Page 34 of A Second Chance for the Beta

I feel tears burning in my eyes. Mom. I don’t even know who she was or what she liked. Was she kind? Funny? Serious? Do I resemble her?

In a sudden flash of anger I close the app and switch off my phone. I sit up in my bed. The noises in the packhouse have calmed down a bit, and Dante and Ella went to bed too. This is where my stealth experience comes in handy. I’ve done this all the time in the orphanage too; all of us did.

Here it’s even easier because my room has a balcony. I swiftly change into some outdoor clothes, then silently slip out onto the balcony. I can’t jump down there, but I can reach the branch of a huge chestnut tree, so I’m going from there.

Ten minutes later, I’m on the ground and hurry off.

During the last week, I’ve befriended two boys and one girl in the pack. One of them, Ty, is a warrior’s kid and managed to find out his dad’s password, so he always knows when and where the guards are stationed.

“Here you are,” Ty whispers when I join him and the others at our meeting point.

Gisela, the girl of the trio, hands me my skateboard. It’s actually Ty’s old one. “Let’s go,” Gisela says. She told me she is happy she isn’t the only girl anymore. She loves to skate, but her mom is a bit of a scaredy-cat in that area and thinks the boys are playing too rough, so she does it in secret.

Ty and Austen have been skating for two years. They can do it whenever they want, but their parents don’t let them go out of the pack to skate.

We are not going far. Some kids from ours and also surrounding packs found an abandoned playground not too far off the pack grounds. It’s perfect for what we are doing. The only tricky part is sneaking past the guards at the pack border, which happens to be a lot easier thanks to Ty.

When we reach the playground, Ty and Gisela instantly take off while Austen remains with me to show me some basics. Before I begin, he helps me to make the board mine. Apparently that’s important. Austen has taken calligraphy classes, so he manages to paint my name on the board. I place an owl sticker next to it to give it the right feel. When I was a kid, the orphanage took us to a fair once. Money was always tight, but sometimes they tried to fund special activities. The fortune teller there indulged us and told us our future for free. Mostly great stuff, but when she told me mine, she also added that owls are my spirit animals.

Somehow that stuck with me, and I’ve been obsessed with them ever since. Owls are fucking awesome.

“Ready?” Austen asks when I finish my work. “I can show you some tricks.”

I nod. “Ready.”

thirteen

Nightmares

*DANTE*

Mariahandsmethepregnancy test, and as the dunce I am, I have no idea what it means. “Is this good?” I stutter.

“Yes, silly.” She laughs, tossing her long dark-brown hair back. “I’m pregnant.”

I feel like the world stops spinning, and for a second, it’s just her and me, and nothing else matters. Fear fills my heart, doubt, making me scared I won’t be good enough as a dad, but overall I’m just beyond happy.

I’m going to be a dad!

Finally!

Maria and I celebrate the whole day. She is over a month into the pregnancy, and as werewolf pregnancies last a lesser amount of time, she will soon show. The whole week I’m in a daze of happiness.

I feel like nothing can destroy it. I will always be happy as long as I have Maria and our baby with us. We decided not to find out the gender, to surprise us. I don’t mind. I would love a girl as much as I’d love a boy.

Nothing can hurt me.

Then the sirens go off.

There is shouting and screams.

DANTE!

I hear her voice before I feel the pain. The pain follows shortly afterwards, making me double over when I feel it. For a moment, I can’t feel or hear anything else.

“There is a rogue attack on the western border,” Liam yells. He has begun to take over more tasks from his father and is currently in charge of training the warriors. He bellows out commands and sends our warriors off immediately. “Dante, what happened!?”

I grasp my side. “It’s Maria,” I yell. “She wanted to visit the infirmary.”