Control
It was ridiculous how, at 29 years old, I felt like a silly teenager all over again. Heart beating a mile a minute, hormones out of control, inability to rationalize or think straight… I didn’t even think I could get like that anymore.?
Aegis ran a hand through his hair when he slid into the driver’s seat, turning and giving me a wry grin. “We are very lucky that ‘control’ is what my father instilled in me most.”
I considered that as he pulled out of the driveway. My whole life, I’d known Aegis to basically be everyone’s rock; he was the point of stability for the entire pack.
“What was training with your dad like?” I asked, trying to ignore how my skin still tingled where he touched me.
“It was… definitely something.”
I glanced at him. “Not fun, then.”
Aegis snorted. “My father and I butted heads behind closed doors because I felt that he was being too hard on me.” He sobered up. “I eventually realized why.”
That surprised me. “How?”
“You may have noticed.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “I have total and complete shift mastery, but I… I feel that control slip, sometimes.”
“Like at the bonfire.”
“Yes. Enough anger, and I shift. Enough anger, and everyone feels it. If I were anything less than a multi-generational werewolf, I probably wouldn’t have control at all. I feel things very strongly, and it causes me to force that control outward onto everyone else.”
“I was wondering,” I said slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a werewolf affect others the way you do. One command, and everyone’s prostrating.”
He grimaced. “I’m not proud of it. If I could turn it off, I would. I deeply prefer loyalty over fear, but my father was right. I have the Alpha gene in spades, and he worked me as hard as he did because he knew I would struggle.”
My heart hurt for him. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how lonely that was.”
“I found workarounds,” Aegis mused. “I had Paul, for starters. I don’t think he knows how to suck up to anyone. I don’t even think he knows how to actually be afraid.”
I smiled at that. “He has always been there for you, more than anyone else.”
Aegis glanced at me. “Don’t go comparing apples to oranges. You’re not Paul, and I don’t want you to be.”
“Damn. I feel like you can see straight through me.”
“Only because I never want to stop looking.”
I shook my head, fighting a smile. After a moment, however, I sobered. “How do you think Rudy’s doing?”
“Bad.” Aegis turned grim. “We need to get as many miles down as possible, today. He needs people with him that he knows.”
“Can you tell me… what happened with his family?”
Aegis hesitated, and then sighed. “I think given the situation, he isn’t going to want to talk about it any time soon. I would rather ask his forgiveness later, than his permission now.” He fell silent for a moment, brooding over his thoughts. “Five years ago, Rudy got involved in a particularly charged case. I don’t know the specific details, because FBI, but I do know that he managed to sniff out a huge hit on a rather big politician who had been very vocal about his dislike and distrust of werewolves.”
“Whoa,” I said, eyes wide. “What do you mean, ‘hit’? Like, trying to kill him? Like a hitman?”
“Worse. They wanted to turn him. Get him bit, show him the reality of the things he was saying. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yeah.”
“But then… how does that involve Rudy’s family?”
“They didn’t catch everyone in the plan. The whole scheme went deep, deeper than you or I will ever see. Not all werewolves have acclimated, and not all of us are happy with our lot in life.” He was grim. “Many want change. There are some who consider themselves the apex predator, the real top of the foodchain. Lots of ‘they keep us as pets’ narratives. Young people are really prone to that kind of language, if they’re not careful. Werewolves can rule the world, we’re better, we’re stronger, put them in their place and make them wear identification tags.”
I grimaced. “We haven’t figure out, in all this time, how to live together.”
“It’s a difficult situation. We are people, real people, with feelings and dreams and personalities and lives… but we are also incredibly dangerous and deadly.” His expression darkened. “As you well know.”
“Not all werewolves, Aegis.”
“No… and yet, in the right circumstances, all werewolves.”
I looked at him, startled. “What are you talking about?”
Aegis’s hands tightened again on the steering wheel. “When I thought you were dead, I nearly lost my mind. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I had to go in seclusion. Your family were in closed caskets, you weren’t there, and the funeral was set and announced to all those invited. I… I nearly killed my dad.”
That was news to me. “No one told me that.”
“Only a few people know. Paul, for one, because there was no way my Beta was going to leave me alone; Jade, because she was hurting, too. My mom… and Lawrence. He was there. It’s part of the reason he’s so aggressive toward me.”
“And why you let him,” I said softly.
“He saw me at my utter worst, and I had no control,” Aegis said quietly. “Under the right circumstances, every werewolf is dangerous. Rudy, more than anyone, knows that. I think he knew the risks before he took that case… or he thought he did.”
“So… the hit?”
“It caught up with him. That root organization put a hit out on Rudy’s family. This time, it wasn’t to change them. Rudy found out about the hit, tried to get them all relocated, but there was a mole within the FBI. En route with witness protection, they were intercepted… and brutally massacred. It was a bloodbath.”
I sat in the car in quiet, stunned silence… and yet, there was a grim familiarity to it all.
“Life is so complicated,” I said softly.
“How so?”
“There is so much darkness.” I looked out the window. “Ivy lost her brother, Marcus, to random violence, and her mother to her grief, if I remember correctly. I lost my whole family to a wild, unregistered first gen werewolf. Rudy lost his entire family in a planned assassination.”
