25 FEBRUARY, THURSDAY, AFTER SCHOOL
"You tell them yourself." I told Alpha Bossy Pants, "Don't get me involved."
I'm just an innocent passer by! Don't talk to me, don't even walk next to me! We were outside the "No photography zone" now so on top of the usual staring, I had to pretend I didn't notice the phones pointed in our direction.
"Right. Not like you have any control over your wolves anyway." Henry smirked at me.
Was that a challenge? Or an outright insult? I almost flared. If he had so much control, why didn't he just make them?
And then I smiled back, "Why? Is the young alpha having trouble with my wolves?"
Henry growled lowly at me, "You're just as bad as they are."
No way, I was quite sure those two were worse!
Boo smiled as we neared the cars, "Since you're asking me so nicely, I'll help you."
Oh, s***. Since when did Boo appear?
"You?" Henry lifted a brow, "What can you do?"
Yeah, Boo. What could I do? You know those two never listened to me.
But Boo was, as usual, the epitome of confidence, "Watch and learn, young alpha."
She smiled as we approached my car, "Fluffy, EJ, Henry tells me you guys are performing next week."
"Hoi, Hoi, alpha. But we sound terrible." EJ announced loudly and unabashedly from his motorbike behind Harvey's car.
"I don't know how we passed the audition." Fluffy turned round from his bike up front, lifted his visor and smiled, "If I didn't know any better, I would have thought the judges were bribed."
I gave Henry a side glance. He adverted his gaze. Nothing to do with him? Oh well, I shrugged, my newest favorite shrug, this one inspired by Lady Amber herself, "Do your best. I'm looking forward to hearing you play."
"Good afternoon, Alpha." Harvey intoned with a polite bow when he opened the car door for me. Boo nodded my acknowledgement.
"Good afternoon, Alpha Henry." Harvey nodded another polite bow because Henry was too near for my good beta to politely ignore.
"Hi, Harv." Henry smirked back.
But I wasn't done with Fluffy and EJ, with all the innocence in the world, Boo offered sweetly, "If you guys can't improve on your own, I'm sure Harvey here will be happy to take time out of his busy schedule to coach you."
Harvey's mouth pressed immediately into a hard line and the two wolves were quick enough to read their beta's cue.
"Alpha is so kind to offer, but that would be uneccesary." Fluffy smiled, "I'm sure big brother beta has enough to do as it is."
I didn't let it go, "If Harvey's busy, I'm sure Ben could coach you too."
Because Boo was pure evil that way.
"Mou! No, Alpha!" EJ bemoaned loudly, "Not the scary beta!"
"Beautiful alpha, please don't worry." Fluffy was alarmed enough to revert to his original weird conversational style, "I assure you, EJ and I will perform very well next week."
"Fluffy! There's no way..." EJ started.
"We will make it work." Fluffy cut off whatever EJ was about to say and beamed his megawatt smile, "Beautiful alpha, please expect an amazing performance from us."
I tilted my head at Henry, "That's how you do it."
Henry shook his head, "What the hell, Sam. There's no way I can do that."
"I suppose that's true." Boo agreed amiably, "You're just not beautiful enough."
Henry's face froze for a moment. It was like he was sure he must've misheard for a second there, and then he realized he didn't. Marcus, who was sure he heard very clearly what I said, coughed indiscreetly.
Oh man, I was having so much fun messing with Henry.
"What.the.hell.Sam." Henry groaned.
I wondered for a moment if Henry would snap right there, but my good beta stepped in, "Is that a Tesla, Alpha Henry?"
Henry instantly forgot I was there, he beamed at Harvey and nodded, "Yes."
Beta Peter opened the dark red car's doors, and they lifted open like falcon wings. Cool.
"Nice." Harvey said, with full male appreciation.
Don't forget your pick up truck back home, Harvey! You're already married to a perfectly good and practical pick up, but you drive around in a midnight blue Porsche "for work". Now you're admiring another man's new car. Tsk, tsk, tsk, my good beta.
"She runs fully electric." Henry boasted.
"Nice. Does she handle well?" Harvey asked, which turned out to be the response that Henry wanted to hear. Henry smiled broadly, "Why don't I let you be the judge of that? Next time you come over, why don't you take her out for a spin?"
Harvey produced one of his wry smiles at that, "Will do, Alpha. Thanks."
Henry smirked back, "Anytime, Harv. See you around."
I got into the car and Harvey shut the door behind me. He got in and buckled up, Boo receded, and everything went back to the usual ride home again, "Did Fluffy and EJ give you a hard time in school again, alpha?"
Eh? Was that what it looked like?
Harvey's brows were creased and his mouth was back in its firm line. Uh oh, I quickly shook my head before they got into trouble with my good beta again.
