Not Alone Anymore

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Mabel and Lu were up late in Lu's room, half working and half talking. Lu was laid out on her stomach on her small assembled natural bed, and Mabel was slouched against the wall of the room. Mabel was sorting out her work from afar, as she was human and relied on technology to get her work done. When she was on an important delivery trip of her own, she had her subordinates send her pictures of the letters being sent between packs so that she could decipher what letters needed to be changed, and which were okay to be sent through. There wasn't a ton of mail going from pack to pack, but there was enough that she needed about 30 workers to complete all of the mailing trips for the North American packs. One of the only exceptions to their "no technology" rule was using paper or cloth made by humans, but those were only agreed upon due to the absolute necessity of them. To make up for it, the wolves planted trees at every opportunity they got, and were only allowed to have a certain amount of clothes/materials at a time. Thus, it was only for the most important of messages that werewolves sent out mail, which meant only 30-40 workers were needed to hand deliver all of the mail across North America. And Mabel was in charge of this.

She read through letter after letter, not finding anything wrong with any of the mail. She read through letters from and to the Salmon-Challis National Forest pack, who's alpha was not troublesome, but not quite great either. He kept to himself in the Idaho national forest, but that made it harder to gauge what went on in his pack. The letters never gave anything away about the state of his pack, and Mabel knew she would have to visit soon to check up on them. She looked over some letters pertaining to the Humboldt-Toiyabe pack that was led by an up and coming alpha named Claire. Mabel was ecstatic to have a new female alpha come into the ranks, and that alpha was next on her list to try and work out some sort of agreement, as she was doing with Collin. Her thoughts must have been noisy, because Lu took that moment to mention the very man she was thinking about.

"So," she started, "what's going on with Collin? You must be making some great headway with him if you've got him to talk this much."

Mabel looked up from her phone at that. "Why? Is he not a talker or something?"

Lu's eyes widened slightly before she replied, "No, not really. I've just never seen him talk to anyone as much as he talks to you. In all honesty, I've never seen him this much period. He never really comes out of his office. I don't even know if he has an actual cabin, or if he sleeps in the office when he's done for the day." Lu shrugged, "Maybe all it took was a hot girl to bring him out of his shell."

Mabel grinned absentmindedly at her friend's joke. "You know I get all the Alphas' attention," she commented back, her heart not really in it. Before Lu could jab back, Mabel continued, "Why, though? He said something earlier today about how the pack doesn't really like him, and at one point he mentioned that you guys are afraid of something, and I think he was talking about himself. I thought he was joking because, honestly, who could be afraid of the guy? He's too quiet and... gentle to be afraid of."

Looking at Lu's pinched face, it seemed that maybe there was more to the alpha that Mabel needed to know.

"Uh, do you not feel anything when you're around him?" Lu timidly asked, wondering how it was possible her friend hadn't asked about it sooner.

Mabel started at the question. Feel anything? Like a crush or something? Her friend had to mean something else. "What do you mean 'feel anything'?".

Lu shifted to a sitting position. "I know you're human so things might be different for you, but you don't feel any aura coming from him at all? Nothing like a dark cloud that hangs over the guy?"

Mabel leaned forward from her slouched position. "What are you talking about? What, is he possessed or something? No, I've never felt a 'dark cloud' following him around like a cartoon." Her friend didn't believe in this stuff, did she?