Canis Lupus

Chapter Three

We made it to school about 15 minutes before the bell. We all made sure we had our lockers right next to each other and right beside the door because none of us wanted to be here longer than we had to be. While we were putting all of our things in our lockers just talking about today, in walks Keegan Alexander, alpha Sameul's brother. He was our age. He was a gorgeous man, long blonde hair he kept in braids, bright blue eyes. Keegan was just very cocky and full of himself, and where he went, Bethany and Bella followed closely behind. Bethany and Bella are identical twins. They're our current betas sisters. For whatever reason, these girls have some false sense of power and are mean as hell. No one knows why they're so mean, but if you aren't one of our governing members or a high-status wolf, they hate you. We don't have many people like that in our pack, but in walked three of them. As they walked past us, all you could hear were the insults. I couldn't help but just glare. I wasn't raised to think any less of a wolf due to pack status. "What are you looking at, creep?" Bella sneered. "What does it look like I'm looking at?" I said “Two bitter bitches.” Christina said, rolling her eyes. "You know who my father and brother are, I would watch your mouth talking to us" Bella said, Keegan in the background just snickering. "I do know, very well who's misfortunate enough to be related to you, and frankly, I don't give a damn" I sat back and crossed my arms, Bella obviously bothered. She looked to her sister for help. "I can make sure you get nothing, you watch and see, you don't want to be on our bad side," Bethany snapped. "There was a good side? Honestly, ladies, I would love to sit and talk all day, but quite frankly, I don't argue with bubble-headed blonde bimbos who kiss ass to get by, so if you'll excuse me, I've got to get to class," I said, walking away, my friend's laughter trailing behind me.

As I walked into my first class of the day, I prepared to go to our "career fair". Basically, we were walking across the street to the auditorium to sit through seminars and learn about our pack jobs. You weren't required to work within the pack, but you had to make your own money. Our pack offers free housing, medical care, water and electricity, but you are required to provide your food, amenities, vehicles, anything you may want or need. Our pack owns our town, so any business on our territory provides for our community, which is amazing because it builds up our community and bond as a pack. As I'm getting my things together, in walks Ms. Clarke ``okay guys, if we're ready, we're going to go ahead and call roll. Everyone who has shown up today gets a full day of extra credit added to each class!" She said with enthusiasm. After she called roll, we all got up to go follow everyone over to the auditorium building. We would walk through so many floors with so many seminars on each floor as well as booths with different career choices.

We finally made it into the building. Looking around, there are people everywhere advocating for their career choice. Mrs. Blair, our beta's mother, has a table full of baked goods from her bakery. She was one of the first women to open her own business in the middle of town. Mr. Jacobs has his clothing store booth. I honestly couldn't wait to go and talk to everyone. We got to spend a day away from school while still getting credit, and to be honest, we're seniors, so we're all so sick of school at this point. While I was standing there, I just felt my arms around my waist. I knew it was either Christina or Joseph. "b***h, where have you been? We've been waiting on you," Christina said. "Sorry, Ms. Clarke was taking forever to let us get over here," I said. "Let's go over here to Mrs. Blair, she has cookies everywhere!" I said.

We made our way through the fair and all the seminars, so now it was time we got to go meet the alpha and hear his speech. "Ladies and gentlemen, as you should know, I'm Alpha Sameul, but you guys can call me Sam. As many of you know, I gained the pack at eighteen. I gained an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age due to my father's illness. I am grateful for my opportunity to bring up our own generation of wolves. I always knew I would be the next leader of our pack, and it is one of my number one goals to grow as a pack and achieve everything under the sun for our generations to come. I know a lot of you are either eighteen or pretty close to being eighteen, and I can honestly say I am very excited to have you as growing members of our pack. I am grateful to all of you. I know you will all make me proud. I fully expect to see and meet each one of you this afternoon. I am very excited about meeting each one of the wolves responsible for our future!" exclaimed Sameul. This man was so beautiful, anyone would be lucky to be his mate. I know all the younger girls in the pack fawn over him, but something about him has just gotten my attention. I know I will meet him face to face later on, I'm so excited to meet him but I'm so nervous. We're all waiting in line to go ahead and meet him. There are a lot of us so we'll eventually get there.

