JAMES I became the Alpha of our pack when my father the former Alpha retired. I remember vividly the day of my inauguration, in a ceremony that took place in the packhouse. Many people had been invited to the ceremony, which was his retirement party. Among the invited guests were my step mother and my younger brother, Mike. My own mother died about ten years ago and I was her only child. I really miss her because she loved me so much. I later came to know that after giving birth to me she developed some complications and could not conceive again, then the complications led to a disease that ate her slowly but surely until she was a skeleton, then later she died. After her death our family was never the same again and my father, though he pretended to be fine, was very devastated. He how