Raven's DarkNess | ✔

Chapter Nine

In the four days I had spent cooped up in this room under the banner of 'recovery', I spent most of my time looking out of the window.

There were a lot of kids in this pack and they seemed to always be playing. That was the only noise I ever heard in this pack; children's happy cries and wolves howling. It was so very different from my pack.

In my pack, the Shadow Night pack, kids played in parks but not as much as kids here because they were mostly invested in arcades, adventure parks and video games. Plus also, there's a lot of competition for spots in the best schools especially high schools and universities so there is an obsessive study culture. Growing up in my pack, the only goal is to get rich. And if you are already rich (like my family was) then get richer.

So well, how do you get rich the legal way? You go into an accredited university. This means either attending one of the various acclaimed universities in my pack or attending university at the Goldstone pack or the Crystal Heart pack. As crappy as the Goldstone pack was, their universities were beyond lit. It was almost impossible to secure a spot there and if you did manage to, the fees were exuberant or else you were some genius and got a scholarship. If you graduated from a university in the Goldstone pack then a top-ranking job is my pack was left waiting for you.

The Crystal Heart pack was also a very good option but it was more preferred for the arts.

This is why, in my pack, parents force their kids to study a lot from a very young age. They want them to secure that university spot under any circumstance that sometimes it becomes an obsession.

I was a victim of this system.

My parents were obsessed with me securing a spot at a Goldstone university for either architecture, so I could run my father's architectural business empire or software engineering. From as young as I could remember, it was drilled into my head to study and that too, years ahead of the recommended scheme for my age group.

My father was going to secure my spot at the top engineering university in the Goldstone pack no matter what. Even if he had to bribe them to get me in, he would. In fact, he had a trust fund set up just for that university and by that, I don't mean only the tuition, I mean some funds were kept aside for bribery too. My family was wealthy anyway so both my parents could afford it.

Regardless, I hated how my childhood revolved around grooming me to become this technological genius. All those things I was forced to learn from expensive tutors that my parents lavished on to make me better just to achieve their university dream for me which for a long time in my childhood and early teenage years was so drilled into me that it was my only dream for myself too.

That's why being in this pack and watching these children happy and running around constantly with all the joy in the world, I feel happy knowing that they're living their childhood outdoors instead of cooped up in a library. This pack's doing something right with childhood development I guess.

I sat up straighter in my window seat, not liking how I was covered so much in this tunic and pants. For such bogus clothing, the material was surprising light and didn't even feel like I was wearing anything but I couldn't stand the granny panties. Why were they so big? It felt weird feeling the waistband pinching at the belly button.

When the door opened, I turned. It was Tinley with two kerosene lamps in her hands. She was probably here to light the candles in my room. She did that every night and I hated the candlelight. It made the room hot and stuffy but if I opened the window then the candles would blow out and I'd have to relight them again.

"How are you?" Tinley asked and I answered fine, looking back out of the window. How was I supposed to be? I'm supposed to be seducing Alpha Enzo but I hadn't seen him in days and I wasn't exactly allowed to leave this room because I apparently needed to recover. My bruises were still there but the aches had dulled yet, I was stuck here.