William smiled into the darkness. “Well I have been known to make quick exits when the need arises.” The off handed comment immediately brought back images of his flight from his forest on that night another lifetime ago.
Charles looked down at the Enforcer. “Ok, I’m right next door if you need anything.” Charles made three quick steps and was out of William’s immediate line of sight, lost behind his screen of branches separating his area from Charles’.
William looked back up at the ceiling. Nicolas might be a problem. Time would reveal more to him than he could by arguing in circles for hours on end. He just had to hope that Nicolas had taken something away from that test last night. If he didn’t…well, they would all have to deal with that when the time came.
He lifted himself onto his elbows and looked around the den. There was no sign of Achelois but she could come in at any time. His words obviously hadn’t had any effect on her, but the other members of the pack had to have seen how she was acting. If she wouldn’t listen to him maybe she would listen to somebody else. “Charles?” He heard a slight rustling in the area next to him.
“Yes, William.”
William hesitated for just a moment. “Charles, you’ve noticed how Achelois has been acting, right?”
Other sounds came from Charles compartment. It sounded like he was moving to sit or stand up. “If you mean that she has made it painfully obvious that she wants nothing at all to do with Aceso, then yes I’ve noticed.”
“Charles I’ve tried to talk to her, you were there, but she doesn’t seem to want to listen to me. If we don’t do something about this now then what happened last night is just going to keep happening.”
“What are you suggesting?”
William sat up with his fists resting dejectedly between his legs on top of his tail. “I don’t know, Charles. I guess…I don’t know.”
As he said this last part Achelois emerged from the entrance into the den. “Don’t know what?”
William looked up at her and a real spark of anger flew into his mind. He knew that anger was not the answer. If he started yelling then whatever he had to say would be lost and things would be worse. He forced the anger aside with a good amount of difficulty. The anger was still there but subdued.
“I don’t know what to do about you, actually.”
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This caught the female off guard and she let a brief glimpse of surprise show on her face. “What do you mean you don’t know what to do about me? There is nothing to do about me.”
William remained sitting. He didn’t want to challenge her in any physical way. Physicality was too often ignored or responded to with physicality. That was not the answer here. He looked up at her with a tight smile. “Then you tell me, when are you going to put whatever is bothering you about Aceso behind you and start working with the pack?”
Achelois stood there as she looked at William with a cold stare but she made no move to speak.
“It seems that if we are to be together then we have to find a way to live with each other, otherwise things like the test last night will continue to happen.” It was Charles who spoke into the frigid silence.
Achelois shot a look at the area next to William’s. “What are you saying?” There was a definite edge to her voice now. “That I should just forget about what she did and move on as merrily as a raccoon to a garbage can?”
There it was, plain as writing on a sandstone wall. She wasn’t going to forgive Aceso. It was probably just that simple. Not all the good points in the world were going to make her change her mind, but he had to keep trying.
“I’m not saying that at all,” William spoke to her. “You have to work that out between yourselves and not me or Charles or Katherine or Nicolas can help either of you with that. But what I am saying is that you constantly fighting her and avoiding her for no good reason is only going to hurt us as a pack.”
Achelois looked down at William. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive what she did to you, even if you don’t know what it was, I do.” She spun on her heels and exited the way she had come in.
William let himself crash back to the floor of the den. He heaved a heavy sigh and tried to work up some kind of emotion. But at that point all he felt was failure, the crushing apathetic feeling of failure.
“It’s not your fault, William.” Charles called out from his area. His voice was even and calm, accepting in ways that William could never describe or emulate. “She is going to have to come to terms with her differences with Aceso in her own time on her own terms. No one can push her to those compromises it’s something she is going to have to do on her own.”
William spoke without moving, “How do you do it?”
There was a hesitation from the other werewolf. “How do I do what?”
“Accept people the way you do.” William stared up into the darkness of the den.
“I accept people for who they are because I know that I’m not perfect. People are different from me and if I insulated myself from those differences than I would live a life of ignorance.” He sighed. “I have always known that variety is what makes the world interesting. If I condemned all of those people who were different from me than what kind of sterile, boring life would I be leading?” He paused. “Even from the most distasteful of people there is something to be learned, if not about the world than about one’s self, and that is always valuable.”
Charles’ words circled around in his head. Was Charles trying to get him to understand something? He knew that he was. Had he been closed minded about some people? It was troubling to hear those words and be slapped in the face with the doubt that they caused. Had he been wrong about Nicolas? He was willing to give the blonde the benefit of the doubt. He turned over on his side his tail flipping up into the freedom of open air behind him. He propped his head up on his arm and tried to go to sleep, it didn’t come for a very long time.