Growing up, River didn't have an easy life.

Little River Alexi Brandon was born to a Human by the name of Miriam Marshall. His father had been a Beta and as much as their kind hated Humans, his father had loved his mother even though relationships between the two species were forbidden.

Now growing up, they had had to hide their entire relationship for fear of being prosecuted.

River had grown up with carefully planned visits from his father as it was too dangerous for his Mother to enter the werewolf community undetected.

For a time, he had known the love of both his parents until his appetite began changing.

Sure, it wasn't much of an obvious change, but his mother had already known what it meant and had hastily contacted his father who had made the split second decision to take River away.

He had been three at the time, so he hadn't realised the gravity of the situation and thus, when he had gone shopping with his father, he had ended up losing the man in the crowd and had gone to a stranger for help.

The man had of course promised to help him. So along with River, they had searched the district for his father but to no avail.

River had been crying at the time and the stranger had comforted him, asking him where his mother was.

Now, you would think that he would say home without going into any specifics, but River's mother had expected such a situation so she had made sure to have him memorise her street address as well as her cellphone number. But in such a situation, he had only remembered the street address because it had been something he had been used to seeing.

So, without understanding the dangers. He had relayed the information to the man who had typed the information into his phone.

River had been looking up at the man and so he had seen the look of disgust on the man's face when he stared at him then back at his phone.

He didn't understand what it meant and hadn't given it much thought as the man began smiling at him once more before picking him up into his arms.

River remembered the man telling him that he would get some of his friends to make sure that they got him home safely.

Of course he had seen nothing wrong with that and had simply nodded in happiness.

He would get to see his Mummy and what kid wouldn't be happy at that?

So within minutes, they arrived at his mum's house and what happened after was something that scared little River for life.

The kind people who had taken him to his Mum's house had...

They...

He could remember screaming as they proceeded to attack everyone inside the house. They brought them outside in-front of River and proceeded to execute them by tearing their heads off.

By the end of it, River was soaked in blood and...

From what he remembered, all the wolves involved had also been executed for breaking into the Human community taking innocent lives without having being ordered to.

Yeah...

The Human/Werewolf wars had long since finished and for them to try and incite it again was cause for much anger between both factions.

They had of course spared him because killing a Werewolf would incite the anger of Lord Lycaon himself and it was said that they would have no peace even in death.

Even as a child, River didn't have it easy.

That incident had followed River for years and even to this day, he still blamed himself for what happened to his Mum.

Can you imagine carrying such guilt at the tender age of three?

It was one of the reasons why he didn't let himself trust anyone that easily.

As he grew up, his father became depressed until there were days that River didn't see him and when he did, the Beta looked emaciated.

So, it was at the age of 7 that River began taking care of his father who was still overcome with grief. He had to wipe the man down so that he didn't smell and feed him so that he didn't starve.

During those days, he didn't attend school anymore because there was no one to help his father but him.

The man didn't even try being strong for him and instead had chosen to waste away, not even caring about his son.

So as he grew older, River began resenting the man for putting him through this suffering, but he felt as if he deserved it because he still blamed himself for his Mother being murdered.

He still suffered Nightmares, that was a given all things comsidered.

...

River was nine when his father passed away and so he was all alone with no family that he knew of to turn to.

Lucky for him, the water and electricity hadn't turned off because the money would be withdrawn directly from his father's account.

The only thing he had to worry about was getting food and because he had learned to survive on his own for so long be had taken his father's credit card and used his computer to order food.

It wasn't even that hard to teach himself how to use it and where to search for stores around.

He may be young, but he was efficient.

Not to say that eveything was smooth sailing for him.

Sooner or later the money on his father's card would run out and then he'd be in trouble.

And not to mention, people would begin wondering where his father was and if you asked River, he would say that his decomposing body was still lying in his bedroom which had been locked.

It sounded sick but he was young. What could he do when he had his own survival to worry about?

But unfortunately for him, this freedom didn't last long as concerned neighbours reported to the police about not seeing his father and next thing he knew, their door was being broken in and cops entered their house and discovered him along with his father's body.

Let's just say that although it wasn't a pretty sight, they had been able to determine exactly what happened. Instead of sending him off to an Orphanage like he expected, they had managed to find family for him but unfortunately, the majority of them didn't want him and when they did find someome who was willing to take him in, they were elderly.

And that same person, his grandma, only wanted him there to do work around the house.

