ONE MEETING AFTER ANOTHER…

7 MARCH, SUNDAY, NIGHT

"Don't worry, Stephan. I think I know how to fix you."

The moment the words left my mouth, a few hands raised. It was just a movement I caught from the corner of my eyes, so I had to turn to the wolves standing by my side, "What?"

Like seriously. Couldn't they see that Stephan was hurting?

"Ah…. Sam…" Beta Lucas spoke first, "Exactly what… what are you planning to do?"

Nothing. I wasn't planning anything… unless winging it was a plan.

"Sam, this isn't the movie." Ben thought he should remind me, "Try to be realistic about it."

Right, because joyriding timelines and everything else we had been doing was realistic. Next hand.

"Does Alpha really know how to save our Captain?" Cornelius' mouth was turned down, "Our Captain's curse is a Tyger King's Mark of incredible complexity. It is a generational one handed from father to son and cannot be broken. It marks the wolf as the Tyger King's possession and grants great powers in exchange for his loyalty. In the same way, it deals prohibitive penalties for every betrayal."

That was why the Laru and Leon I had met could be summoned, open and close portals, had certain immunity and control over the black fumes, and live such long ageless lives. They too bore the Tyger's Mark and were bonded to his fire. This was the original meaning of being an agent - they were bonded to serve their Tyger King's interest for the rest of their life or until they were replaced with their offspring.

They were not answering Bell's emails because they wanted to. In everyway, they had no choice. Stephan would have been able to exhibit the same powers should he be returned to the Tyger King.

"But how was it that Stephan never had this problem before?" I wondered aloud.

"He was born with the curse, Alpha." Cornelius tried to explain, "He had the Tyger King's mark on his shoulder from the day he was born. It faded as he grew as it did with his father's, but ever since he pledge his loyalty to you, the mark had emerged and it burns more aggressively each passing day."

Ouch.

I patted Stephan's shoulder, "Stand up Stephan. You too Theo. Don't worry, I'll talk to Bell."

The Underground wolves all looked confused.

"Goddess is referring to the Young Alpha James, if you'd remember the one also known as Rebel." Ki kindly explained away the confusion with his beautiful smile.

"Ah, I see." Cornelius frowned, "Forgive this old wolf for asking, Alpha, but what would the Young Alpha James do?"

"He's the new Tyger King…" I explained.

"So you're going to just give Stephan to him?" Ben rudely interrupted.

I shook my head, "No, Ben. Of course not."

There was visible relief among my wolves, it was like they thought I would just hand over Stephan to Bell. Please, they should give me more credit!

"I'm going to ask Bell to give Stephan to me." I decided.

"Oh great." Ben groaned. This was the extent of his confidence in me.

Ki was wearing his gentle smile, Harvey's hand was still raised because I hadn't gotten around to him yet.

"What is it Harv? You don't think I'll be able to fix Stephen's curse either?" I asked.

"That's  not it, Alpha." Harvey answered quite politely, "I was just meaning to suggest we discuss this with your advisors before deciding on the specific actions."

Harvey coughed discretely before demurring, "It would not be too late to deal with this on Tuesday, for example."

Why put off to Tuesday what you could do today?

But my other betas seemed to have caught on quicker than I did.

"Let's wait till we see your Bell on Tuesday MORNING." Ben was much more obvious that he was hinting something, "REMEMBER, we have to report to his office at the Lorent's first thing Tuesday morning."

I tried to remember. Bell was mad because we were time travelling… Oh! They mean we shouldn't do anything until we got to our right point in the timeline. I'm sure Wolfgang would be able to furnish us with all the academically correct theories on why doing anything out of the ordinary in the past was going to throw our future out of whack.

I shrugged, "Its no big deal."

"What?" Ben blinked.

"What?" I asked back. Why was everyone reacting to everything I said with varying levels of visible confusion? Even Ben? We had run together all our lives, for THREE LIVES. Surely he should understand me better by now!

