Dear Pen pal, Hello. My name is Wesley. I am 12 years old, and I am in 6th grade at Crescent Lake Elementary in Northern California. I’ll be honest, I am only writing this letter because my teacher said we have to. She said if we don’t, we’ll get an F, and I am not about to fail an assignment and ruin my track record of perfect grades. Plus, my dad would probably ground me or something. Anyway, I don’t really want a pen pal. I have friends here at school already, so why would I need to make friends with somebody who doesn’t even live here, someone who I’ll never actually meet? So, yeah. That’s really all I feel like I need to say to you. There’s no point in telling you anything else about myself, since it’s not like we’ll continue to write to each other, or meet each other, or anything like that. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. It’s nothing against you. Like I said, I don’t even know you. You’re probably a really nice person, and I’m sure that you, just like me, have pl
Dear Wesley, Thank you for being honest with me. It’s not a surprise that you don’t want me as a friend. I’m used to people not wanting me. You see, I’m an orphan. My parents left me when I was a baby. I was only a few days old. I have lived in pretty much one home a year since I was a baby. So I guess that would make it nine homes now, since I am nine years old. And since I move so much, it makes it harder to make friends. I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I just wanted to tell you I know why you did it and even though you didn’t ask for it, I forgive you. I hope you get your A. Haven Kenway **********WESLEY POV The reply letter came in our packhouse mail almost a week after I sent mine. I didn’t realize that I wrote my home address as the return address on the envelope instead of the school’s address. I arrived home to find the letter was already opened. It was on the small, round dining table in the kitchen of the alpha suite (we called it a suite, but it was r
WESLEY POV “Once upon a time, two peeps fell in love and-” “Dat’s not how it goes, Wessy!” Maddie laughed, pushing me with her little hands. I pretended to fall down on the mattress from her shove. “Wessy!” she whined, pulling on my arm. “Okay, okay,” I chuckled. “I’ll start over!” I took a breath and began again. “A long time ago, when the world was brand new, the gods and goddesses walked among us. They lived within the world they had created, celebrating in its beauty and its bounty with the people of the land. The gods and humans and other beings lived together in harmony, celebrating the magnificence they lived in.” “What’s magfishinence?” Maddie interrupted. “Magnificence,” I corrected. “Yeah dat.” “It means wonderful or great,” I told her. “Can I keep reading?” She nodded, and I continued. “But the peace among the inhabitants was a tentative peace, a fragile peace. As such, each of the gods and goddesses created warriors, their own followers blessed with a touch of t
Dear Haven, It’s me. Wesley. Wesley Stone. Well, I guess that it is probably pretty obvious that it’s me, since my name is on the outside of the envelope, and I’m also probably the only person who writes you letters. Crap. That probably sounded ruder than I meant it to. I just meant that most people don’t really write letters nowadays, so if you were to receive a letter from someone, it would make sense for it to be a letter from someone who had already written you a letter before. Not that no one would want to write you a letter. That’s not what I meant. Great, now I’m rambling. You probably won’t even read this, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I was kind of rude to you before. No, scratch that, I was REALLY rude to you before. I could try to push the blame off of myself and say something like “Well, I didn’t know that my pen pal would be an orphan,” but that would be immature of me, because, no matter who the letter was for, I should have never written the letter the way
Dear Wesley, I already told you in my first letter to you, I forgive you. I know you didn’t mean what you said, and I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, or whoever got your letter. I know you’re just a kid. Shirley, my foster mom, always says it’s not about the mistakes that you make, but whether you learn from those mistakes. It’s about what you do next. That’s what is important. That’s what makes you a good person or not. I am willing to give you a second chance. I need a friend. Like I told you before, I don’t really have many friends. I’ve moved homes too many times. My social worker says I shut people out too easily to make many friends. So, you’ll be my first one. All right. Since we’re making this a fresh start, I’ll go first. Starting over. Pretend we’ve never met. Or written. Hi. I’m Haven Kenway. No middle name. That was the name stitched on the blanket wrapped around me when they found me in front of a fire station when I was only a few days old. I’ve never met my birt
Dear Haven, I cannot tell you how happy I was to receive your second letter. Well, no, I guess I probably could try to tell you how happy you made me, but in all honesty there are not enough words in the English language or any language to express how I felt when I saw your letter finally come in. You can’t tell anyone this. But I was waiting and waiting and waiting, hoping that you would give me another chance, and I’m not going to lie — at one point I thought maybe you had decided I wasn’t worth it. But seriously, please don’t tell anyone, because I have already endured enough teasing from my parents and my brother, and even a little bit from my best friend, Reid. Not that I’m embarrassed to be your friend, that’s not it at all. It’s just that the constant taunting from my little brother and my best friends is annoying. So annoying. That’s what it’s like, by the way, to have siblings. ANNOYING. Okay, okay, it’s not ALL bad. Sebastian, my little brother who is two years younger
