Chapter 12 The Devil’s Spawn
The Devil’s Spawn
SHADOW
Seven Years Ago
The Luna Queen paces in front of the Alpha King’s large mahogany desk and scolds someone over the phone.
Jessica sits in a high wingback chair placed in front of the desk with her head bowed, digging the toe of her shoe into the oriental rug on the floor, looking like she wants the earth to swallow her up.
I stand near the door, waiting for the King to allow me access into the office.
“Luke, don’t you dare patronize me! She attacked Jessica again! If you think I will allow that girl to mate you and become the future Luna Queen, I will... I will figure out a way to reverse the aging process and put you back where you came from! So help me, Luke!”
My eyebrows raise to my hairline, and I quickly glance at the Alpha King. He covers his face, hiding a smile.
“This isn’t funny, Nathan! I’m furious!”
“Yes, and you’re taking it out on poor Luke, who told you repeatedly that he hasn’t touched the girl, dated her, or given her any indication of an interest in her. What more can he say at this point?”
She sighs. “You’re right. I’m sorry… but—”
The Alpha King holds up a hand. “No buts, Shakti. You know how horrible these girls can be. You, yourself, have been a victim when girls pursued me before you and I made it known that we were officially mated.” The Alpha King assesses his wife and then winks.
I turn my head to avoid eavesdropping on a private moment.
“I am seriously so happy I’m not sitting in that office right now,” Luke jests over the speaker.
Jessica snorts. “Lucky you,” she mumbles sarcastically.
Luke’s chuckle vibrates from the phone.
The Luna Queen rolls her eyes. “Knock it off. I’m still upset.”
“As you should be, my love. I am just as upset that the girl came here after a direct order and lied about it.”
Anders slams his way into the office, pushing past me straight to the King’s desk. “What the hell are we waiting for? If I can’t kill his underage daughter, I want Alpha Powers’s head on a fucking platter!”
“No, Anders. Please, just wait,” Jessica beseeches him. He turns to her, eyes blazing with fury. She clears her throat but stiffens her spine. “You can’t go after Alpha Powers.”
Anders’s chest heaves from his erratic breathing. The temperature in the room starts to drop. “If you think I will let her get away with threatening you—”
“If you hurt him, she will make good on her promise. You won’t face a war with the Resistance. They’ll send assassins.”
“She’s bullshitting to manipulate you. She doesn’t have that kind of power,” Luke counters.
Jessica vehemently shakes her head. “She knows exactly who will help her, and she’s planning on going to them as soon as she checks on her father. If you charge him for terroristic threatening or hurt him, she will retaliate against me. I heard it in her mind.”
Anders whips around, facing the Alpha King. “How the hell does this little shit have those kinds of connections when I spent over half of my life hunting them down? Other than the ones we already suspect, I don’t have a damn clue who the hell is part of the Resistance!”
The Alpha King frowns. “You and I both know it could be anyone. There hasn’t been an attack for years, but that doesn’t mean that they no longer exist.”
“Son of a bitch! Now what? We do nothing?! Let that little bitch bully Jessica? Continue to threaten her life? At this point, I don’t care if there is a war. If Alpha Powers is part of the Resistance, I’m going after him,” Anders growls.
“Even if you don’t know for sure he is part of the Resistance?” Jessica asks.
“I’m afraid we can’t take that chance, Jessica. If there is a chance he is part of the Resistance, we should act, sooner rather than later. We also can’t afford to let this issue go unanswered. This isn’t the first time she’s tried to threaten or blackmail you,” the Luna Queen answers.
“Did you all not hear what I said? She will go to the person in the Resistance if her father is harmed. I think he’s innocent. He may very well be a man who loves his daughter so much that he raised a spoiled brat. Even her own brother spoils her by giving in to her irrational behavior.”
“Her brother is a coward! Instead of helping you when they ganged up on you, he stood there and did nothing!” Luke bellows.
“Not true. He told you what was happening.” Jessica glares at the phone.
“Yeah, and Emily and I barely reached you in time! By the way, I went to bat for you, and you didn’t even press charges!”
