4. The Gods Want Nothing To Do With Us Mortals
Haera
It was winter around her on the wings of the wind, and just as frigid where her heart lay. The white season reigned there syrisis-round, unchallenged by any waning emotion that braved it. She couldn’t feel anything except desperation. It blanketed her life like the snow she was currently blinking to see through.
It was the thirty-third day of Jonix – Mynphes, and behind her and up ahead, the streets were abandoned. Understandably, most werewolves didn’t like the cold. They preferred to stay at home, warm from the glow of the fireplaces in their individual and pack houses. Their kingdom, Vanzantia, was a safe space. There was always an abundance of prey animals for the packs to feed on. Unlike in the world their distant relatives shared with humans, they didn’t need to tire themselves out in winter hunts. In Vanzantia at large, and in Avallon, where she lived, sometimes prey bumped into them, instead of the other way around.
A few syrises ago, she would have opted to stay home too, cozy with her pack members. Now, the cold didn’t bother her. It didn’t leave her bare and raw like it used to. It was nothing that she was not already used to.
Letting her feet lead as her steps sank into the soft snow with delicate crunches, her eyes trailed along the line of trees across the street. The Loriax forest stretched almost into the Avallon’s center, and the sky-breaching line of millennia-syrisis-old trees was where it began. It was the glory of the Aegon pack.
The sunlight that draped along their branches slowed her steps. Her eyes traced over the familiar trunks of the trees where the glowing light dripped down their lengths and into the earth. Her heart burned, and she gulped down her longing. It was perfect snow-angel weather – and perfect for hunting. The feel of her body sinking into the snow was so clear in her mind that she could almost feel the flakes caressing the back of her neck. The canopy would be quiet above her; the air infused with the foliage’s scent – crisp, earthy, clear. She pulled her eyes away. The stillness beneath those canopies wasn’t enough to lure her in.
Knowing better than to think the Loriax would ever be left unguarded, she looked down at her dark boots before raising her eyes to the sun. The temperature was far below anything that it had dipped to in recent syrises, and judging by the sun’s position, it was the sixteenth houyra. It was the time of syrisis where she never stayed out until dark, no matter what.
The high stone steps that led up to the province’s library were empty. The usual crowds that flocked to them were missing. Even Avallon’s magnificent winter festival light displays couldn’t lure the werewolves out to play. She shook the snow from her shoulders and continued past the vast columns of the building. It was prime huddling weather, especially among her kind. But she didn’t have a pack to huddle with – at least, not anymore.
The bell over the door of the small shop chimed as she pressed in, and the echoes of her boots filled the small space. The front desk where she often placed her order was empty, so she went to her usual spot: the seat next to the widest window, at the furthest corner, facing the door. It was the only one from which everything and everyone could be seen, before they could get to her.
She mumbled, ‘ Just the usual’ to the server that had come to take her order, eyes fixed out the window, watching as the light faded fast. Darkness was settling sooner over Vanzantia than she had anticipated. She was starting to get that familiar pit in her stomach. The one that made her saliva turn to bile in her throat right before she felt rough claws dig into her throat. After a segund, she glanced over at the dark-haired youngster next to her. Their sheepish expression clued her in. They were a new employee and had no idea what ‘ just the usual’ meant.
“‘The usual’ is an extra-large, deep-spiced Aurjun, foamy, and steaming hot.”
The server nodded once before hurrying away to the back of the shop to pour and froth her wine. Haera stared after their small frame as they retreated.
She didn’t order or drink Arjun often anymore. The occurrences were so rare now that the order almost felt foreign rolling off her tongue. It was more expensive than she should allow herself to spend, given the condition of her life. It was more nostalgic and melancholic than she should let herself feel. Todahy had been lonely, quiet, and too long. She couldn’t help it. Anything to get out of the house for even just a short while. Aurjun was a blood-colored aged wine made from the oldest wood of the Loriax. It was her only connection to that part of her past.
Her attention returned to the world outside the window. The line of trees at the edge of the Loriax was visible from here too, and even from far across the street, she could see individual snowflakes twirling and rotating as they fell daintily to the ground and settled in with the rest of the snow. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she looked at the line of trees, and she ripped her attention away, cursing at herself under her breath that she had let herself get so deep in thought that she’d been caught staring at the forest. Her heart was thumping faster now, as she looked down at the table before her. Casting a glance at the sun for the one-hundredth time since she had left home, she checked its position. Twilight would descend in less than an houyra. She had less than an houyra to down a pint of strong aged wine, and haul ass back to her home. Back to safety.
