Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
This is what it means to be a true alpha—not to be the one standing solitary, but to be the one surrounded, supported, sustained, leading all of us together.
“No,” Nikos yells. “He is weak. Instead of fully fighting me, he sent his power out to you. That is weakness. You can only help yourself. You can only depend on yourself. You can only fight for yourself.”
You can only win if you sacrifice yourself, isn’t that what I’d been thinking?
Not about building alliances or coming together or fighting with my pack family like Effie’s sisters showing up for her—and Effie showing up for me along with my pack.
Shit. It really has taken me long enough to figure out that leading isn’t about locking things down; it’s about building one another up.
All of us together against our shared enemies.
“That’s bullshit,” I tell Nikos, almost feeling sorry for him because I know, no matter what, he’s not going to understand. “We’re all in this together. Witches, werewolves, everyone else—it’s up to us, and we’re not going to let the Council or anyone like them win.”
Panic flashes across Nikos’s face, and he rips the leather strap holding the carved rune from his neck. “This isn’t ove—”
He doesn’t get the chance to finish his threat because he’s gone. Poof. There one minute and nothing but air the next. I whip around to Effie, but she shakes her head.
“Wasn’t me,” she says.
So whose magic? The Council’s? Someone else’s?
My brain hurts even more from contemplating the options than it does from any of the shots Nikos delivered to my head. But it’s not just my head that feels weird.
There’s a buzzing in my toes and a strange vibrating sensation rattling through me, growing bigger and bigger until I’m just air too.
I’m not here or there or anywhere, and then suddenly I’m back in Arcadia.
But it’s not Arcadia. It’s like a ghost town version of Arcadia frozen in that moment right between dusk and nightfall, as if it’s a permanent gloaming. And I’m not alone.
Aunt Artemis is there, holding a pair of gleaming golden scissors—but she’s with two women who look nearly identical to her. They’re standing only a step or two behind her. One is holding a ball of metallic purple twine, and the other has a tailor’s measuring tape draped around her neck.
That last punch of Nikos’s must have landed harder than I thought. I give my head a little shake and try to figure out what is going on.
Aunt Artemis walks over and gives me a quick hug before turning me to face the other women. “I think it’s time you met my sisters, Clotho and Lachesis. And, of course, I’m Atropos.” She gives me an indulgent smile as if she knows I’m having trouble keeping up. “We are the Fates.”
Yeah, that last hit was definitely harder than I realized.
This has to be a concussion dream. The Fates.
The actual Fates. It’s ridiculous. Everyone knows the sisters who decide the length of a life never make personal appearances.
They sure don’t live as a werewolf pack’s oracle for generations. I have to figure out how to wake up.
“Oh my stars, Attie,” the one with the measuring tape says, “do you always have to be so dramatic?”
The woman holding the twine rolls her eyes.
“She’s always been like this, Clo, so I’m going to go with yes, it’s just her nature.
Who else would go undercover for three whole centuries as an oracle other than our baby sister?
And then to snip that nasty Nikos’s string of life right at the pivotal moment? High drama.”
“It’s just a lot,” Clotho says with a shrug. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Well, you’re the one who bet her she couldn’t carry it off,” Lachesis says. “You know how stubborn she is.”
“Takes one to know one, Lach.”
Artemis (Atropos?) hooks her arm through mine and walks me a few steps away while the other women continue to banter in the distance. “Ignore my sisters, they get a little chatty in corporeal form. They rarely get to take it, even in the in-between space where we are now.”
We sit down on the steps to the gazebo, and she gives me a few minutes to unwind things in my head.
It all kind of makes sense in a weird way.
No one has ever known how old Aunt Artemis is, where she came from, or anything about her life before she appeared in Arcadia.
The Fates. We talk about them, curse them, plead with them, and a million other things all the time, and yet no one ever expects them to show up, let alone tattoo a Kardia on your shoulder.
“So all of this, everything, you planned it?” I ask.
Aunt Artemis shakes her head. “That’s the thing, we may be the Fates, but all we decide is the length of your time.
What you do with it is up to you.” She pauses.
“Now, I may have nudged a few things along here and there to point you in the right direction.” She pats my shoulder exactly where she’d inked my Kardia tattoo.
“But you of all people should know that destiny is in your own hands.”
I rub my wrist where the leather cuff she’d given me all those years ago used to be. “And fated mates? Is that real?”
“Yes. And no. And maybe.” She cocks her head in question. “Does it matter?”
I look over past the wavy line that divides this ghostly Arcadia and the real one at the spot where Effie is standing and try to imagine even a day without her. I can’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t think it does. I am hers and she is mine.”
When Aunt Artemis, or Atropos, really, doesn’t answer right away, I look over, but she’s gone.
So are her sisters. And the gloaming version of Arcadia is wavering as the buzzing starts up again in my toes.
The vibrations are just starting to expand, and I know I only have seconds left before I’m zapped back when I spot it.
There on the ground is a pair of rings woven from that otherworldly metallic purple twine Clotho had been holding. I swipe them before the vibrations take me back to that in-between place.
I can’t help but chuckle, because that’s so like Aunt Artemis to always get one last nudge in.
Not that I need the push.
I already know what to do next because Effie is right about everything.