Chapter 8: The Council
803 Words
On the fourth day, people began arriving at the mansion.
Aurora became aware of this gradually, first through sound, the low murmur of voices in the formal rooms below, then through visible evidence, cars she didn't recognize parked along the interior drive, men and women in professional clothes moving through the ground floor corridors with the focused purposefulness of people attending to serious business.
"The council," Nadia explained when Aurora appeared at the top of the staircase. "Regional pack leaders and senior advisors. Damon called them in. The Ashclaw situation requires a formal response."
"How formal?"
"Territorial declaration level." Nadia glanced at the closed doors to the formal meeting room. "This is significant. These people don't gather for small problems."
"Is Damon in there?"
"He's been in there since seven this morning."
Leo appeared beside Aurora, holding Gerald the dragon-giraffe, and looked at the activity below with interest. "Are they having a meeting?"
"Yes."
"What about?"
"Grown-up things."
"That means me," Leo said, with an equanimity that concerned her. "I heard my name last night. The walls are thin here."
Aurora looked at her son. "What did you hear?"
He thought about it with genuine care, as he thought about everything. "They said the heir. And then they said Leo. And then someone said protected, and someone else said not enough." He looked up at her. "Am I the heir?"
There it was. The question she had known was coming and had not finished preparing for.
"Come sit with me," she said.
They sat in the window seat at the end of the hall, the one that looked out over the courtyard where the previous morning Leo had examined something in the pavement with his father. Leo sat cross-legged with Gerald in his lap and waited with his characteristic patience.
"Damon is your father," Aurora said.
She had not planned to say it quite yet. The words came out before she had fully decided on them, and once they were in the air there was nothing to do but continue.
Leo looked at her. His face was very still. "My father who lives far away?"
"He doesn't live far away. He lives here. And there were reasons we weren't together when you were born, complicated reasons that weren't about not wanting you, but things got complicated and I made a mistake and we lost time." She kept her voice steady. "He didn't know about you until a few days ago, baby. This is new for him too."
Leo was quiet for a long moment.
"Is that why we're staying here?" he asked finally.
"Partly. There's also a safety situation that we're sorting out."
"Because of the heir thing."
"Because of that, yes."
He looked at Gerald. Turned him over once. "He crouches down when he talks to me," he said. "So we're the same height."
"I noticed that."
"Most big people don't. They just talk at the top of my head and expect me to hear."
Aurora felt something press against the inside of her sternum. "He pays attention."
"Yeah." Leo looked back at her. "Can I ask him questions?"
"Of course."
"Okay." He slid off the window seat. "I'm going to go find him."
"He's in a meeting."
"I'll wait outside the door. I'm good at waiting."
This was true. Leo had an unusual capacity for stillness when he was thinking about something important.
She let him go.
The meeting ended an hour later. She was in the library when she heard it break up, the sound of doors opening and the low current of multiple conversations moving through the hallways. She heard Leo's voice once, a single question, and then silence, and then Damon's voice, lower, and then nothing.
Twenty minutes later Damon appeared in the library doorway.
"He found me before I could find him," he said.
"I know. I sent him."
"You told him."
"He already knew. He'd heard his name through the walls." She put down her book. "What did he ask you?"
Damon crossed the room and sat down in the chair across from her. He looked, for the first time since she'd known him, genuinely undone. Not distressed. Undone in the way that something overwhelming and wanted does to a person.
"He asked if I knew how to play chess," Damon said. "And when I said yes, he said good, because he was learning and he needed someone to practice with." A pause. "He shook my hand. Like a business agreement."
Aurora could feel the smile before she managed to stop it. She stopped trying.
"He's been learning from YouTube tutorials," she said. "He's very serious about it."
"He beat me in twelve moves."
"He's five."
"He's extraordinary," Damon said, with a quiet absolute conviction that had nothing political in it.
"Yes," Aurora agreed. "He is."
- Writer
