THE HERO ENTERS

1 FEBRUARY, MONDAY, STILL HOMEROOM

"Mrs Henderson, sorry for being late. My morning meeting with the student council ran over." Matt said.

"Well, it's alright. Come in." Mrs Henderson said. She turned to us, "For homeroom today, I had invited some of your seniors to share their freshman experience with you. Maybe even inspire you."

Mrs Henderson's mouth was pressed down, like she couldn't decide if she should allow us to enjoy this special homeroom event. Finally she sighed, "Perhaps it would be good to hear from them how a class should be kind and supportive to each other. Sit down."

So we all sat down again, scrapping the chairs on the floor noisily. The senior wolves in front of the class winced a little. I adverted my eyes and pretended that I didn't know the guys.

"We couldn't help but hear the shouting just now." Jules admitted, "Nothing like a bit of homeroom drama to spice up a Monday morning."

"Did we miss a cat fight?" Bra asked.

Mrs Henderson was slightly alarmed, "No! There will be no cat fights in my homeroom class!"

Matt hit Bra roughly with the back of his hand, "Of course not, Mrs Henderson. Brandon's just trying to be funny."

"The key word is 'trying'" Jules grinned.

Mrs Henderson nodded and took a step back. She had always been on the petite side, and the three guys towered over her in height.

I tried to remember what Pearl was screaming. I think she called me a b**** but I forgot the rest of it except that I was popular and rich and just like the girls who treated her badly in the past... and a lot of other accusations.

I wondered which part Jules and the other guys heard.

Suddenly, I wasn't that chill about it anymore. I didn't really like the idea of Jules or Matt or Bra or the girl with twinkling eyes thinking that I was any of those things.

Someone raised her hand, "Is it true that you guys take the train home with Sam every day?"

The girl with the twinkling eyes looked surprised, "Who's Sam?"

She looked around the classroom. I simply pretended I was more interested in something outside the window. Now that Maria wasn't here, I had an unblocked view.

"Yeah, who's Sam?" Bra looked unnecessarily amused.

And of course the other two guys had to join in.

Matt looked to his left and then his right, "Sam? I don't know a Sam."

Jules chipped in, "Yeah, cos if we did know a Sam, she'd definitely look happier to see us."

"Yeah, cos we're cool to hang with." Bra said.

"And funny, and good looking, and smart. Did I mention we were funny?" Jules added.

Matt winked and laughed.

Idiots.

The girl with the twinkling eyes looked confused.

"Maybe we can start with introductions." suggested Mrs Henderson, who looked equally confused. She gave me a quick glance, but decided to start the session.

"Ladies first." Jules said with an easy smile.

"Hey!" The girl protested.

Jules stepped forward and addressed the class as if he had expected that reaction from the start, "This is Romana, the most beautiful senior in our school."

Romana blushed, her irate at Jules immediately forgotten.

Jules continued smoothly, "I'm Julian. You might recognize us as the hosts of all our school events. I'm also the debate team captain. That's Matthew, our magnanimous student president, and this is Brandon, our noble football captain. We are here today because Mrs Henderson had kindly invited Matt to bring a few of his friends to come talk to our cute freshmen class!"

Romana nodded, "We were all from this class in our freshman year too. Class 7 is known to be the top class every year, so you need to work hard to stay in Class 7."

In Winderhill, there were 7 classes for every grade. Our freshman homeroom was labelled "1-7". We were put here based on our entrance exam results. At the end of the year, our school would stream us by our grades, and the top students would be at 2-7. Freshman Year's top class would be 3-7. And of course the senior year's top class was 4-7.

Class 1 would be the lowest ranking student. I supposed this was some kind of human education hierarchy, but I wouldn't say Class 1 were the omegas. I don't think they were the dumbest kids either. More like the Marlows and Nixes and Ethans... I heard they were the rowdiest and the hardest to deal with. Sometimes they were so loud, I could hear them from outside the school.

But based on this human education hierarchy, Class 6 and 7 would be where you would find the Student President, and most of the language and arts club captains. Also, if there were any opportunities for school exchanges, inter school competitions, etc, the teachers would invite students from Class 7 first, and then go down the classes with whatever seats left over.

"So you should work really hard to stay in Class 7!" Romana concluded.

Yeah! I'm going to stay at Class 7! Wait, no... I'm transferring out next term? Was that confirmed? I should really check when I get home. I haven't told anyone at school yet though...

"So that's about how the school works." Matt said, "Any questions?"