"No, not at all. But I think those two were giving Henry a hard time." I watched as the traffic around us was redirected so that we can leave the school grounds.
Today, the carpark was pretty crowded. It's like a number of parents were picking up their kids personally. Maybe having shady men (all claiming to be upstanding press associates) stalk young male students and prowl around the school had somewhat ruffled some parental feathers.
The protective feathers of the same parents who had sent their kids to a school with vampires.
"Would it help if I checked in on them sometime this week?" Harvey asked.
Who? The shady men or the vampires? Oh, no. Harvey meant The Last Hurrah. My good beta was following up on my last instructions about helping the band get their act together.
I shook my head, "No need."
But because Boo had not quite receded far enough, "Just tell Ben to do it."
"Understood, Alpha." Harvey continued driving, his usual wry smile had slipped back out now.. If he noticed that Boo had popped out, he didn't comment. As usual, Harvey was quite able to take my wolf in his stride.
Instead he moved on, "How was school today, Alpha?"
So I knew that he was about to start beta-reporting.
"It was boring." I told him, "But fun too."
"I became a new mummy." I showed him my coffee cup, "Zara gave me a baby hamster. It's name is Lucky."
I didn't give him time to digest news of my new motherhood, or the fact that I was keeping my baby inside a coffee cup, "What about you? How was your day?"
"It's been busy, but I've completed my term exams and resolved Ben's latest indiscretion." Harvey reported.
Hahaha, was that what Harvey was going to call it from now on?
I paused, "Which one?"
You know, just to be sure we were talking about the same thing.
"The mess he made at school with the multiple submission of the same paper and also the disqualification of Dean's winning entry for the Reid Inc Interhigh Research Paper." Harvey summized, and then because my good beta was really too smart for his own good, he realised, "Pardon my asking, Alpha, but do you mean to say that Ben might be involved in some other kind of potential trouble?"
Only if you considered moonlighting as an online hacker as potentially troublesome. Aloud, I managed a weak laugh, "Well, you know Ben... When is he ever not potentially in trouble?"
"Understood, Alpha." Harvey nodded, but his creases were back on his brow. Opps, did I just get Ben in trouble?
"It's not a big deal...Ben's still young so he likes to test his limits." I tried to explain on my childhood friend's behalf.
Harvey didn't look particularly swayed, "All the more he should also learn to deal with the consequences of crossing those limits."
"Haven't you?" I was quite sure Harvey would, what young wolf did to test how far or fast or hard he could run, or jump, or whatever it was in front of him?
Harvey'a mouth flattened now, and immediately I regretted asking.
For some reason I imagined Harvey carefree and young, testing his limits, playing in his wolf form, and then something really bad happening... Like the kind where someone got hurt, and Harvey forever blaming himself for it. And from that day on, he would work his butt off to achieve perfection in everything he did, striving relentless to reduce that margin of error to nothing. Because the future of his entire pack rests solely on his shoulders, and he couldn't afford to overstep his limits again. No, never again.
That kind of drama.
So I was rather relieved when Harvey only answered tersely, "Even so, alpha, Ben is your beta and his mistakes could certainly be counted against you and your FAO. It would be best if he were more mindful of his position and status in the lycan world now."
Oh, so it was just for sensible and grown up reasons, not any harrowing childhood experience. I was probably just reading too much of Savy's manga - all the characters had pretty dramatic pasts.
The cool guy was almost kidnapped as a child, but his super nice friend had claimed he was the rich kid instead to save him. To this day, one holds on to unbearable guilt, while the other tries to hide his truamatic past behind an easy smile. His model sister, who was actually adopted, had been abandoned as a small child, so she always felt she had to be cute and lovable to remain wanted by her family.
I suppose the author was going for some kind of dramatic backstory to justify each character's bad decisions. I mean, it was all peachy at the beginning, but by now, with the model sister on the nice guy's lap... It was getting complicated. In fact, I knew by my gut instinct that everything's going to get a lot worse before it got better.
"Alpha?" Harvey called me, for probably the third or fourth time.
"Ah, I was thinking about something complicated." I quickly looked back at him. I should ask Savy to just give me the executive summary and conclusion to the manga to decide if I really wanted to read the other 46 volumes.
"Apologies for interrupting your thoughts, Alpha." Harvey said, and respectfully stopped reporting whatever important pack matter so that I could carry on pondering over the story arcs of my comic books.
I shook my head, "No, it's okay. Were you asking for my input for something?"
And Harvey, with the patience of a saint, repeated everything all over again. I realised he was repeating himself only because he had said, "Please stop me if I am repeating myself."
Naturally, he KNEW very well he was repeating himself. He just didn't know what I knew, so poor beta had to start from the top.
This time, I listened more carefully, because far be it for me to make my good beta repeat the long report all over again. I was such a considerate alpha like that.