Prologue III.
A year with the pack comes and goes. I’ve turned nineteen and gotten used to life in the big city. I like to press my hand against the floor to ceiling windows of our apartment, watch the people walking the street under. From this height, they look like ants.
Sometimes I make up backstories for them.
A young man with a hunched back just had to climb out of the sewers.
A woman holding a little boy’s hand is coming back from a play date, where she fell in love with her child’s friend’s single father.
The man carrying an absurdly large umbrella is preparing to use it as a weapon in a bar brawl tonight.
Mostly, I just like to watch. I doubt many of those people are doing anything so exciting. They’re just living regular, mundane lives. Going to work, or heading out to see a friend. Sometimes, I wonder if I would have been one of them if I hadn’t found my pack.
I don’t think about it for too long. It gives me a tightness in my chest, imagining a world where I didn’t meet my scent matches.
I might have been down there, one of the ants like everyone else.
Instead, I get to watch them from above, safe in the home my pack’s made for me, blanketed by their scents.
My phone ringing makes me jolt. That doesn’t happen often. I peel my hand away from the window, rubbing at the fingerprints left on the glass with my sleeve before I head towards the table I’ve dropped my phone on.
“Hi mom,” I barely look at the contact before I answer. My alphas tend not to call during work hours, leaving only one person that would be video calling me. I smile at her struggle to position the phone correctly.
We still haven’t gotten the chance to go visit her, but my pack’s bought her tickets to come to us a few times. Cole tried to teach her to hold the phone closer, but she just can’t resist holding it as far away as she can and squinting into it.
“Ariana, dear! You look happy,” my mom chirps into the phone. She doesn’t wait for a response before she begins chatting my ear off. Luckily, I’ve become quite practiced at staying quiet and nodding or smiling when needed. It gives me time to think about her comment.
Of course I look happy. Isn’t that a given? I’m the luckiest girl in the world, after all.
Aren’t I?