H.A.

3

International guests were able to sleep late as the presentations started in the afternoon, but I was already up at five AM and glimpsed a departing, sleepy Noël before going out for a run in the nearby park.

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The first day of the congress was utterly boring. All the guest speakers where local college or university professors with monotonous voices, who barely spoke a word of English and had nothing new to say. The receptionist would do way better than all of you, I thought absentmindedly. I nearly fell asleep a few times and the older lady next to me gave me disapproving glances throughout the entire afternoon. And though I was happy to have something to do, I felt pressure build up in my shoulders the closer I got to my birthday.

I'd delayed thinking about the decision I had to make a week already and now I had less than two left. As I thought about it again, I felt all my muscles tense. What could I do? Could I give up the pack? Every fibre of my mind screamed NO at the simple thought of it. Not only had my parents worked hard to get the pack where it was today, I loved the pack, every family had its quirks and the children could be a pain in the ass, but they were my family. Putting them through a merge meant they would have to relocate. If and when that happened, it would mean tearing apart entire families, no pack would ever willingly take in a whole pack.

No, I had to find another solution.

Thinking to what my mother had suggested I felt the urge to gag. She, who'd waited for more than a decade after meeting my father, to conceive me, now wanted me to go and find someone, anyone, to produce an offspring, regardless of my feelings? I felt exceedingly frustrated. To top it off, my father had agreed to the whole thing. When I'd heard, I'd been beside myself. I'd holed myself up in my room and cried the whole night till tears ran out and my throat was dry like the desert.

I felt tears well up again as I thought of this solution and quickly and quietly left the room, slipping into the bathroom.

Securely inside a cubicle I left out a strangled sound. I felt relieved, it was however short-lived. I still had no solution. How could I ever bear the child of someone other than my mate? What if I did, then met my mate? He would reject me without a doubt, even if I was an alpha. Though in human society, having children with more than one partner was accepted, in shifter society it was taboo. Simply because one had a mate.

But what choice did I have? Could I do it? Would the pack accept a child conceived in such an unorthodox manner? They would, for the sake of the pack, they would accept it... eventually. But I would be shunned. I would be unable to lead the pack. Even if I was capable of doing so now, how would I feel after impregnating myself with a sperm donor? No, I would be unfit to lead the pack. An alpha had to be a strong creature, someone who held pride in his very being. Having a child without a father, as a female alpha, would leave me humiliated beyond repair.

As I sat there on the pot in the ladies room, tears streaming down my face while I sobbed quietly, I realised that my parents hated me.

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I sat there for a while longer in silence, then got myself together and went upstairs to my room. Luckily the stairwell was rarely, if ever used and I got to my room unnoticed. I went into my bathroom and cleaned my face before reapplying my makeup and getting back to the conference hall.

I'd missed the rest of the previous presentation, the short break that followed and nearly the entire following presentation. The woman I'd sat next to had not bothered to keep my seat free so I had to stand the remainder of the ongoing presentation. I was surprised to see the speaker was a young man, late twenties - early thirties, and, I looked to the program leaflet, CEO of a reputable publishing company in Dublin, Connor O'Brian. He was a guest-speaker, probably just flew in or here on business, as I hadn't seen him yesterday at the reception. I let out a soft chuckle.