“Maybe we should leave the talking to me, with Rudy,” Aegis muttered.
“But,” I said, holding up a finger. “But. There’s always a ‘but’. I tried to build a family and failed, but I got Lucy. Brittani tried to bully and destroy Jade, but it led to her obtaining form mastery. Marcus was murdered, but Ivy was able to rectify a broken system within her jurisdiction, saving who knows how many more. My family was brutally murdered, but I had the boys, and they kept me tethered to this world even in the darkest of my days. Rudy’s family was murdered, but…”
“He did catch them,” Aegis said, when I fell silent, at a loss. “He caught all of them. I don’t really know the details of the entire thing; a connection kept me abreast of the situation, because I was worried. He was a man possessed. I know there was a confrontation, and I know there was a gunfight. I do also know that the leader of that organization was brought in, and there were minimal casualties. Whatever Rudy did, it was effective.”
“Nothing in this world seems good enough when you’ve lost so much,” I said softly. “So many will never know exactly what he sacrificed to save them, to alter their very lives…”
“Very few know the circumstances of their fate,” Aegis mused. “Maybe we learn after death. Maybe we never know, and we fizzle away into nothingness.”
“I can’t imagine what he went through… He was around, but I was too… I was too wrapped up in my own world to notice that he was going through something. Even now, that whole time period is foggy and faded.”
“Probably for the best. You were a good distraction when he needed it, something to keep him tied together. He suffered, once the whole thing was put to rest. He did it right, but that didn’t bring him comfort. It didn’t bring his loved ones back.”
“What a story,” I whispered. “I wonder how this whole bite happened.”
“I’ve been following events sporadically, more so after he left. Hot blooded gangs of opposing beliefs were duking it out, using the situation you sparked as an excuse.”
I groaned. “Don’t tell me this is all accidentally my fault.”
“Remember your own words,” Aegis said, grinning slightly. “There’s always a ‘but’, even if you haven’t found it yet.”
“I set off an entire shut down and sparked a near war between humans and werewolves within the county of Los Angeles, but…?”
“But it drove you to come back home, and let me fall in love with you all over again.”
I looked away, blushing furiously. “That was a good one, although I doubt the people of Los Angeles would agree.”
Aegis laughed. “I’ll get better. I’ve got time to practice; I won’t give up. I’m not letting you go, this time.”
I glanced up at him through a curtain of red hair. “Did you really… were you really that upset when you thought I was dead?”
“I was never quite right after it.”
“I don’t think I’m very good Luna-quality.”
He snorted. “You’ve always been good Luna-quality, Sylvia. Do you know when I first saw you?”
I blinked. “Was that when that boy broke up with me?”
“No, long before that.”
“When… Jade was getting bullied in the sandpit? I think I remember that day. I stepped in to stop some mean kid from kicking sand in her face.”
“A little before that.” He grinned. “You were still friends with Brittani. I don’t remember very much, but I remember one day, you went missing.”
I wracked my brain. I couldn’t remember this at all. “I did?”
“Oh, yeah. For several hours, no one could find you. One minute, you were playing with your dolls, the next, you’d vanished.”
“I don’t remember this at all.”
“We were young. They sent out search parties, but for some reason, your scent was difficult to pin down. I figured that it must have been because you’d gotten abnormally wet, and if you’d gotten wet, you must’ve been down by the creek, which had just recently flooded.”
“There are like fifteen creeks in Werewolf Hollow.”
“Yes, but this was my logic- and anyway, I was right,” Aegis added, suppressing a laugh. “You were lost because outside your window, you saw a kitten wandering around in the rain. You climbed straight out your window and chased after it, only for it to lead you down to the creek, where you found five other kittens all soaked in the water and unable to get out.”
“Oh… I think I remember that part.”
“When I tried to get you to go home, you cried, because you didn’t want to leave the kittens. You were soaking wet, and you were adamant that the kittens needed to be saved.”
I shook my head, amazed. “I don’t remember your part in this at all.”
He mimed an arrow striking him in the chest. “Straight through the heart.”
“Oh, please,” I snorted. “I barely remember anything from those days. That night, ten years ago… it really kind of screwed up my head.”
“Either way,” Aegis said, “I carried you and six soaking wet, very angry kittens home in the rain. That was when my father sensed the Alpha gene, and it was the first time I became hyper aware of who you were.”
“Because saving a bunch of kittens is life-altering.”
“No. Because a sub-five year old sacrificing herself for the well-being of small, helpless animals that don’t know she meant well left a mark on me- and this wasn’t the last time you did something like that.”
I shook my head at him, embarrassed and possibly stuck in a permanent blush. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Aegis snorted. “I was taught to have full and total control over every aspect of my life. I was terrified of feelings; when you’re a teenager, there’s zero control over that. I could see you walking down the hallway, and my thoughts were completely out of my own control. It scared me, because my father was adamant that control was paramount.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You were just existing,” he laughed. “And I’m glad for it. I regret being so scared, but…” He grinned at me. “I learned my lesson. Don’t hold back; don’t be afraid.”
“And… there are some things in this world that we just… can’t control.”