Dear Wesley, Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I will never tell anyone about how the great Wesley Stone was awaiting a letter from a girl. No, I will take that secret with me to my grave. No one will ever know that you are actually a nice person who cares about poor little me. I have to say, as much as I’ve always wanted to have a large family with siblings who are close to me, I think I could live without all of the annoying and teasing that you described in your letter. So, you can keep your brother and sister and best friends over there with you in California. I will stay here, by myself, without anyone to ever annoy me or tease me. I will have peace and quiet, and you will have noise and chaos. Seriously, though, I enjoyed reading about your siblings and friends. They sound wonderful. I hope someday I can maybe meet them. I mean, assuming you want to meet at some point. Okay, now, my turn to answer the questions. My birthday is on October 18th. That was their best gue
HAVEN POV The unfamiliar sensations of the woman’s hands massaging my feet kept eliciting uncontrollable giggles from my mouth. My body tensed with each of her ministrations. Mom insisted we needed a girl’s day, filled with every type of girly pampering one can imagine. So far, we’d gone shopping and picked out fancy outfits, had our hair cut and styled, and the last step was getting manicures and pedicures. I picked out a sparkly gold nail polish for both my fingernails and toenails, the color an almost perfect match for the gold accessories I bought to go with my dark purple dress. Mom hadn’t told me why we were going through all of this effort, but I guessed she had some exciting surprise planned for us. I just needed to be patient, and eventually she would let me know what was going on. Another giggle involuntarily burst through my lips as she moved her massaging up to my calf. I had to pinch my lips together to suppress the noise when she gave me a stern, reproachful glare. I
Thank you again for reading "The Alpha's Pen Pal." I hope you enjoyed following along with the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. There will be a book two. Book two is titled "The Beta's Blind Date," and will follow Reid as the main character. I do not know when I will begin updates for this book, as I am currently working on another project that I need to have finished by the end of this month (July 2023), and I am also working on getting Pen Pal ready for print. In the meantime, you can leave a review for Pen Pal, as this helps readers know that others enjoyed the book. The review doesn't even have to be detailed, it can just be "I loved the story!" but even that helps out a lot! I also have another completed book on the app titled "A Prophecy of Crowns and Harmony." It is the first book in a completely unrelated series. It is a bit different from the usual werewolf story, as it also includes dragons, fairies, and witches, but I would love it if you would check it out and give
HAVEN POVWesley led me away, still holding me by my waist. We wandered around the building and into the garden where the company hosted the gala last year. It was just as beautiful and magical tonight as it was that night. Perhaps even more so, since there wasn’t a party set up within it, and its natural beauty was on display.“I have something for you,” Wesley murmured as he sat us down on a bench near some jasmine.I huffed out a small laugh. Of course, he sat us near the jasmine. “You didn’t need to get me anything,” I told him.“I know I didn’t need to, but I wanted to,” he said.He let go of me and reached under the bench, pulling out a small rectangular wooden box. I raised my brow at him, and he smiled.“Here,” he said, handing it to me.The wood was dark and smooth, except for the very center where my name had been stamped into it with a crescent moon behind a redwood tree next to it, the symbol of our pack. I ran my hand over it, feeling the ridges and dips of the letters, ma
SIX MONTHS LATER — NOVEMBER WESLEY POV Glittering lights. Rustling fabrics and programs. Instruments tuning. Whispering voices. A theater filled with audience members for the opening night of The Nutcracker this season at The Redwood Forest Ballet Company. A full house, as Haven had taught me. And all of them were here for her. The pack had bought out the house for the evening, so every single member of that audience was here because they were supporting their luna. Because tonight, she would dance the role of The Sugar Plum Fairy. “Thank you again,” I muttered, turning to look at Imogen. She rubbed at a spot on her red painted fingernails, a wrinkle between her brows. “I told you already, I needed the break. Some time to breathe and kick my feet up and just remind myself that I’m not just good at ballet, I actually enjoy ballet.” Her eyes lifted to mine, and she smiled. “Plus, it was for a good cause,” she said. “Oh, the baby is here!” She maneuvered around me and towards the
