Chapter 33 Alaric
Alaric
“You found nothing at all?” My father’s voice dripped with skepticism, but I shook my head and sighed, like it pained me as much as him I’d had no more success than the MIB investigators.
“Nothing at all other than traces of the wolves who occupied the room and a few random females.”
“What females?”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Nobody recent.”
“And the forest?”
“Just the bear and pack members who rushed out there after the murders.”
Dad cursed under his breath before staring into the middle-distance for a moment.
I used the lull in conversation to pour myself a glass of elderwine.
This was the good stuff. As strong as shifter moonshine, but way more palatable.
Some elderwine was exactly what I needed to make this visit home more agreeable.
Dad looked up, his lip curled in annoyance. “You drink too much.”
I disagreed but said nothing while waiting for him to grill me some more or dismiss me. Preferably the latter. The spot under my breastbone twinged as my thoughts inevitably drifted back to the witch. I rubbed at it without thinking.
“Something wrong, Alaric?” Dad asked with a frown.
“No, just indigestion from a burger I ate,” I replied before swallowing a large mouthful of elderwine. The liquor burned as it slid down my throat, successfully distracting me from the stabbing pain in my chest.
Dad’s eyes narrowed as he watched me before the moment passed.
“Like I said, you drink too much.” Irritation flared bright and hot.
“I’m a twenty-year-old mage. Of course I drink too much!” Judgmental fuck. Like he didn’t get drunk all the time while he was at Starfall Academy. I’d heard the rumors about his debauched activities before he dialed it back after graduation.
“You’re the son of the Mage Council leader. We have an image to uphold. It looks bad that you were busy partying while students were being murdered.”
My eyes rolled. “It was a full moon. Everyone partied that night.”
He grunted but didn’t push it any further.
As much as he disliked the stories that occasionally ended up in the press about me, there wasn’t much he could do.
While Starfall was closed off to the outside world for first-years, to allow them to settle in, second- and third-year students had more freedom.
This meant anyone could post shit online about me, which inevitably ended up on the gossip sites.
I finished my glass of elderwine and gazed longingly at the half-full bottle my father had placed behind him on the bureau. I needed at least one more glass to relax in this mausoleum of a home.
At least my stepmother, Brianna, wasn’t here. Small blessings. The less time I spent with her, the better. She’d made my childhood truly miserable, and I would never forgive her for that.
“The lack of evidence pointing toward the damned incubus is a problem,” Dad grumbled. “Even I can’t get away with convicting him on no evidence.”
“Really? You have no problem doing it when covering up demon and feral wolf attacks.”
Dad glared at me but couldn’t deny the truth. “That’s different. Convicting lesser magicals of heinous crimes is easy. People want to believe they’re responsible for all that’s wrong in our society.”
Of course they did. Decades of insidious rumors and fear-mongering had brainwashed the populace. When bad things happened, people looked for a scapegoat. It was all too easy to blame minorities with fewer protections.
“And you see nothing wrong with that?” I asked, emboldened by my glass of elderwine.
“No? It’s better to convict a few random trolls and goblins than risk mass hysteria. If people knew demons were breaching the portal weekly, they’d panic.” He sniffed. “It’s for the greater good. It’s my job to make the tough decisions.”
My father’s unerring ability to rationalize what amounted to a shameless persecution of minority species left me speechless as well as fucking angry. But telling him so would only bring the full weight of his ire down on my head, and I couldn’t afford him looking too closely at me right now.
“Unfortunately, there is no evidence against the incubus, so you’ll have to find a different way to spin the murders.”
“Pity. I would love to eradicate that fucking incubus before he breeds. The whole damn bloodline is tainted.”
The level of venom in his voice surprised me. Xavian Vanyx’s crime had been awful, yes, but the poor male had lost his soul-bonded mate. Was it any wonder he’d unraveled? But nobody cared about that. All they saw was the bloody aftermath of his psychotic break.
Honestly, I had a lot of sympathy for Zane. No wonder he’d grown up into an emotionally constipated sociopath. He and I had a lot in common.
“Was there anything else?” I asked once Dad had finished his mini-rant about Zane.
Dad smiled.
I hated it when my father smiled. It usually preceded some awful request or gleeful announcement.
“Regina has requested you and Kinara wed immediately after the winter solstice. She’s keen to build strong family ties between our bloodlines.”
“I thought we had the freedom to decide this for ourselves?” I knew Kinara was desperate for more, but I doubted she wanted to get married this young, while both of us were still students.
From what she’d told me during one of her drunken ramblings, she wanted to make it big as an influencer.
If her mother was trying to move the marriage timeline forward, it meant the old hag had her own agenda.
The thought of procreating with Kinara made me ill. Sure, she was attractive, but the minute she opened her stupid mouth, I lost the will to live.
Dad shrugged, not at all bothered about my opinion, even though it was my fucking life.
