ALEKS
We had been flying for almost forty minutes when Leukas joined me on the small sitting area inside the jet. The kids had fallen asleep almost immediately after boarding the plane, and Atlas and Kristin where no different. Max had been sleeping before we left the water park and he continued to peacefully sleep through the flight. After he handed Max to me and walked off during our talk, I’d decided it was best I gave Leukas time to cool off and I was pleasantly surprised to see him seeking me out.
“Hey.” I said, closing the Azzurian History book I had bought at one of the souvenir booths, when he sat silently besides me without saying a word.
“Hi. Sorry for walking off back there. It wasn’t very adult of me.” he said with a slight chuckle.
“It’s okay. I guess I did ask and it was very forward of me. I was out of line.” I admitted.
He sighed. “Not really. It was a valid question and I should have expected it. We are friends after all and you have spent a lot of time with me and my family; in a way they are yours too, so it’s expected that you’d have questions about some of the visible…gaps.” He was quiet for a while but I had a feeling he wasn’t done so I remained silent and as unimposing as I could despite the fact that he wasn’t looking in my direction. “I guess it’s just that it’s become kind of a taboo conversation at home. We don’t really mention the incident at home and no one else ever knew about it so I like to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“What…What happened?” I found myself asking.
After another tense silence he spoke. “When I was younger and so excited about being Alpha, I decided that I would unite the supernatural beings and the humans. It was actually silly how I came to want that so much, but I watched a movie once, and the way it depicted us and most supernaturals as a whole was so ridiculous and so ignorant I just…, I felt like we were being mocked and depicted as monsters with too little humanity and unnecessary violence, so I thought that it would all be better if we showed the world who we were; if we all lived together and were all considered normal. I knew that Jason believed that both worlds should be separate so I just classed him as one of the people I should convince. From there on Fletcher and I worked tirelessly, going over ancient texts, reviewing the laws and the rights and any loopholes that could justify me working with humans and exposing our nature to them when I was Alpha. There were none at all, it was all airtight but even then, I was so sure I was right that it became this obsession of mine. I was desperate to find a way. What I found instead was an old room that belonged to the previous alpha before Jason; the woman who raised him. It had been closed down and locked at some point and we were always strictly forbidden from entering it, hell even Atlas who strived on breaking the rules and pissing off our mother didn’t ever go in there, but one day it just called to me and I couldn’t resist the call. So I went in and I found a notebook, and in it, I saw that Tyna really believed that humans should know of our existence as well. After spending so much time searching for even one person who could believe me and coming up short; finding out that this woman who I thought was my grandmother had felt the same way was so relieving. My parents had always told us that she wasn’t a good woman but I thought that if she saw things the way I did….maybe she wasn’t so bad. Maybe she was misunderstood like I sometimes was. Maybe she hadn’t been given a chance.”
I had an idea where the story was going and I couldn’t help but grab his hands as a chill ran through my spine.
He squeezed my hands. “Yep, what you’re thinking happened. Since she was a witch, her room was filled with all kinds of spells and portions..... They had somehow trapped her soul in that room so they hadn’t gotten rid of anything she owned. So I found this book about necromancy and I had this crazy thought that I could awake her and we could do it together; change the world together. A part of me didn’t believe it would actually work because the idea of actual magic by lycans was ridiculous. We had been taught from the start that it was illegal, and dangerous and downright taboo to attempt to do pure magic, especially dark magic, so part of me didn’t think it would work. But it did. And I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. Turns out what she really wanted was humans to recognize us as superior and serve us as slaves forever. So, basically, what Tyna has always been about is world domination, and if she has managed to escape another prison and it is her causing all this trouble, I’m not sure she can be stopped again.”
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The drive back home was spent mostly listening to Elena, Adrian and Atlas chat about their day with Leukas and Kristin getting dragged into the conversation at different intervals. I was mostly silent, mulling over what Leukas had told me. I could imagine him being a young and determined kid, desperate to be seen and make a change. I could imagine him feeling so alone in his beliefs clinging on to anyone or anything that seemed to sympathize with him. So I understand how he could have been drawn to free Tyna from her prison. He was a kid after all and he couldn’t have known the gravity of his actions. In my understanding. Tyna had been re-captured after that so I didn’t believe guilt was the only reason he had left and his family was so determined to keep him as far away from Tyna as possible. I knew that he hadn’t told me the full story when I saw the fear in his eyes when he spoke about her. The bitch had hurt him so much his parents didn’t want him to hear about anything concerning him, and the thought of how she had done that sickened me.
‘And in return she killed my wolf and turned it into an abomination that I can barely contain…’ He had said before, and the thought of someone killing his wolf and mutating it to something else chilled me to my bones. Since I’d arrived in Azzuire, I’d heard many people describe their wolf as this other part of them; this part so connected to their being that it was basically part of their soul. I could almost imagine the physical and emotional pain that could have caused Leukas to lose his wolf. A lot of things made sense then; the glimpses of longing in Leukas’ expression when pack events where held and he opted to stay behind, his mysterious exit from Abattohn, his relinquishing of his birthright and the wedge between him and his family. I could imagine a child Leukas so scared and guilty he couldn’t possibly stay at his home despite Tyna’s capture. I could imagine how he could have isolated himself from everyone he once knew when the thing that once held him with his whole pack had been turned into something he didn’t know, and I could imagine, something evil. A memory of the dark wispy phantoms moving within me came to me and I couldn’t help a slight shudder. The things, whatever they were, had been so slick and dark and scary, but also so saturated with Leukas that they were the most beautiful thing I’d ever felt. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was and how he survived without letting out whatever beast was within him when all his pack-mates claimed that it was hard to survive without contact with their beastly counterparts.
The day had been tiring and the questions and thoughts which were running through my head were so exhausting I planned to face-plant onto the bed as soon as we arrived, but when we finally entered the house and I spotted the grim expression on Malarkee’s face, I knew that I wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. Everyone else must have noticed his expression too because Kristin immediately herded all the kids to their room, thankfully with little resistance, while Leukas, Atlas and I followed Malarkee to the living room. On top of the table lay a big box which was wrapped in birthday wrapping paper with a bow on top of it. With a slight feeling of dread lodged deep in my stomach, I advanced towards the box and lifted the lid.
Atlas cursed while Leukas immediately turned away at the sight that greeted us. I simply blinked at what I was seeing, because in the box was the severed head of Valleigh Baron. A card was placed on the bow and I opened it, fairly certain of what I would find written on it.
‘ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE. ONE WHORE DONE, ONE WHORE TO GO.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TRAMP.’
A picture of Leukas and I laughing under the cabana with cocktails in our hands was attached to the message.