Her eyes flitted back and forth around the small shop she was in, taking notice of all the chairs and how they were positioned. Which ones faced her, and which ones faced the door. The wooden tables were only about waist height on her five-foot five frame. It was a detail she always made note of no matter where she was. Railings, chairs, small streams, steps, walls, boulders, rock outcrops, low waterfalls, even low buildings. Anything that she would potentially need to scale or jump over in a hurry to escape brewing trouble was carved into her memory.
In the past syrises, she had gotten so good at measuring environmental obstacles against her height, that she had mapped out the whole province in her mind. She knew every street in Avallon. Knew where to dart down an alley that had a dead-end wall that she could scale, and which alley to avoid because its slippery walls would leave her without escape. Each route that she knew to be off-limits had been the result of a pricey mistake. A move noted in her mind that she could never make again. The next time The Shadow chased her down one of those paths, they might not be in enough of a playful mood to allow her to escape.
She knew this shop well already. Every dimension was stored inside her movements. The number of steps it took to get to the door from all the points in the room. The thickness of the glass pane she always sat next to. She didn’t usually keep track of windows, but she had for this location. It was an extra precaution she had taken to be prepared in case she ever needed to launch herself through it if her other escape routes were blocked. Knowing the plan still wasn’t enough to calm her. Every time she visited, she still looked around multiple times. What if someone had rearranged just one chair and she took it for granted that she knew where everything was? What if that singular chair was the reason she stumbled and lost her footing? She shuddered. No. She needed to keep relentless track of everything.
After her third look around the café, a surfacing memory pulled enough of her attention away from her environment long enough so that it bloomed. It had been popping into her head since she had woken up from her nightmare that morning. She had been ignoring it on purpose. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her best friend. It was that remembering the events of syrises gone by was her least favorite activity.
Successfully demanding her attention, the memory lit up her mind. Her with her best friend, her only friend Alanis, having the time of their lives in the snowy forest just two winters ago – the winter everything changed. The winter her father had been killed. ‘ Lighten up Haera’, is what Alanis had yelled as she’d launched herself into a deep pile of snow.
If they had been caught, if she had been caught the matter would have been far from light. That eventuality would have led to much more darkness in her life than there had been at the time. The Shadow was as ruthless as they were sadistic, and hurting the innocent was a game to them. They would have had no interest in hurting Alanis – she was one of their own. It was Haera who would have paid the price for trespassing. Looking back at those times when Alanis had coerced her into breaking rogue law and trespassing on her ex-pack’s territory, she cringed .
The smell of Arjun was all around her as the server poured it and foamed it carefully to match her request. Her fingers were tapping against the table in time with her heart. Fast . Alanis had insisted that she needed to sleep in todahy, which was why Haera was alone, feeling an increasingly suffocating sense of danger. In any case, she could handle herself if it all turned to shit. At least, that was what she told herself to quell the rising panic.
It was just as well that werewolf law prohibited the use of debilitating weapons in werewolf-to-werewolf combat, but failed to prohibit the attack and assault of rogues who lived in territories where they avoided trespassing as much as they could. If that stupid law didn’t exist, she would have already rightly killed at least ten of The Shadow’s overenthusiastic members. Piercing the heart of a werewolf who belonged to a pack with illegally obtained silver bullets – fortified with wolfsbane and the blood of fallen wolves – was unfortunately, off-limits.
Prince Miron Vanzant, the fifth strongest hand of the Crown that ruled over Vanzantia was to blame. The arrogant, self-absorbed, immature, irresponsible, idiot prince never cared enough to do his true duty. As member of the royal family with responsibility for overseeing packs, their self-governance by their respective Alphas, ensuring fair treatment and preventing the abuse of power, he was as effective at his role as a bird would have been .
There were only two packs per province, and still, the prince managed to be inefficient. The two most powerful laws in Vanzantia were royal law and pack law. Because the Alpha of each pack managed their territory and established rulership and law without the interference of the Crown, it left them endless room to turn their righteous rule into a reign of terror. Once you were cast out from a pack and forced into exile as a rogue, the pack law that had been for you previously, turned on you. There was no way for rogues to advocate for themselves – there were no officers of the law, and certainly no courts and judges.