What could he do?

It was either that or an Orphanage, so it was the lesser of two evils.

And thus he had to earn his keep until he turned eighteen.

...

River worked hard to get where he was now and having anyone invalidate his success was like a slap to the face.

He didn't get where he was right now by living off anyone else's success.

So it was while he was in Uni that he met Phoenix's father.

At first, River hadn't focused much on anything other than his education but boy was O'Reilly persistent.

It also didn't help that the Alpha was drop-dead gorgeous.

So yeah, it wasn't long before he gave into O'Reilly's advances and next thing you know, they went on regular and study dates with each other.

River honestly couldn't say when he started falling for the Alpha; he simply did.

O'Reilly pretty much wined and dined him until their fifth month of dating when he lost his virginity to him.

Now that was a magical experience for him and even to this day, he would never regret losing his virginity to the Alpha.

After that, nothing really changed except they started having sex regularly. O'Reilly pretty much acted the same. They still went on dates, they still spent time alone and cuddled up to each other and that was that.

In no time, days passed by, weeks passed by, months passed by until they were dating for 13 months.

O'Reilly was set to graduate from Uni the next year and him the following so the Alpha had made certain to incorporate him into his life as much as possible. Hell, River had even met the Alpha's family and they were some pretty nice Weres.

It was during them being together for 17 months when River missed his period. He of course thought it was no big deal as he had a friend miss four months period without anything being wrong with her, so a month wasn't that big of a deal to him. (True.)

He of course hadn't thought about being pregnant as they had been careful for so long that even entertaining the thought was pretty funny and not worth further consideration.

He didn't tell O'Reilly about it and he didn't think it even mattered.

What mattered was when two months passed, three months passed and still no sign of his period. Even then, he still hadn't thought that much about it as he didn't experience any weird cravings nor did he throw up or start gaining weight. Everything was as normal as can be.

But... Some part of him had begun to worry so he had scheduled an appointment with a doctor to be on the safe side and that was when he discovered his pregnancy.

People may thing that he's a bit thick to not believe that something was wrong after missing his cycle but having irregular periods were pretty common and didn't mean that anything was wrong.

Some reasons for having irregular periods were stress, exercising regularly, restrictive dieting and low blood level. Not to say that there weren't medical reasons for it, but most of the times, those were the culprit.

So yeah, to say that he was surprised was an understatement. He had immediately met up with O'Reilly and relayed the news to him and to tell you the truth, no matter what the Alpha said, he wasn't going to get rid of the baby.

To his surprise, O'Reilly began pretty much bouncing off the walls when he told him and in no time, he began talking about marrying River, buying a house, painting their pup's room and so on.

The Alpha seemed even happier than River and that was saying something.

If possible, their relationship grew even more serious and hardly three months passed when the Alpha proposed to him.

He of course said yes and River had never believed that he would ever end up this lucky in his life.

Here, he had an Alpha who wanted to marry him and he was even expecting his pup. Not to mention, he was passing all of his classes so he didn't have to worry about that.

Could life get any better for him?

You best believe that it did as two years and 3 months into their relationship, he ended up winning the lottery after years of playing so he quit his part-time jobs to focus on his education.

O'Reilly was ecstatic that his dedication paid off but the Alpha believed that he should invest some of his money and told him not to spend it on unnecessary stuff because at the end of the day, the only person who needed to accept him was himself.

He didn't need anyone else's acceptance so he shouldn't waste his money trying to.

He had of course listened to the Alpha and only bought what he deemed necessary. Not once did O'Reilly ask or take money from him and it had annoyed him for a while before he realised that the Alpha was pretty prideful and wouldn't want to accept anything from his Submissive.

Sure, it was pretty annoying but he got over it quickly as within no time, he ended up giving birth to their little pup, Phoenix.

Well, his fullname was Hayden Phoenix Moreau while O'Reilly's real name was Carson Owen Reilly Moreau.

Yeah, he joined his middle names together.

Fast-forward to Phoenix being five months when O'Reilly graduated from Uni.

It was both a sad and happy day for him and after celebrating, he cried his eyes out on O'Reilly's shoulder.

The Alpha had assured him that nothing would change about their relationship but that was not to be as two months later, he completely lost contact with O'Reilly.

It was as if the Alpha fell off the face of the earth as he tried visiting his parents only to see that the house had been put up for sale.

He had tried calling his number but it was out-of-service.

