Chapter 22 An Alpha’s True Power
An Alpha’s True Power
When the meeting was over, the Betas left, while Anais, Enoch, and Thayer stayed behind.
Lucien, who seemed weary already from the whole ordeal, turned to look at the two. “The Spellscript on my back,” he said quietly, looking at Anais specifically. “I need you to crack it.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. Enoch nodded, too, and said quietly, “I’ll do whatever I can to help, though Spellscripts are not my main area of specialty.”
“That’s all right,” Anais told Enoch. “All you need to do is study some old writings with me to try and figure out what the Spellscript’s effects are.”
A light switched on in my head, and I jumped to my feet. “Lucien,” I said, looking at the gorgeous, tired man. “Where is my duffel bag?”
Lucien frowned. “I think it’s still in the car—”
“Give me the keys,” I said, stretching my hand forward expectantly as I looked up at Anais. “Please wait.”
Confused, Lucien handed them to me. “It’s right outside.”
“Thanks,” I said, and left the house. Or rather, the cabin.
I headed to the shiny Rolls-Royce, which stuck out like a sore thumb in the midst of an endless spreading wilderness that surrounded Lucien’s house—cabin—and clicked it open. I grabbed my duffel bag and returned inside, dropping the keys on the table as I rummaged through my things.
It occurred to me then that the contents of this duffel bag were all I had left to my name. My entire apartment had been trashed, my furniture, clothes, everything I owned damaged beyond repair, after all.
The memory of the apartment haunted me as I pulled out my notebook and handed it to Anais.
Trying to ignore the sudden suffocating feeling that squeezed my throat, I answered Anais’s silent question when she looked at the notebook.
“For the past eight years, I’ve compiled a list of all sigils I encountered. ”
“Sigils?” Lucien, Enoch, and Anais echoed simultaneously, turning to look at me with confusion.
My cheeks flushed at my little slip of the tongue. “I mean, Spellscripts,” I mumbled, embarrassed. “Before, I named them sigils. But they’re Spellscripts. Obviously.”
Enoch took the notebook from Anais and studied it, his eyes widening. “You encountered a lot of different Spellscripts,” he noted, flipping through the pages, stunned. “I know you write for The Hallowing Hour, but I didn’t expect that you would’ve done such extensive research.”
Anais peered at the notebook as well, with a narrow-eyed expression, but she didn’t say anything.
A moment later, Lucien rounded the table toward us, heading to Enoch and staring down at my notes with a heavy contemplative look. Thayer, too, approached us, or rather, me, with a confused yet curious look. “What’s all this?” he asked me in a low murmur.
Still flushed with embarrassment, I stared down at my feet. The response to my notebook, which indeed contained years of dedicated research, made me shift from foot to foot uncomfortably. I felt like an obsessive, die-hard fan of the supernatural rather than a journalist.
But I wasn’t a fan. All I had ever wanted was to meet the supernatural—the Otherborne—and find out what really happened to Willow and Julianna.
“You know why I took the job at The Hallowing Hour,” I said now, folding my arms. “You know what my end goal is—and has been since that day.”
Thayer didn’t reply. Instead, he merely put his arm around my shoulder, which made me automatically stiffen before I slowly relaxed. “Can you tell me again?” my brother asked. “About what happened?”
I stiffened again, this time in surprise—and dread.
I hadn’t retold everything that happened then in detail after that one time, when I tried to convince our parents and Thayer that what I saw was real.
It was hard enough that the memory didn’t seem to vanish with the years but only embedded itself harder into my psyche.
The thought of speaking about it, reliving it, made a chill crawl down my spine.
“You already know what happened,” I evaded, shrugging off his arm.
His gray eyes were full of emotion. “Back then, I didn’t believe you,” he said, regret coloring his voice. “Because I didn’t believe you, I hardly listened to anything you had to say. I’m ashamed of it, but it’s the truth.”
I scowled but let out a long sigh. “I don’t . . .” I started, before dropping my gaze to my fingers, which fiddled with the hem of my shirt. “It’s not . . . easy to talk about.”
“Talk about what?” Lucien’s voice suddenly interrupted, and Thayer and I raised our gazes to him. Anais was now holding the notebook in her hands, and the three were staring at us with identical suspicious gazes.
Thayer and I exchanged glances, as if we could read each other’s minds. And at that moment, peering into his gray gaze, I knew our thoughts, for the first time since God knows how long, were aligned.
