"Alex, little munchkin, time for school!"

I called from the kitchen, sipping on the last few drops of my morning coffee. I cringed slightly because of the stale taste of the cooled black liquid. Or brown with loads of sugar in my case.

My mornings were usually hectic, but I tried to get at least one cup in my system. It helped me cope with my bad mood. The routine was also a way of keeping my mind occupied. Alexander would be turning six soon, but whenever I allowed myself, I started to worry about both our futures. Not a single day went by that I don't regret my actions, because I sealed both our fates with such uncertain futures. So I tried to stay as busy as I could, only allowing myself a break whenever I slept. I also tried to go to bed feel absolutely worn out, so these worries couldn't come haunt me in my dreams as much as they would like. This mindset actually wasn't too hard to accomplish, because with a child in the house, there's always some kind of mess to clean up, or laundry to do, or basically anything, the work was really never done.

As Alexander finally sauntered in to the living area from his bedroom, removing the last remnants of sleep from his eyes by rubbing his tiny fists in them, my heart swelled. I could never get over the fact of how unbelievably cute he was, even though he was quickly turning into a big boy now. While I made my over to Alexander, the house phone rang, making me frown. It's rarely ever used, so I was curious about who was calling, but I also knew that if I didn't get Alexander dressed now, he'd be late for schol and I hated how people looked at me whenever that happened.

"Come on little wolf, let's get you dressed." I said, grabbing the clothes I had already picked out the evening before. 

My Mom and I had decided to not tell Alexander much about our heritage yet. His entire life, and even when he was still in my belly, he had never portrayed many signs of the wolf gene. He never growled when he got upset over something and he barely had any temper tantrums, much less than the average pup, according to my Mom. 

The lack of growling could also be because he was rarely exposed to growling males, so he wasn't conditioned that way, because pups did what they see and hear, but that's just one of the things we told ourselves to keep our hopes up.

So, in the end, after a lot of talking and going back and forth between the pros and cons, we decided not to immerse him in our folklore yet. We'd raised him without all that, in case his wolf never showed either. It might have been selfish, or cruel even, to deny him his heritage, but I wanted to protect him from the disappointment I had to endure.

I began dressing him quickly, before I allowed my thoughts to overrun the day, but got disturbed by the ringing of a phone again. This time, it was my cell phone. Again I ignored it, must be coincidence.

Because of these distractions, we were running late anyway, so after dressing my boy and grabbing his back pack, I scooped him up in my arms and hurried out the door, leaving my phone at home in the progress. Getting him to school on time was going to be quite a challenge today.

I tried not to worry about the phone calls, but couldn't help feeling slightly weary, as if bad things were coming.

***

After dropping Alexander off at school, I hurried home so I could find out who had been trying to reach me and my Mom. Suddenly, I worried that it might be my Mom who had gotten hurt somewhere and the hospital was trying to call me, but I quickly erased that thought from my mind. We were in a human city and we kept to ourselves, there was no way she could be sincerely hurt here.

As I was opening the door, I could already hear the phone ringing again. Had whoever had been calling, been trying to reach me since before I left the house?

With dread in the pit of my stomach, I raced my way over to the phone, although my moment felt slugish, like time was slowing down.

"Hello?" I said, unsure of what to expect.

From the corner of my eye, I saw my cellphone's screen lighting up. Someone's trying to reach me here too.

"Hello, this is Tally from Consumers Energy calling, we're just checking if you might be intersted in changing your electrical bill to -"

"Sorry, not interested" I cut her off, realizing I was rather rude to her, as she couldn't help calling at the wrong time, but it's not like I was ever going to see her.

I hung up the phone and raced over to my cell phone, to check the caller. As soon as I did, I felt as though I've been run over by a train. There are a couple of different callers, one being my cousin Luke, the other unknown to me. Judging by the amount of missed calls, this was serious.

Hesitantly, I pressed the call button, waiting for him to pick up, biting my finger nails in anticipation. Whatever the reason was behind these phonecalls, it couldn't be good. They had never tried to contact me like this, these past seven years. We had stayed in touch through emails, where I'd carefully omitted anything that had anything to do with Alexander, dodged any invites to come visit. The subject of my absent wolf had also been a sore one, so we never spoke about that either. 

Instead, we conversed about my education, Luke's beta training, how the pack was quite restless because the Alpha hadn't found his mate yet, but they had never tried to reach me this desperately.

I listened to the monotous ring, until a deep voice picked up and breathed my full name.

"Cassiopeia."

Just the grave tone in which Luke spoke to me, was enough to make my knees buckle. I held on to the counter tops to not fall and made my way to the couch, shaking before I even knew what had happened.

"Luke, what's going on?" I asked, when he didn't go on.

"It's my Dad, he's - There was an attack, you know how the pack is quite restless, and rogues thought we were weak and easy to overrule.. My Dad was part of the first response team. He and several guards controlling that part of the border, were killed." he paused, choking up. "I just wanted to let you know, this isn't something I wanted to tell via email, and who knows how long it'll take for the obituary to reach you, so at least you know now."

There was an unspoken question, hanging in the air, and both of us knew it.

"We'll come." I said, not having to think about it. All my worries of keeping Alexander a secret suddenly seemed so trivial, ridiculous, childish.

"Thank you, Cassie, it means a lot." he answered after a while.

"Anytime, Luke, it's been way too long."

"It has.. I just wished I'd be seeing you under better circumstances, I don't think you'd have ever come back here if it wasn't for this.."

His words hurt, and I suddenly felt even more selfish. 

"I'm so, so sorry Luke, I'm not going to tell you its going to be okay, but things will get better. He was a great beta and and even greater father and uncle, but you are going to be even greater, because you had such an example."

"I'll see you soon, Cassie."

"See you soon.."

He ended the call, but I remained seated for at least five more minutes, letting the news sink in, until I finally called my Mom and told her to come home.

________________________________________________________________________________

Pffsh, this is so long for me. Finally getting into the story. Sorry for the long intro! I have clear plans on where I'm going with this, and even have some sequel/spin off ideas if this would be something people want to read, so I'm excited!

If you like the story, please vote, comment or add to your reading list, but honestly, just seeing people read it already makes my day.