Alle Kapitel von Alpha Bikers: Kapitel 91 – Kapitel 100

RILEYThe community center proposal had been in the planning stage for three months before I made the mistake of mentioning it to Elder Chen.Not a mistake in the sense of regret — in the sense of underestimating how quickly Chen could mobilize council opinion in a direction she had decided was wrong. Within forty-eight hours of our conversation she'd drafted a counter-proposal that she was calling the Alpha Compound Initiative, which was a name that communicated everything about what she thought a Blackthorn-Harper pack's primary facility should look like and nothing about what I'd been planning to build.I sat at the kitchen table on a Tuesday morning with both proposals in front of me. Knox had read the Chen counter-proposal three times with the expression he used for documents that were technically unassailable and practically wrong. Grayson had sent a six-page analysis of the political landscape surrounding the two proposals before eight AM. Mara had sent her financial projection

RILEYHunter's school incident happened on a Wednesday afternoon in late September.I was called at two-forty-three. Not by Jess this time — by the pack school's formal administrative line, which meant whatever had happened had been escalated above the normal level. The voice on the other end was measured and careful, which was a specific quality that people's voices got when they were telling you something significant about your child while trying to calibrate how you were going to receive it."There was an altercation," the administrator said. "Between Hunter and another student. Hunter is fine. The other student is fine. But we need you to come in."I was in the car in three minutes.The altercation, as it was described to me when I arrived, had involved a boy named Cole who was seven and who had been, for approximately three weeks according to Jess, directing a specific kind of social pressure at a younger wolf named Sam who was four and who had recently joined the pack school fro

RILEYThe community center build broke ground on a Wednesday in October and the ceremony for it was exactly what I wanted it to be: brief, functional, and involving the people who were actually going to use the building.I'd fought for that last part. The traditional groundbreaking ceremony for a pack facility involved the Alpha, the council representative, the architect, and possibly a few senior pack members. Formal, hierarchical, communicating the same message the compound proposal had communicated: the institution matters and the people who run the institution are at the center.I wanted the people who were going to use the community center to break the ground.Vasquez had looked at this request with the expression he wore for things that departed from standard procedure but couldn't be argued with on principle. "Who specifically," he'd said."Petra," I'd said. "She arrived three weeks ago with her family from the Sagebrush pack. She's been cleared through intake, she's in the pac

RILEYLila started spending time in the shop at the end of October.It started when Petra brought her in to pick something up — a small delivery from the supply order that the framework office had arranged and that I'd said could be picked up from the shop instead of the community center because it was on Petra's way to the ceramics workshop she'd started using at the community center. Lila came in, looked at the north bay, looked at the light, and said: "What's that smell.""Engine oil," I said. "And metal. And the specific cleaner I use after restorations.""It smells like my grandfather's workshop," she said. "He fixes things.""What kind of things.""Everything," she said. "Whatever's broken. He says things aren't finished until they work correctly."I looked at her. "Your grandfather is right."Lila looked at the north bay for another moment. "Can I watch," she said.I looked at Petra. Petra looked at me with the expression of a mother who has learned that her daughter's requests

RILEYPetra opened her ceramics workshop at the community center on a Thursday in December.The opening was informal — she'd been working in the space for six weeks and had started teaching a class three weeks ago, so the opening was less a beginning and more a naming of something that had already been happening. We put a sign on the door. She brought food. A small group of pack members who'd been attending the class showed up and people stood around in the workshop in the way people stand around in new spaces that are good — not with ceremony, with the easy presence of a place that was already doing what it was for.I came at four. The class had ended at three-thirty but Petra was still there, organizing the new shelving that Marcus had built for her. He'd spent two evenings on it — solid, well-joined, built for a specific purpose rather than for appearance. Lila was doing homework at the corner table with the focused efficiency she'd developed since starting at the pack school."The