Jessica huffs. “What the hell was I supposed to charge them with, huh? Emily hit Elaine and Cassie! She broke their noses. They didn’t hit me. They just exchanged words. If I pressed charges or brought attention to anything they attempted to do, they would have followed through with their threats.”
She’s right. They didn’t threaten her life, not like the way Elaine did today. With Alpha Powers and Alpha Greystone’s political influences, they would destroy Jessica if she managed to identify even a small offense.
“You could have done something, anything! Instead, you left Emily and me to fight your battles while you just stood there and did nothing!” Luke yells.
Jessica’s eyes narrow at the phone. I’m getting vibes that she doesn’t really like her older adopted brother. Which is a bit out of character for Luke, since almost everyone he meets takes to his charm.
“Look! I never said any of this was right or okay. Elaine and Marcus are the devil’s spawn, born straight out of his ass.
I heard their thoughts. I saw what they wanted to do, what they planned for me.
But all of you need to consider that this isn’t just about me!
This is about all of us—the twins, the Blackguards, Charlie, Sixes, you…
” She points at Anders. “We all have magic. If we don’t play this right, there might not be a war, but they will send more assassins. Let them think it’s just me.”
The Luna Queen approaches Jessica with brows slightly raised, head tilted to one side, mouth slightly parted. “Assassins? Jessica, that’s the second time you said that. What do you know about the Resistance and these assassins?”
Jessica shakes her head; her fear tingles up my spine. She glances at me, and I inconspicuously shake my head as I look away. “I overheard it in Elaine or Marcus’s heads.”
Anders’s outrage and the Alpha King’s insistence for him to keep his head quickly develops into an argument, with all the chaos and yelling. I glimpse Jessica’s face, detecting her fear and guilt.
She looks over at me. This is all my fault. Tears pool in her eyes.
I’ll fix this.
Without anyone’s notice, I slip back into the shadows and teleport out of the room to deal with Alpha Powers face-to-face. Men like him care about one thing—power. But what men like him don’t realize is that it is also their weakness because it’s the fear of losing it all that enables them.
I appear before him without giving him a chance to speak. I unleash my magic. Shadows wrap him in fear and portray his worst living nightmare. He crumples to the ground in his own vomit and excrement.
“This is a warning. Keep your daughter away from the Princess.”
He tries to pull himself up from the ground, slips in his own waste, and falls back down. Shadows slither and glide up and around his throat and slam his face into the hardwood floor.
“I’ll talk to her! If she doesn’t listen to me, I’ll turn her in myself. You have my word!” He struggles and claws at the shadows around his throat.
I’m still not satisfied. “I want that little bitch as far away from Jessica as possible, since I can’t get rid of her physically—not yet anyway.” The shadows around his throat tighten. His weak pleas don’t calm the murderous rage flushing through my veins.
“I’ll send her to a private school in the Northern A territory.”
I release the shadows around his neck. It’s enough for now.
I leave him with a final warning. “When she comes of age, I will give zero fucks about destroying your daughter and the little empire you built if she threatens Jessica in any way again.” I wave my hand, dismissing the shadows at my disposal.
Coming from a law student and a Young Alpha who hasn’t exactly come into his own yet, my warning may seem minuscule or empty.
But I’m neither of those in this moment, and Alpha Powers has a front-row seat to just how dangerous and cruel I can really be.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Anders snaps before I can take a seat in front of his desk.
“Problem solved.” I almost shrug but decide against it.
“That’s not what I asked, Shadow, and you know it.” He squints and intently stares at my face. “You, above all others, know the risks of what you just did.”
I do, but it needed to be done. She was crying.
“Alpha Powers isn’t a threat to me. He’s a coward, not even a true Alpha.
Had I known he was that weak to begin with, I wouldn’t have used my magic on him.
” But my rage consumed me. All rational thought ceased to exist. He fears me now, and with that deep-seated fear of me that consumes his dreams, he won’t betray me. Or I’ll make those dreams a reality.
