“Alpha, we’re pleased to meet you.” The guard on the left offered a note Keon reluctantly accepted.
Alpha Keon,
We accept your offer to return our stolen property. We do not accept it as proper recompense for what your brother took.
Prepare for negotiation talks where we can agree on an appropriate repayment.
Alpha Thatcher.
Thatcher was threatening them? Keon’s note to Thatcher had explained Simeon’s actions—acknowledging the rumoured theft, his disgraceful behaviour after becoming Alpha, and his criminal deeds—offering to return the stolen item. Keon had sworn to have Simeon’s name scrubbed from the Alphaship records, for committing heinous and treasonous acts. He’d asked Thatcher to describe the stolen item, to search for its whereabouts. Had invited a delegation of no more than three men to collect the item.
An army was not a delegation.
“Your Alpha is a strange man,” he remarked, handing the note to Weston, who read and raised a single eyebrow. “He claims I’m ungracious and haven’t offered appropriate restitution,” Keon explained, hoping enlightenment came with a realisation of the situation they’d been placed in.
“If your Alpha demands peace talks, he may have them. However—” Stepping closer, straddling the boundary line, Keon stared the soldier in the eye. “—your Alpha brought an army to terrorize my people, and killed a scout. If he believes he’s been wrongly compensated, wait till he hears what I demand in return for this unnecessary show of force. Believe me, it will be more than he’s willing to pay.”
Turning from the guards was a sign of superiority, not a show of weakness or naïvety. If they stabbed Keon, he’d remove the knife, survive the wound, and walk away unscathed. Keon had outlived his family, despite being called the weak one. He’d show them who was weak.
“Do you think they’ll attack?” Weston asked, as they walked.
“No. He’s posturing.” As Simeon would. “He brings his army to show he can attack if I don’t comply. His mistake was leaving his homeland vulnerable,” Keon said, knowing the best potential strategy. If he were Simeon, he’d have sent guards to Thatcher’s territory and destroyed it. But Keon was a planner and knew how to bide his time. His brothers had taught him how to focus on the bigger picture, and he would use it to make the pack a family.
“It was dangerous to meet them alone.”
Keon glanced at his Beta as he climbed the front steps of his home and opened the door. “I suppose, but this way Thatcher will know I’m not afraid to face him alone, and his men learned I’m no coward. Where he requires an army, I need only my Beta and two guards,” he said, entering the room opposite the living room, where he’d dressed in his ceremonial garb. The room where Alphas must meet their enemy.
Weston lifted the box of incense from the corner cabinet and made a circuit of the room, blessing the space and asking the Fates to preside over the talks. “May I remain with you, during the talks?”
“Of course. I need my expert analyst to see what I can’t.” Keon relied on Weston to ground him, to remind him if he strayed from protocol. “First, would you warn the guards about our guests? I don’t want them being mauled,” he said, though it would improve pack morale.
Weston completed his job and left in silence.
Keon crossed to the window and touched his fingertip to the clasp of a long wooden box, carved with flowers, names engraved into the sides. He tried to conjure a memory of his mother sitting in her favourite chair, watching his father create a piece of beauty from a scrap of wood. The image was hazy, unclear. His mother had gone from crystal clarity to a mist in his mind. He lost more of her, day by day.
Flicking the clasp, he opened the lid, lifted one match from the stack in the divot on the right, and lit the central candle.For you, Mother. Please guide me.He closed his eyes and bent to blow out the candle.
Keon hoped her spirit rested peacefully in the land ofunimar, a type of Vihaan heaven, and that she could hear him. Guide him, one last time.
*
“WELCOME, ALPHA.”
Keon stood as Weston led Thatcher into the room. While his Beta gestured to a chair at the round dining table—symbolic to make them equal—he eyed the young man accompanying the Alpha. Too robust to be a Beta, an administrative role in the pack. Too imposing to be a guard, as his size would make him slow, not swift. The copper in his brown eyes suggested this was Thatcher’s son.
Thatcher was an imposing man. Forty, dark hair greying at the temples, and a prominently crooked nose. Broken in the past, if not numerous times. His build would be intimidating, if Keon hadn’t spent a lifetime being bullied by his brothers. Thatcher could pass for Simeon’s older brother, the similarities striking: broad shoulders, a puffed chest, tight leather clothing, and garish gold jewellery.
The son was no better. Inches shorter, the way he twirled a thick gold ring around his pinkie as he took his seat made Keon want to smack him. The leer he offered Weston proved him as disrespectful as Thatcher.
The men sat and Weston took a dining chair into an unobtrusive corner where he scratched at a notepad, taking notes. Ready, Keon dove in head-first. “Would you like to explain why the ‘delegation’ I graciously offered passage to is an army threatening my pack?”
“Grand words from a boy playing at Alpha,” Thatcher said, his elitism showing as blatantly as the gold tooth. “You live in squalor and have no servants. Tell me why I must speak with an unworthy pup.”
Servants? What year was it? Thatcher was stuck deep in the past, and Keon was surprised he hadn’t disintegrated. Interestingly, Thatcher hadn’t asked where Simeon was or for proof of Keon’s position. Something he would have done in the other man’s shoes.
Reining in his temper, Keon feigned disinterest. “I live modestly. I was raised to be humble by a family taken by the Fates. First my mother, my older brother, my eldest brother, and my father. I have no need of extravagance.” He shrugged, finding no shame in the truth. “I was never meant to be Alpha, true. Simeon bequeathed his role to me. Grudgingly, I imagine.
“I may not be the one my people wanted or expected, but I hold the lives of my pack upon my shoulders. I would rather die than pass my rule to someone else.” He stopped and looked this Alpha in the eye. “My bastard of a brother thought everything in Vihaan was his for the taking, but he was an ignorant fool.” Keon glanced at the brat sitting beside Thatcher, who snorted. “Make no mistake, I’ll leave an impression to outlast his stench for eons.”
