Chapter 1
If I were to make a list of my favourite places where I want to live the rest of my life, one place would not even figure in my top 5000 and that’s Los Angeles. Everything is great about it. The weather is so incredible here, it doesn't drizzle anytime like in Mexico. But making friends there is as difficult as finding hair on a bald man's head.
So much difficult that I tried to make friends on some social media app and ended up making tens of perverted friends who sent their f*****g c**k and a*s photos in my chat. f**k IT!
“Where is your one stud?” Mom eyed my left ear. I touched my earlobe, it was really missing. The black stone studs Shasha gave to me only when she was wearing them for the first time.
“Throw the other one.” Mom lifted the bag from the belt, placing it on the trolley. I slowly took out another stud and moved to my pocket.
As soon as mom and I departed the airport, the scorching heat of LA was the same as if someone had just pushed me into a hot oven. Maybe we came straight from sixteen to thirty two degrees, so the heat seemed a bit excessive.
“I told you to carry a sun coat. Do you remember?" Mom took out the goggles from her purse and put it on. I nodded with a wry smile.
“I think… I did.” I knew her anger very well because I have witnessed the way she screamed and yelled at dad before we were leaving. Her expression turned sour.
“You crazy a*s! You should not act so reckless here.” Her voice was a poison blended with honey. “Your dad spoiled you.” She fixed her goggles over her head. I ignored her words like an air, thinking I had to tolerate this few more years. Once I become independent, I will not have to listen to all this her bragging.
"Look, do you see Mark somewhere?" Mom tied her hair. They were swaying and blown by the wind. She fixed her cotton midi dress that had creased at the waist, adjusted the belt of her wrist watch.
I never saw her doing it in front of dad, never!
I was looking around the crowd, I didn't even remember Mark's face. It's been five years since I've seen Mark. If I accidentally see my mother's status on w******p, I never see Mark's face. Many times I just gave reactions like thumbs up and smiley to the photos sent by my mother without opening them. When I couldn’t decipher, I just left them blank. Mom and I pushed our trolley ahead as the exit was crowded.
"Hey, Emma..." We heard a manly voice calling mom and turned back. “Here... To your left...” We found a waving hand in the middle of the crowd. A satisfying grin appeared on mom’s lips.
"see, what a big car Mark brought to pick you. Your father will never do that." From the time we left Mexico, she was bitching about dad all the way. How dad made it difficult for her clothes to even two time meals. She spent her life awfully with dad. I ignored her as I always did on the phone call with her.
‘Ezra. You’ve grown up beautifully. Just like your mother.” He swept his hands over my head and smiled. A middle-aged man around his forties, he had changed himself according to the times. Allen Solly's T-shirt and black trousers, a black jacket over it. A grey long beard and those grey settled hair, big city vibes were coming from him. I felt awkward when he caressed my hair, as his fingers trailed around my ears. He was grinning.
Mom was right, my dad would never do that. He never caressed my ears to make me feel uncomfortable.
The smile on his face vanished as soon as his eyes tucked with moms. She rolled her eyes at him and he immediately took his hands away from my ears. One thing I noticed right now: Mom was f*****g possessive about Mark.
Mark lifted mom’s suitcase up and moved it in the trunk. I also picked up my bag but Mark interrupted.
"Ezra, you can just leave it to me." Mark's excessively sweet voice sounded a bit awkward. I wanted to sit on the front seat in the car so that I could take some aesthetics from the front glass, but before that my mom had already sat down.
“Just sit here.” She pointed behind her. I silently sat and relaxed because the air-conditioning in the car was already on.
"Mark bought this car just a few months ago." Mother told me, holding his hands on the gear. This was probably the fifth time mom had told me. I ignored her again and stared through the glass of the window.
We were going to the Westside, which was only a short distance from the airport. Most of the things were so new to me, as if I was watching it for the first time. I have come to the city after five years, not a single day up or a single day down. It was a whole f*****g five years later. I was twelve years old when I last came here. I remember some things clearly. But many things have changed.
