Chapter 2 The Winter Alpha #2
“I know, but this isn’t what I signed up for. If I’d known that we’d be listening to whining people for fifty years, I wouldn’t have worked so hard.” The High Beta grabs two goblets and drinks from one without taking her eyes off me.
What is her affinity again? Why can’t I remember?
Her words echo my earlier thoughts, and, for the first time, I don’t feel so alone in hating this place.
“I didn’t know you felt that way, too,” I say and press a hand to my suddenly light head.
She smiles again. “How can I not? We are gods doing paperwork. It’s infuriating. All our studying, all the pain to get here, and for what? To listen to the whining of humans who get to enjoy their lives so deeply?”
She hands me the other cup. I stare into the burgundy liquid and consider my life. It’s bleak.
She lied to me. She told me I could save her.
I drink again, deeper this time, and hand the empty goblet off to another server. They appear and disappear, giving us our every desire. I want to be without, I want to suffer, to hurt. I’m sick of being handed everything except what I want.
The rules and regulations that have dictated my life for the last thirty-eight years are suddenly a weight too heavy to bear.
“What do you suggest?” I ask, and though I notice my words slur, it doesn’t cause any alarm.
I feel lighter and almost happy.
“Let’s test the humans. Let’s see if they have grown to have compassion and love,” the beta says with a shiny gleam and a smile I have never seen her wear. She looks triumphant.
I laugh because it sounds so funny, and there are twinkling lights in the air around us. She has no eyes. So weird. Why are her fingers melting?
“Let’s do it.”
She takes my hand and tugs me out of the chamber, and I go, watching the world swirl with colours. The day has turned to night, but I don’t know when that happened. I’m lost in the colours, the movements, the music, and the pull of a dream of an omega I once had.
Everything is spinning, and I’m falling, so far. I land hard, my knees buckling on the cold rock. I blink in shock.
Am I…bleeding?
I stare at the red pooling around my knees. I’m suddenly sober, cold, and in pain. So much pain. I reach down and touch the red. Blood. What’s happening? Where am I?
“Catch!” The word is snarled in my direction from a voice I don’t recognise.
I throw up my arms, catching the heavy, cold metal by reflex. The chains glow with black light pulsing, and they are so impossibly heavy that I almost can’t hold them.
I try to drop them, throw them off, but I can’t. They slither around me, dragging me lower to the stone I’m kneeling on.
“What are you doing?” I ask, twisting my head so I can see her. “Beta, what are you doing?”
She pulls out a sword. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Is she real? She swings the sword, but before she can strike me, I shift into the huge wolf form that is my birthright and snap at her, forming a ring of protection before the chains completely incapacitate me.
“What are you doing?” I say straight into her mind.
“Me? I’m fixing it.” She throws her head back and laughs. “I’m going to fix all of it.”
“What do you mean? Why are you doing this?” I scream at her, but she doesn’t pay any heed.
The drugs are wearing off, pushed out by pure adrenaline and panic. I struggle against the chains, but they just hold me tighter.
My power is buried deep inside me. I’m locked in the form of the wolf while the drugs are still present, unable to move, helpless as she paces the outside of my protective circle.
“Alpha of Winter, you are less than human now. Your god powers won’t work as long as you are wearing my chains, and only a god can set you free. You are helpless. But I can put you out of your misery. Run you through with a sword now and end this. You can become a stone for the rest of eternity.”
I stare up at her with wide eyes. She’s a monster. I can see it now. How did no one notice? How did I miss this? I didn’t see any sign of this living inside her. Still, for a moment, I’m tempted by her offer.
If I die here, my omega will be at this mad goddess' mercy. I can’t allow that. I huff, refusing to look away. I’m going to live so I can protect my omega. I won’t let her hurt my heart.
“No? Fine. Stay here on this rock until the end of the world, then. No one will see you; no one will rescue you. Aw, Alpha,” she starts to cackle, and I realise she’s mad, completely and utterly mad, “no one is coming to save you.”
My breathing is rough as I try to wrap my still-dizzy head around what she’s saying.
“You drugged me.”