Prince Miron was responsible for keeping constant equilibrium between the more prominent rights of the Alpha and organized packs, and the rights of the rogue. Useless. He was useless. Haera had considered sending an anonymous letter to the palace to tell him so, on more than one occasion. But her letter would no doubt make it into the hands of the king and queen. The eventuating attention from them might cause more trouble than resolution, and so, she hadn’t.
Pack rituals, practices, laws and the governance of Vanzantia had remained the same for hundreds of syrises – since the establishment of their kingdom. The issues she faced were ancient and unchanged. Her cause was hopeless.
Perhaps she should consider sending a letter to Prince Orion Vanzant – third most powerful hand of the Vanzantian Crown, second only to his father, King Valgerd Vanzant, and his mother, Queen Jazmhyn Vanzant. Orion looked over the matters of justice that came to the castle. He was a fair, just ruler as far as the tales she’d heard told.
What if she skipped the seat of justice in favor of sending a letter to Prince Alekx Vanzant? He was the fourth most powerful hand of the Vanzantian Crown, standing in power of trade and border control between provinces. What if she undercut Prince Miron in favor of his older brother and begged him to transfer her to a new territory? She chewed the soft flesh of her inner cheek as she mulled over the options that had come to her. There was a slight complication. She couldn’t very well act on her behalf now that her best friend had already done it for her.
Her best friend was equal parts workaholic and terrible liar, so Haera knew that Alanis’ absence wasn’t due to just ‘sleeping in’. She was likely working on the small trading business that she had founded with her mate in the past syrisis, or she was obsessing about their wedding plans. Also very likely, was that she was doing both. Their wedding was to be in the tender spring dahys in the coming syrisis, and though a part of her longed to watch Alanis float down the aisle in her dress, bitterness was never far behind that initial surge of joy. The forest clearing would be covered in blooming peonies and roses .
Everything would feel like love and romance when the sun hit the blooms at the sixteenth houyra. The birds would call to each other from the trees, the wind would toss the trees in gentle exultation. All the werewolves from the Aegon pack would be in their seats, while Haera would have to watch from the shadows of the forest beyond the clearing. Rogues were not allowed to attend weddings, or anything else for that matter.
Alanis was going to leave her side and run off into the sunset with Nickolas, while Haera was holed up in her silent cottage afterward, with only Arujun and her recurring nightmares for company. She didn’t have a mate of her own to hold her as she wept with happiness for Alanis. She would still weep in celebratory overwhelm and joy for her friend, isolated from the event, deep in the forest. But she knew sorrow would find itself at home in her tears too.
Before Alanis met Nickolas, Haera had never witnessed a mate bond up close. Her own mother had died giving birth to her, ripping the mate bond that she’d shared with her father in two before she had even fully entered the world. Haera had learned about love in other ways, absorbing thousands of stories about the love that the humans held in such high regard. They were obsessed with writing about it, and she was obsessed with reading whatever they wrote about it. The smuggled romance novels that came into Vanzantia through trade with the pirates of Raendra, the kingdom south of theirs, from the worlds they travelled to beyond their region of Thorca were not nearly important enough for the royal family or the law to have clamped down on. She had still been careful in the ways she sought out new ones to read and stored the ones she owned, and indulging in their world of romance had left her permanently lovesick. Just like in the most romantic of books she’d read, Alanis and Nickolas were the perfect match. The Fates had matched them perfectly.
Raising her head, she surveyed the room once, then twice, before stealing a glance out the window. It wasn’t much darker than it had been when she’d arrived, and she exhaled. The memory that was coming up was from the dahy they had run into Nickolas while heading to Rue; the iced over lake near the border of their pack Aegon, his pack Elon, and the Loriax. The snowstorm that dahy had drenched Avallon in the deepest melancholy, much like the stillness that was wrapped around it now. They’d ploughed through the snow, hand in hand, teeth chattering. She could still hear Alanis’ cursing at her as they went.
***
“And for all the syrises of our friendship, our last moments are these, ploughing through snow as though to our escape like the enslaved of our ancestors. If I die in this storm Haera, I swear to the gods –”
"The gods want nothing to do with us mortals. And they most certainly want nothing to do with me."
