Chapter 4- Ready or Not

My legs kept bouncing up and down in the backseat as I squeezed my fists together in fear. All I could do was stare at Duke across from in the passenger seat as we drove towards the Moon pack in the south. He kept looking up and down at the road and the phone that was telling him directions.

'Once we find a pack, we can always visit him.' Ash hummed with confidence. 'We can run all day and train like Beta's are supposed to and become strong enough to protect our new pack.' I didn't want a new pack, I wanted to stay with Luna and Duke, all the boys and girls just like me who understood me and respected me. Even if I lived in my own world and kept to myself, all I needed was one friend in my life and that's what I got.

Blue was my roommate in the Haven pack, also my best and only friend. He completed me like an unsolved puzzle and was my voice when I had none. We were opposites that fit perfectly together with our traumatizing pasts and our odd personalities. He was the day to my night and I was the night to his day.

But, our friendship was now circling the fishbowl. He wasn't born in a top rank family so he had the opportunity to stay at the haven with everything he knew and liked but I couldn't. This had been a strain on our friendship over the years, we both hated change only the change that we wanted and made was comfortable. Now that I was 17, I could no longer stay in the Haven without the threat of being attacked by Duke even if he didn't want to attack him. If I stayed, I would be threatening the whole pack's existence even by trying to act normal. Blue and I haven't talked about me leaving this week, just small talk and a couple of nods here and there that crushed my heart every time.

"We are almost there." I looked into Beta Duke's dark brown eyes as he glanced back at me for a response, all I had to offer was a slight nod of my head before I carried on day dreaming. "Nathan, this is a good thing for a fresher start from the Haven. You will start a new life, make new friends and maybe even your mate." Hot steam blew down my stomach as I glanced at Beta Duke with fear. He didn't know, nobody did. After I was saved and brought to the Haven I swore to myself and Ash to never tell them that I was an abomination and a sin and that I had acted upon it. Fear that they would do the same thing to me that my old pack did always lingered in my mind. Over time, I saw same gender mates and I had become what everyone stereotyped as the kid who hated Gay people.

I remember I was walking down the hallway of the pack house as I carried an apple closely towards my chest in fear of it being taken away. It had been only a month since I was taken to the Haven pack and was healing. It had been the first time I was able to walk without any major help, when I realized I could walk I began to wander the halls in search of an escape of freedom. I remembered how weak my wolf was and how I could barely stand longer than two minutes. But when I saw the bright red apple on a small barstool table without anyone near it, I knew I had to grab it. Once I snatched it and slowly crept away from the table in fear someone had seen me, I made my way towards another hall that had doors on each.

While I walked past most, one door from behind opened. I remember the fear I felt that rushed through my veins and the crippling thought I would die at that point. When I turned to face my doom, the man before me was the same man in the woods with the woman named Luna. We stared at each other in silence like a voiceless conversation that didn't end. Before the man that Luna called Duke could talk. Another man appeared from the same doorway slightly giving him a side hug with no shirt on exposing his very pale bare skin. The feeling of discus could never be washed away from my memory at that time. They weren't horridly fat or anything, rather both for 30 year olds. Duke had to be at least 6'1 with shaggy black hair, brown eyes and a burly frame of a man while the other man, the one I couldn't stop staring at in discus, was smaller around my own height at the time, barely reaching 5'5. He seemed to have been the opposite of Duke with his bright blue eyes, short brown hair, a slim body with the biggest smile ever.

At that time, I knew Beta Duke was gay, but it rattled me to the core how he could live a happy life with his male mate and I could not.

I despised him for that for a long time. But I grew enough to realize that what happened to me was what they would call a 'freak accident' or even a 'cult' but I still think it's normal sometimes, only sometimes.

"Nathan, snap out of it. We are here. I looked up at the older Duke that had grown more grizzly from the version I remembered when I was 15, he had become wiser in what he said yet more childish.

"You go first so I can follow; yeah?" It was something that always was that way. I never led, I only ever followed.

"Of course, are you ready?" He turned back to me with a glint of hope in his eyes that wasn't there before.

"No." I simply said. I looked out the window as the car raced down a dirt road towards the surfacing territory. Huge trees covered the land as tall grass that no doubt had wolves in, swayed with the chilly wind. "I will never be ready."

'And that's okay.' I felt Ash become more alert as we entered the larger part of the territory. Wolves would soon be sensing a rogue Beta with another Beta from a pack, it would be hard to miss.

"No, it's not okay. And that's the problem." I swallowed deeply as I wrapped my arms around my chest, hoping my large black hoodie would hide for the next 2 hours of my life. Everything would be okay, because everything is already.