“I did. You were easy to manipulate. It has been incredibly tedious talking to you for these last thirty-eight years. So tedious.” She spreads her arms and twirls. “Now, the worlds are mine.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see. After all, you’re going to stay here and be a silent watcher. You may as well start now.”
I hear a whistling sound, it’s not just heard but felt. With my whole body.
What is that?
She looks up. I try to look, but the first falling object confuses me. What is that? A large shape is hurtling towards the Earth. It crashes with a boom into a city in the distance. A plume of dust rises into the sky, but I can’t figure it out; my mind won’t let me.
More and more fall, and slowly, my mind makes sense of it. My mind unravels as the truth becomes clear.
My claws dig into the rock as I strain. I pant, struggling against the chains. When the first one collides with the Earth in an explosion close enough that I feel it through the rock, I start to scream.
“What are you doing? Let them go. They never did anything to you!” I howl, wordless, as explosions hit the Earth all around me. The dull thuds break my heart. Each blow ripping my sanity away. I hated them, but not truly. Not enough to want to see them end like this.
The falling objects are the bodies of the alpha and omega gods, falling lifeless to the Earth. The bodies of everything I know. The fabric of the universe is being massacred.
On and on, I watch them crash. I feel each collision. I scream their names in my head.
This is my fault. It's all my fault.
Madness turns my vision white at the edges, but I keep fighting, trying to remain here, trying to free myself.
A body hits the rock in front of me; the Omega High stares sightlessly at me with her throat torn wide open. The third part of the trinity of ruling gods is dead. My mind will not let me accept what I’m seeing.
She’s so pretty, even in her death. She’s not supposed to die!
“Omega?” I shout, hoping I’m wrong and I can rouse her.
I lose hold of the wolf form, sitting bowed over on my knees as I stare at the omega.
Tears run down my cheeks, but it’s shock more than anything. Gods can’t die. They just can’t.
My chest aches.
“What have you done!” I howl.
The Spring Alpha lands beside me with a thud that has me jumping but barely jiggling the chains. I haven’t seen him in thousands of years. He looks the same as the day we last met.
“No,” the word is drawn out of me in a moan of denial. “Spring. Oh, no, please. Open your eyes, hang on.”
He was my friend when we were young, a kind but serious alpha who liked long walks through our perfect forests.
He would show me how to make flowers bloom and taught me patience and understanding.
Grief rips through me. His eyes are already fading with the living light.
But still, I struggle towards him, trying to pull him into my circle.
Beta laughs, reaches out, and grabs a foot, towing him out of my space and throwing him carelessly onto the ground below, out of my sight. Not that I could ever forget those sightless eyes.
“No alphas. No omegas. It will be a perfect world. You alone will live to remember the night the stars fell. It will be better this way. I will reign on Earth and in Remmilow.”
“What are you going to do?” I sob, still staring at the falling gods. They are like a million stars burning up and crashing to the Earth. I can’t be angry; I'm in too much pain.
“I’m going to cleanse this world and remake it in my image,” Beta says with a smile.
I’m broken; nothing makes any sense. This is all my fault. All my fault.
“Why?” I say it over and over.
The sky is still raining bodies. I kneel on a rock, overlooking the field of my fallen brethren.
They hit the Earth with ground-shaking thuds. Over and over. With each one, my hope fades until I have nothing left.
“Live a long life, Winter Alpha. When someone finally sets you free, omega and alpha will be words of the past, and you can kneel before me and beg for death.”
I shift back to the form of the wolf, cowering away from her. I sing my agony, a dirge of pain, into the night. The way it was taught to me, mourning those who have gone. My voice is the lone accompaniment to the thuds and screams of humans watching their world end.
I was the reason they fell, and now I am the last, the watcher over their bodies that turn to stone in this desolate landscape.
As the day dawns, the bodies stop falling, and I realise this is it. The omega and alpha gods are gone. It’s over.
I am alone.
I send up a single prayer to my Luna Omega, even though she’s never heard me before. But I send her one now, begging for her help. Sending her a warning and a promise.
I am waiting for you.
But no one comes.
Not for a very, very long time.