“Regina wants her daughter to breed the next generation of powerful witches, and for any heirs to be included in the coven’s line of succession, there has to be a wedding ceremony blessed by the goddess first.”
“Why the rush?” I suspected there was something he wasn’t telling me.
Sure enough, he sighed and pasted a sad expression on his face.
“Regina’s sick, which means she wants to ensure she has a magic heir before she passes.”
Witches, like most magicals, rarely got sick like humans, but witches who abused dark magic were at risk. I suspected her use of dark magic had caused Regina’s terminal illness but thought better of saying this out loud.
Dad rarely appreciated it when I offered him my opinion on such things.
“I’m sorry about Regina,” I lied. Like Brianna, Regina had always been power-hungry and vicious. Most high-ranking witches were. They had to be to hang on to their seats as coven heads. At the first sign of weakness, their fellow witches cast a vote of no-confidence.
Magical society had always been about power. The more power a magical had, the more ruthless they were. The notion of a welcoming, inclusive coven was so far from the truth as to be laughable.
Being utterly ruthless was how my father had become the Mage Council leader, even though his older brother, Adam, had ostensibly been the more powerful mage.
I had no clue what had happened to Uncle Adam, only that he’d disappeared before I was born.
Knowing my father, he’d murdered the poor bastard.
I’d spent a lot of time trying to find Adam, but either he was dead, or he’d gone off-grid and stayed there.
“Yes, yes. It’s all very sad,” my father said with a dismissive wave of his hand, uncaring that my future mother-in-law was at death’s door and likely to pass over within six months.
A tiny twinge of sympathy shot through me. As much as I disliked Regina Blake, she was still Kinara’s mother. Seeing her mother literally waste away would be horrific for Kinara.
Still, it didn’t make me want to marry her any faster. Or at all.
I didn’t have that much empathy for her situation.
“Unless there’s anything else, I’ll leave you to it.” Any more of his bullshit, I’d need more than one glass of elderwine.
“That’s all.”
I glanced at my watch. There was just enough time to visit my mother before I returned to campus.
Mom lay on her bed, eyes closed. Heavy drapes drawn tightly across the small window up high hid the thick iron bars Dad had installed to stop her from escaping. Not that she was in any fit state to stage a prison break.
The thick silver collar around her slim neck prevented her from doing anything rash. It also blocked access to her eagle.
“Mom?” The figure huddled beneath a thin sheet stirred.
“Alaric?” Mom’s raspy voice had grown so weak I could barely hear her. How long had Dad kept her locked in her room this time? From the plates of uneaten food, a few days at least.
In the early years, Dad used to allow her some freedom, but she’d tried to escape too many times. After the last attempt, when she made it as far as the forest, he had Brianna spell a collar to block her from shifting. That was fifteen years ago.
Since then, she’d slowly deteriorated, both mentally and physically. Blocking a shifter’s access to their animal was inhumane, but Dad didn’t care. All he cared about was keeping his soul-bonded mate alive while ensuring nobody knew fate had given him a mate from a lesser species.
In his mind, our family’s public image was everything. If other mages found out his mate was a bird shifter, his image would never have recovered.
But as long as my mother remained alive and lived in the same house, the bond didn’t affect him. He carried on with his life, and nobody knew the woman he paraded as his wife was not his true mate or my birth mother.
It was lucky for me I’d been born a mage. If Mom had birthed another shifter, my father would have murdered me in my cradle. Thankfully, my father got the male heir he needed first time. Job done.
I picked up a glass of water from the table and handed it to my mother.
She took it with shaking hands, swallowing a few sips.
The gauntness of her cheeks and arms showed she’d lost even more weight.
I could see every vein beneath her paper-thin skin, and her once vibrant blonde hair had faded to white.
She sank back against the pillow. When I looked closely, I saw fresh scratch marks around the collar.
“I wish I could break the spell, Mama,” I murmured so only she could hear me.
My father’s servants loved to hover outside, listening for anything they could feed back to my father or Brianna, hoping to earn favors for tattling on me.
I hated them all. One day, karma would come for the people who’d stood by and done nothing to help my mother.
“I can’t feel her,” Mom whispered as tears slid down her cheeks. “She’s gone.”
“She’s still there, Mama.” I wasn’t sure what happened to a shifter’s animal after all this time without access to them, but I fervently hoped Mom’s eagle was there, waiting for her chance to break free.
Mom grabbed my shirt in an unexpected show of strength. “You must end this, Alaric! Kill me and he’ll die too.” I shook my head.
“No, Mama, I can’t. There has to be another way. I’ll keep looking for a way to break Brianna’s spell.”
“It’s no use.” I hated that she’d given up, but was it any wonder when my father had stripped away her freedom, stolen her animal, and given her nothing to live for?
“I’ll find a way, Mama. I promise.”
“He always wins,” she whispered before rolling toward the wall and curling into a fetal position.