Wolves of Secrets 3: Family Values

Tradition

From the moment Skylor had returned and taken over the pack, the younger wolves were entranced with her and her stories of the human world and the tame werewolf pack in Ninjago City. Even though Krux hated the human world and believed that anyone who willing lived there was devilish scum, he had to admit that the pack had flourished under Skylor's leadership in the first week. Krux had never paid much attention to the red-haired girl before.

To him and others, she was just Chen's daughter, but even though she was next in line, he was their Alpha, so he demanded much more of their attention.

But it was hard not to notice how different she was from her father. While the younger members of the pack were happy about this, a few like Krux hated her calm, and merciful nature. Things got even worse when Skylor started teaching the pack how to read and write. When the red-haired girl was questioned on this, she said that reading and writing impacted many aspects of life. It promoted cognitive functions, which helped ward off diseases like Alzheimer's, enhanced knowledge of different topics, and reduced stress and anxiety.

The classes were tiny at the start, made up of only about five cubs, but Skylor loved every one of them for giving it a try.

But even as the class sizes started to grow more and more, there were many more who fought against it. Krux, his brother, and others had tried to convince her that battle and hunting training needed to begin immediately for the cubs, not learning human writing. But she had insisted that it was their duty to prepare the cubs for both the wild and the human world. That they should be able to make their own choices and enjoy their lives, whatever they decided.

To Krux, this was a travesty.

The rest of the pack had stood by her without complaint as she did things like taking them on a tour of the edges of their territory, closest to the humans. She would show them trees, roads, rocks, vehicles, and valleys. The other elders held their tongues when she took the pack flower picking, tree climbing, and swimming. All those things were seen as human activities. Krux refused to have any part of it. When they asked her why she was doing these things, she said that sometimes you just had to enjoy being alive.

Things finally started to break when she began teaching members of the pack how to play sports like volleyball and soccer.

Krux and others begged her to give them a decent reason why she considered this knowledge valuable to the pack and its cubs. She had simply replied that sports were super important for building a strong pack for future generations. Sports were beneficial for mental and physical well-being. It also helped build skills like teamwork, leadership, patience, discipline, and learning from failure. Krux thought it couldn't get any worse, but he was quickly proven wrong.

She had even convinced the pack to partake in games when they were doing any chores or hunting.

These were hidden and seek, capture the flag, traffic cop, hopscotch, jump rope, Simon says, tag, blind man's bluff, red rover, hand-clap games, and musical chairs. That wasn't bad if it hadn't been for the fact his brother Acronix had started participating. Despite his brother's animosity towards anything human, Krux seemed to greatly enjoyed it. As the weeks passed the wild werewolf pack Krux had lived with most of his life looked more like a human summer camp.

Krux felt he had no choice.

He had tried to reason with Skylor, but that had failed. His only hope now was either to take the role of leader from this tame wolf or abandon his pack and start again. Now the sun was setting, and Krux felt that the whole day had been wasted. Krux glared and snarled at Skylor as she taught a group about the alphabet. Most of the group were cubs, but some were older, including his brother. They would have been better before Skylor's unorthodox training methods and he couldn't stand back and watch her ruin them any longer.