I WAS WRONG, IT WAS WONDERFUL

7 MARCH, SUNDAY, 7:20PM

The new underground base at the Princess Town had to be the coolest place I had ever been to in real life. I know I had said I was older and wiser now, but it turned out that the older and wiser me was wrong. The new underground base was WONDERFUL. If I had to describe it in one sentence, I would say it was like a fighting university with a secret underground military organization in the basement.

This was the best thing I had ever seen since The King's Agents movie.

Officially, it was the New Leaf Military School and it accepted students who were warrior wolves from ages 18 and up. It had a "Gold" class, two "Silver" classes, and three "Bronze" classes in its scholarship track. At the moment, all the students enrolled were on scholarship since they were mostly rescued fight dogs but in the future, the Military School would be open for regular young warrior wolves to attend training and classes too.

The school was equipped with every facility to teach warrior wolves everything from computer labs and mechanical workshops, to reinforced training halls where special bloodline powers might be exercised freely. We watched the underground warriors run an outdoor obstacle course with a bar structure that was four stories tall. It was the biggest jungle gym I had ever seen.

Because it was already dark, they ran the obstacle course under floodlights - which made the entire thing look 10 times more exciting because of the elongated shadows.

"Hoo man." Beta Lucas was very impressed by their performance, "Once these guys hit our ranking matches, they're going to leave our regular warriors in the dust."

Yeah, that was what Flynn was worried about too.

I watched one guy scale up a vertical rock wall in a few seconds only using his arms. He didn't even bother to use his feet to give himself a step up. Do you know how hard it was to pull your entire body weight up with just a few fingers gripped on a tiny protrusion from a solid vertical wall? He wasn't even using wolf power. These guys were running on 100% muscles.

I watched enviously as the warriors finished up the last leg of the course on a zip line down from the top of the four-storey structure. Zipline! Coolest slide ever! I regretted wearing this skirt.

"I want to enroll!" It was so cool, I forgot how I was older and wiser now. Suddenly, I felt like the puppy who watched The King's Agents and wanted so, so, much to become an agent too.

"No." Said Dad, "You're going to Gate City University."

Because Dad had my Alpha educational path all mapped out in this timeline too. I thought Dad could be a little more flexible about my educational path, especially since New Leaf Military School had a joint program with Gate City University for warriors who qualified to take a double degree in Business Management/Accounting/Information Systems and Military Science. With time, they will open other courses too. Degree in Military Strategy/  Military Intelligence/ Military History/ Military Engineering/ Military Law... Just putting the word Military in front made everything sound much cooler to be studying.

"Awww… please?" I tried my puppy eyes.

Would there be a "Military Business" by any chance? No. Dad was quite firm, I was going to Gate City University Business School. I sulked. Dad was being so unfair.

"I don't even care about money!" I informed my Dad. 

Dad shook his head but had his thinking frown on again, "Sam, you won't be a puppy forever."

I knew that. I even understood Dad's rationale - with the kind of financials I would have to sign off as an Alpha, business school was a practical choice. But business school could never be as fun as fight school, I mean Military School. Ahem. Because this school was for proper military stuff, not fun fighting stuff.

Imagine coming here to "study" every day! {So fun}.

"You'll probably just be getting in trouble every day." Ben told me, and then he grinned, "If you enroll here, I will too."

"No." Both our Dads shut that down very firmly.

I shrugged. Okay, so we won't study here, but have you ever heard, "When goddess closes a door, she opens a window?"

Especially since our goddess had a particular penchant for leaving loose ends lying around everywhere. Just saying.

After that, we took a freight lift down to the Underground Concourse. This was the tunnel that linked the school to the rest of the military base. The place in its entirety was huge, the concourse had a tram service running from one end to the other. We only had a single basement level for now, but the lift shafts went down to B21 to accommodate future expansion. B21 wasn't a typo. It was really going to be 21 floors deep - thanks to my idea inspired by that photocopied page I had taken from our Packhouse Library of the Green Mountain's underground city.

No one thought it was possible when I first brought up the idea, but after the ground was surveyed and consultation with Old Roulette, there were some seriously mind-blowing plans for the Underground Base. 

Wait, who was Old Roulette? Remember the guy who was going to custom a fancy pen that wrote with magic stones? Ki had commissioned him to craft the pen for Bell's Investiture gift in our original timeline.

Old Roulette was some mechanical genius from the Colored Mountains who proposed underground building plans using a combination of old magic and ancient building techniques from the Green Mountains. He was very into experimentation and had come out to the plains for new inspiration some century ago. He was famous in the plains for small mechanical magic-imbued jewelry like watches and pens and whatnot but had recently come to be obsessed with creating giant stone and metal machines... like the drills installed within the lift shaft at the Underground Base.

