!" Ben's monotone informed the room.

When I was a small pup, I used to take my naps here sometimes. In fact, this sofa was bought for this purpose. Later on, I outgrew naps, and it became Gamma Harry's spot in Dad's office whenever Dad had a meeting.

That was why Dad's office in the other timeline didn't have a sofa… because he didn't have to babysit me back then. Wait, so we were back?

My hair seemed to think so. It flared up in a stretch. I blinked and noticed food, because there were sandwiches, coffee… and CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES - the exact same ones I smelled baking and wanted to eat - the ones just a little over-baked (but they smelled good.)

It felt like a lifetime ago…

"Wha-?" It felt like I had woken suddenly from a bad dream, "What happened? Did I fall asleep?"

Dad put down his coffee cup, "Something like that."

"I had the strangest dream." I said, because it was still so vivid in my head, and short of sounding like a quote from the Wizard of Oz, I realized as I looked at the faces in the room, "And you were there, and you, and you…"

Oh, maybe I fell asleep at the meeting and because they were all talking, I subconsciously picked up their voices and dreamed of them?

I dreamed of Bell too. Where was he?

"It wasn't a dream, was it?" I spoke my realization aloud.

When Dad hesitated, Ki stepped in with his beautiful and gentle smile, "What do you mean, goddess?"

We were home… it was like we never left. I was so happy I could cry, but even as the tears welled up, I realized something wasn't quite right either, "We… we aren't back…"

We left our original timeline on a Sunday afternoon, spent a day in my second life as Kayla Kingsley in the Lorent Girls School on Monday, and then tried to undo everything and return back to the original timeline on Monday night.

So technically speaking, (because I'm such an expert at how the Time Gates operated), we should have lost Monday, that is, if we had made it back to our original timeline, it should be more than 24 hours later, not 2 hours later.

Because I knew cookies, and these were as fresh as the day they were baked in the packhouse kitchen - on Sunday.

Unless it was a dream, and all I had done was fell asleep and woken up 2 hours later when Dad was meeting THE EXACT wolves who I dreamed I went Time Travelling to the past to fix Jude only to create an entirely new alternate timeline where I was Kayla and Fluffy was… I looked over at him because for he was just there, next to Wolfgang, his usual smiling mask in place.

But… how… why…

I couldn't explain how I fell asleep.

But if I sleep, and it wasn't a dream, I couldn't explain how I survived and got home in one piece, Boo and all.

Oh it was so good to be Boo again! Good old blue powerful alpha wolf with blade hair and OP luck. I really don't know how Kayla survived as long as I did.

That silly girl Kayla, how could that be just a dream? But walking in the white empty space with Grandpa Bell as he told me long winded stories… maybe that bit was a dream. The problem was, I couldn't quite tell.

Ki poured my tea and placed a plate of cookies and a sandwich on the coffee table in front of me. This table was bought for puppy-me too, because I wanted to be the alpha, and I insisted an alpha needed a desk to do important work at. The coffee table allowed me to wake up from my nap and directly sit at my desk to do all my alpha paperwork.

Whenever Beta Lucas brought Dad a document, he had to give me one too. Now that I remembered, I think Beta Lucas used to give me whatever he found in the recycle bin in the Beta Office. Sometimes I got mail too, mostly ads, but I liked the catalogues and I especially liked bank forms because I would fill in all the rows of boxes with the letter "A" because A is for alpha (and also because for the longest time, that was the only letter I actually knew how to write with confidence.

I was such a dumb pup. (Was I really dropped on my head from the back of a motorbike and healed by Ki's late mother… and Mum never found out?)Now that I was remembering it in the light of the day's normalcy, it did feel like I must have dreamed it all.

"It's good you're alright, Sam." Dad said. He sounded somewhat relieved.

"Why wouldn't I be alright?" I asked. But even as these words left my mouth, I realized, "Because it wasn't a dream, was it?"