15. Aurelia
Chapter 15
“Now, love, how do you feel?” Hadriel pushed into the tent with a steaming cup of the horrible tasting tea in his hand.
I was dressed and ready, having woken up with the big alpha curled around me, just as I’d wanted, his lips against my bare shoulder, his arms holding me close. He had laid me there last night, the two of us merged as one.
As predicted, of course, the morning brought its troubles. It hadn’t taken long for him to roll away and for my situation to become real again. We’d had a moment, yes. But that moment had passed.
Still, it had been great while it lasted. The sex had been fucking amazing. Out of this world. The only awkward part had been when he was carrying me through camp, only one tent setup. Everyone else would sleep under the stars in wolf form, as was easier for a pack on the move. He’d had me put on my shirt, had covered my bare ass with our remaining clothes, and had even held me in a somewhat awkward position as he strutted to the tent, confident and strong and somehow not at all mortified. He’d barked at everyone to turn around at our passing, giving me the respect of whatever privacy could be managed. It was chivalrous and kind, and if he’d stayed that way, my heart might’ve melted just a little bit towards him.
Unfortunately, this morning he was back to being an insufferable prick. He’d barked at me to get up and get dressed. The sooner he could get me to the dragons, the better. My time for emotional turbulence was over. There were clearly more important things to do, like hurry me to my death.
“Fine.” I stood and reached for the tea. “Sorry about yesterday. About...” I motioned to my eyes. “You know.”
“Don’t you dare, you horrible creature.” He frowned at me comically before handing me the mug. “I had a good cry as well. Then I asked the hottest guy in this mini-detail for a pity lay.”
I nearly spit out the tea I’d sipped. “How did that go?”
His lips pulled wide, stretching out his little mustache. “Not amazing. He told me to suck it up or it would be his foot in my ass, not his cock. I, of course, told him I could work with whatever got him off. He did not find that joke amusing, especially when he realized I wasn’t joking.” He shrugged. “It was worth a shot. Okay, here we go. We have a lot of ground to cover today, and I am hoping to do it without you jumping horse, so to speak.”
He ushered me to his beautiful horse who I was positive glanced back at me with an ill-suffering look. Poor thing. I felt bad for it. Weston sat at the front again, his head bowed, reading. Prick.
“Have you ever heard,” I said softly, leaning close, “that an al?—“
“Nope.” Hadriel waggled his finger in my direction.
I leaned back again, closing my mouth, wondering if he’d decided chatting with me was not a good way to pass the time after all. It hadn’t really worked out well for him the day before.
After the procession was underway, though, he glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry about that,” he murmured. “I figured it might be better for more noise and a softer voice. You were planning to ask about the alpha, were you not?”
“Y-yeah.”
“I thought so. You had that scandalized tone to your voice. Shifters with access to their animals have excellent hearing. Clearly you don’t realize how good.”
“Clearly.” I tried again, this time in a whisper. “Have you heard that an alpha’s knot is dependent on the female?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, it stays... big for as long as the female wills it?”
“No. But then there might be a different dynamic for your situation.”
“My situation? People without magic, you mean?”
“Uhmm...” He adjusted his seating as though uncomfortable. “No—well, I just mean that maybe he knows you need it, and is responding to that need... Actually, you know what, let’s revisit that another time. Without hitting a pressure point, we’ve discovered that your mother might not have had any magic. That, or it was so suppressed that she couldn’t find anyone strong enough to pull out her animal. But what’s your deal? Why do you assume you don’t have any magic?”
I started tracing the dicks on his jacket again, this a different jacket than the other. “Do all your jackets have dicks on them?”
“No. Some have vaginas. The seamster, Cecil, is a horrible jackass. Answer the question.”
“Oh. Well, my mom didn’t have magic, and that trait is always passed on.”
“It almost never is, actually. It’s quite rare not to have one’s magic flower, but every person born a shifter still has the genes. But I see what you’re saying. You’ve always assumed you don’t have magic because your mother doesn’t, then?”
I furrowed my brow, shaking my head a little. “I’ve always heard that a parent will pass on magiclessness. And anyway, Granny is—was—a pretty powerful alpha and she said she couldn’t feel an animal in me. She tried every year just to appease me. You know, because sometimes there are late bloomers.”
He went rigid.
I leaned back a little to give him space. “Sorry if you thought I was just suppressed. Do you want me to walk?”
“Aurelia, my darling, don’t dip your toes into the absurd. That is not your journey. Granny told you that you didn’t have an animal?”
“Yes. She tried numerous times. She said she’d be able to feel something even if she wasn’t strong enough to pull it out.”
“She certainly should’ve been able to, that is true. And obviously, without magic, you’d have worried that life outside of Granny’s village would end in the same sort of trauma you witnessed as a child, but this time it would be targeted at you. And while you seem like a determined, stubborn sort of person who wouldn’t back down in the face of adversity, I imagine you worried that if the tormentors succeeded, you’d fail in keeping your mother’s promise in remembering her?”
