So I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Becca has a bit of a thing for Colt.
I was around at the Tree House for dinner last night… And actually I’m going to take a tangent here for a moment:
You know how the Pack pays for almost everything for the younger (like 18-25 ish year old) members? It’s crazy. They get a free education (with no limits) and free rent at the treehouse, and last night? Dinner was cooked by a fucking cook.
It’s essentially a messy, smelly, brand spanking new college dorm mansion with a five star cook, room service, and free rent. (Is it just me, or is this situation screaming out ‘we don’t care what kind of people we’re turning out here – shit all over us if you’d like there will be no consequences!’)
The exchange for all the free easy living is that if they work they’re expected to try find work with other shifters in Pack businesses (where we can keep an eye on them), and while they’re young and dumb, they are under the care of the Alphas and leadership while they learn control, and Wolfy life-skills.
Later, when we release them into the wild, and they become mature, full functioning adults (25-35+) they’re expected to stay loyal to the Pack, support Pack businesses, act as role models for younger members, obey Shifter law (thou shalt not shift in front of humans), and obey the rules and recommendations of the Alpha’s.
It’s all funded by Pack businesses, which, because of our long term higher education policy, and loyal members, are doing really quite well. We have a near constant supply of well educated workers, who have years of experience working at the base customer-service level of our businesses – the true meaning of working your way to the top I guess!
Except this new batch of wolves are kind of taking the system for everything it’s got. I’m thinking that this whole ‘entitlement’ theme that we’ve got going on is the cause of some of our issues with discipline and control with the younger members.
The education policy – all they have to do is slap down a bill and an offer of study, and we pay their way. I’ve just found out that there are quite a few kids here who aren’t even GOING to classes. They’re failing, and we’re still paying. Screw that.
Then again, there’s a whole bunch who aren’t studying, and aren’t working. they hang out at the house and party. (Before last month they hung out at the hotel, ordering room service.) What the hell are they going to do when they hit 30, with no life skills, no job experience, and not even a Bachelor of Arts to show for it?
And the food, rent, alcohol, and expensive furniture (which Tiny keeps having to get fished out of the pool) all get supplied to them no strings attached. (By 5 star chefs!) You know what? If they’re working they should be contributing to running the house. If they’re not working they should be actually running the house and perhaps doing some of the cleaning and cooking themselves.
When we showed up tonight I see that not one of these entitled young douchbags have cleaned ANYTHING since they moved in. And they can’t even cook a meal for themselves.
They’ve had no supervision here. We’ve got twenty four 18-24 year olds alone in the house, because the remainder of the rooms aren’t furnished yet, and the young ones were causing too much noise and lost profit at the hotel.
The older members of the Pack (thirty 25-35 year olds) – including myself, Ran, Tiny, and Andre – ie the leadership and responsible role models! – are still at the hotel.
The whole point of ‘Pack’ is to supervise the younger members until they’re old enough to make smart choices for themselves, support the members without families of their own while they’re learning to co-exist with their wolves, and to create life-long bonds within our family of shifters.
We’re not doing a very good job!! Not through lack of trying though. Ran is pretty much exhausted after the last few years of trying to police this lot almost by himself.
In fact it’s kind of my fault – this whole ‘tree house/ hotel’ split is because essentially I burnt down their old house. And this is what is causing most of the problems right now.
(This right here? Leadership. Fucking. Material.)
Anyway. Tangent aside.
We had dinner, and one of the younger girls (Sasha) and Tiny were giving me a guided tour of the house – including the bit that will eventually be my office, and personal suite (suite!!) of rooms.
We’re walking down an un-wallpapered hallway, and I hear a sound. So I go off to investigate, trailed by Sash and Tiny.
I turn a corner, and there in a room full of dry-wall, paint, and tools, is Becca, looking like hell.
“Hey Becca…” I say slowly, trying to figure out exactly what I’ve walked in on here.
And with that she fucking fell to pieces. I stood there for a moment staring in horror. I’m really not much of a touchy-feely-lets-talk-about-our feelings-then-spoon kind of person. I NEVER know what to do with crying people.
However. Despite my reluctance to wade into personally awkward territory, I realize that, in my new position as Alpha, some sort of a response (other than to throw a box of tissues at her) is required.
Tiny’s eyes went huge, and at my nod, went to go shut and guard the door, preventing the spectacle from becoming a whole-pack affair, and making her feel even worse.
What can I say, Becca’s kinda irresponsible, and a little know-it-all-y, but I like her, she’s only 23, and when she’s older, she’ll be a force to reckon with. Maybe even an Alpha or Second. Plus she helped me out when I needed someone to talk to about Pack and all that entails.
Sasha on the other hand was your typical 19 year old drama queen. Without thinking she squealed “Oh my god! Is this about Colt cheating on you? Are you OK?”
I stood for a moment stunned at her stupidity. What the hell? What exactly did she expect the answer there to be? ‘yes, oh, I’m fine, I’m just sobbing like the world’s about to end because I stubbed my toe’?
“Are you fucking out of your mind? Clearly the answer is Fuck No, she’s not OK. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you wait outside.” I said impatiently.
Sasha went quickly, and I could just see her trying to decide who to go gossip to first. “And Sash? If you say a word of this to anyone I will be really fucking annoyed with you.”
She flashed her throat, and dropped her eyes, and ran. (This kind of power might go to my head if I let it.)
