48. Family
CHAPTER 48
Family
ALIA I couldn’t see what he sensed for the houses and buildings blocking the path. I walked over to him, and I saw his eyes. They were aglow with his wolf.
And then I felt the needs. To hunt. To kill. To be set free of this realm. Then there were many more with normal needs . All of them were radiating from outside the city. An entire army. My chest tightened.
“I feel them,” I said, kneading my hands into his fur. He whined, stepping in front of me.
“Get the sickly and the children to the safe houses, Enforcer Markus, and rally our enforcers and Reds. I must find my grandmother,” I said. Grandmother may be a right dragon flame with her own misguided sense of right and wrong, but she knew the best way to defend our people. And I could count on her to want to do that, at the very least. It might even be her way of redeeming herself.
Shen crouched, but I shook my head. “You need to see if you can tell why they’re here. If we can get out of this without a fight…” He nodded, licking my cheek. He stared at me and then leaned his forehead against my own with a sigh before he pulled back.
Be safe, his eyes said.
I nodded. “You too.”
He released a low bark and wagged his tail while bounding away.
The surrounding people were staring in confusion. “Set aside your differences for today. We are under attack. Protect your fellow man, but do not kill unless in defense. Spread the word!”
The people saluted and ushered the children off. Enforcer Markus guided them, and some fairies hitched rides on the shoulders of the children. Further down, neighbor told neighbor, until the entire row of the marketplace was ushering the sickly folk and children to the safe houses. Soon, the entire city would be on lockdown with capable citizens and Reds set to protect them. That is where the sprites would come in, for they would guard the safe houses while we fully-fledged Reds would fight.
Pride pulled at my heart. I’d seen the way the people in the regular cities reacted to threats. They typically screamed in terror and fell over each other like a teeming mass of ants to get away from the threat. Panic never did any good. And my people knew that.
I let a smile cross my face before I took off at a sprint. I grabbed Jacob on the way, telling him to get Mom and Dad and bring them to safety. Our location was compromised.
I just hoped I wasn’t the one who’d done this.
He took off at a sprint.
I raced to get to the Matriarch’s Palace and shoved through the door.
“Grandmother!” I yelled. Then I saw her.
“Hello, Granddaughter ,” she said playfully. Her eyes flashed golden. She wore a simple white dress with golden piping along the edges. Her hair was in a sharp bun with a headdress behind it like some sort of goddess. A silver chain decorated her neck. She had eyes of pure amber, even when they did not glow with her inner werewolf. Her skin was smooth and pale, nothing like my own deep-tanned skin. Her lashes were long. I could not say what her age would be. It wouldn’t surprise me if she were twenty or two hundred.
Who was she, and why the heck was she in my grandmother’s house?
“You, my dear, have been a naughty, naughty girl,” the woman said. She was definitely not my grandmother, but two could play this game.
“What bright eyes you have, Grandmother,” I replied, saying the last word just as sarcastically as she called me granddaughter , slowly pulling a blade from beneath my cloak.
“All the better to see you with, my dear ,” she replied, her teeth elongating and her nose growing.
“What sharp teeth you have, Grandmother,” I replied.
She chuckled, snapping those teeth as her arms shortened and her bones popped in the longest shift I’d ever seen. “All the better to eat you with, my dear ,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
I threw my blade. She caught it between her teeth, snapping it into metal slivers. I attacked, sweeping her feet out from under her before she could fully form and stabbing with a second blade. She growled and snapped at my throat, but I jumped back, chest heaving, two blades in my hands.
“If my son cannot do what needs to be done, I will do it myself!” Her words ended in a sharp growl, her shift complete. She was a pure-white werewolf with amethyst eyes. Drool dropped between her teeth, pooling on the floor.
“Where’s my grandmother?” I hissed.
She leapt.
I ducked.
Shen
My paws bounded beyond the town’s borders and into the woods. There, black mages gathered with snarling half-wolf, half-man creatures.
Rogues, Lycus whispered.
That was almost us. Would have been if not for Alia.
I growled and shifted, my bones snapping and popping as I emerged a man. “Who is in charge here?” I asked, the words a demand threaded with all the authority I held as an Alpha.
A Red stepped forward.
“I am,” he said, pushing back his hood. It was the man who betrayed Alia.
“You,” I growled, feeling Lycus push forward.
The rogues growled back.
“Me. Are you going to chase me again, little wolf? Or shall this be a fair fight?”
“Fair would be you leaving.”
“Oh, you don’t understand, do you?”
A few things clicked into place. The way this army showed up, just close enough to get a reaction from us. The way there had been calculated attacks to drive Alia’s people away from her. How her grandmother had been silent all this time when a woman as stubborn as she would have fought to the death to get her power back.
Maybe she was. Not in the way we expected, but in a way that was much worse.
Graham cackled as he saw the dawning on my face. “Oh, now you get it. She won’t be under your thrall for much longer.”
I turned, shifting into my wolf mid-leap.
“Run, little wolf, run. And hope you aren’t too late.”