Ben shrugged and returned to his usual bad attitude, "It's nothing. I thought you'd want to follow Hotstuff's advice more."

Well, yes. Yes, I would like to follow Wolfgang's advice more. It would seem he was the only one who wasn't crazy among us. Too bad he wasn't here with us.

"Okay!" I decided again, "You're right. There's no time like the present!"

I grinned because I just made a super good pun - get it? We would go back to Tuesday which was OUR present time?

"Stephan, meet us outside the Night Leaf Packhouse on Tuesday morning. We have an appointment with the Tyger King!" I announced.

"Oh no…" Ben groaned. I couldn't tell if he was groaning because he thought I must have a terrible plan, or if he knew I didn't have a plan at all.

"It'll be fine." I assured everyone, "Let's go back and get Wolfie and Fluffy."

"Alright." Dad agreed, "We will go back one we finish the meetings."

Wait, "meetings"? I distinctly heard an "s" at the end… so not just one but two meetings? WTH! I wanted to fix Stephan ASAP!

Stephan and all the wolves in our company bowed, "Yes, Alpha."

Thus with all the power to time travel, I was still unable to escape long boring meetings.

The first meeting was the Premeeting for the New Town Committee meeting, which according to Harvey, was initiated by little ol' me. I had no idea what I was thinking… it was like 2 lifetimes ago!

But everyone else seemed to feel that this meeting was much needed, even Dad, who commended me for taking the initiative to set it up. It would definitely benefit the decision process that was expected in the next meeting.

Cornelius agreed, and also noted aloud how everything he heard about the Alpha Princess was true, I was wise beyond my years.

"Not everything they say is true." I said. Especially not anything they say about BOYFRIENDS #1-10. But of course I didn't say this aloud.

I didn't say much during either meeting. I was just really rearing to rush back to the future to fix Stephan. My lucky sense of direction was full blown screaming that it was that way. (This had nothing to do with the fact that I was going to see Bell again… ahem.)

Although seeing Bell would be very nice. ~ ❤ 

So I was really not in the mood to sit through two meetings. I let Dad take the lead. The first one was just use and Cornelius, Stephan, and Theo. It didn't take too long. There weren't many of us, and Stephan and Theo were very efficient with their word count. Cornelius did give us a good picture of the situation at Princess Town.

The second meeting was a very large one with many stakeholders represented by the NEW TOWN COMMITTEE. Again, Dad took the lead, my betas took notes, and I just fidgeted in my chair and ate M&Ms because that was what Ben gave me.

I had expected jelly beans, but I really couldn't complain. I liked M&Ms too.

You know what? Let's just skip the meetings. They were important, they covered many issues, the Princess Town was still at its initial stages and it really wasn't easy for the wolves working on the ground. Discipline was still an issue among some of the new wolves. It wasn't that they were necessarily worse than then any of our New Leaf finest troublemakers, it was they were far more dangerous, and when triggered, they really didn't know how to hold back sometimes.

Most of these wolves had only been in captivity and the fight cages for a year or two. The turnover was very high and nearly half of the new fight dogs never lived past their first night. Keys was one of the longest lasting fight dogs.

"That's because I was a very commercially viable dog." Ki explained with his usual killion dollar smile, "I was never the strongest fighter in the cage." Ki confessed, "But I always gave a good show and was the most profitable dog. There were ways for a fight to be determined behind the scenes. It's just business after all."

Being a healer wolf helped too, "As long as I was alive, whatever damage could be healed."

Fight cages were one of the cruelest forms of slavery in lycan history.

We wanted them to ban it, but all they did was increase the age limit to entry to the live shows. It's R(A) for audience entry, but the boys in the cages were usually younger than that. And till today, they debated rigorously over whether fight cages should be classified as a sport or show.

The truth was that although most of Lycan society saw this as a vampire problem, there were just as many humans and lycans who bought tickets, magazines, live streaming subscriptions.

