Gray Valley

t w e n t y - s e v e n

"WEST," I called out, spotting him in the garden, sitting among the long blades of grass. He turned to see me, at once and smiled gently.

"Weslyn," he stretched out his arm, calling me over to him. "Over here."

"How are you doing?" I asked, as I crossed my legs and sat on the ground next to him.

"I feel... Light," he murmured.

"That's good, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess." For a few minutes, we both sat silently, breathing in time with the stillness of the garden.

"I'm going to meet a Brown Wolf today," I announced, carefully waiting for his reaction.

"Lucian?" He asked, staring at me. "You're meeting with Lucian Bronze?"

"No..." I hesitated. The way West spoke of him; it sounded as if they were friends. "Alpha Bronze has fallen ill. I am meeting his Beta."

"I..." he trailed off, a lost experience on his face. "He was a friend..." I sighed deeply.

"West, I need you to tell me about it," I told him. "About this agreement you had with him."

"Why, so you can hate me even more?"

"I don't hate you."

"Well, you should."

"For the love of Luna, just tell me," I urged. "I have to know what it is, West. It's for the safety of the pack. I am the Alpha, you know? Now, it's my responsibility to protect them all."

"Our father made peace with the Alpha before Lucian. It was basically a peace treaty to keep to ourselves. The Gray Wolves weren't to associate with the Brown Wolves; and they weren't allowed to either. When father..." he took a sharp intake of breath.

By Luna... It would be hard for him. Hard to speak of our father. My chest tightened, as I placed my hand over his.

"West, you don't have to say it."

"But it's true," he muttered. "I killed our father."

"It wasn't your fault. You may have went too far, but you had every right to be angry. As the oldest child, you should've been named future Alpha at birth. But when I was born, I was much younger than you. It wasn't right. Not when you were... Wait, how old are you?"

"I'm 24."

"What?" He looked much older; at least 28 or 29 years old. "I mean, you don't look like it."

"Gray Wolves grow fast, early on in our lives," he explained. "But we barely age later on. We still have a human life span, though."

"So, Twilight got that part right?" I asked, smiling slightly.

"You could say that."

"But..." I realised after a minute. "That would mean you were only 16, back then."

"It was long after the first time I shifted," he replied, staring at the overgrown grass.

"You were a teenager," I muttered. "You were younger than me, you know?" He nodded gently. "I think they would've forgiven you for all the wrong-doings you've done, West."

"Who?"

"Mother and father. If they'd known how hurt you were, they would've understood. But they didn't. They didn't know you well enough to sense how you felt. Our parents weren't the best people, were they?"

"No one is perfect," West whispered.

"I couldn't agree more... But what was your agreement with the Bronze Pack, West?"

"Three years after I became Alpha, I found Bryan and Bryanna. They were only 12 at the time, but their life was so painful; they chose to be turned. I brought them to the Grayson home and commanded William to bite them... The Brown Wolf pack, which was named McLean Pack hack then, had laid low for a while. I was the teenage boy, who had slaughtered his own father. Obviously, they were too scared to act out against me. But eventually, they confronted me for breaking my father's treaty by keeping Bryan and Bryanna in the Luna Pack... The fact that they had a new Alpha may have had something to do with their sudden courage."

"Lucian."

"That's right, Weslyn. He wasn't like most Brown Wolves. The way he didn't back down; his confidence; how he carried himself... I took an instant liking for him. It was as if he was born to be a leader."

"Did he ever tell you how was he turned?" Someone that powerful... He couldn't have been turned easily.

"He never told me that," West admitted. "But together, we made an agreement so the peace could remain; even with Bryan and Bryanna on our side..."

"What did you have to do in return?" I asked him, for what seemed like the tenth time, that day.

"I looked up to him, actually. I thought he would treat me better than our father... But Lucian was much worse, of course. I agreed to his terms, thinking he had my best intentions in mind... But I was such a idiot," he stated. "In return for keeping the two of them..." West went on in a low voice. "I had to turn one human..."

My whole world spun out of control. No. Forcing that much pain onto a human? It was something I wouldn't and couldn't do.

"I had to turn one human," he repeated, his face grim. "Every single full moon."