What Royalty Means

The walk back from the campus to home was exactly what Apryl needed after having lunch with Keith. Although she thought that it was sweet that he wanted to take her home, she didn't think it would be a good idea after hearing what little he had told her about Brian. Plus, she wanted the extra few minutes to process everything before she actually got home.

The word royalty kept sticking in her head. She didn't quite understand what it meant still and that made her want to look it up as soon as she had gotten home and had a chance to make sure that everyone was doing alright still and that her aunt didn't need help with anything.

Even though her and Keith had spent a decent amount of time talking, Apryl felt as though there was still so much that he hadn't told her about what happened with her uncle. She would have to follow up on it.

She would tell her mother what she had found out thus far and just omit what Keith had told her about his bloodline. At least until she was able to fully understand it herself. She also didn't want to risk saying too much of anything if Brian was around in case it triggered anything with him if he found that she was involved with a Keith that he used to know.

Apryl was happy to see that everyone seemed to be doing well when she went to check on them. Nova was doing a good job of trying to help Lydia manage everything along with getting the other sisters used to shifting forms. Oreo was still kept a guard over Summer's phone since she didn't intend to swap her forms back any time soon to be able to talk with anyone on it.

The other pups were starting to get used to their smaller siblings even though they still didn't quite know what to make of them. A few snaps when they got too rough or prodding with them from their mother helped them to understand that they couldn't be rough with the littlest ones.

Seeing everyone together gave Apryl a rather large urge to skip everything else for the night and just curl up with them and sleep for the day even though it was hardly after six in the evening. She knew it was the effects though from being up too late the night before trying to fix her homework.

She needed to shake it off though so that she could talk with her mother. decided to help Lydia with anything else that needed to be done before dinner and that she could talk with her mother while eating with everyone else when her aunt wasn't likely to be around. She didn't distrust her aunt, she just wasn't sure that the other wouldn't accidentally say the wrong thing around Brian.

Summer was at least interested in eating that day since her pups were still doing well two days after they had been born. They were still so small and fussy but they were getting better and learning how to stick close to their mother rather than rolling away and getting lost.

"So he told you he knew who Brian is?" Her mother asked as they eat peacefully together. Everyone else was intent on listening as well since they knew whatever the news would likely affect them as well. Only the pups didn't really understand yet what was being talked about.

"He did, but the conversation gout a bit sidetracked while we were talking about it and he kind of never finished telling me anything beyond the fact that he caused some problems for the pack that Keith was part of." Apryl replied as she continued to cut up the steak her aunt had made for dinner. It was hard to figure out how best to coordinate her hands to get the task done nut she felt that it would futile to shift into her wolf form to eat it as she would eventually need to learn how to eat such things in human form anyways.

"Sidetracked because?" Summer asked as she looked at her daughter with a slightly tilted head.

"On words I didn't understand that he was bringing up and also because one of his friends called during the conversation because there was something that he had forgotten to do for them?" She replied recounting what had happened.

"Werewolves who have spent a lot of time around humans have so much larger of a vocabulary than I can keep up with right now. I need to take more time learning the larger words that are being used." She said with a sigh as she handed one of her cut pieces of steaks to her younger brother who was watching her intently while wagging his tail. Even though they had already eaten, they were still hungry because of how fast they were growing.

"Keep up with the dictionary you have on your phone and writing down the words that you don't know so that you can look at them and remind yourself of what they mean. It'll be important if you intend to make it through college." Her mother suggested already having finished eating and getting back to tending to her pups again.

"I have been trying to do that so I can remember the spelling as well. Common words are easy to keep up with because they are used all the time and tend to be smaller from what I've noticed. The larger words though are tricky." Royalty was one of the words that she was thinking about when she said this, but she wasn't going to say that out loud because she couldn't exactly explain why she would be interested in that word.

"I'm sure this Keith would be willing to help if you asked him to as well." Her mother commented as she gave Apryl a knowing look. She frowned at this, not quite sure what her mother was trying to tell her.

"He is willing to help, but I can't keep asking other people what a word means every six words as I'm going through something." She replied as she pulled her phone out. She had wrote down 'royalty' before she had left after she had figured out how it was spelled from Keith so that she could look the dictionary later for examples of how it was used.

The first of the two explanations made the most sense to her-people of royal blood or status. Keith had mentioned that he came from a line of werewolves that were the original ones to first transform. The second one which mentioned it as being used for a sum of money paid to writers, artists and such for pieces of work they made didn't seem like it was right.

Reading about royalty made Apryl come to the conclusion that Keith really did come from a place and status that was above other werewolves who didn't come from such pure bloodlines. If that was the case however, why was it that he didn't like to talk with other people about it? Shouldn't it be something for him to be proud of? That was something she would have to add to the list of questions that she wanted to ask him the next time they were able to meet and talk further about her uncle and his past .