Dear Wesley,
Thank you for being honest with me. It’s not a surprise that you don’t want me as a friend. I’m used to people not wanting me.
You see, I’m an orphan. My parents left me when I was a baby. I was only a few days old. I have lived in pretty much one home a year since I was a baby. So I guess that would make it nine homes now, since I am nine years old. And since I move so much, it makes it harder to make friends.
I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I just wanted to tell you I know why you did it and even though you didn’t ask for it, I forgive you.
I hope you get your A.
Haven Kenway
**********WESLEY POV
The reply letter came in our packhouse mail almost a week after I sent mine. I didn’t realize that I wrote my home address as the return address on the envelope instead of the school’s address.
I arrived home to find the letter was already opened. It was on the small, round dining table in the kitchen of the alpha suite (we called it a suite, but it was really more like a penthouse apartment) where my family and I lived. My mom sat in the chair facing the doorway, giving me “the look”.
Every kid knew that look. It was the look that put the fear of Selene in the toughest of wolves and Lycans. The look that made even my dad, Alpha Harrison Stone of the Crescent Lake Pack, tuck his tail between his legs and say, “I’m sorry,” before he even knew what he did wrong. The look that said, “You done messed up.” That look.
Don’t get me wrong. My mom, Luna Emily Stone, was the best mom any Lycan could ever ask for. I mean that. She was truly the glue that held our family, and our pack, together, just like any good Luna should.
That’s why the ancestors of our pack made a rule that the alpha heir could only take over the pack once they found their mate — be it fated or chosen — so they had the person who could balance them, and keep them from being too overworked or stressed.
Obviously, the pack had the Beta, Gamma, and Delta positions to help the Alpha with that as well, but those people couldn’t calm down an angry, irritated Lycan in the same way their mate could. Even if something happened to the current alpha before the heir found their mate, the next highest ranked member with a mate would run the pack until the heir found or chose their mate.
Not all werewolf packs handled succession that way. Some packs designated an age at which they handed the pack over, and others let the current alpha decide when their heir was ready. But this was the way our pack had done things since the beginning.
With that look on my mom’s face, I was likely in for an earful. I didn’t get in trouble often. I was usually well-behaved and a rule follower, but just like any preteen kid — wolf or Lycan or human — I messed up occasionally.
I sat down in the chair right across from her, folding my hands on top of the table as I eyed her curiously. She gestured at the opened letter on the table, so I picked it up, took out the letter, and read it to myself.
With each word, I shrank further and further into my seat at the table, my mother’s eyes boring a hole straight into my brain, as if she might extract the words that I had written to this girl that made her respond so coldly to me.
We didn’t get names when we got the assignment. Mrs. Appleton said her sister would just distribute the letters randomly to the students in her class. How was I supposed to know that my letter would be given to the one student in class who needed a friend more than anybody else?
That didn’t change the fact that I now realized I shouldn’t have written what I did. It wouldn’t have mattered who she had given the letter to. Even if the student was someone who had tons of friends, my words would have been rude no matter what.
I lifted my eyes to meet the steely gaze of my mother’s gray eyes, and she could already see the remorse in mine, could already see that I understood I had made a huge mistake. She softened a bit, and leaned across the table and placed her hand over mine, as she said in a soft voice, “You know what you need to do.”
I nodded. She was right. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to do what any true alpha, any alpha worth his title, would do: own up to my mistake.
So many alphas thought they never needed to apologize when they were wrong, or even worse, that they couldn’t possibly ever do anything wrong. One of the most important things my father had emphasized to me during my alpha training was to own up to my mistakes.
We were just as imperfect as any other person — human or wolf. Being an alpha didn’t change that. We were just as prone to mistakes — or fuck ups, as Dad liked to say when my mother wasn’t around — as the rest of the world.
What made us different was showing that we realize we’d messed up, and how we reacted to that mistake, and whether we changed ourselves or if we kept making the same mistake over and over and over. If we truly learned from our actions, we could grow and move forward. If we kept repeating our errors, well, then that just showed that we were stuck in our ways.
These actions affected our pack as well. If the alpha was stubborn and set in his ways, then the pack would be stuck in the past. They’d plateau and never rise above the others or continue to be successful. But if an alpha was open-minded and able to learn and grow, then the pack would thrive and succeed in all of their endeavors.
My mother stood up from her chair at our small table and walked through the doorway of the dining room. Her heels clicked on the wood floor for several steps, and then she paused, picked something up, and headed back towards me.
I twisted in my chair so I could see her when she came back into the room. She was carrying my backpack that I had left unceremoniously next to the front door of our apartment. She sat it down on the floor next to my chair, her unwavering gaze boring through my skull as I tried to avoid eye contact with her.
“I am leaving to pick your sister up from pup care,” she told me. “I expect your letter to be finished by the time I get back with Madeleine.”
With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of our apartment, leaving me alone with the letter from Haven and my own thoughts.
I sat there for a few minutes, the only sound the ticking of our old grandfather clock in the living room. I thought about what I wanted to write to this girl. Haven.