They should hear that too, Thayer’s eyes said, echoing my own thoughts. They must be able to help.
But I hesitated. There was a reason I hadn’t said anything to Lucien so far—though, admittedly, a part of it was the fact we hadn’t had a dull moment or a right time to sit down and talk things through.
Yet I couldn’t help but fear what Lucien’s reaction would be.
So I stalled as I turned to him. “I thought you have another meeting?”
Lucien didn’t seem satisfied by that, yet he looked at the clock on the wall and grunted. “Yeah, it’s almost time.”
“I’ll go to the Ward and start looking into this until the gathering’s over,” Enoch said, shooting me a momentary glance before looking at Lucien. “I need Anais for that, though.”
Lucien nodded and looked at Anais. “You’re exempt from the gathering—and from any other work you have for the rest of the day. If anyone asks, tell them you’re under direct orders from me. If they have issues with that, tell them to book an appointment with my secretary.”
Anais’s spine straightened, and she said determinedly, “Yes, Alpha.”
Next to me, Thayer snorted mockingly, and Anais shot him a fiery glare that would’ve flayed him alive if it could.
The exchange wasn’t lost on Lucien, who glanced between my brother and Anais with a little furrow between his brows before he rested his gaze on Thayer. “You can stay here and rest. We’ll be back later.” He paused. “There’s food and drinks in the fridge.”
“We?” Thayer and I asked together, and we glanced at each other with a frown.
Lucien smiled. It was a genuine smile I didn’t think I’d seen from him before. It made his eyes sparkle with warmth, and in return, my heart skipped a beat and butterflies fluttered in my stomach. “Drew’s coming with me.”
Blushing for a whole different reason now, I glanced at Thayer again and saw him frowning. “Can’t I come, too, then?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Lucien replied apologetically, his smile disappearing as his gaze turned thoughtful. He glanced at Anais for a moment before he seemed to reach a decision. “If staying here isn’t what you want, you can accompany Enoch and Ana?s to the Ward.”
Anais whipped her head toward Lucien and snapped, “No!”
Lucien’s lips twitched, his eyes almost wicked, while Enoch frowned, looking at Anais disapprovingly. “This is not very hospitable of you, Anais.”
She glowered at Thayer. “He’s only going to slow us down.”
And again, she knew exactly which buttons to push, because Thayer suddenly straightened and shot her a strained smile as he retaliated. “You know what? I would love joining you. Maybe I’ll even learn a thing or two. Unlike some people, I’m not afraid of a little intellectual challenge.”
The provocation was obvious. The gauntlet was thrown. And Anais, whose face reddened with fury, couldn’t help but pick it right up. “Fine,” she spat venomously. “I would love seeing you eat your words.” She paused, glaring. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, Colter.”
Thayer put his hands in the pockets of his jeans, gray eyes flashing silver as he stared at her, grinning wickedly, and drawled, “It’s Dr. Colter to you.”
She was so livid, her curly hair seemed to slither around her head like Medusa’s snakes. But Lucien put an end to the best show I’d seen in a while, especially from my normally cool-as-a-cucumber big brother. “We have to go. Thayer, go with them. Ana?s, be nice.”
Anais growled deep in her chest, the sound rumbling like thunder. “Yes, Alpha,” she grated out almost too menacingly.
As the three left the cabin, with Enoch standing between my brother and Anais like a human shield, I wondered how and why the hell these two hated each other so much.
The site of the Montrevere werewolf pack was absolutely, heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
From the narrow river trickling through the residential wooden cabins to the majestic vines covering the sole brick building of the pack’s library, everywhere I looked, nature flourished.
I was so used to the Californian dry colors that the vivid green grass and healthy brown earth were like feasts to the eye.
Whipping my head from side to side, I took it all in as Lucien drove us deeper into the pack territory.
Other than the residential cabins, there were a bunch of others that belonged to certain pack establishments: the school classroom, restaurants, and even local designer clothing shops.
They were all surrounded by tall, bushy trees that gave the place a fairy-tale feel and made my heart ache with strange nostalgia.
But none of it compared to when Lucien came to a stop, with me right next to him, in front of a round plaza surrounded by five large wooden cabins.
The trees around the plaza curved inward, toward the circle created by the cabin entrances, and cast shade over everything, with only hints of sunlight in between the leaves.
But there was one beacon of sunlight that cut through the circular space between the tops of the trees, and it hit right smack in the middle of the plaza, over a flower garden.
It was hands down the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.