SIX MONTHS LATER — MAY HAVEN POV Spring in Crescent Lake was just as beautiful as I imagined. The spring festival the pack held on the shore of the lake every year — the one he’d written to me about in the letter I never received — was a blast. I ate more food than I should have and stayed up way too late dancing with Wesley and all our friends and family. And in the early hours of the morning, after we’d gone home, my mate held me close and made love to me, whispering to me and caressing me with the same care and tenderness he’d shown me on our first night together. That was all a few weeks ago. Now, we were gathered by the shore of the lake again, but for a different reason. For Wesley’s alpha ceremony. For him and his friends and brother to take over the pack. And for me to become the luna. It was still strange to think of myself as a leader of a pack of wolves. But in the short time I had been with Wesley and been living in the pack, I’d found more acceptance and love than alm
HAVEN POV The ghost of Wesley’s touch lingered on my skin, warm and soothing, and the whisper of his breath tickled the hair on my neck. My heart fluttered and raced in my chest, still pounding from the rush of our intimacy and the overwhelming pleasure from him marking me. I stretched, inhaling the hint of jasmine and vanilla and luxuriating in the feel of the soft blankets around my body. But where I thought I would meet Wesley’s chest with my back, there was only emptiness, vast and cold. My eyes blinked open, and I sat up, my heart now racing for a completely different reason. My clammy hands wiped against the blankets — no — the dress somehow on my body. The same dress I had worn at the temple in Greece, and during our visit with Selene. I stood to my feet, gathering the fabric in my hands as I did, scanning my surroundings. I pivoted in place, looking around me until my eyes landed on the temple. Selene’s temple. My mother’s temple. Everything was identical to how it was the
ONE MONTH LATER - NOVEMBER WESLEY POV The buzzing of the tattoo gun filled my ears and the minor ache and itch and sting of the needles hitting my skin and the silver hitting my blood had me closing my eyes every few minutes. But the tingles of the mate bond from Haven’s hand held in mine comforted me and dulled most of the pain I felt. I looked over at her and found her watching the tattooist raptly, her eyes locked on my marking spot, where he was inking her “mark” on me for all to see. I’d come up with the idea to get a tattoo as my “mark” when we were flying home from Greece. But I didn’t have the idea for what it should be specifically until we moved her out of her apartment and into our house in Crescent Lake, about a week after the challenge against Pierce. She was organizing the letters and making sure she had them all, and as soon as I saw them in her hands, I knew just what I wanted my mark from her to be. Which is how I came to be sitting in the tattoo parlor the day of
HAVEN POV I sat stiff and rigid in the chair next to Wesley’s hospital bed, his hand held in mine and my thumb stroking his skin in slow, smooth strokes. The bond would help him heal, but it was also helping me not have another massive freak out while I sat with him in the pack’s hospital. Dr. Russo had patched him up in almost no time, but he had to re-break Wesley’s foot because the bones had already started to heal in the wrong position. He’d tried to refuse any sedation, but with the damage to his ribs and lungs, they had to give him general anesthesia in order to repair all of it. Now he was in the bed, still asleep, but healing. Hopefully, he would wake up soon. I closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath. His scent was still mixed with the antiseptic and medicinal smells of the hospital, the ones that always sent me into a spiral of depressive thoughts. But his scent was still there, still stronger than those other smells, keeping me in the present and not letting me return to
WESLEY POV I readied myself, crouching into position just as Pierce had done. I focused on my breathing and the extra resolve Haven sent my way, and trusted that my body and my mind and my lycan knew what to do. “The challenge will begin with my word,” King Malachi stated loud and clear for everyone to hear. “And it will end upon the death of one or both of the participants.” I breathed in again, making sure to keep my eyes opened and focused on Pierce. He was my target. We knew he was working with a witch, knew he was using her somehow to strengthen himself. I just needed to keep him engaged, needed to stay in the fight until they found the witch and took her out. I let my lycan stay at the forefront of my mind, so I could be ready to shift at a moment’s notice. I cleared my mind, letting my sole focus be on this fight. And I prayed to Selene — to my mate’s mother — that Pierce would not let his witch do to me what she’d done to Maddie to render her defenseless. “Begin,” King Mal
WESLEY POV There were varying reactions to Pierce’s preposterous challenge, but most of them included some degree of a snarl or a growl. The loudest was mine, of course, but Nolan’s, Sebastian’s, and Reid’s were all a near match of hostility and volume. How dare he. How dare he challenge me for the woman who was rightfully mine. For the mate Selene had honored me with. She had chosen me for Haven, for her daughter, and I would not let anyone take her away from me. Not again. Not in this lifetime or the next. I moved Haven behind my body, my hands still on her hips, her hands resting on the small of my back and her head peeking over my shoulder. There was a flurry of noise and movement around us, but my cold focus was only on the bag of scum in front of me. “What the hell does that mean?” Haven asked me. “He wants me to fight him for you,” I explained to her, my voice low and tight. She tensed, her hands clutching at my shirt. “Can he do that? Try to claim me that way?” she whispe