Pack History
1452 Words
CHAPTER SIX
VIOLETTA
Jason's breath was still warm on the back of my neck when the door swung open and Professor Ian walked in.
I snapped my eyes forward and stared at the board like it had personally offended me.
Behind me, Jason's chair scraped back. I heard him get up, heard his footsteps move toward the door, and I let out a breath so long and slow my shoulders dropped two inches.
Right. Good. Gone.
I unclenched my hands under the desk.
Professor Ian set his bag down at the front and turned to face the class. He was medium height, sandy-haired, with the kind of face that had seen too many first days to be impressed by any of them.
He looked around the room once and said, "For the benefit of our new students, I'm Professor Ian. This is Pack History." He turned to write it on the board. "Let's get into it."
Pack History.
I stared at the words on the board and thought: what in the actual world has my mother dragged us into. She found one man on a grief retreat in Vermont and now I am sitting in a class called Pack History in a town full of wolves. Fourteen months. That's all it took to completely dismantle my entire life.
I opened my notebook.
Ian drew a diagram on the board. A vertical hierarchy, clean lines, labels in capital letters.
ALPHA at the top.
BETA directly below.
RANKED WOLVES beneath that, broken into sub-levels.
UNMATED WOLVES further down.
And at the very bottom, separated from the rest by a dotted line, two categories sitting together in their own box.
HUMANS. HALF-WOLVES. PACK-ADJACENT POSITIONS.
I looked at the dotted line.
I looked at where I sat on that diagram.
I wrote it all down in my notebook exactly as he drew it and then I drew the dotted line around my category and stared at it.
Pack-adjacent.
Not pack. Adjacent to it. Like a footnote. Like something the diagram had to include but wasn't quite sure what to do with.
I underlined the dotted line.
Then I underlined it again.
Ian was still talking. "The hierarchy is not symbolic," he said, tapping the board. "It is biological, legal, and social simultaneously. Your rank determines your rights within the pack, your standing in disputes, your access to pack resources, and your protections under pack law."
He paused. "It also determines what happens to you if you violate pack law. Higher rank means more protection. Lower rank means less."
"Mating bonds," Ian continued, moving to a new section of the board. "Adjacent topic, not today's focus, but relevant context given what we've covered."
He wrote the words and turned back to face us.
"A mating bond is biological and irreversible. It is not a choice. It is not a romantic construct. It is a fixed connection between two wolves that activates when the recognition triggers." He kept his voice even, like he was reading from a manual. "Once formed, it cannot be undone. The bonded pair will experience physical and emotional symptoms... pull, heightened awareness, distress at prolonged separation."
He paused.
"In rare recorded occasions," he said, "the bond has involved humans."
He said it flatly. Like a footnote. Like it was the least interesting sentence in the paragraph.
I wrote it in the margin.
*Rare recorded occasions.*
I stared at it.
Then I turned my head to scratch the side of my neck and my eyes landed on Jason.
My hand stopped moving.
He was two rows to my left, one seat back, slouched in his chair with his arms crossed and his jaw set. He hadn't left. He had just moved.
I snapped my head back to the front.
My whole spine had gone rigid.
He was right there the entire time. Two rows over, close enough to hear everything Ian was saying, and every time Ian said something about humans — human integration, pack-adjacent positions, the rights of non-wolves — I could feel it. The slow pull of his gaze on the side of my face.
I did not turn to confirm it.
I kept my eyes on the board and my pen moving and I wrote down every word Ian said for the rest of the lesson.
"Any questions before we close?"
Ian looked around the room.
I put my hand up.
The room shifted. Not dramatically — just a small collective adjustment, the kind that happens when something unexpected occurs. A few heads turned. Someone behind me exhaled.
Ian looked at me with an expression I wasn't expecting. Not irritation. Something closer to interest. "Yes?"
"What rights does a human in a pack household have under pack law?" I asked. "Specifically. Not in general terms."
The room went quiet.
Ian held my gaze for a moment and then nodded slowly. "That," he said, "is an excellent question. The answer is complicated enough that I would rather give it properly than quickly. Read chapter seven of the textbook tonight and come back to me with a follow-up. I'll make time."
"Thank you," I nodded.
From two rows to my left came Jason's voice. Low enough to be deniable. Loud enough that I heard every word.
"None," he said. "The human in a pack household has none. No f*****g rights. Because they're f*****g human."
His friend beside him laughed under his breath.
I didn't turn around.
I wrote *chapter seven* in my notebook and underlined it and kept my face completely neutral while my jaw ached from how hard I was holding it still.
The classroom emptied and I stayed.
Ian was erasing the board when I came up and he turned and looked at me and put the eraser down. "Chapter seven," he said.
"I haven't read it yet," I said. "But I wanted to ask now while it was fresh."
He nodded and pulled out his chair and sat down and answered me properly. Not the abbreviated version teachers give when they want to get to lunch. The real one. He went through the legal standing of humans in pack-adjacent households, the protections that technically existed under inter-pack law, the gap between those protections on paper and how they were applied in practice. He didn't soften it. He told me what it actually was.
I wrote down everything.
When he finished I said thank you and he said come back whenever you have more questions, and I believed him.
The corridor outside was still busy with students moving between last period and wherever they were going next. I shifted my bag on my shoulder and headed left.
"How's Ian's class treating you?"
I turned.
Jace fell into step beside me. He wasn't waiting... wrong corridor for his next class probably, just passing through. But he'd seen me come out and matched his pace to mine, easy and unhurried, like it was nothing.
I looked at him.
He looked back at me from behind those wire-framed glasses with that calm, even expression he wore when he wasn't performing anything for anyone.
I felt something settle slightly in my chest. Just slightly.
"Informative," I replied, and smiled.
"Good—"
"Very informative," another voice said.
I went cold.
Jason materialised on my other side from nowhere, falling into step like he'd been there the whole time. His hands were in his pockets and his expression was the unbothered one he wore when he was enjoying himself most.
He looked straight ahead when he spoke.
"Hope it sticks some sense into your head," he said pleasantly. "So you can finally see there's no light at the end of this tunnel you're standing in."
He glanced at me then. Just once. That slow, flat look.
Then he laughed and kept walking and turned the corner.
I stood completely still in the middle of the corridor.
Students moved around me on both sides. Someone knocked my shoulder going past. I didn't move.
There's no light at the end of this tunnel.
Said it like he was doing me a favour. Like he was just telling me the weather.
"Violetta—" Jace started.
"f**k you, Jason!" I yelled it down the corridor.
My voice came out louder than I planned. Loud enough that the students nearby stopped and looked. Loud enough that it bounced off the walls and carried around the corner he'd just turned.
I heard him laugh from somewhere I couldn't see.
I stood there breathing through my nose with my notebook pressed flat against my chest and my face burning.
And somewhere around the corner Jason Calloway was still laughing and I hated him so completely in that moment that it almost felt clean.
- Writer
