Semua Bab Alpha's Feral Kitten : Bab 1 - Bab 10

BILLIE There’s a kid asleep on one of the benches in the booths near the bar. He’s been here since New Year’s Day, three days ago. Just another day in the Gaelic Wolf, Meridian’s townie, human-owned, 80 year old Irish American Werewolf pub, patronized solely by wolf shifter college students and faculty from Crescent University. Where 100% of the front-of-house employees—minus the bartenders—are young townie human girls looking for rich wolf shifter college boy tips, and the door never really closes. I’m a human, but not a college student, either. Not yet. I’m waiting the results of an audition for a modern dance scholarship. In the meantime, momma’s treatment has to be paid somehow, and townie bars are the best places to get paid under the table. Wolf shifters, or werewolves, and humans have been coexisting for centuries. It’s only recently, in the past fifty years, that treaties have been signed and werewolves have integrated further into society. A shortage of female wer

BILLIE I wake up the next day around 8 am. The first thing I do is pile my hair on top of my head, pull on some legwarmers, and run through some barre exercises in my living room. I do this every morning. Then I go for a 20 minute run through the human trailer park where I rent a tiny one-bedroom. After a yoga-fueled cooldown, I take a shower in the stained but clean bathroom. I mix some cereal with yogurt and a banana, then take my coffee to the stoop. It’s early, so it’s safe to be outside without getting sexually harassed by one of my neighbors. The view is of my next door neighbor’s garbage bins, but the air is fresh and my rent is paid. Around noon, I put on a hoodie and head to the bus stop to visit my mother. She’s in assisted living, and most days I have to remind her I’m not my long-dead Aunt Tracy. On the days she remembers me, she gives me messages to take to my father, who was shot in the line of duty when I was four. Today is one of those days. “Tell your father that

BILLIE I sleep restlessly on the futon, then wake up and roll it up. I do my morning routine, then throw my dance gear into my school bag. I’m waiting on the stoop when Raven pulls up in a black Ford Mustang. He gets out as I stand up and holds his hand out to me, helping me down the stoop. Then he kisses my cheek. “Show me where it is and I’ll grab anything you need. We can get a truck as well.” “No need. If my chest can fit in the back of your car, and two boxes of books in the trunk, my futon can go on top of the chest and I’ll carry my clothes bag.” “Perfect, show me where.” I take him inside and he insists on carrying my trunk alone, then setting it in the back of his car as gently as if it were a valuable antique. He does the same with my books in his trunk, along with my bag of clothes, sets the futon in the backseat, and all I have to carry is my school bag. I lock the back door and leave the key at the office, paying my final rent. Then Raven asks me where to. “Do yo

BillieThe past two days have been some of the best of my life. The guys have all made me feel welcome, and everyone's allowed me to hide in the tower until I'm ready to meet more people. There are other girls in this dorm somewhere, and I intend to eventually seek them out.Meanwhile, Raven showed me his attic studio and made me promise to sit for him on the first day of classes. He says I won't need to more than once, as his photographic visual memory is heightened by the Wolf inside him and he's able to do the rest by memory. As he showed me his beautiful pre-Raphaelite paintings, he flirted with me again and made me feel pretty. And Fleming and I now have a standing lunch date in the courtyard. We became instant friends when we realized how much in common we have–he has a sick mother and no father, too, and was raised to be independent. It's likely he, along with Dom, will become co-Betas, or Tristan’s lieutenants, when the Underground forms an official pack. He flirts with me, to

TRISTAN I’m sitting at our usual table in the cafe at the Student Union, when Dominic and Billie finally arrive. I watch them closely to see how the insular students at C. U. react to her presence—and how she and Dom are getting along. He was the best choice of my friends to draw her out of her shell. They seem to have some banter, judging by her smile. She’s wearing a ribbed mid length black knit dress with a plunging neckline, a slit up the side, a pair of knee-high boots, and the moonstone I’ve been keeping for my girl since I was 18 years old dangles from her neck, along with a thin gray lace scarf. A red ribbon is tied in her hair.I wonder what she thinks of the inscription on the back of the moonstone. It looks like a jewelry designer name, Mo fhíorghra. Someday I’ll tell her it’s pronounced “moe here-graw”, and that its literal Gaelic meaning is “my true love”. In our world, we use it to mean “fated mate”. I bought it from a vendor at a midsummer fair in our hometown of Tide