He was crazy... but we hired him, so what did that make us?

Within the next 10 years, the Underground Base was slated to be the central warrior hub for the entire Green Packlands.

Wait… wait… but in this timeline, Morning Light was still an independent pack and how were we supposed to merge with the Lorent Pack without me mating Bell?

I pulled Dad aside and asked him. It wasn't like our packs would share an army, right?

"I would prefer if we could merge the packlands peacefully too." Dan answered.

WTH did that mean? But the tour must go on...

Stephan, Cornelius, and Theo accompanied us with a small bevy of other warrior escorts on this tour. We followed them to the first tram waiting for us and rode passed the cafeteria, gym, pool, recreational rooms, and club rooms tunnel. Actually, we only saw a lit tunnel and part of the lit cafeteria. Presumably, the rest of the cool stuff was further down that tunnel. Just like the Underground Base at the Red Packlands, our new Underground Base ran on a network of tunnels - if one were to look at the map of it, the top-down view would look like the veins of a leaf where the central shaft with the tramline was the vein down the center.

Oh, I wish I were a student here. I never wanted to be in a school so much in my life. I wondered what kind of clubs a Military School would have.

I turned to ask Stephan, but our tram pulled to a halt and Stephan raised his hand stiffly to gesture for us to alight. It could've been a trick of light, or just the shadow, or perhaps my imagination at play, but for a moment, I thought Stephan's nails were black.

Don't get me wrong, I was all for it if a guy wanted to paint his nails black (or any color for that matter), but Stephan was a soldier who followed the strictest Blue Demon dress code, and also because I did know one guy who sported black nails sometimes from my Original Timeline - Bell, and only on his cursed arm…

I thought to get a second look - just a quick one to make sure, but once off the tram, Stephan put on his gloves to push open a metal side door - the first door that didn't automatically slide open with a tap of their ID card.

"We'll take a shortcut here." Cornelius explained.

He quickly pulled on a glove before holding the door for us, "Be careful, the metal doors do produce some static when operated manually."

"Touch it, Sam." Ben said, "Maybe it'll make your hair stand."

"Yeah, and maybe all the people who ever said I looked like a doll meant that I looked like a blue-haired Troll doll." I shrugged.

Ben chuffed at the thought because he knew what a troll doll was, "Nah, that's Neil's face."

Naturally, we immediately pictured Neil with my hair and had to stifle our laughter. It brought me back to when we were pups on a Lycan Study Group excursion to the museum or somewhere educational like that. We used to follow at the back of the group making stupid wisecracks and snickering instead of paying attention to the guide.

And you know what? I was the Alpha now so no one reprimanded me for acting like a puppy in the middle of an official inspection.

Our next stop was the state-of-the-art 32-lane shooting range. We happened to be just in time to watch some of their best marksmen practice. So far, the inspection had been running like a well-oiled production - we were always just in time to observe whatever appropriate activity to be demonstrated.

"Owen!" I recognized the wolf on the left-most lane closet to us.

Owen looked incredibly surprised, I don't think it was so much that I was there - I believe everyone had been thoroughly briefed and was well aware of the "inspection" that was currently taking place. I think what surprised him was that I called him by name… especially since in this timeline, he had never been left behind to "babysit" me for Bell.

Bell didn't run my army. Stephan did, so they didn't set the Red Packlands on fire, run with the death god, or sold their service as a mercenary army. In other words, my army was a rather respectable one funded by the Night Leaf FAO and Stephan's "pocket money" because he was the heir to Reid Inc - only the largest investment giant in the continent.

Okay, it wasn't "pocket money" - it wasn't small change at all. My betas just called it that. They believed they were so funny. Stephan was just one of my agents, so my three big bad betas saw no reason to pull any punches when joking around with Stephan.

The Stephan in this timeline was just as void of emotion and word count as in our Original Timeline so I could never tell if he was bothered by them.

Anyway, I quickly pretended I didn't know Owen after all, "You're Owen right?"

"Yes, Alpha." Owen politely bowed.

"Are you good at this?" I nodded towards the target.

"This…" Owen looked up at the target board, he paused to consider how he should answer me, "I am a decent shot, Alpha."

Since I knew Owen to be a humble guy, I understood immediately that he meant he was fantastic.

"Great! Let's play." I might not have been able to try out the larger-than-life jungle gym or come down the four-storey zip line in a tight skirt and heels - but shoot a gun? If I could shoot in tight Lorent ceremonial dresses and killer pumps, I could shoot in anything.

"Pl…play Alpha?" Owen sounded extremely hesitant.

But you know what? I was the Alpha… and no one could deny me the joy of joining in the target practice demonstration.

I guess there were perks in being the Alpha of your own army.