Blue in the face from the cold, Alanis’ mouth had fallen open at Haera’s words and she hurried to offer the prayer for forgiveness. “Magnificent master, divine light of the heavens. absolve her of her sins, deliver her from her tongue. May retribution not be granted to us.”
As she had begun to shake Haera’s shoulders for not also praying the prayer and adding insolence to her charges of guilt before the gods, Nickolas’ voice and presence had manifested. They’d both been caught off guard when he spoke. The snowfall had been far too heavy to make out more than a few feet ahead of them, and realizing now how close they had been to trespassing, Haera shivered. That could have ended in disaster. Cross-border travel had to be submitted to and approved by Prince Alekx. Outside of officially approved border crosses, trespassing was punishable in any way the reigning Alpha of that pack chose. For rogues, that meant death or other heinous torture.
“Because of the storm, I’ll assume you two are just lost. The alternative to that is that you, who belong to Aegon, are trying to cross into Elon without escorts or permission. I know that you know that this constitutes trespassing, which would put your fate in my hands. That would be quite the way to meet for the first time, wouldn’t it?” he’d said.
His question, and most of his attention, had been directed at Alanis. It was what Haera was used to. No man ever looked at her with any expression save wrath, or spite. No man save for her father, and he was long gone.
Nickolas’ teeth hadn’t been chattering the way theirs were. The Shadow – werewolves who patrolled the borders of their territories to keep intruders from other packs out – were not moved by the deep darkness and cold of winter. Instead, they thrived in it. She knew that well from her many run-ins with Aegon’s Shadow. He was used to the cold.
When they could finally make out his figure, approaching casually in the driving snow and wind, Alanis was immediately transfixed. All it took was the sly grin on his lips, and his sparkling hazel eyes. She was in love right away. That’s how she’d learned that mates recognized and connected with each other immediately. Otherwise, she would have thought her best friend was clinically insane for wanting to get married so quickly. She often wondered if it would be like that for her when she met her own mate.
** *
Blinking away the jealousy that wanted to fall down her cheeks, Haera let the memory fade. She was glad that happiness had found Alanis. It was what her friend deserved. She couldn’t let her sorrow consume her just yet. They were moving to the province of Cyxvras after the wedding to join Rahl. She was storing away all her sorrow for then.
Alanis had been so excited to share the news with her, jumping around on Haera’s small couch, grinning ear to ear. She had always dreamed about moving to the grander province and joining a bigger, more secure pack. Haera was happy for her friend. Many werewolves could only dream of being accepted into the larger packs when their own pack of origin was so much smaller, and so much more…unstable. Alanis and Nickolas were finally going to be able to live together instead of jumping through hoops and stroking the egos of their respective Alphas to allow them to cross into each other’s packs to spend time together.
She’d been happy for Alanis. Too happy to ever let her best friend know that she had cried for a woux after hearing the news. She was going to be on her own again, thrown back to the werewolves to be eaten – battered to the bone in the darkest underbelly of Avallon. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she wouldn’t survive another winter like her last one. None of her efforts to prepare would matter in the end. Fate’s hands always seemed to deal her the hardest blow possible .
The snow was still drifting down to Earth from the skies. In another houyra or so, it would stop completely. Now that the clouds were thinning, it was getting lighter again outside, but Haera knew that surge of light wouldn’t last long. It did that very often. The skies of Vanzantia seemed almost intentionally engineered to be disarming. Darkness descended suddenly, then it would clear in a burst of light right before the twilight would come. Sometimes the twilight failed to appear, and the Earth went from encased in glorious light to engulfed by stark darkness. She had found herself out late before, which was strictly forbidden, watching, struck dumb by horror as all the light from the skies faded and the world around her turned suddenly black. She had paid for that lesson with her blood. It was a dangerous line to teeter as a rogue that couldn’t afford to get caught between trespassing on her prior territory when the Aegon Shadow was determined to kill her.
Another memory was surfacing, this time without her permission. She’d spoken to Alanis the nigh before. Her best friend had shown up at her small cottage, proposing to have the answer to her problems – the solution that would finally change her life.
** *
“Haera, please start packing all your belongings immediately,” She’d said as soon as she had crossed the threshold.
“Not that I had many belongings to begin with, but what’s the need?” Haera shook her head, smiling, and Alanis laughed.
