Page 3 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

Jack and Shirley had treated me with nothing but kindness. They bought me what I needed when I needed it, and even got me surprise gifts when there wasn’t any reason for them. They showed up for every school event, and Shirley picked me up from school in her air-conditioned car every day.

They enrolled me in dance lessons, something I had been wanting to try since I was four years old and caught a snippet of someone dancing ballet on TV. They told me I could call them Mom and Dad, too, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that yet.

When my hands were back to normal and not trembling, I removed them from beneath my legs and scanned his letter one more time, checking the address on the envelope so I could write the correct address on mine.

He said he didn’t want to continue to write to each other, but, just like him, my teacher was giving us a grade for this pen pal assignment. So I had to write him back. But I couldn’t send him what I wrote on the back of his letter. It was the truth, but I didn’t want to be a big, ugly meanie back to him. Shirley always said, “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” and Jack always said, “You can’t fight fire with fire.” And I didn’t want to get in trouble.

I took a deep breath, calming my emotions and forcing the tears down. I was Haven Kenway, and I would not let some stupid twelve-year-old boy get to me.

I grabbed my favorite pencil—one of the good ones, the kind with the type of eraser that didn’t leave annoying streaks on the paper—and I sharpened it with my handheld sharpener until it was as pointy as possible. My pencils always had to be sharp. I couldn’t stand dull pencils. I pulled out my dictionary and thesaurus, setting them within easy reach. Then I took out a clean piece of my nice, crisp, white paper with perfect blue lines and wrote back to my pen pal, who didn’t want me.

CHAPTER 2

DearWesley,

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

The reply letter came in our packhouse mail almost a week after I sent mine. I didn’t realize I wrote my home address on the envelope instead of the school’s address.

I arrived home to find the letter already open. It was on the small, round dining table in the kitchen of the alpha suite 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 holding 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 marked 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 as well, but those people couldn’t calm down an angry, irritated lycan in the same way a mate could. Even if something happened to the current alpha, 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 well-behaved and a rule follower, but like any kid—wolf or lycan or human—I messed up occasionally.

I sat in the chair right across from her, folding my hands on top of the table as I eyed her. She gestured at the open envelope 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, my mother’s eyes boring a hole straight into my brain, as if she might extract the words I had written to this girl for her to 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 my letter would be given to the one student in her class who needed a friend more than anybody else did?

That didn’t change that 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.

I lifted my eyes to meet the stern 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, leaned across the table, and placed her hand over mine. “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 everdoanything wrong. One of the most important things my father had emphasized during my alpha training was to own up to my mistakes.

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