Shadow Mate - Jen L. Grey Page 0,32

not ill-prepared."

"But that's all human stuff." Tripp leaned back in his seat and winked at me. "So not really relevant to purely shifters."

"You don't think we had a part to play into it all?" The professor chuckled. "We have shifters in political places throughout the world and make army supplies. Some shifters would even encourage war. But what we all should know is there are no true winners." He waved a hand in front of his face and shook his head. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, we need to learn the fundamentals of our wolf hierarchy. In order to do that, we must start from the beginning."

"Is this a bible lesson?" Tripp chuckled.

"No, but it does sound like it." The professor laughed.

I liked him. He seemed to be down to earth and a regular person, unlike a lot of the people who worked and attended here. He made me think of a kind grandfather.

"Do you all know why The Blood Council exists?" He arched an eyebrow and turned, writing those exact words on the board.

"Wasn't it because we found we were stronger together than apart?" A guy in the back row lifted his pen in the air.

"Yes, that's exactly what it was." The professor then wrote north, south, east, and west on the board. "Around two hundred years ago, all the regions had their problems whether it be crops, materials for clothing, etc. So each region sort of fended for themselves. Even the packs within those regions didn't help one another. Instead, they were trying to take care of their own."

"That doesn't sound like a bad plan to me." Some girl called out in the back.

"No, it doesn't, but unfortunately that's what caused the problem to worsen." He turned back to us and smiled. "Instead of working together as a community, we were broken and fragmented. Instead of sharing resources a pack or region had in order to gain items they needed, no one talked to one another. In fact, the problem kept getting worse and worse."

"Though someone must have figured it out." That could be the only thing he was getting at.

"Yes, and that someone was the person who lay in the center of the four connecting boundaries." He drew the state of Kansas on the board.

"Wouldn't they have all the resources needed since they were smack dab in the center?" Tripp leaned forward and placed his elbows on the desk.

"One would think that. Hell, I bet they all did, but in fact, they were the worst ones off. They suffered from every limited resource affliction." He wrote the word ‘Overseer’ on the board. "She left her pack behind and went to each region speaking with all the alphas throughout."

"She?" The same guy in the back parroted.

"Yes, she." Professor Johnson wrote she on the board and underlined it twice. "She was able to secure the strongest alphas in each region to come together and begin addressing each resource limitation that each group had and how we could spread supplies amongst each other. It took a while; each pack had been so segregated that the alphas traveled throughout their region. They met with each pack to determine what the whole area needed and what they could provide in exchange."

Even though I had heard a shorter version of this, I had never learned the details. And it was badass that a woman got the whole thing going.

"When they met again a year later, they began devising a plan on what could be accomplished."

"A year later?" Gertrude's forehead wrinkled with confusion. "Why would they wait so long?"

"Well, you have to remember back then, there were no cars, phones, or anything like that." The Professor smashed his lips together as if he was trying not to smile. "So it required a lot of leg work and shifting while still catering to their own packs’ needs. They couldn't leave them high and dry. So in 1918, The Blood Council was created."

"Wait, wasn't that the year of the Spanish flu?" Tripp pulled out his textbook and flipped through the pages.

"You are correct, young man." The professor nodded. "And as I said earlier, shifters are involved in every piece of history. We were one of the main reasons so many humans survived that tragedy."

Now, this was brand new information. "How so?"

"Because we were the doctors and nurses tending to the sick." Professor Johnson began pacing in front of the class. "We were naturally resistant to the virus, thankfully, but that's not always the case.