Chapter 10 A Wolf’s Philosophy
A Wolf’s Philosophy
There were ten profiles in total. The logs were also about these pack members’ movements during the past two months.
According to Lucien, werewolf packs operated as a mix of feudal and capitalistic systems. There was the Alpha, who was the leader of the pack and who called the shots, and the Betas, who were like his private council of advisors.
The rest of the pack members held jobs that had to contribute to either the pack’s finances, like taxes, or the pack members’ well-being in general.
In all the profiles I read, Mack Page was the only Beta, while the others had different jobs. It piqued my curiosity, and when I finished reading everything out loud for Lucien, I said, “This is the list of suspects, right?”
“Yes,” Lucien replied as he suddenly took an exit from the interstate onto a highway bound for San Diego. “All ten are suspected of trying to kill me.”
I nodded. “Right. So, how come there’s a Beta, who’s part of the pack leadership, on the list?” I asked, frowning. “Are you on bad terms with your pack’s Alpha? Which reminds me . . .” I turned to stare at him. “What is your job in the pack?”
Lucien’s lips stretched into a thin smile. “Will you believe me if I tell you I am the Alpha?”
My frown deepened. “I mean, when we speak of a werewolf Alpha, I imagine them looking like the Rock,” I said, thinking of the bald-headed wrestler, “only probably hairier.” Looking at Lucien, with his otherworldly beauty, he didn’t strike me as the archetype I imagined in my head.
He chuckled and pushed his auburn curls back, which looked far too sexy for such a mundane act. “So that’s a no?”
“That’s an I don’t know,” I corrected, shrugging while trying to distract myself from any dirty thoughts by focusing on the subject at hand. “Is Remi part of the pack?”
Lucien’s face softened. “Yes, he is. Why?”
“I mean, he treated you like the cousin you are to him,” I said, my heart tugging a little at the true affection I could tell he felt toward his cousin. “I would assume an Alpha requires more . . .” I bit my lip and looked away. “Respect, I guess.”
“You’re not wrong, Drew,” Lucien said, and when I hesitantly returned my eyes to him, I saw his smile was gone, the amusement on his face replaced by grim seriousness.
“An Alpha demands—or rather, commands—respect from his pack members. He is the absolute ruler of the pack. His word goes, and those who do not follow his lead meet an unfortunate end. It’s similar to a dictatorship, in a way.
“However, not every Alpha is the same.” He narrowed his eyes as he made a sharp turn at a corner.
“Each Alpha leads their pack as they see fit. Some ignore the Betas completely and go on to become a true dictator. Others listen to the Betas and take their advice into account when making a decision. Very few, though, consider their pack as more than a company to manage or a mere power trip, and those few see their whole pack as one big family, and treat them as such.”
For some reason, my heart ached at his words. Perhaps because I could hear a slight pain in his voice. “Seeing a pack as a family sounds lovely,” I said quietly.
“Yes, it does,” Lucien murmured. “Or rather, it is. But each leadership path the Alpha takes has its flaws. Even this one.”
I nodded, following his trail of thoughts.
“A dictator Alpha is doomed to fall one way or another because of a member who’s had enough,” I said, thinking about modern human history.
“But the other way around, an Alpha who sees his pack as family might not be taken seriously, or could be seen as weak.”
“You got the gist of it,” Lucien agreed. “But you forgot one: an Alpha who takes the advice of his Betas. Can you see the flaw in this one?”
Frowning, I thought about it for a few moments but came up empty. “It actually sounds like the most solid way of leadership out of the three you presented.”
“On paper, it does,” he said, and his voice tightened, “but that, too, has its flaws. That kind of Alpha could unintentionally trust their Betas to the point of blindness, and the wrong Beta could take advantage of that and manipulate the Alpha in return, thus risking the pack as a whole.”
He sounded bitter, I noticed, and his face was both grim and disgusted. And I had a hunch why. “You think this is the worst outcome of the three.”
There was no hesitation when he said, “Yes.”
When I realized he wasn’t going to elaborate on his reasoning, I let that go and asked instead, “So if every leadership way has its flaws, what is the correct way to lead a pack as an Alpha?”
Lucien smiled, but it was humorless. “A perfectly balanced blend of all three.”
I couldn’t help but be skeptical. “Is it even possible?”
“I can only hope that if I believe it enough, it will be true,” he said somewhat ominously before he suddenly tensed and said, “We’re being followed.”
Tense now as well, I glanced at the side mirror to try and see who was following us. But though it was nighttime, there were still a few cars on the highway, and I couldn’t tell which one it was.
Lucien seemed to sense my confusion because he supplied, “The silver Jeep in the leftmost lane.”