No respectable lycan would openly say they were watching the fight cages though, because you know, fight cages were one of the cruelest forms of slavery in lycan history, and nobody wanted to support that.

But if that was the case, how was it that Ki was so immediately recognized as Keys by the guys around me? It couldn't be all of them just happen to hear the rumor about our new Charming Beta being the most popular fight dog in our continent?

Of course, there were also wolves like Ben who fought against slavery and cruelty it by illegally streaming it for free, "Piracy is stealing. I'm stealing from the bad guys."

Anyway, there was a lot said about the back ground of our new warriors, and a lot was worried about how this would affect the culture and safety of our pack wolves and the those from Stephan's Red Cloud Pack, and even the Free wolves - most of them being women and children.

Just like in the Original Timeline, the Free Wolves suffered from rogue attacks since Fount's power (and sanity) had been depleted. Their men were either recruited to join the rogues (and killed because face it, the Free Wolves were farmers, not fighters), or died defending their home from rogues.

Blah blah blah… the meeting just went on and on about all the big, historical, monumental ills of the world threatening the peace of the Princess Town and the other Packs around it.

Was it like this in our Original Timeline too? I had no idea. I had never lived this long before.

"How would you know all those terrible things would happen?" I asked after hearing a particularly pessimistic outlook report.

"Well…the stats…" The beta wolf tried to explain. He was one of our new wolves. For one thing, he was wearing a stuffy old grey suit and was introduced as a Mr Ronald Sonata from the Free Wolf community.

Actually, now that I was looking at him properly, he looked really familiar.

"Ron?" I gasped. Like it was Ron! Right? I looked to Ben and pointed at Mr Sonata, "That's Ron right?"

Ben just shrugged.

In our Original Timeline, this guy would be in our dungeons with his traitor Alpha Jude, growling vulgarities at every soul who came near.

"Wait… Ron, you're a lawyer?" Maybe it was Ron's older brother… the only thing that matched was his face.

"I am the legal representative, I'm not a lawyer." Ron clarified. Actually, his voice matched too. He was a Free Wolf by birth, was homeschooled, and graduated from Gate City University. He had dreamed to be a lawyer, but his family was killed during a rogue attack and he barely had enough to finish his last term at the Uni. Currently, he was technically a secretary working at a local Legal Office in Gate City.

Because he did finish Uni. He worked night jobs at clubs where he DID NOT meet Jude and ended up following him. So he finished University, graduated with a Magna cum laude, and became a boring grey-suited office worker.

Anyway, he was the best the Free Wolves had for a legal representative.

"Wow, Ron." I said. I couldn't decide. I think I should feel that it's better for Ron to be safe and here attending a meeting like a respectable adult than in the dungeons but I couldn't exactly feel he was happier without Jude. He was also much less cool without Jude.

There was nothing I could think to do for him at the moment though. I had no idea where Jude was in this timeline, and even if I did, I couldn't say for sure that Ron should meet him.

Meanwhile, Ki was working hard to cover for me, "Our goddess has the gift of insight. At times it illuminates certain otherwise unknown things to her about a person on first meeting."

I nodded when I caught Ki's gentle smile in my direction.

"Yes." I agreed hastily, "Although it's our first meeting, I just realized something."

But now everyone was looking at me expectantly, so I said, "Ron, you have great potential to be cool..."

The confusion on his face (and many other faces) did not go unnoticed by me, I tried to correct myself, "I mean, you have great potential."

I really should've just stopped there. But in a momentary panic, I  racked my brain for anything I could think of about the Ron I knew, "Although you don't trust others or make friends easily, you are very loyal to those you run with, and you…"

You could have been cool, you could have been in the dungeons, you could have…

"Be careful who you choose to follow." I decided to say instead.

And I hope you choose someone who'll lead you to a happy ending.

But I decided to not say anything weirder. I was already feeling (and sounding) very much like a fake fortune teller.

"Why didn't you just cast that flame of inspiration spell?" Ben asked me later.

Good question. I wished I thought of that.