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“What did you say? I saw the family tree thing. Casey brought one home too.”
“Valarian added you, Macey, and the girls on it,” I smile.
“Damn-well better have! I am the best Auntie anyone could ask for,” Zoe states, and I chuckle.
“Did they go down easy tonight?”
“Casey had a tummy ache, but Valarian went down easily. He asked when you would be home, and he was digging around in your room earlier, too. He took some pictures from the photo album.”
I nod. “Yeah, I told him he could.”
Zoe chews her lip nervously. “He overheard you on the phone earlier—asked what being marked meant.”
“What did you tell him?” I ask, wishing I could stop time and keep Valarian from growing up and asking the questions he's bound to ask.
“That mates mark each other,” Zoe says, shrugging.
“Shit.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, thinking of how many new problems I’ve had since Valen came back into my life. He's been nothing but a series of unending problems. I didn’t blame her for answering, though. What else could she say?
Zoe sighs. “Too smart for his own good sometimes, that boy is.”
* * *
Two Days Later—Monday
We were running late for school drop-off this morning, and Zoe and I both forgot it's crazy hair day. Macey reminded us when we walked out this morning and saw the other kids' hair undone and messy, so we detoured to buy some spray-in hair color. Pulling up at the local grocery store, Zoe runs inside before returning with one can of electric blue hair color and one calledglitter bomb. We pull both kids from her little yellow Volkswagen. Casey giggles excitedly as her hair is instantly changed to blue. Valarian, however, pouts.
“I don't want to look like a smurf,” he says.
“Zoe said it was the only color they had left. It's for a good cause; it's to raise money for the children's hospital and for you kids to have fun,” I tell him.
“What about the glitter one?” Zoe asks. Valarian crosses his arms, looking at Casey dancing around the parking lot beside the car in her blue hair.
“No, it will make my hair sticky,” he says.
“Come on, Val, just a little,” I beg him. Gosh, this child is difficult sometimes. Would it kill him to be a kid for once?
“You will be the only kid without your hair done,” Zoe tells him, and he side-eyes Casey.
“Please?” I ask.
“Fine, just one line,” Valarian gives in, and Zoe draws a glitter line from the front of his head to the back, then shrugs. You can barely see it in his dark hair.
“Better than nothing,” she says, and we count it as a win.
Climbing back in the car, we head to the school. The school is run-down and derelict looking, covered in graffiti, and there are only around two hundred students total. It angers me that only two streets away on this side of the main street is Alpha Valen's prestigious pack school, and across the road, three other pack schools—good schools. Yet, children of rogues or 'rogue whores' are apparently undeserving of getting a proper education. The least they could allow would be actual teachers—some of ours are barely educated enough to teach. Valarian is smart too; he may even be smarter than some of the teachers. The kids' teachers are waiting out the front, all done up in colorful clothes and crazy hair like the students.
When we enrolled the kids in school, Macey, Zoe, and I were given a tour; they barely had a library and only one old computer to be shared among the kids. We decided to raise money for the school, so for two weeks, half of all hotel sales and room fees went to the school. It was clear the packs weren't going to help, but in a way, they did without knowing it by attending the fair we held at the hotel. We raised enough to buy new laptops, and the library actually looks like a library, half the shelves packed with different books.
“I just had an idea on what the bonus from the Alpha meeting can be used for,” I tell Zoe.
“I still can't believe he paid it.” Zoe laughs.
I point to the run-down play equipment. Macey's daughter Taylor fell off last week and broke her arm after falling through the bridge between the two platforms. “Was going to ask those willing to cater for the event if they would take a double bonus for the night and the rest of the amount goes towards the school playground?”
Zoe smiles. “You know they'll say yes. Look how keen they were for the fair we held; everyone has kids that go here. Thank you, Alpha Valen,” she murmurs.
“Yes, but it's also a big ask for them to put up with the Alphaholes,” I tell her, and she snickers.