It was silent all around us but for hooves thumping against the ground and the squeak of carts farther back. Weston’s head had come up, clearly having heard me and Hadriel talking, this apparently more interesting than my other issues and hurdles over the years.
I hunched a little, my gaze finding the ground, still so far away. “You’re pretty astute.”
“I’m incredibly good at reading people, love. It makes me unbelievable at sussing out information through gossip.”
“Which is why you are my babysitter, I take it? You try and pull information out of me through idle chitchat while Head Dick over there reads my most intimate thoughts and feelings from over the years.”
“Something like that, yes.” He patted my leg. “I’m enjoying my time with you, though, if it’s any consolation.”
At least he was honest. I supposed that might’ve been the reason I didn’t take offense to it. That, and I was enjoying my time as well. Most of it, anyway. I enjoyed his easy banter and his effortless proximity. I liked that he seemed to actually care about my stories and worried I might break my neck from jumping off the horse.
Maybe it just boiled down to the fact it felt like he actually cared, and I craved that. I was big enough to admit it.
I shrugged. “Is that so hard to fathom? Granny kept me safe. She kept us all safe. And look, what she said would happen if I got captured came to pass. Imprisonment, taking me away, the leader using me for sex...” She had failed to mention I’d like it. “She tried to protect me from exactly this. And you killed her for it.”
“Phew.” Hadriel braced a hand on his thigh. “This is a juicy onion. I have water works with each layer.”
“It’s just...” My voice was firm, knowing Weston was listening. “You’ve been suppressed, fine. But, number one, you knew you had magic, and number two, you were in the same boat as the whole kingdom. You were all in it together. I don’t have magic and I’m on my own. I’m the only one. My mom looked for help and look where it got her. She tried to settle down, look where that got her. Right now, I have—or had—a forever home. I have flowers and a semblance of a garden. I have a life. A community. They might not like me being there, but at least they tolerate me. They don’t try to force me out. All of this without magic. I had it pretty damned good for my situation, and I know that from experience.” I paused to take a steadying breath. “So yes, I’d go against the law as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone—and it isn’t, by the way. I dealt with the punishments from Granny when I stepped out of line because you know what? My life with her was a helluva lot better than the alternative. Even being punished or killed by your dragons is better than what I’ve already been through. These streaks of white in my hair are from trauma--being chased out with pitchforks when I was four, or seeing my mother get stoned in the street, barely able to escape, or hiding in wet bushes, freezing, starving, hoping the dogs from the nearby village I’d stolen bread from didn’t find me. I am not going to apologize for my choices. I am only apologetic for not killing the alpha when I had the chance.”
“And the other villagers?” Weston asked, interjecting into the conversation. His hand was braced on his thigh, looking out to the right. “They wouldn’t have those problems living elsewhere, yet they aren’t allowed to leave.”
“Of course they are allowed to leave,” I spat, angry. “People come and go all the time.”
“With an escort.”
“Yes. We’ve had this conversation. Our job is dangerous. Granny provides them protection. And before you say otherwise, they cast a vote in favor of Granny’s organizational goals. They gave their consent to stay there. I was young, but I remember that vote. I participated in it. Someone from the village tallied it up. Notes of that would’ve been in one of the journals you were reading so closely yesterday.”
“It was. As was what you were all promised for that vote,” he replied. “Those promises must’ve seemed like heaven to the impoverished. But then she started slacking in her duties, didn’t she? You wrote that, as well.” His tone turned harsh. “You pushed back and were punished for it. For months you were punished. You thought they’d kill you. Children were beaten to get you to come around. To get you to come around. They didn’t matter, not even the kids. It was you Granny needed to cull. Her drug maker. The key to her whole operation. She needed to keep you happy, Aurelia, and while she worked on that, they were trapped in hell. A hell without end, it seems. It looked to me that they had just enough to get by. Are they really much better off than they started?
“Regardless, they no longer have any freedom of choice. They can’t even move to a neighboring village—those are all gone. Granny made sure of it. Even if they weren’t, what gold do those people have? Besides what we left for them, of course, the offering one they seemed over the moon to receive. Without me, they’d have nothing. Isn’t that right? That isn’t all written in your journals—so far—but it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.” He paused for a moment. “Or don’t you remember what you wrote?”
I opened my mouth for a rebuttal, ready to say how absurd that all was. Granny did look after everyone. She always mentioned the special things she was doing for the children. She talked of special treats she was working on procuring. Every few months we were all spoiled with enough haunches of meat and extra loaves of bread for a feast.
Before I could utter a word, though, memories long forgotten rose to the surface. I’d been young, fresh in my new role and just getting traction. I’d been working hard on belonging in the village, creating a situation where they needed me and couldn’t get rid of me on a whim. Weston was right; Granny had reneged on her promises for a time. Food had come in rancid. Bread was moldy or rock hard. She promised she’d fix the issue and never did. Everyone had been starving and no one would take my rations unless I just left them behind. I remembered the beatings—oh, how I remembered the beatings. They’d been constant and brutal.
I did think I would die, then. I’d wanted to.