Alia
I drove a blade up as the white werewolf jumped over me. I adjusted my grip so it nicked the werewolf’s back leg. The werewolf let out a single howl that was filled with rage.
“Aurelia!”
I turned, seeing my grandmother at her throne, her crossbow trained on the white werewolf. She pulled the trigger, but the shot went wide, thunking into the wall. The werewolf snarled and leapt up the red runner toward Grandmother. I barreled into the werewolf and sent her skidding from the rug with a blade in her shoulder.
She tried to get up, but her claws slipped on the polished floor. It gave me the split second I needed to get ahead of her. I ran toward Grandmother, the werewolf snapping at my heels. I arrived at the throne half a second before the werewolf.
I turned to place myself between Grandmother and the white werewolf, who gave me a half-grin as she slid to a stop. She backed away, her tail wagging.
Grandmother snaked a hand around my neck and dug her thumb and forefingers into my neck where it met my chin. My rapid pulse thrummed against her fingers, though my heart felt frozen by her betrayal.
She placed a dagger to my throat just below her hand. I swallowed, feeling the blade dig into my larynx with the movement. I froze.
“What a wonderful granddaughter you are. You were always so driven by what was right. Too bad you outlived your usefulness.”
The white werewolf sat, cocking her head with a lazy grin creasing those long, pearly teeth as blood slowly dripped down her back leg to pool on the floor.
“You were such a promising child. So full of fire. If only you had followed my teachings and the teachings of those who came before. Then you would have been my successor in truth.”
“I was never going to be your successor,” I said.
“Of course you were. You were the chosen. Bred specifically for your parents’ qualities over generations. You were the accumulation of your ancestors’ hopes and dreams. The strongest of us against the strongest of them. You were our prodigy… and you broke it all. For what?” She tsked. “You forced me into this, dear girl. Forced me into siding with the enemy to gain back my rightful place. Such a shame.” She shook her head.
“I may keep you. You could still be of use. Just not as you are now…” The knife left my throat. She dragged it down my collarbone and then pressed against the back of my shoulder, slowly piercing right where the ligament meets the joint. I tried to jerk away, but her fingers tightened around my throat, nearly cutting off my airway. My struggles to pry her fingers off were futile as she held me there, blood making a warm trail down my back.
A growl erupted behind me. The heavy weight of my grandmother was ripped from my back. I spun. Shen was standing between my grandmother and me, his head low to the ground and foam dropping from his lips. I turned, putting my back to his so I could watch the white werewolf.
“You two may keep each other. This tribe is finished. Have fun dying,” Grandmother said. She threw down an orb. It exploded, smoke billowing and making fire race down through nose to my lungs.
I darted forward, my knife outstretched, but Grandmother was no longer there.
By the time we finished coughing, it was just us and a white werewolf. Scratch that. She was flanked by another werewolf, a black werewolf with a white-tipped tail and two white ears.
Shen
Alia was bleeding. My mate smelled of pain.
And I wanted blood, a thousand times over, to pay for every drop of her precious lifeblood that had been spilled. But the one who had wounded her was gone.
I turned. Mother was here. And so was my eldest sister, her eyes questioning as she stared between me and Alia. I needed to be able to speak, so I shifted into my human form.
Alia’s grandmother must have been working with them this entire time. Which confused me.
It appeared her grandmother was not strong enough to amass the power she craved while greater, more powerful beings outclassed her, so she sent the assassins she brainwashed to do her dirty work.
But why all this? Why take out the tribe she worked so hard to build? Unless she was near her goal and no longer had need of them.
My mother shifted into her human form, standing to her full height. Her eyes filled with tears. She reached out her hand, taking a step toward me.
“You are at last strong enough to lead, my precious child. Long have I awaited the day for you to shake off the chains, to find your freedom. For now, you are strong enough to be Alpha King. To take your rightful place as ruler of this realm.”
Beatrice transformed, her body cracking and popping as smooth skin replaced her dark fur. She remained on her knees and stared at mother. “What?”
I thought Mother had said this before merely to get a rise from me. But she truly meant for me to take over the pack? The son she abhorred?
“You were only ever a placeholder, my dear,” Mother told Beatrice. “Your brother has always been the true heir.”
What was Mother’s angle here?
Regardless, Mother had miscalculated. Beatrice was the loyal one. A loyal werewolf could handle many things. Except betrayal.
“I am not your heir?” Beatrice’s voice was oddly sweet. Beatrice was not sweet.
Mother stared at Beatrice. “Did you not realize? A female is not meant to lead. You and I were merely placeholders for my son. I have given my life to train him up in the ways of a powerful warrior Alpha?—”
“You taught me nothing of strength, Mother,” I said.
Her head snapped around, her eyes narrowing. “I taught you strength and resiliency through adversary. I taught you how to live?—”
“You taught me how to survive. You taught me how to kill. You taught me that to be a leader is to be heartless.”
She stared at me. Then her eyes grew golden. “Ungrateful brat. How long have I put up with your dalliances? Even encouraged them so you’d find the strength to break your chains. You think I did not know about the pup and the Red? You think I did not know how you took your sisters under your protection? You think I did not know that you spoke sweet words in my ear, all the while doing everything in your power to spite me?”
