Chapter Three
My mother shook her head in disgust. “All those students.” She couldn’t hold back her anger.
“I’ll transfer you the money.” My father was about to hang up, but I had to stop him.
“Daddy? Can you round it up to five million?”
I could picture him throwing his head back, and his laughter rang through the phone. “Why?”
“Because. I have a plan. I want to make a few investments. That way, I can pay back the pack and handle the rest of the cost for the next four years at university.”
My father’s laughter grew even more. “Smart girl. I did the same thing.” I knew he was talking about his investments he made when I was a kid. Everyone thought he was just making good decisions, but he knew how it would turn out.
A second chance at life does that. But remembering everything is hard, and he took a few hits. But now, now it was my turn to use my first life to my benefit.
“Yeah.” I smiled.
“Ronnie will send it over right now.”
“Thank you, daddy.”
“You are welcome, pup. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I hung up the phone and turned to Mrs. Sandlewood. “Okay. So I am super sorry, but I think this will be a lot of work for you.” I grimaced, but she smiled.
“This is something I am more than happy to do.” She ran to the filing cabinet and grabbed stacks of papers. “This is going to take a while. I can load all the cards, assign them to each student, and then have you pay before I activate them all.”
“Sounds good.” I stood. “I also want one hundred thousand on my card. That way, if I need to do something, I have the extra money I need, and if it rolls over, so be it.”
Mrs. Sandlewood jotted down a note and nodded. “Okay. Give me probably an hour. Go look for your classes, your dorm, check everything out and then head on back. We can process everything then.”
“Okay.” I grabbed my purse, my mother and I walked out of the office and found Vince standing outside of the glass. “Hello Alpha Vince.” I smiled up at him.
“Hello Amy.” His voice held a barely contained rage. “Hello Ainsley.”
“Alpha.” My mother smiled as we skirted him and continued down the corridor. Once we were a ways away, my mother turned to me and she smirked. “He was livid. Did you see the vein pulsing in his forehead?”
“I did.” I laughed as we walked out of the main building. “Let’s go find the students bringing people around to give us the layout.”
“Sounds good.” My mom wrapped her arm around mine as we walked towards the dorms. We walked around the campus, searching for the correct building, when we turned a corner and saw a few people sitting at a table with a sign.
I pulled my mother towards the table, and the smiling girl sitting there. “Hi there.”
“Hey.” I gave a small wave. “We are looking for a guide.”
The cute girl smiled wider. “You came to the right place.” She looked down at her clipboard. “What is your name?”
“Amy Maclean.” I smiled at the few others standing around.
The girl’s smile faltered. “You are an Alpha.”
“Yes.” I tried to meet her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at me anymore. “Is there something wrong?”
“No.” She rushed. “Not at all.” She smiled at him, but it felt forced. “Clint. Another Alpha for you to bring around.” A big man, obviously Clint, stood and walked over to us.
“Clint?” I started and put my hand out.
“Yes Alpha. I’m Beta Clint from the Shadowclaw pack back east.”
“Nice to meet you, Beta. How’s your father?” I smiled as I pulled back my hand.
Clint stumbled over his words. “My father?”
“Yeah Clive. How’s your father? Last I saw him, he was set on retiring and taking your mom on a travel vacation.”
Clint’s eyes widened. “You know my dad?”
“Of course I do. My father always brought me to the Alpha summits where I would get to meet everyone.” I raised my shoulder. “Your father was always super nice to me, and didn’t treat me as ‘some Alpha’. He saw me, if you know what I’m saying.”
Clint smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. He was always an amazing dad.”
“Was?”
Clint cleared his throat. “Him and my mother died last year, after the summit. They left for their first vacation. My dad called it my training. And then they were just gone.” Clint rubbed the back of his head. “And I inherited the Beta role.”
“I’m sorry. I know there is no way to make it any better, but your dad always talked about you. He was very proud of the man you were becoming and he was confident in you taking over his position.”
Clint nodded, then gestured towards the building. “Let’s go.”
“This building holds the dorm rooms. It's a co-op, so everyone will be in the same building. Instead of organizing us by gender, they organize us by year. First years are on the top floor with the last on the bottom floor.” Clint looked back and smiled. “The elevator has been out for…well I’ve been here for three years already and it was out for years before me.” He laughed.
“The stairs are over here.” He brought us over to the main staircase and headed up.
“What program are you in?” I followed him up the five flights of stairs.
“I wanted to go into business, like most Alpha’s and Beta’s. Help strengthen the pack’s standing.” I nodded.
“Yeah. A lot of packs fall into that line of thinking.” I tried to hedge my bet, but Clint laughed.
“Yeah, you sound like my father.” He looked back at me with a smile as he turned to the last flight of stairs. “He pushed me into computer science. Said it was the new way to protect the pack, and potentially make money.”
I reeled. “My father gave me the same push.” Clint met my eye as he made it to the landing and turned around with his hand out. I furrowed my brow. “I need your papers.”
I handed him everything. “He’s a smart man. This entire program teaches us how to structure security systems, how to program and create apps that the humans use. Anything is possible with this program, and only our packs benefit from it.”
I nodded. “Exactly.” He nodded down the hallway, and we followed. “Any pointers you can give me?”
“A ton. But if I have to be honest, the only one that would make any difference would be to go to every class.” He chuckled. “You miss one day, and you are completely lost. You learn so much every single class here.”
“Got it.” He headed down the hallway, looking down at one of my papers.
“Here you are. Alpha room, single with its own bathroom.” He whistled and wiggled his eyebrows. “Fancy.” I laughed. “Not many get this kind of treatment.”
My mom jumped in. “I requested it. Sometimes Amy’s wolf…”
“I just started shifting, and my wolf is bigger than most. And very territorial.” I finished, causing my mother to laugh.
“She found out her step sister was borrowing her clothes. She washed everything with descenting spray, had her carpets cleaned, replaced her bed completely, and changed her routine.” Clint’s eyes widened as my mother nodded.
“Okay then. That checks out.” He smiled, and he pointed to the knob. “I assume you have your key?”
I nodded and opened the room. We walked in and checked everything out.
The room was white, bare, and boring. On the left-hand side, there was a door, and a desk.
On the far wall stood a single bed, on the right-hand side, was a double sliding door.
I slid the door open to a closet with a built-in dresser on one side and room to hang things on the other.
The bathroom was clean, with a small vanity, shower and toilet. There was a shelf over the toilet to home extra toiletries. It was nice, but I noticed there was no bathmat, no shower curtain, no towels. “It’s empty.”
“Yeah, bring everything. It’s listed on the papers, but they miss things.” He slid a pen out of his pocket and wrote a few things on the list to bring. “Make sure you bring everything on this list. Or else you will be scrambling.”
I nodded as I closed the door. I looked at my mother as she took back the list of things to bring and sighed. “We just did all that shopping for your room and now we have to do it again.”
I laughed. “It’s okay. I can just take most of the stuff from home.”
She shook her head. “The whole point is that you can stay here or at home, not one or the other, and hauling all this stuff back and forth isn’t practical.” She looked down the list and back up at me. “We will go shopping tomorrow.” I just nodded.
“Let’s head to your classes.” Clint looked over my course’s one more. “I luckily know where all of them are, so it won’t take long.”
“Hey, I had a question.” I started as we closed up my room.
“Sure shoot.”
“Who is the unnamed professor?”
Clint threw back his head and laughed. “Ain’t no way I am telling you that.”
“Why not?” I shot him a glare.
“First, because I can’t. He’s an Alpha and commanded our silence. But even if I could, I wouldn’t. That is a surprise worth finding out on your own.”
I groaned as his laughter rang down the corridor.