Chapter 27 Consequences of Naivety #2
“As the years passed, I settled into my role as an Alpha,” he continued, derision dripping from his voice.
“I appointed a few Betas and ran the pack as I saw fit, believing in the political philosophy of treating the pack as one big happy family.” He laughed, but it was so brittle and humorless, I felt myself shiver. “And that was my mistake.”
He suddenly leaned back so he could face me, and his eyes were bright with despair. “Because I insisted my pack was my family, I didn’t realize one of my Betas was aiming to overthrow me and bring another Alpha from another pack in my place.”
His auburn curls fell down over his face like a curtain. “That Beta, Jacques, was my closest friend. A man I considered a brother.”
Hearing the little break in his tone at the word brother, my chest squeezed, and I hugged him tighter, trying to merge our bodies and offer him warmth and comfort. Telling him I was here.
He sucked in a breath and looked away, lips thin.
“Before the rebellion erupted, I was striking deals with human companies to bring profit to our pack. It’s not unheard of for Otherborne to do business with humans, as long as they kept their true nature under wraps, but werewolves hardly ever did such things.
We’re very homogenous. We don’t mix with other Otherborne races, let alone humans.
I was the odd one out; I insisted we couldn’t continue living among ourselves without spreading out to other races.
Jacques, along with other conservative pack members, did not like that at all. ”
Slowly, his arms fell from around me, and he took a step back, staring at me without really seeing me.
“I was an idealist. Still am, for better and for worse. But back then, I turned a deaf ear to others’ opinions.
Instead of listening, I preached. And Jacques and the others simply stopped complaining when they realized they were talking to a wall. ”
The self-deprecation, and self-loathing, in his voice made my heart break. I stepped forward, wanting to reach out to him again, to hold him, but he shook his head and put up his hand. “No, Drew. I don’t deserve your sympathy. The fall of the Montvoilé pack was of my own making.”
“Lucien—”
“Yet I could’ve prevented it,” he cut me off with a bitter smile, “if only I could have told the human companies and their representatives, who became my friends along the way, about what was happening.”
Pushing his auburn curls back, he gave me a desperate look.
“You must understand, Drew. I wasn’t entirely unaware of my pack members’ building resentment.
I saw things from a different perspective, my own perspective, really, and wouldn’t bother to try and look at everything from theirs.
For so long, Otherborne and werewolves, too, thought humans to be weak, meek, and useless.
But when I dealt with them myself and interacted with them on a daily basis, I realized just how wrong this state of mind was.
” His voice turned somewhat choked. “Humans had their own strength. They had the power of curiosity, the endless need to better themselves, unlike most Otherborne, especially werewolves, who believed that they could only use the cards life had dealt them at birth.”
He suddenly looked as if all energy evaporated from his body as he sat down on a bench, burying his head in his hands.
“But just like I didn’t listen to them, my pack members didn’t listen to me.
And so one fateful night, while I was away, in Marseille for a meeting with a human company, a rebellion broke out inside my pack and started a civil war. ”
Tears welled in my eyes as I slowly, hesitantly, came to sit next to him. I was scared of what he was going to tell me next.
“Jacques led the rebellion,” Lucien said hoarsely, and I saw him tremble.
“He brought half of the pack over to his side, and they went around the pack territory, threatening the members with death if they didn’t join them.
A few did, but most didn’t, and the forests of Paris turned into battlefields. ”
He stopped, and I could hear him trying to catch his breath before he said, “I received the call too late, and ran in wolf form all the way from Marseille to Paris without pause for a full day at full speed. But by the time I arrived, I was already too late.
“They were all dead.”
I sucked in a breath as he slowly raised his head and turned to look at me with that haunted gaze from before.
“When werewolves turn against each other, the odds of survival of either side are close to zero. The entire pack territory was filled with bodies of werewolves in both human and wolf form. My family . . .” He swallowed hard and looked away.
“I had a mother and two younger sisters, just like you did, Drew. And I failed to protect them. I arrived too late. The rebellion killed them.”