Arrival

            Although the alphas weren’t due to come for a couple weeks, I heard about them constantly whenever I wandered out of the house I shared with the other teachers.  The school children were just excited to have new members joining the pack.  We had so few members, even a few additions were something to look forward to.  And Heechul’s wasn’t the only pack that had responded.  So far, we knew of at least one other alpha coming as well. 

            Kangin was coming from a neighboring pack.  We’d met him before.  He was good friends with our pack leader, being close in age, and was rather quiet, but he was a damn good hunter and he was rather intimidating when he wanted to be.  He would help immensely with security.  He was joining the pack in the coming days.

            Unfortunately, none of the talk revolved around Kangin.  As I mentioned, we’d all seen him before and he was older, so the omegas weren’t as thrilled about his arrival as they were about the prospect of two younger alphas coming.  Some of them remembered Kyuhyun vaguely, but were too young at the time to have interacted with him much.  The other alpha, Changmin, had never been to our pack before. 

            Going to the dining hall bothered me the most.  The unmated omegas spoke about them all the time.  In most packs, betas made up the majority of the pack, by at least half to two-thirds of the members.  The next most numerous group were usually alphas, so not all alphas ended up mated to omegas.  The rest found omega mates outside the group, joined another pack to mate, or sometimes even mated betas or other alphas, although more rare.  That was simply not the case in our pack.  Few pups were born after the onslaught until very recently and, for whatever reason, there were almost no alphas in the litters.  Of the older children that had survived the onslaught, not many of them were alphas either.  Our pack is an anomaly, but that isn’t a good thing.  Alphas are the pack’s means of protection and gathering food.  Without a large group of mature alphas, we’re vulnerable to attack.  We have just been lucky, these last twenty-some years, to have faithful allies beside us.

            This lack of alphas benefited the other packs around us, however.  It was a good opportunity for their alphas—who hadn’t found mates—as long as they were willing to join our smaller pack.   I understood the appeal.  No wonder Kyuhyun wanted to return.

            I should have just avoided the dining hall altogether.  I knew better.  But one night, I wandered in after the initial rush and there were few people left sitting at the tables.  It was quiet and I sat down with a notebook, jotting down notes for class.  But I should have taken it as a warning when I took a bite of dinner and tasted a hint of mint in the sauce.  It should have known that my luck was about to turn for the night.

            “What is your brother like, Heechul?  Is he handsome?” Victoria asked the lead omega, sitting at the end of the long table. 

            Victoria had been rescued by our clan only a couple years ago along the border.  She was a little older than the nineteen and twenty-year-old omegas that were finally coming of age.  She was twenty-three, but she fit in well with the pack.  Unlike many of the younger omegas, she was far smarter and wittier.  It was clear that she’d been well educated in her old pack, but she never spoke of her past.  From what we could tell, she had narrowly escaped a life little better than that of ion.  Leeteuk and Sungmin found her running for her life from a group of betas and a couple alphas that ran together, but weren’t part of any known pack.  Leeteuk and Heechul adopted her, although she was technically an adult, because she could not remain unchaperoned as an unmated omega.  Honestly, she was the only omega I could tolerate.  If Kyuhyun was wise, he would fall for her.

            “He’s very good looking!  Not as good looking as me, of course.  No one is.  But it certainly runs in the family,” the lead omega explained.  “He’s tall, has dark eyes, a stunning voice.  Am I forgetting anything, Wook?”

            I looked over at the pair, a little surprised to be drug into the conversation.  “That sounds right, although I don’t think I heard your brother sing when he was here last.”

            “You heard his y voice though.”

            I thought it wise not to respond to that comment.  Kyuhyun’s voice was incredibly y, especially when he’d moaned my name in bed, but I wasn’t about to tell the omegas about it.

            “I will make him sing for us,” Heechul assured the young woman.  “Both he and his friend Changmin have beautiful singing voices.  I think you may like his friend just as well, Victoria.  He is less shy than my brother, although Kyuhyun seemed to open up to Ryeowook when he was here visiting before.”

            “We are very close in age,” I reminded the lead omega.  “And Kyuhyun was the first person I’d ever met my own age.  In fact, he’s still the only person I’ve ever met my age.”

            “He and Changmin are only a couple weeks apart in age.  We used to refer to them as twins because they always hung out together.  They’re the best of friends,” Heechul informed us.  “So, you will now have two people in the pack your age.  I hope you won’t be too jealous of Min though.  You’ll have to share Kyuhyunnie this time.”

            I went back to jotting notes.  “I doubt Kyuhyun wishes to spend much time with me at all.  He’s probably eager to meet our newly matured omegas.”

            “That’s not the impression he gave me in his letter.”

            My pencil scribbled across the page.  I swallowed hard and looked back at the lead omega.  “W-what did Kyuhyun say in his letter?”

            “He asked all about you.  He wanted to know if you were still in the pack, if you were still teaching,” the omega said, clearing his throat, “and if you were still unmated.”

            “He did?”  I could barely hear my own thoughts over my racing heartbeat.  “What did you tell him?”

            “I didn’t have time to write him back.  He’ll be coming in a few days.  We weren’t sending anyone else to my old pack before he’d be leaving, so he’d never get my response anyway,” the lead omega explained.  “I’m sure he’ll enjoy asking you all his questions when he arrives.”

            “Is your brother a good hunter?”

            “All our alphas are well trained.  Our elders teach them well,” Heechul assured the omega.  “But Kyuhyun is one of the alphas who teach the young how to hunt, so he will be teaching at the school, just as Wook does.”

            “He will?” I asked, thrown off by the news.  “No one told me that.”

            “Well, we’ve been having our elders train the younger alphas, but they’re getting a little old.  Don’t you think?  It’s time we let them retire and take it easy in their old age.  After all, it sounds like they had a rough life.”

            “All the elder alphas lost their mates in the onslaughts.  It’s strange that there aren’t any older omegas in the pack,” Victoria noted.  “They will all be lonely in their last years.”

            Heechul shook his head.  “They pop in at the den to see me and the pups to entertain themselves.  Trust me, it will be nice to have a couple more mated omegas around here.”

            I stood up and hurried away when I noticed a couple more omegas headed our direction.  Seohyun and Taeyeon were two of the youn