My eyes teared up and I looked away. Granny had been callous and unforgiving. Cruel sometimes. I’d hated her then. I remembered that now. I’d hated everyone; I’d tried to help and they were horrible to me. But what had been the alternative? For me, only death. Death there, or death elsewhere.
I’d stayed firm to help everyone, or so I’d thought. Now, as I looked back, had I really? Or had I been helping myself, ensuring they would all stay so I’d have a place to live without fear of waking up in a burning house? I knew Granny would not only protect the borders, she’d protect me as well. She wouldn’t let the villagers turn on me. She’d said so often enough. She even enquired after my sense of safety periodically.
I’d never once wondered why no one had left. I didn’t wonder even a couple days ago, either, confident it was because they had more now than they did before Granny brought in food and supplies.
But honestly, I had no idea if that was true. People wouldn’t tell me how their day was going, let alone their lives. I knew Raz was unhappy, but figured he stayed for his kids. Did he, though? Was that why he dealt with a job he hated and a co-worker he despised?
My mind churned, thinking back. The past was foggy, unfocused. So much of my life had been about survival. About negating danger. Anything not directly related was hard to call up and analyze.
Didn’t we have some of the same problems now as we did back then? Not nearly as often, I supposed, but sometimes food was lean. Sometimes roofs weren’t fixed. Sometimes we didn’t get the supplies we were promised. It was never bad enough to really be a concern, and I’d never had to push back so hard again, but it wasn’t as good as in the beginning—of that, I was almost positive. Plenty good enough by my standards, but not the avalanche of goods and materials like in the beginning.
It should’ve been the opposite, really. I worked harder now than I ever had. I produced more product—better product. Granny was in the main trade markets, for gods’ sakes. The gold should’ve been pouring in.
The village didn’t see any of that coin. I didn’t see any of that coin.
The most obvious issue that I’d never bothered to reflect on hit me in the gut.
None of us had ever been paid in gold. Not ever. I was given gifts and they were given supplies, but we never got more than a pittance to spend in the Outside, and that was allocated only when we were actually traveling, a long journey to and from the nearest town. The villages that used to be close had dwindled until they were ghost towns.
Our village never got raw materials from which to make goods, either—those goods came already made. Even if people wanted to trade their wares for some sort of savings, they couldn’t. Without that job and that village, I had nothing. Literally nothing. The clothes on my back. The journals Weston had stolen.
My stomach churned, bile clawing up my throat.
“No. Stop. Just...” I struggled to get away from Hadriel. “Stop, let me off?—“
I slipped off the back of the horse and fell into a heap on the ground. The horse danced away, probably freaked out at the lump of human that kept dropping off its side. My mind spun as memories bombarded me, each more damning than the last. My stomach heaved now as I tried to process, dizzied as I swam in guilt.
“Whoa, wait a minute.“ Hadriel steadied his horse. Those to the sides cleared some space, the path suddenly filled with stomping and dancing hooves.
I darted out from between two large beasts. One reared, whinnying. Its owner struggled to stay on.
“Sorry,” I mumbled before I was through the trees, gripping a trunk and losing the meat and cheese I’d eaten on the trail.
I flipped back through those hazy memories, adding a new lens crafted of age and experience.
“Did you know she wouldn’t allow a whole family to leave at the same time?” Weston stood somewhere behind me.
I closed my eyes, leaning heavily against rough bark.
“If a family wanted to leave the village,” he said, “one child would have to stay behind. Did you know?”
“What?” I asked, head still spinning. I sucked in deep breaths, my stomach threatening to upheave again. “That’s absurd. That can’t be.”
“Multiple people in the village verified it. She wasn’t providing escorts for them, Aurelia. She wasn’t providing protection. She was monitoring them and keeping a hostage in case they tried to run.”
“In case they tried to run?” I asked, my knees suddenly weak, remembering the things the patrol had said to me when they’d thought I was trying to escape.
“You trying to run, little girl? You stupid enough to think you’d get past us?”
“The drug trade is dangerous,” Weston went on, though he didn’t venture any closer. “But not in the way you’re talking. I’ve never heard of a drug maker being abducted. Or killed, even. They might’ve tried to poach you—tried to offer you gold and a better living situation to entice you away from Granny, but I’ve never heard of them outright abducting someone. They certainly wouldn’t take you, not with your royal backing. She was manipulating you, Aurelia. She saw your predicament, knew your limits, and was using you.”
“No!” I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart aching. “No. She took me in when no one else would. When I didn’t have a penny to my name. She hadn’t known what sorts of abilities I might have. It was only later she learned how good I was at making product. She wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t care. She wouldn’t have helped me set up a new life if she hadn’t cared!”
But she’d beaten me to within an inch of my life. She’d starved me. She’d tried to force my hand once she learned what I was good at. Her caring clearly had limits, limits my mother never, ever in her life, would’ve had.
Tears threatened to fall and I sank to my knees.
“Please,” I begged, the memories coming faster now. A black hole inside me stretched wide. “Please,” I whispered. “She’s the only family I had left. You’ve already taken her from me, please don’t tarnish her memory as well.”