Harlan leaned forward on the log he was sitting on. “Tell us more about our parents,” he said. “I want to know everything.”

Phelan took a deep breath, and told them a story. There were dozens of them, stories that stretched long into the night.

Eventually, rays of sunshine appeared through the trees and it was time for the pack to return home.

“Come back any time,” Phelan said, as they parted.

“I will,” said Argus, then corrected himself. “We will.”

Chapter 12

The pack made it to school on time the next morning with the assistance of Phyllis. She asked each of them where they’d been all night, but no one was saying and Phyllis knew enough not to ask twice. More questions would have gotten her nowhere since Noble had instructed the pack not to mention anything about Phelan just yet. If the others felt the same way Noble did, then their meeting with Phelan had unleashed a complicated set of emotions within each of them. In Phelan they had found one of their own who knew their parents and could tell them and show them things Ranger Brock could never even imagine. But Ranger Brock and Phyllis had taken them in and raised them, had shown them love and compassion when they were at their most vulnerable. If Phelan knew they’d been taken in by Ranger Brock, then why hadn’t he come for them, retrieved them and taken them back to the forest to be among their kind?

So many questions…

Noble hoped they would all be answered in time, either by Ranger Brock or Phelan. Between the two of them lay all the facts and when the time was right the pack would have the answers they were looking for. But not now. Right now they had other things to deal with…like high school.

“We’re here!” said Phyllis in something close to a shout.

Mumblings and grumblings from throughout the car as the four members of the pack woke up.

“Already?” asked Harlan.

“You sure this is our school?” Argus chimed in.

Tora and Noble said nothing, taking the opportunity instead to rub the sleep from their eyes. The drive to school took only twenty minutes, but Noble felt like he’d been asleep for hours.

“Don’t skip any classes,” Phyllis said as they piled out of the car.

“We won’t,” answered Noble, already wondering which ones he could afford to miss in favor of sleep in the boys locker room.

“I’m sure,” Phyllis said skeptically. When the car doors were all closed she waved and drove off.

The pack turned and began the long walk up the school steps. There was still ten minutes before classes started and they would need every one of them to get to where they were going.

They’d nearly reached the front doors when Jake MacKinnon and six of his toadies suddenly appeared from behind a stand of cedar bushes.