We're up next in line. Christina, Joseph and I all decided to go meet him together. He dismisses the girls in front of us and waves for us to come to him. As we make our way up to him, Joseph is first, he reaches out and shakes his hand, next Christina, then me. I shook his hand in utter disbelief as he was standing in front of me. The strangest thing happened as soon as he took my hand in his, his eyes flashed directly up to mine, stealing the air from my lungs. I'm not shy, I'm not shy! Why can't I form a thought? Finally, I found the courage while he was staring straight through me, "Hi, I'm Cordelia." I said, never breaking eye contact, it was like he was studying me. "Cordelia, the pleasure is mine. It is very nice to meet you all," he says while releasing my hand and turning to my friends. "Come, have a seat. I would love to get to know more about you all." We all sat down. "My name is Joseph Daniels, I'm eighteen. I'm planning out training so I can eventually find a place in your front line warriors. My family has found their way to highly respected positions for generations, and I cannot wait to continue the legacy," then went Christina "I'm Christina Ross, I'm only seventeen, and I can't exactly tell you what I plan to do with my future, but I hope somewhere in the future I can do some good work for this pack". Now it's my turn. I hated telling other men what my plans were. As a female, wanting to be a warrior wasn't unheard of, but it most definitely wasn't common. "My name is Cordelia Summers, I'm seventeen. My plan sounds silly to most, but I would really like an opportunity to be a part of our army. I've been in basic pack training since I was old enough to do so, and I love it. I'm the best female in training. I would very much enjoy being a part of something bigger and being a warrior for our pack would be the biggest honor I can think of," I said. He just stared at me but, after a moment, said, "We would be more than happy to have Christian's daughter in our army. Your father and brother have shown more promise and honor than any other warriors we have, though your brother has an attitude problem, which is why we have been fighting it out of him," he said with a wink and a laugh. "My brother doesn't have an attitude, he is the epitome of an attitude" I said laughing. "So, guys it was very nice to meet you, and it would be awesome to be able to talk to you guys longer, but you have a very large class and I would be an asshole if I missed anyone today. But if you would, grab an invitation from Beta Dennis back there, and I hope to see you all at your senior ball," he said, turning to me and making eye contact. As we walked out, we grabbed our invitations and I could still feel his eyes on me. I turned around and looked and we locked eyes again. I don’t know why he keeps staring at me. There is absolutely no way I could be his mate. I’m a warrior, I’m not meant to be Luna and, plus, he could have anyone. Why would he choose me? We walked out of the doors and I pulled out the invitation and read it.

"Alpha Sameul would like to invite our entire senior class to our palace for a celebration. Not only will we be giving you a fun night together, we will also be allowing the senior classes of our neighboring packs to join us in hopes of you finding your mate. Please be at our palace ballroom, Saturday May 20th 7 pm sharp. We look forward to seeing you all again. And please remember, this is a ball, we are requiring dresses and suits. We would love to see our new adults in their best attire.

Thank You

Alpha Sameul Alexander"

We went outside and began reading the invitations. "Oh my god, do you see the date on these, Cordelia?!" Christina said. My heart stopped, here we are, nineteen days away from turning eighteen and meeting our wolves, but we could possibly be meeting our mates at a massive ball. "What are we going to do?! What do we wear? We don't have anything to wear" I said, freaking out. "God, first drooling over Sam, now you're losing it over a dress. How cute are you?" Joseph said while pinching my cheek. I pulled back: "I was not drooling! I was being friendly!" I sneered at him. "Sure, sure, that's why our best friend, who doesn't have one shy bone in her body, couldn't muster up the willpower to tell her superior her name," he laughed and I punched his arm. "Cor, we can go shopping later, we have two whole weeks. We'll find something perfect," Christina said, easing my mind a little bit. I knew they saw my face, but who can blame me, that man was so perfect.

Finally, the day had come to an end, and we were all released to go home. All of us piled into my truck, and we all made our way back to my house. My mom wasn't working today, so she was sitting in our kitchen reading one of her books. "Mom, you would not believe today. Our entire senior class got invited to a ball. It's the 21st century. Who still has balls?" I said, trying to hide my excitement. "Cordelia, I birthed you, I can spot a lie coming from your mouth from a mile away." I just rolled my eyes. "You should have seen her drooling mom, I think she's in love" Christina said with a laugh. I could crawl in a hole. My friends have never seen me like that before and I wanted to keep it that way. "Aw, sugar, don't worry about that, everyone has their little crushes," my mom said as she winked at me. "Anyway, mom, we have to go and get dresses, the ball is May 21st and I don't have anything ball worthy. Can we go next week please?" I pleaded. "Of course darling, I can take you and Christina next Saturday," she said. "Thank you mom!" Christina and I said.

Finally, it's finally time for us to go get our dresses. I had no idea what to even look for, I've never been to a ball, I never even went to prom. I knew it was a common thing in the "alpha world", but for us regular people, we didn't do things like that, so it's kind of exciting. We get to the dress shop and thank god mom knows some less common shops because downtown was packed today. As we're walking in, our jaws drop, we've never seen such beautiful gowns. Everything looked royal, we weren't used to this. Mom and Christina were browsing when I came across the most beautiful royal blue dress. It had lace sleeves that hung off the shoulder, it didn't quite look like a princess gown, but the flowing a-line dress would hold my body perfectly, I had to have it. My mom saw me eyeing the dress and had one of the clerks take it off of the mannequin and put it in one of the dressing rooms. I looked over at Christina and saw her holding a very bland red dress. I knew my best friend, this isn't what she wanted. "Babe, what is it? Why are you trying to pick out something that's not you at all?" I asked. Her arms dropped, and she hung her head and said, "I can't afford anything else. I've looked around at everything and I can't afford any of them. My mom has been looking at different shops and seeing about finding a second-hand shop, but we just can't afford it right now." She almost seemed ashamed. "Darling, you find whatever you like in this shop, I don't care what the price is. Find your dream dress, sweetheart, you are like a daughter to me and I will do what I can to make you as happy as I make my Cordie," my mom spoke over my shoulder. Christina's eyes were full of tears and she couldn't stop thanking my mom. We finally found a beautiful floor-length ball gown. It was a maroon and was full of jewels, it was pure royalty. We were going to look amazing and that just made it all more exciting.