Hell, he had even tried asking the teachers if O'Reilly had asked for any recommendations from then only to hear that they had never had him as a student.

Gah! Like, what the hell?!

Did the guy even exist? Fuck, if it wasn't for Phoenix then River would have probably believed that as it seemed like everyone didn't remember ever hearing O'Reilly's name.

After that, he just gave up and decided to take care of his son himself until he found an Alpha who wasn't a fucking ghost.

He never really got over O'Reilly and was that a surprise? He was with the guy for more than two years and even engaged to him. So if he cried his eyes out for months afterwards about being a single parent and losing the love of his life, at least he managed to get over it enough for him to date again.

So, it was while Phoenix was one that he met Natalia's cousin, Rain.

Rain was unfortunately not an Alpha; he was an Omega and normally, River wouldn't date an Omega but Rain was pretty cute and even though Rain wasn't a father figure, it'd be like Phoenix had two Mums.

So for 13 months, him and Rain began dating and everything was going well until Rain ended up pregnant.

Now, you would think that the Omega would be happy but unfortunately, he was one of those Omega's who were obsessed with the number on the scale and had immediately asked to have the baby aborted.

And as selfish as River was, he didn't give into the Omega and instead asked him to keep the child because that baby was also his.

Rain grudgingly carried the child full-term but that was the end of their relationship. As soon as the Omega gave birth, the little pup had been handed over to River and he had named her Cyan Takumi Brandon.

Rain's parents had fought with him for custody but of course they couldn't win as he was the father and he had convinced Rain not to abort her so he had agreed on sharing custody.

Cyan would stay with them six months out of the year and he could get her for the rest. The only reason why she wasn't with him was because they had blindsided him and because he couldn't exactly say no, they had whisked her off to all those Disney themed parks.

He would be getting her back on Christmas, thank fuck or he would've went berserk and Phoenix already missed his little sister.

Surprisingly, Rain began spending time with Cyan and even asked him to spend time with her. He only allowed him supervised visits because the guy wanted to freaking abort his pup because he didn't want to gain weight.

Not for some medical reason or because he was raped, but because he didn't want to gain weight. He always knew that Rain was superficial but not that much.

So after that, River allowed him to see Cyan but not surprising, the little pup hadn't much taken a liking to Rain and the Omega saw that.

Cyan was the only reason why Natalia still referred to him as her cousin-in-law since him and Rain had broken up already.

It was later on when he began dating Wolfie.

I mean, who wouldn't want to date that Alpha?

The only reason why their relationship went sour was because he really just wanted to see what the Alpha would do if he ended up pregnant.

Wolfie had the wrong idea about what he did and River hadn't even bothered to correct him because it really wouldn't change a thing.

He had fooled Wolfie into thinking that he was pregnant which was the reason why the Alpha didn't smell any pregnancy pheromones from him. You can't use scent blockers to hide something that isn't there after all.

The scent blockers that the Alpha had found was what he had used whenever Rain went into heat and he had simply forgotten to get rid of them after they broke up.

The message that Wolfie saw on his phone was also taken way out of context. He had been talking about what he would do if Wolfie found out what he was doing since it had just been a test after all.

During that time, he had kept Phoenix and Cyan a secret. Yeah, it was wrong but as much as Wolfie liked him, he hadn't believed that there was any other way that the Alpha would date him.

He didn't want to be seen as used goods because he had two pups already.

Just because his decisions were poor didn't mean that he was an all around arsehole.

He was just desperate for someone to love him after the love of his life disappeared on him and he wanted what was best for his pups.

Phoenix didn't remember O'Reilly so after River began dating Wolfie, the little pup immeidtarly latched onto the notion of the Alpha being his father.

River hadn't mentioned anything to Phoenix about Wolfie almost being his father. Phoenix had simply thought that because him and the Alpha hadn't mated together, that was how you determined paternity.

He went about eveything the wrong way but that was because he was too afraid to lose any future partners which he had later on.

He missed Wolfie and Rain but he had gotten over them.

The only reason why he was still acting affected at him and Wolfie's break-up was because he really had no one to banter with.

Everyone needed a Rival and Wolfie was his even if all that the Alpha mentioned was about their past relationship.

River honestly loved riling the Alpha up.

Wolfie wasn't as much of a catch as everyone seemed to believe. Hell, even Natalia had the wrong idea about it.

Wolfie had a nasty side