Katherine nodded and even though he had just checked the den he watched as she craned her neck over his shoulder and did her own visual sweep. Once her search was finished her golden eyes fell back on William. She shrugged. “I have no idea. They should have been back by now though.”
William nodded and got up from his place on the floor. He turned toward Aceso who was lying on her side, her tail flicking idly in the air. William walked to within a respectable distance of her and stopped. “Aceso,” William hesitated, watching for any reaction from her.
Her head rolled upward toward him, her gold eyes looking up at him from the black fur of her face.
“Where’s Nicolas and Charles?”
“Are you concerned?” Aceso answered. There was something off about her tone. It wasn’t sarcasm but something less than genuine.
William felt like Aceso was evading the question. “I was just thinking that maybe I should go look for them. It’s been a long time.”
Aceso sat up and raised her body on her powerful legs. The effect was one of grace power and control. It was less like she was standing up and more like she was being raised from the floor. “William, you don’t have to worry.” She let a small, tired smile touch her lips. “While you three were sleeping I met Charles and Nicolas outside and asked if they would go on a hunt.” She nudged William’s chest with her clawed fist. “We need the nourishment after what we’ve been through, and I thought it would be good for Nicolas to feel like he was of value to the pack.”
William nodded, not quite understanding.
Aceso looked from him to Katherine who had just stepped up on William’s side. “Nicolas took the test pretty hard, and we all need to cope with our…failings in our own way.” She looked over at Achelois who had her eyes open and was watching the three of them but she made no move to join them. Aceso turned back toward William and Katherine. “Nicolas has been taking some hard blows to his ego, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
William nodded.
“Nicolas does need to stop being such a…what is it you human born call it? An asshole?” Aceso asked.
William couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across his face. “Yeah, I’d pretty much call him that.”
Aceso shot a hard stare at William. “But we also need for him to be unbroken. Our pack is a unit. If one of us is unsure of him or herself than the whole pack suffers.”
A loud snort brought all of their attention down to Achelois who hadn’t moved. She was looking at Aceso with a stare that was so hard she might as well have been yelling at the top of her lungs. William watched as the two looked at each other.
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Achelois rolled over onto her other side slowly, breaking eye contact with Aceso. Once she had stopped moving, Aceso brought her gaze back up to the Enforcer and Sage.
“To that end, I sent Nicolas and Charles on a hunt. I told Charles privately to make sure that Nicolas made the kill.”
William looked at her sideways. “You know, Charles will be able to smell the prey from a lot farther off than Nicolas will. How much subtlety will he need to push Nicolas in the right direction without pushing too hard?” William shook his head. “Nicolas may be an asshole, but he has never struck me as someone who was completely stupid.”
Aceso smiled at the off-color compliment. “I know, which is probably why it’s taking so long.” She put a reassuring claw on William’s shoulder. “I’m not asking for a fountain from a rock but slight changes to the trail can lead to drastically different locations.”
William looked up at her from the corner of his eye. He smiled at his alpha and shook his head.
“What should we do in the meantime?” Katherine asked.
Aceso looked between the both of them as she dropped her arm from her enforcer’s shoulder. “Just what you’ve been doing, passing the time as best you can. You could probably go outside if you wanted. I don’t think the Elders have any more surprises for us today. As far as I’m concerned, this time is yours.” She lowered herself back down to the ground and lay back, retaking her previous position.
William didn’t have anything else to say. He turned around toward Katherine. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her place. William didn’t know what he wanted to do. He needed to think.
He waved to Katherine as he walked back to his space. He dropped to his haunches and rolled onto his back. With his tail comfortably between his legs he placed his hands behind his head and looked up at the dark ceiling.
Aceso’s words rang through his mind. He tried to make himself think like Nicolas. How does a selfish asshole deal with not being the strongest, or the most popular, or being made painfully aware that he has no friends to ridicule when he’s having a bad day? He could name a few such people from his past; Robert Jenkins was the most prominent. He worked around the blows to the ego of such people. The most immediate thing that he guessed people like that would feel would be alienation.
The unbalancing effect that would have on such a person could go either way. The person could either dive harder into the asshole realm of things or become a sullen catatonic. He had seen both sides of this in Nicolas throughout their short time together. He doubted very seriously that one momentary lapse into self-reflection would cause any kind of a serious turnaround for the adolescent in a man’s body, but he could always hope.
There was always the possibility that they were all reading him completely wrong, and Nicolas had just refused to accept what had happened and so there was no epiphany, no moment of self-reflection, only a momentary defensive shield that his ego had constructed to protect him from the reality of the world around him. If that was the case than Nicolas would be back to his old self again with his mind having constructed some bullshit version of what had happened to make himself look better than he actually had been. William was not happy with this line of thought, but he couldn’t deny that this was, more often than not, how real assholes dealt with the world and the things that they saw as negative or harmful to their pride. Just shrug it off with a smile or a sarcastic retort and go on living as if they were the coolest thing since Elvis.