Chapter 6: First Day Part 2 (written on April 19th, 2020)
My next class was health, and it was taught by my mom. If that wasn't bad enough, I shared it with Can-do. I made sure after I walked into the den that I sat far away from him, but before Mom could get to the board, he approached me.
"Hey, Kate, I'm sorry about Humphrey." I wasn't in the mood to listen to him, but he seemed genuine. "If it makes ya' feel any better, I'm not allowed to advance to Alpha. Even if I graduate Alpha School, I can't be an Alpha until Winston says so."
"Yes, it does make me feel better," I said to him smugly.
"Can we start over?"
"I imagine your parents gave you quite the spanking."
"Everyone in the pack knows about it, okay." I could tell that Can-do was embarrassed and shameful. I never thought I would have any kind of sympathy for him. "I ruined my family name," he added. I thought it was enough.
"Look, I can't be your friend, but we're packmates... so you can count on me to be your comrade." I patted his back which he took as my acceptance.
"I'll take it."
Using the writing tool, my mom drew an outline of the body of a wolf.
"This is who we are. We are wolves. You may notice the various features of our bodies. There are our hind limbs, our forelimbs, our tails, our paws, our muzzles, our teeth, our eyes, our ears, and so on. All of these features have a purpose. Some of them are pretty obvious but some are not. Throughout this course, I will teach you how to fully unlock the features of your body. Knowing your full potential could mean the difference between life and death. I will also teach you about the parts of your body that you cannot see, the stuff on the inside. It may be gross, but this is stuff you need to know. That includes mating."
I could hear everyone in the room groan and make sounds of disgust. I winced as I knew my mom too well. "Oh, you guys hate it now but come spring and all of you won't hesitate to hump whatever's in front of you!"
"Ew! Why is your mom so gross?" said Can-do. I rolled my eyes and stiffened my lips. I remembered what my dad told me about friendship and how they made you who you are. If they subscribed to that idea, they weren't doing a good job at helping me make these life-defining friends.
After health class was, thankfully, lunch. After my mom, I assumed everyone had lost their appetites, but the opposite couldn't be more true. In the center of the Learning Center was a flat boulder called a butchering stone. We drooled as we watched an Alpha divide some caribou, staining the stone red. The adults ate before us. It seemed cruel, but they told us that the highest-level wolves in a group always ate first. The order of who eats was decided by the wolf hierarchy. I had an idea of what that was, but my next class, Wolfish, would go in-depth.
I would learn that Wolfish class not only taught our language, which was West Canadian Wolfish, but customs that defined our society. My instructor here was a wolf named Dwight.
"From the lowest to the highest ranking," he began, "the wolf hierarchy goes like this: you have the unranked pups, Junior-age and Senior-age, then the Omegas-in-training, the Omegas, then there's the Prime Omega, and then there are the Betas, which are you guys. Betas are the Alphas-in-training. After Betas are the Alphas, but there are many types of Alphas. The lowest-level Alphas are the ordinary ones. Above them are the Alpha members of the royal family that aren't the pack leader or his mate." He then gestured to me. "Kate will be one of them. Above them is the second-in-command. At the moment, we don't have a second-in-command, but I hear that Winston may choose one of the Betas to become one." I immediately thought of Hutch. Ever since Hutch suffered a serious back injury when he was younger, my dad had personally kept an eye on him. Hutch was like the son he never had. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he became a second-in-command. "Above the second-in-command," our instructor continued, "is the pack leader's mate, which is Eve. After that is the pack leader, which currently is Winston. The pack leader is the highest authority in the territory. You are bound to any wolf with a higher level than you, and Winston has the final say."
Our instructor then went on to tell us that his entire curriculum consisted of the teaching of language, laws, wolf etiquette, and other customs. One of the big customs he wanted us to remember was the one that banned romantic relationships between the two main ranks, Alpha and Omega. "To promote specialization," he explained, "Alphas and Omegas cannot be together. Besides, Omegas are inferior. You wouldn't want to be with them anyway. So repeat after me: we can eat together, but we can't howl together."
"We can eat together, but we can't howl together," we repeated.
"Good."
Next was my history class. Our instructor for this class gave us his own overview of the material ahead. He told us that we had to learn all twenty-eight years of the history of the Valley.
"The history of the Valley is divided into seven eras: the Canisian Era, the Grand Boom, the First Great Peace, the Black Mountain War, the Second Great Peace, the War of the Divide, and the Age of Aggression. Some of these eras may invoke some emotions, but I'm not here to make you subscribe to one ideology or another. My job is to simply and objectively lay down the events and the reasons why said events occurred."
"Alpha School is going to feel so long if we have to learn so much useless information," I heard someone say quietly. To an extent, I could sympathize with my classmate. Classes such as history, math, Wolfish, and health only seemed to be the appetizer. The main course or cornerstone of Alpha School was the P.E. class. Everyone knew that and wolves who hadn't been to the class yet couldn't wait for it. That included me. I wasn't quite as excited as everyone else since I knew both my parents taught P.E., but every other class paled in comparison. Every Beta wanted to learn how to hunt. It was the thing that practically determined whether or not you were a true Alpha.