Anders shakes his head. “You think I don’t see it, Shadow? The changes? You’re not fooling me by sitting there like an unmoving statue.”
I don’t answer him. There’s no point in lying.
He leans his head back against his chair and stares up at the ceiling. “I’m not sure I know what to do with you.”
It’s only when I’m around Jessica that I lose my shit. But he doesn’t need to know that. “No. I have it under control. Besides, as we discussed, I’m filling in for Charlie while he’s on leave pursuing his music career, until we onboard the new training officer. You can keep an eye on me.”
He levels me with concern in his eyes. “I decided not to use you as a training officer.”
What the actual fuck? He can’t do that. This isn’t part of my plan.
I need to be involved with this group of recruits, especially since Jessica will be among them.
I don’t know how to explain it. Ever since that night I found her being attacked by Boris, I have an incomprehensible need to protect her even more.
“When the hell did you make that decision?” My muscles begin to tremble. My skin prickles as my magic threatens to spill forth.
“Since now. I don’t think you can train the new recruits when you can’t control your own anger. If some smart-mouth bastard gets under your skin, how can I trust that you won’t unleash your magic or skin them alive?”
I take a deep breath and force myself to relax. “I can keep it together.” My words are short, laced with tension. I swallow. “I can keep it together,” I repeat, softer this time. I’ll get it under control. I have to.
You hear me in there? If you want to be a part of Jessica’s life, I must get this under control, so back the fuck off.
Just like that, the tension in my muscles releases, and the prickling sensation dissipates. I guess that’s one way to keep him at bay.
Anders continues to watch me, jaw clenched.
He dips his chin and sighs. “This is my fault, with Jessica here, dealing with the program changes and the council members.” He rubs a hand over his face.
“And trying to prevent the guard program from falling apart.” He drops his hand on the desk and shakes his head.
Fatigue etches his face. The council has been after Anders for quite some time now. I don’t understand why they’re suddenly involved. The final decision is ultimately the King’s.
Anders decided not to enlist another group of recruits until this past class graduated. Politically, his decision didn’t sit well with the council members, some of whom have sons or male relatives who will miss enrollment before they pass the age limit.
One of the council members has been pushing to shut the program down entirely and to outsource the King’s guards from the military.
To appease the wrath of the council, we—the Leads and I—explained that we needed the gap in recruitment to upgrade the training program.
It was a weak excuse, but it worked, for now.
A lot of changes have been implemented over the past couple of years, not necessarily because of Jessica.
The changes started when Marcus Greystone entered the recruitment program.
Due to his bullying, we lost many recruits.
In my mind, if the recruits who left couldn’t deal with Marcus and his two idiot cousins, they weren’t guard material anyway.
However, some recruits I really liked. I saw their potential—if they were given a fair chance—so I reassigned them to a different training facility in Ryukyu.
The ones who stayed impressed me. I hold high hopes for them within the guard, Darwin especially, with his technical abilities.
I see the guards moving past this era in which we’re currently stuck in.
In hindsight, this break from bringing on new recruits is not entirely bad, which is another reason why I want to be more hands-on with this new onboarding.
With everything I learned in my training overseas, and with Anders’s military experience, we could do so much more, more than the council realizes we can do.
This year, I recruited a group with a different set of skills than Anders and the other two Leads sought before. I need to be around to help them see the new benefits. So, I need to get my own shit together.
With Jessica’s innate magic abilities, she has a part in this. I see the bigger picture. I just need Anders to see it, too.
“I saw the slight changes in you when you first met her. They were subtle but still there. Hell, I should have picked up on more, especially when the Blackguard kids, the Langhlan twins, Charlie, and Sixes suddenly developed magic.” He presses his fingers to his temples and closes his eyes.
“I think I need to send Jessica to Ryukyu. I’m not cut out for this shit.
I’m failing her, you—shit, everyone. But among all of them, Shadow, you’re the most dangerous one.
I need to focus on you before...” He grimaces.
“I’m not him,” I say quietly, “I’m not my brother.”
“No, but he is still a part of you. After the shit you pulled today, it scares me.”