“It’s normal,” said my mother to my father. I was embarrassed to hear it. Mortified, really, or I would have been if not for the fact that at that time of my life, my go-to emotion was anger. Things being what they were, I was annoyed they were talking about me. Deeply annoyed. I gritted my teeth and kept my ears cocked.

“Of course it’s normal,” my father replied. “I only mentioned it because I’m a teeny bit concerned about it in combination with the moodiness. Aren’t you?”

My mother must have lowered her voice to a whisper because I couldn’t hear her response.

A little later, I heard my dad say, “Try to stay calm and breathe, love.”

In some ways, I thought my father was a very brave man for telling my mother to calm down and to breathe. He did it often. He always had. I was not what I considered an expert on women by any means, but to me it seemed ill advised. Every time he did it, I expected that to be the time my mother lost it, but strangely she never did. He seemed to have a calming effect on her. It was one of the many mysteries that existed when it came to my mother and father.

My mother was crippled, but strong. She was the strongest woman I’d ever met. I’m not saying that my father was weak. Physically, he was incredibly strong. It’s just that my father was the definition of a beta. The very definition of it. When I was little, he used to read to me or tell me stories about the White Wolf at night before bed. When he turned out the light, he’d trace his finger around the whorl on the crown of my head and he’d whisper, “Good night, my little beta boy wolf. We’re all betas in this family, aren’t we? That’s because being a beta is the best thing to be.”

In fact, he said it so often that when I was nine, I painted being a beta is the best thing to be on a clay mug and gave it to him for his birthday. He was made up about it and used that mug for years, until he dropped it on the kitchen floor and the handle broke off. After that, he kept it on his desk and stored his pens and pencils in it.