My mom and dad separated just two years after I was born. My mother was the daughter of the Beta of the dark blood pack, and my father never told my mother that he was a human. Yes! And that made me a hybrid wolf, not even a wolf.
A few days after the marriage, my mother came to know about my father being human and the quarrels started between them. A few months after I was born, Mom found her real mate, Mark, the Beta of the Red Shadow pack, who was also very rich. Mom decided to go with him. Dad never remarried. But the question was mine.
Mom and Dad got divorced, but for some reason, the court ordered them to keep me with them for 5-5 years. In the first five years, I was with my father. My mother wanted to start a fresh life with Mark, so in the initial years of my childhood, I stayed with my dad.
Then my mother for 7-12 years, here in Los Angeles, and now I have stepped into seventeen.
Dad was not rich like Mark, he had a small house. He was a mechanic. Either he was unfolding some spare part of a motor vehicle or emptying his whiskey bottle outside the house, sitting on an old wooden bench. I used to hide behind the door and watched him muttering or making gestures in the air after getting drunk. He did not have any such luxury which he could give to mom. She was very happy with Mark, they were both laughing.
The car stopped in front of a big pure white bungalow that must have been built in the old Greek style of architecture. That’s what made it different from the rest of the houses in that alley. A three-story building and a spacious porch, a big wooden swing in the garden that directly swayed into the small bushes that would leave the tickling on your bare feet.
What else does one need in his life? If Shasha was here, she must be drooling right now and ready to kill to get into that bungalow.
“Ezra”, Mom called to me from the other side of the road.
She made an irritated face and waved her hand to the right. I came to know that it was not Mark's bungalow in front of which he had parked his car. Afraid of the scratches of thorny bushes, he just parked it in the middle of the road.
“Hurry up, don’t be a snail.” Mom again sided the goggles from her head to her eyes.
I followed mom and Mark to the small alley and reached his big house, far better than any of dad’s rich relatives. The double-storeyed house was spacious, with a big garden and big gate at the entrance. Even from entry to the exit, everything was so expensive that dad did not even think of buying in his dreams. I realized why my mom chose Mark over my dad.
“Your room…” Mark held my shoulder and pointed at one room next to the master room. I clenched my shoulders as I was irritated by those constant touches. Difficult to explain, but I was so uncomfortable as it was more annoying than those uncle’s pinches on the a*s while traveling in the crowded metro of Mexico.
“I shifted her bed to the second floor, darling.” Mom gave him a rough smile. He just stepped away with a gloomy face, followed by mom.
I pulled my heavy bag to the living room, now it was going to be burdensome. Soon I have to move those bags to the second floor. Why the hell did I bring the books with me? Can’t I buy them here? Definitely not. I marked many of the words with the highlighter while reading them. I reread them twice, thrice, some even five times.
I gritted my teeth and tried to pick up that trolley bag which seemed even heavier than it was in Mexico. Does Los Angeles have a different gravity? Why is it heavier than it was before? I was taking out my frustration and didn’t notice a pat on my shoulder.
I turned back and found that no one was there. The bag in my hand turned as light as air, I headed down and found a red-headed guy holding it for me.
“I’ll do it, Ezra.” He said and a wide smile appeared on my lips. A punk who was my favourite. “Long time no see..” He rolled his dark wine eyes over my face.
“Joe.” I thought he wouldn’t be there. He picked up both trolley bags in his hand and took them up the stairs. I followed him and stopped when he kept the bag down.
“You never forget my name?” He asked me while adjusting his specs. It was not difficult to remember him. His shiny curly redhead. I have never seen someone’s hair so naturally dark red. The only thing I liked about this place was him. Joe and I played a lot when I stayed here last time. I had no mobile at that time, so we shared our email address and communicated with each other once a fortnight or month. But somehow my old computer broke and I couldn’t login to my email ID. I made another one but lost all previous contacts. This is how we lost our communication.