I turned to look through the driver’s side window at the Jeep in question. Its windows were tinted, and even if they weren’t, in the dim streetlights of the highway, it would be kind of hard to see who was inside.
“Are you sure they’re following us?” I asked, trying not to sound skeptical.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said quietly. “They’ve been following us ever since we exited I-5. I wasn’t sure, either, but I felt a brush of fluxion coming from that direction.”
“Fluxion?” I asked, staring at the silver Jeep.
“Magic,” Lucien said. “There are Otherborne in that car.”
I wanted to ask what “Otherborne” were, but I felt like a broken record, asking him all these questions while we were apparently being followed.
So I swallowed that question and filed it for later before I asked, more to the point, “What are we going to do?”
“We’ll have to take a detour,” he replied, putting both his hands on the wheel. “It’s time to drive this expensive fucker to its full potential.”
My heart hammered in my chest when he suddenly pressed the pedal and the Rolls-Royce shot forward like a fucking bullet.
Clutching the upper handle, all I could do was stare, wide eyed and full of adrenaline, as Lucien cut through the light traffic, passing the cars like a maniac behind the wheel, all the while looking as calm as a cucumber, entirely unfazed.
Through the mirror, I could see the silver Jeep was also accelerating, trying to catch up to us, but the Rolls-Royce was much faster.
When Lucien took the exit toward San Diego, I glanced at him. “Where are we going?”
Lucien’s eyes were trained ahead as he maneuvered the car expertly toward the main road. In the side mirror, I could see the silvery glint of the Jeep far behind, still racing after us. Then he said, “Hospital,” and didn’t elaborate.
It wasn’t until we arrived at a spacious parking lot, where Lucien parked as close to the building as possible, that I let out the breath I was holding.
He threw the door open, and I followed suit, grabbing my duffel bag. I could barely see the sign on the building reading Lane Medical Center before we entered through the automatic doors.
I expected him to go to the front desk, but to my shock, he strode hurriedly past the desk with me in tow, and I saw a couple of giggling nurses waving at him excitedly with bright blushes on their faces, as if they knew him.
“Are you a doctor or something?” I asked him in a quiet murmur.
Lucien’s lips twitched, but he didn’t have time to reply before a door opened at the end of the hallway, out of which a man wearing a doctor’s coat emerged.
He was about as tall as I was, but the authoritative air about him made him seem a few inches taller.
He was in his late thirties, with dark hair, a deep set of velvet brown eyes, and olive skin.
He had laughter wrinkles near his eyes that gave him an approachable and friendly look.
He smiled widely when he saw Lucien and me. “Ah, the Lucien Delterre,” he said in a fond yet loud voice that echoed through the busy hallway, bringing almost everyone’s attention to us. Especially when the man grabbed Lucien’s hand in both of his like a father would his son.
Lucien didn’t seem to mind, though. In fact, his face relaxed, and a genuine smile spread across his lips. “Enoch,” he said softly. “It’s been a while.” But then he grew serious. “We’ve been followed here by Council agents. Can you—”
The man, Enoch, raised his hand and said, “Say no more,” before he pulled out his phone and called someone. Then he said to whoever he was speaking to, without preamble, “If they ask for a redheaded man, tell them visitation time is over.”
He hung up and simply smiled before he returned that dark gaze to me. “And who might you be?” he asked kindly, but before I could reply, he gasped, and his eyes widened, practically popping out of his sockets, as he whipped his head back to Lucien. “Is that—”
“Not now,” Lucien immediately cut him off, an underlying warning in his voice.
Enoch clamped his mouth shut, seeming sheepish. Feeling an awkward silence coming, I decided to chime in. “I’m Drew Colter,” I said now in a clear, pointed voice, drawing both men’s attention. I put out my hand for him to shake. “I’m a columnist for the online magazine The Hallowing Hour.”
Enoch seemed shocked. “The Hallowing Hour?” he repeated, something akin to wonder in his tone. “The occult magazine?”
I was so surprised a man of his station knew about the obscure magazine, all I could do was stare at him and nod.
Defensiveness rose inside me instinctually, urging me to tell him the magazine was legitimate, that my work was real, but I bit my tongue.
Since Lucien had told him about the Council agents after us, I assumed Enoch must also be a supernatural.
A sudden touch on my back made me stiffen in surprise, cutting my trail of thoughts, and I glanced at Lucien just as he told Enoch, “Let’s talk more in your office, Enoch. Too many ears out here.”
Enoch agreed, and he led us down the hallway toward the room he’d emerged from earlier. All the way there, Lucien kept his hand gently pressed against my back while looking straight ahead, and I wondered why.
Especially since it made me feel a certain way I didn’t like to acknowledge.
Nonetheless, I let him keep his hand there and refused to think about it any further.