“I talked it over with Nickolas, and the strain to see each other is wearing both of us down. We decided it’d be best to move to Cyxvras and join Rahl much sooner than we planned to.” Alanis’ grin had been wider than Haera had ever seen it. “We’ll finally be together!” she exclaimed.
Haera’s stomach had bottomed out.
“All the dates are moving up,” Alanis continued, “excluding our wedding. We’ve decided to stick to our original wedding plans.”
Listening to her pitch climb in excitement as she continued, Haera had struggled to breathe. “That is great news!” she had finally managed to say.“
I know! We want you to move with us. You know, live lavishly, finally make life our party.”
Shock had made her voice disappear for a moment. “I could not possibly tag along with you guys like that.” Haera had frowned. “And I’m a rogue. My dahys of partying and living lavishly are over.”
“I wasn’t giving you an option,” Alanis pressed. “You’re moving to Cyxvras with us. Nickolas and I already put in express requests for pack transfers to our offices. And well,” she had hesitated. “You are a rogue, but you need a change of environment after what’s happened to you here.”
Haera had opened her mouth to speak, but Alanis’ spiel had continued.
“I also don’t know what the hell you mean by ‘tag-along’. You’re the reason he and I even met. You forced me out of the house to go skate on the frozen lake while Avallon was under lockdown because of a province-wide snowstorm. Ring a bell?”
Haera had laughed, but the amusement had faded just as quickly. Her name was permanently etched into the dark leather-covered book that bore the record of werewolf rogues. Every time the memory crossed her mind, she was overcome with the urge to sink her hands into herself and rip her heart out the way she wanted to tear through the chest of the werewolf that had caused it. She would never heal from the pain that the black label had caused her. And yet, even then, being permanently cut out of her race for shattering the vertebrae in her ex-alpha’s neck and spitting at his feet when he recovered was better than the alternative .
“Alanis, I understand your concern. I do. But you know how strict our Kingdom’s laws are, and how much of an offense rogue trespassing is. Any Alpha can slit my throat and drink my blood with gusto for something as simple as accidental trespassing. The law gives him that right. I am barely escaping being killed here as it is. You know how much trouble I have here with The Shadow on my ass at nigh when I try to hunt –”
“I expected you to bring all this up, so this would be a convenient time to let you know that we’ve already done the documentation for you to be transferred with us.” Alanis had shifted her weight from one leg to the other nervously, knowing that she had crossed a line.
“When did you –”
“And it was already approved. No arguing. Now, like I was saying, please start packing. I know that I’ve crossed a line by doing that without your permission, but I don’t regret it. I won’t leave you behind.”
Haera’s mouth fell open for a moment, thoughts buffering as she tried to form her fears into words. “And you think I’ll be safer closer to the territory of the person who wrote and yet fails to enforce his own law? ”
She was trembling at just the thought of being one province closer to the Royal Palace; to the cruel prince who was the benefactor of her suffering.
“I do,” Alanis replied calmly. “Rahl isn’t the same as Aegon. You’ll be safer there than you are here.”
All Haera had managed as a response was a strangled sigh.
“It’s okay. You’ll be safe I promise. We won’t let anything happen to you. You know I would die for you.”
“Okay,” she said. The word was but a whisper when it slipped through her lips.
She knew her best friend meant what she said. But she would never let it come to that. She would die first, before putting Alanis in danger. Yes, Alanis meant well, but Haera hadn’t been able to overcome the dread that had been rolling through her since their conversation. She couldn’t help the apprehension that overcame her. Alanis had already ironed out a solution for her key point of concern, and she was not going to take ‘not wanting to tag along’ as a serious enough reason not to go. In her best friend’s mind, no reason to stay was every reason to go.
“We really want you to be there with us. I need you, and you’re like a sister to Nickolas,” she had said.
Arguing would have been silly. Feeling like a nuisance while she was tagging along would be a better alternative to what staying in Avallon would result in.
“Fine. You’re right.” In her heart of hearts, she hadn’t known what else to say.
***
The memory faded. From the corner of her eye, Haera saw the server approaching with her drink. The heavy, bittersweet scent of Aurjun made her mouth water. Finally. She would get home before nighfall. With the quiet clink of metal on wood, the server finally put her drink to rest before her.