I slowly got out my pencil and a piece of paper from my backpack, and set them on the table in front of me as I got into my writing mode.
At first, it was difficult for me to find the words to say to her, but the more I wrote, the easier it became, until the pencil in my hand could not keep up with the words flowing through my mind.
By the time Mom returned with Maddie, I had written the longest letter I had ever written in my life. I had an envelope from my father’s small office in our apartment already addressed and sitting next to the letter on the dining room table. I stood straight and tall next to it, waiting for my mother to inspect my writing.
She surprised me, however, by only checking to see if I finished it. Then she nodded without a word and walked away. She was putting her faith in me to treat this girl respectfully in my letter, and I was proud that she trusted me enough to not check over every word on the page.
I quickly folded the letter and carefully stuffed it in the envelope, sealing it and setting it in the stack of outgoing mail near our front door, just as Maddie came barreling into me. Her arms wrapped around my legs, nearly causing me to fall over on top of her.
Her tiny giggles echoed through the entry, mingling with my laugh that was becoming deeper as I neared the age of receiving my Lycan. I lifted her little three-year-old body with ease, throwing her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Her giggles turned into full belly laughs as I ran through our home with her dangling behind me.
“Wessy!” she shrieked, just as I threw her down on her back onto her princess pink bed, topped with the squishiest feather duvet and the most ridiculous frilly and lacy pillows I had ever laid eyes on.
She wriggled around, trying to flee. But of course I was faster than her, and my hands tickled her belly before she even had the chance to attempt an escape. Her tiny legs kicked towards me as I continued tickling her, but I stopped before she became too hysterical or out of breath or, even worse, wet herself.
I turned to leave her room, hoping to wrangle Sebastian or Reid into playing a video game with me, but her little voice asked from behind me, “Wessy, pwease wead me a stowy?”
I sighed, and looked at her, prepared to say no, but of course she was giving me the wolf pup eyes, complete with the pouty bottom lip and batting eyelashes, her little hands clasped under her chin as she silently begged me. I couldn’t say no to that face. No one could. Maddie had perfected that look, further cementing her status as the princess of our pack.
Without a word, I moved back to her bed, grabbing our copy of The Goddess’s Tales from her bookshelf. The book of myths and legends and fairy tales was passed down through the generations in our family, but had somehow remained in decent condition, even with its age. It was well-loved, but the binding was still intact, and none of the pages had tears or bends.
The tales in the book made up all the stories that had been told over the centuries about Selene. No one knew anymore which of them, or which parts of them, were true. But every werewolf and Lycan heard them growing up, just as human children heard their own fairy tales, such as Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel.
They did not know most of their stories were based on a sliver of truth. That the magical beings they read about were actually all around them, hidden in plain sight.
“Which one shall we read today, Maddie?” I asked her, holding the book up for her to see.
She clapped her hands excitedly, settling herself next to me and saying, “Ria! I want Ria!”
I groaned. She always wanted Asteria’s story. “No, we just read that one the other day,” I argued.
I thumbed through the pages, looking at the titles as I flipped through them. “How about ‘The Alpha Pup’s Best Friend?’” I suggested, showing her the page.
“No!” she shouted.
I sighed. That was one of my favorites, because it told of the first beta, and I always thought of mine and Reid’s friendship.
I flipped through the book some more until I ended up back at the very beginning. The first story, the story of our origins.
“‘The First of the Wolves’?” I asked, peeking at her from the corner of my eye.
Her eyes lit up, but then she forced a frown. However, it was too late. I had already seen her excitement.
“First wolves it is!” I exclaimed in triumph, and she giggled and settled in next to me as I began to read.