"I have a question." Mrs Henderson raised her hand from her desk, "What do you think about bullying in Class 7?"

Seriously? There wasn't any bullying happening here.

Romana looked concerned, "Bullying happens a lot in many schools. But not in Class 7 because...everyone knows their place."

Romana said the last part under her breath. I heard and understood her clearly though. Class 4-7 was a purely werewolf class, so within the class there would be an hierarchy. Matt would probably be the top of it, and all the other wolves would line up after him. Romana herself, since she is the only female representing the seniors of Class 7 would probably be the top few, if not the top female wolf in her class.

There was no "bullying" because whoever was the omega knew his place and stayed down. Now that I'm writing this, I realize that it might sound very inhumane, but we were wolves. That's how we rolled... that's how we've been rolling since the beginning of the Colored Mountains.

But 2-7 and 1-7 weren't full werewolf classes anymore. Since the vampires joined, there were far fewer werewolf students. Now we were mixed classes of mostly humans. Even our teachers were human.

Based on the things Mrs Hen (a very proper human) had been saying during homeroom, I've concluded that what wolves considered as asserting dominance could be considered bullying in the human world. And bullying is bad because humans were different from wolves.

Humans were supposed to have something called empathy and respect for one another - there were no omegas among the humans. All humans life was precious.

It was a really idealistic concept.

The one thing that made humans stand out from us werewolves and warlocks and vampires etc was their general consensus in the virtue of compassion and empathy and how a lot of their legislation promoted equal standing and fair competition.

Dad borrowed a lot of it when designing the policies that governed Night Leaf and Morning Light.

At first, everyone told Dad it wouldn't work. We're werewolves. Human rules wouldn't gel. But it did work, actually it worked even better than it did on humans because pack wolves actually followed the rules, for most part anyway. Pack wolves were surprisingly good at following the spirit of the law too. It was in our instinct to follow our Alpha correctly.

From the inception of Night Leaf, besides anti slave trade laws, there were also laws to protect the right of females to continue studying (even after mating) and their right to own and inherit property and work and open businesses. That was a big deal too, even though it's pretty much the standard in most large packs now, back then it was considered rather radical.

We didn't take everything wholesale from the humans though. For example, our pack didn't have anti sexual harassment rules at work. "Sexual harassment" was part of wolf courtship. But no one would bat an eye if a guy got shredded to pieces by a female wolf for offending her.

That was also part of courtship.

(They might joke about it though.)

"Courting" pups who haven't shifted was another matter. At least in our pack it was strictly prohibited, even if that pup was your mate.

It's complicated, wolf relationships were very physical and instinctive. But I think that's what made wolf relationships easier. We were easy to read. We were predictable because of our strong instincts. And for most part, we were direct in our confrontation.

Humans were a whole different species. Without our werewolf supernatural powers and boosted physical and mental constitutions, I'm sure we would have been made extinct by the humans long ago.

But back to class, the seniors (all werewolves) were still struggling to give advice to us about bullying.

"If you don't want to be bullied, get stronger." was Bra's personal advice, "Then you can be the bully."

"Bullying is against the school rules. You can get into serious trouble for it. So you shouldn't." Matt said, "Just don't. It's not worth it."

"I didn't think bullying would be an issue in this class." Jules eyed Henry carefully, "Who is being bullied?"

Mrs Henderson looked at Pearl.

Pearl looked at me, her eyes were teary all over again. My heart twisted at being pinned the bad guy. I looked out of the window.

None of us had said anything. But wolf body language spoke a lot and Jasmine had to raise up her hand, "Sam didn't do it!"

She looked down at her table straight after saying that. I was touched. She stuck out her neck to defend me, well technically it was her hand that she raised, but the point was she spoke up for me.

"Yeah!" Zara said, "I was the one who tripped her, although it was an accident. Like I was only joking about it, and then she really tripped over."

"She's the one who is always bad mouthing Sam behind her back and then acting all smiles in front of Sam." Krystal said, "So it's karma that tripped her."

"So... Sam is the one being bullied?" Jules frowned.

I don't know all that much about how manga stories went, but this was not what I was expecting.

"It's always like this." The words were softly spoken by Pearl, as if she had verbalized them unknowingly.

I looked at Pearl who was looking down at her desk, her face was red, her tears were falling, just falling, and she was gritting her teeth. Where was the hero that was supposed to come over and save her?

I looked around but no one said a thing. Not even Mrs Henderson who was just gaping at the situation.

And then I remembered, this isn't a manga story. This was my life. I stood up.

"I think there has been a misunderstanding."