So instead of talking or whatever to Becca (because, lets face it, at times I can suffer from foot in mouth) I just sat beside her and waited.
Slowly, as she began to calm down, she started to tell me about it.
Back when I first met her I assumed she was dating Colt. BUT. It turns out it wasn’t really a relationship, just lots of innuendo, and implication.
Becca WANTS to date him, and did broach the topic, but he always had some kind of excuse, or laughed it off. They had a proper chat this afternoon, and he came up with the lame excuse that she’s too young – he’s 25, she’s 23.
For the first time Becca realized that the thing she had assumed was mutual between her and Colt might not be, in fact, mutual.
Then comes the rumor that Colt and one of the other younger girls at the hotel have been shacking up. Worse yet, the rumor comes from one of the other younger girls here, who had to KNOW that bringing it up in front of other people was going to hurt Becca.
The thing is, I like Colt, but it’s true. He can be a bit of a hound, and a butt-head towards girls. He thinks he’s gods gift, and is out for a good time. If he wasn’t into Becca he really should have been straight with her from the start, but then again, Becca should have probably taken off the rose-tinted glasses and made a few deductions of her own.
And as for the girls here being nasty to each other for the sake of it? What the hell?? I thought Pack was supposed to be supportive, and family-building.
Anyway. There’s nothing I can do there in particular as Alpha, because I am NOT going to stick my head onto relationship crap in my first week. It would set a very bad tone – It’s not why I’m Alpha.
At the same time though… I would kind of like to shake them all by the backs of their necks and tell them to play nice.
***
To Ayla,From Ayla- Re: "DO NOT GET INVOLVED."
Sort out the big stuff
(money/ supervision/ role models/ bullying/ attitude
problems) and the small stuff
(relationships/ gossip/ general stupid behavior/
cleaning schedules/ grades) will sort it's self out.
***
Phew. Anyway. Later I sat out on the balcony trying to figure out all this crap. Ran came up and sat behind me rubbing his thumb at the base of my neck.
“You’re thinking very hard…”
I frowned. “To think you once accused me of not thinking at all… There are some big problems here…”
He leaned in to kiss where he had been rubbing. “I believe at the time you had walked into an alley full of rabid hyenas and had your stomach ripped open… You kind of have to forgive me for that accusation… And yeah, there are. I’ve got some ideas, and I know you must have some too. I thought we could start with daily leadership meetings.”
I signed and leaned back into his shoulder. Meetings suck. “Yeah. That sounds like a must. We need to get all the problems reported to one/both of the seconds and then work on the big stuff first. We need to get this place finished, furnished, and full of older wolves too.”
He nodded. “Yeah. They’re destroying it. I’m thinking we come back tomorrow morning, boot-camp style, and scare the living crap out of them all. Put the fear of Alpha in them, and lay down he law… I’ve been putting it off because of all the other stuff I’ve had to deal with lately, but I think it’s time.”
I thought about it. “So… You want to scare them into submission, using my dangerous reputation, and your own badass aura of cool?”
“Exactly.”
I nodded slowly. “That’ll work. It’ll be less effective, though, when they find out you’re now my bitch boy, and I’m just a smartass.”
Ran chuckled and slid his hand up to a non-business meeting appropriate position. “Bitch Man. And we’ll just do our best to keep that hidden for now. Besides, you break out that riding crop, and none of them will ask questions”
Then we made out like horny teenagers.
***
So… Now I’m just chilling out at home. Ran’s back at the hotel getting some sleep, because tomorrow will be early, and we do not really sleep when we stay together. Plus we decided that we need to make sure we don’t take the relationship too fast and rush through dating and stuff because we’re doing so much together.
Tomorrow will be crazy. I’ve been slack at work because I have so much to wrap my head around with Pack, and my summer school paper has all these readings that I missed last week… And I’m out of food again, and so is Rump.
So. Fucking. Tired.
You have some big decisions to make. Do they get disciplined as a pack or individually? I recommend pack. Get tough and tell them that they got this far as a group and they have to dig their way out of it together. They will be punished as a group and will be rewarded if the group does good. (starting with group study until all of them start passing.) It will help them think as a pack and learn how to police themselves. They will hate you though. It will also help you to remove power from the instigators.
Just remember you control the purse strings, and where diplomacy stops…ass kicking begins.
I agree: they are pack, treat them as such–isn’t that what they do at boarding schools too? Hmmm. She’s right about the purse strings. Hold them tight and don’t pay for anything. And hide the beer/ale.
Your 5-star chef needs to start giving cooking lessons so that the young ones can fend for themselves. And they need to learn how to operate a vacuum cleaner–successfully and frequently.
Yeah. I fired the cook. I did get Tiny and Becca to go out and buy a libraries worth of ‘cooking for dummies’ type books.
And Ran and I went boot camp on their asses.
It was surprisingly fun – like, we managed to have some fun, while they were learning not to be giant lazy chumps. And yeah, I like that whole ‘collective punishment thing, because it means they’re WAY more likely to rat each other out. That means I found out this morning that the 16 year old ‘early bloomer’ (she had her first shift two months ago!) was about to wag school and get a tattoo.
A TATTOO.
AT 16.
WHAT THE FUCK.
I AM NEVER HAVING CHILDREN.
Even I waited until I was 18 till I got my first one. MOSTLY BECAUSE IT IS THE LAW. Geeze. So I went all Alpha on her ass. it was great. Then I called her Mum and ratted her out.