WESLEY POV “Once upon a time, two peeps fell in love and-” “Dat’s not how it goes, Wessy!” Maddie laughed, pushing me with her little hands. I pretended to fall down on the mattress from her shove. “Wessy!” she whined, pulling on my arm. “Okay, okay,” I chuckled. “I’ll start over!” I took a breath and began again. “A long time ago, when the world was brand new, the gods and goddesses walked among us. They lived within the world they had created, celebrating in its beauty and its bounty with the people of the land. The gods and humans and other beings lived together in harmony, celebrating the magnificence they lived in.” “What’s magfishinence?” Maddie interrupted. “Magnificence,” I corrected. “Yeah dat.” “It means wonderful or great,” I told her. “Can I keep reading?” She nodded, and I continued. “But the peace among the inhabitants was a tentative peace, a fragile peace. As such, each of the gods and goddesses created warriors, their own followers blessed with a touch of t
Dear Haven, It’s me. Wesley. Wesley Stone. Well, I guess that it is probably pretty obvious that it’s me, since my name is on the outside of the envelope, and I’m also probably the only person who writes you letters. Crap. That probably sounded ruder than I meant it to. I just meant that most people don’t really write letters nowadays, so if you were to receive a letter from someone, it would make sense for it to be a letter from someone who had already written you a letter before. Not that no one would want to write you a letter. That’s not what I meant. Great, now I’m rambling. You probably won’t even read this, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I was kind of rude to you before. No, scratch that, I was REALLY rude to you before. I could try to push the blame off of myself and say something like “Well, I didn’t know that my pen pal would be an orphan,” but that would be immature of me, because, no matter who the letter was for, I should have never written the letter the way
Dear Wesley, I already told you in my first letter to you, I forgive you. I know you didn’t mean what you said, and I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, or whoever got your letter. I know you’re just a kid. Shirley, my foster mom, always says it’s not about the mistakes that you make, but whether you learn from those mistakes. It’s about what you do next. That’s what is important. That’s what makes you a good person or not. I am willing to give you a second chance. I need a friend. Like I told you before, I don’t really have many friends. I’ve moved homes too many times. My social worker says I shut people out too easily to make many friends. So, you’ll be my first one. All right. Since we’re making this a fresh start, I’ll go first. Starting over. Pretend we’ve never met. Or written. Hi. I’m Haven Kenway. No middle name. That was the name stitched on the blanket wrapped around me when they found me in front of a fire station when I was only a few days old. I’ve never met my birt
Dear Haven, I cannot tell you how happy I was to receive your second letter. Well, no, I guess I probably could try to tell you how happy you made me, but in all honesty there are not enough words in the English language or any language to express how I felt when I saw your letter finally come in. You can’t tell anyone this. But I was waiting and waiting and waiting, hoping that you would give me another chance, and I’m not going to lie — at one point I thought maybe you had decided I wasn’t worth it. But seriously, please don’t tell anyone, because I have already endured enough teasing from my parents and my brother, and even a little bit from my best friend, Reid. Not that I’m embarrassed to be your friend, that’s not it at all. It’s just that the constant taunting from my little brother and my best friends is annoying. So annoying. That’s what it’s like, by the way, to have siblings. ANNOYING. Okay, okay, it’s not ALL bad. Sebastian, my little brother who is two years younger
Dear Wesley, Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I will never tell anyone about how the great Wesley Stone was awaiting a letter from a girl. No, I will take that secret with me to my grave. No one will ever know that you are actually a nice person who cares about poor little me. I have to say, as much as I’ve always wanted to have a large family with siblings who are close to me, I think I could live without all of the annoying and teasing that you described in your letter. So, you can keep your brother and sister and best friends over there with you in California. I will stay here, by myself, without anyone to ever annoy me or tease me. I will have peace and quiet, and you will have noise and chaos. Seriously, though, I enjoyed reading about your siblings and friends. They sound wonderful. I hope someday I can maybe meet them. I mean, assuming you want to meet at some point. Okay, now, my turn to answer the questions. My birthday is on October 18th. That was their best gue
HAVEN POV The unfamiliar sensations of the woman’s hands massaging my feet kept eliciting uncontrollable giggles from my mouth. My body tensed with each of her ministrations. Mom insisted we needed a girl’s day, filled with every type of girly pampering one can imagine. So far, we’d gone shopping and picked out fancy outfits, had our hair cut and styled, and the last step was getting manicures and pedicures. I picked out a sparkly gold nail polish for both my fingernails and toenails, the color an almost perfect match for the gold accessories I bought to go with my dark purple dress. Mom hadn’t told me why we were going through all of this effort, but I guessed she had some exciting surprise planned for us. I just needed to be patient, and eventually she would let me know what was going on. Another giggle involuntarily burst through my lips as she moved her massaging up to my calf. I had to pinch my lips together to suppress the noise when she gave me a stern, reproachful glare. I
HAVEN POV It had been several months since the wonderful evening I spent at the ballet with Mom and Dad. I still couldn’t stop thinking about the magical experience. I could still picture the beautifully detailed costumes, still hear the wonderfully elegant sounds of the full orchestra, and still feel the butterflies swarming in my stomach. I could still feel the tears of joy flooding my eyes as I sat on the edge of my seat the entire night, watching the pristine and exquisite dancers on the stage of the darkened theater. I even remembered a decent amount of the choreography. Well, that might be due in part to the fact that Mom purchased a video of the performance and I watched it at least once a week since. Dad even suggested we turn one of the empty bedrooms into a ballet room for me. He said it’s so he didn’t have to listen to classical music constantly, but really it was because he wanted me to have a safe place to practice. I had learned almost every routine for every role, b
HAVEN POV The waiting room at the hospital was cold. Cold, and white, and clean, and filled with the scents of disinfectant, stale coffee, and anxiety. I sat quietly in place in my chair with my book bag, scanning the room, watching the waiting family members of the other patients in this wing of the hospital. I also watched the nurses as they came and went from the unit. The amount of people in the waiting room dwindled, and the darkening sky outside signaled the approaching end of visiting hours. And, yet again, they had not allowed me to go back to see my dad. “Come on, kiddo,” Scott said as he walked towards me from the restroom. “It’s time to head home.” “Mom?” He grimaced. “She’s staying here again. I guess they’re giving her a few more nights of it before they tell her she can’t anymore.” I nodded and grabbed my bag and followed him out to his car. It had been the same routine for several weeks. School, hospital waiting room, home, repeat. Except, “home” kept changing. S