I stepped back as her eyes grew so golden they were nearly yellow… and then they turned white. Had everything I known been a twisted lie from the start? Displeasure threaded through me. Was it all a manipulation? Did I finally do what she wanted of me after so long?
A part of me wished she had screamed and yelled, called me a cur of a son, and told me how horrid I was for betraying her. But she stood before me wanting such a betrayal? Her reaction cheapened my rebellion until I felt like nothing but a young, embarrassed boy berated by his mother for eating the laying hens.
A tiny hand rested on the crook of my arm. I glanced down. Alia turned her face up, her eyes bright with fury, but her voice the calm in the storm of my emotions. “There is only a drop of belladonna in a wine glass,” Alia whispered for my ears alone. “But it turns the entire glass into death.”
I stared into her eyes as my mother raged about how she had given all for me and how she had raised me to overcome all hurdles, including Command.
I lightly trailed my half-formed claws down Alia’s cheek. “You are correct,” I whispered through the fangs protruding from my lips. I did not even realize I had partially shifted.
I rotated to face my mother. “You gave me no choice,” I said, cutting through the tirade of her lies and half-truths.
“What choice did you need? You were a child, unable?—”
“Unable to choose. Unable to even understand what was expected of me. And you watched as I was trained in the arts of secret keeping, torture, espionage, and assassination. Once, I only wished to please you. But no more. Your vitriol may sound pleasant to the ears, but your actions are poison to the soul.”
“All I ever did was for you!” she cried, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please believe me, all I did. It was all for you .”
“No, Mother. It was all for you.”
Alia’s hand disappeared from my chest as she walked forward to the woman kneeling on the ground. I reached out for Alia, but she evaded my hand, shooting me a look, asking me to trust her. I clenched my fists at my sides, trying to let her go.
“You were born an innocent child,” Alia said, her voice soft.
“What is this which you speak, human demolisher? You cannot know me,” Mother said, snarling in disgust.
“You were an innocent child who broke. They broke you. Many times,” Alia whispered.
“You… you know nothing. ” Mother’s voice gave at the end.
“And then they played with you. Made you into their little werewolf. But you rose, didn’t you? You killed them.”
“I did not kill them.” Mother sneered, her face twisting until it was nearly unrecognizable from the cold being I had known my entire life. “They slowly lost all will to live when I took everything from them. Every inch of coin was mine. Every debt was mine to hold. And I cashed out.”
Alia shook her head, her fists clenching against her blades. “You were so young. How could they have treated you so wrong?”
“They did not see it as such. I was merely a means to an end.”
“But you loved them.”
“They were my parents. How could I not?”
In those few short words, I understood. My mother was not born the manipulating woman she was leading up to that moment. She had been made into a manipulator.
“You loved them, and they hurt you. With their words. With their actions. How did it make you feel?”
“Worthless. Helpless. Weak,” Mother whispered.
And in those words, I knew . She raised me to never know those three things. In her own, twisted way, she was trying to protect me in the only way her gnarled mind knew how. She did the opposite of what her parents did to her to make me the strongest werewolf possible.
“I only wanted their love. I only wanted them to be proud of me. But they used me,” she said. “Sold me to the highest bidder. They climbed up the ladder of the packs because of me, and I was left holding the cut rope at the bottom of the abyss.”
Alia went down to her knees before my mother, the salty tang of sweet tears reaching my nose. “And you haven’t seen the light since, have you?” she whispered.
Mother shook her head, covering her mouth as a sob erupted from her lips. She was nothing more than a broken, tortured creature.
“You know you can, right? You can see light again.”
My mother shook her head. “It is too late for me, child. Much too late.”
Alia set a hand on mother’s bowed shoulder. “It is never too late?—”
A flash of light glinted off steel. Instinct kicked in. Alia’s breath caught as I shoved her aside, sending her rolling.
Mother came down on my blade, her breath easing from her in a gentle sigh as the blade pierced between her ribs to stab into her heart. The blade that had incited my instincts to protect my mate fell from her hands, clattering against the rocky dirt.
I caught her as she fell, brushing the hair from her eyes as blood dribbled from her lips. “Why?” I whispered.
She lifted a feeble hand, sitting it on my cheek. “My wolf will not allow me to end my life. Now I may know…”
The light left her eyes. Her hand fell from my cheek.
“Peace,” I finished for her.
Alia’s gentle scent of rain and grief mixed with the scent of my tears as I cradled my mother to my chest with one arm and tried to stop the tears on the bridge of my nose with my other hand. It did nothing to ease the ache behind my eyes and the pain in my soul.
“She loved you. In her own, twisted way. But she never loved you in the way you needed. It’s ok to grieve the person you needed and never had, and to grieve who she was.”
With her gentle words and her warm arms wrapped around my shoulders as she kneeled beside me, I bowed my head over my mother’s limp form and cried. I cried for the little girl who was so broken. I cried for the woman who was so twisted. And I cried for the mother I needed but never had.