Alpha Instincts

Chapter 3

After leaving my bedroom, I made my way downstairs, through the hallways and into the kitchen. There were a bustle of people gathered around the kitchen bench, all piling food from onto their plates. Most of them would be either heading off to work – we had to earn money, somehow – or getting ready for their boundary walk.

They smiled and greeted me as I came in and I replied with the same enthusiasm before I made my way to the kitchen bench as well. My stomach growled at the look of this morning's breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. I grabbed a plate and started piling on too much food for my own good.

The Pack House had an adjoining dining room where everyone ate their meals. There were three separate round tables that could fit ten people each, but since half the people were missing, much of the space was empty. I settled myself into the seat furthest away from the crowd and was finished with my breakfast within the next ten minutes.

With my stomach satisfied, I thanked the Lydia, one of the pack's chefs, and who also just happened to be my aunt on my father's side, and set off to find Cole.

It didn't take long. I almost ran into him near the staircase landing.

He stopped the collision by reaching out with his hands and steadying my shoulders. He smirked at me, his hazel eyes bright with amusement.

"Ready to go?" I asked him.

"Yep," he cleared his throat. "But we have to wait for–"

A Native American war cry sounded and Cole and I swung around to find Hanna behind the railing on the second floor.

Hanna Lawrence was a hyperactive wild child who was a stranger to shame and was never acquainted with embarrassment. She always spoke her mind, which accompanied her large mouth and sometimes turned to the worst, but I loved her for it. We'd been best friends since birth; Hanna said that it was one of the side effects of being born within a few weeks of each other.

Considering her five foot eleven height, Hanna held her jacket in one hand and jumped over the railing barricade with surprising speed, landing on the first floor with ease. She stood up tall, swung her brown leather jacket over her shoulder that would probably never be worn again, and beamed. "That's how you go down steps, bitches."

I might need to mention that Hanna was going through a phase where she called everyone bitches.

"Let's roll," she stated, walking straight out the open front door.

"You're awfully happy today," I assessed.

Cole snickered. "Yeah. What happened to your fight yesterday with Freya about her getting the last hamburger?"

Hanna spun on her heels so fast I almost didn't catch it. She walked up to Cole and poked him in the chest with one finger. "Hey, Freya knew that I wanted that last burger."

"And so she deserved a black eye as repentance?" Cole put pressure into his sentence.

"She deserved everything she got. She's just lucky her puppy healing came into play and she didn't have to sport that injury to school."

The two faced off, glaring at each other in an ultimate staring competition. Neither blinked nor turned away. A minute had passed and I was still standing there, watching them motionless, neither one willing to lose. I decided on closing the front door behind then and started making my way to Cole's blue car, sitting in the driveway.

Freya and Milo, the two other pack members the same age as us would've taken a different car to school.

I unlocked the car with Cole's keys and sat in the front seat, leaning over into the driver's seat to place the keys in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. When I looked over, Hanna and Cole were still standing there, not having moved an inch.