The Prime Alpha

Chapter 2

DERAN

I left my bed, which still held two sleeping naked bodies, to come to Uncle Seth’s study to discuss what he loathed with every fibre of his being. I moved quietly, not out of courtesy, but habit, stepping over discarded clothes and the faint smell of sweat and perfume clung to the sheets.

Haball.

I don’t think there’s anything Uncle Seth despised more than the Haball. He hated that thing so much that his face visibly contorted every single time it was mentioned. His jaw tightened, his brows knitted, his lips pulled thin like he was tasting something rotten. Yes, it really was that serious. Sometimes, when I caught him frowning at nothing obvious, I find myself wondering if he was thinking about it.

“Do you know what a Haball is?” Uncle Seth had asked me several years ago when I was maybe fourteen or fifteen. We were in the main dining area, the long table already set, the smell of food thick in the air. One of the helps had just called me in from the combat area, telling me dinner was ready.

“A what now?” I had replied, wondering if I had heard him wrong.

That was the first time he told me about the Haball.

You see, the Haball was one of the oldest and most powerful gifts the moon goddess left on the earthly plane. It had originally been called 'Her ball' many centuries ago, and over time the name shortened, twisted, until it became Haball. According to Uncle, it was a bright crystal sphere, roughly fifty centimetres in diameter, humming with dormant light, charged with the moon goddess’ power itself. Through it, the Nobles—werewolves who dedicated their lives to the worship of the moon goddess—could track down every single werewolf walking the planet. Every heartbeat.

I remember how sober Uncle’s face would get when he talked about the Haball. How his usual sharp humour evaporated, replaced by something heavier. It was only years later that I truly understood why he hated it so much, why it scared him.

“The Nobles are the worst,” Uncle would say, drawing deeply on his cigar, smoke curling around his head. “They’re smug dimwits who believe they have all the wisdom in the f*cking world. Nasty, delusional pricks, I’ll tell you.”

Turns out the Nobles could kill any werewolf walking the world, wipe us out with the same ease a butcher draws breath. Well, maybe not a Prime Alpha. Maybe. No one alive has tested that theory yet. But the mere possibility, the idea that the Haball carried that kind of power, was enough to drain the colour from Uncle’s face every single time it came up.

“So, no,” he rasped now, clearing his throat after choking on the same smoke he kept dragging back into his lungs. “I don’t think ASILENCE has any ties to werewolves.” He jabbed the air with the lit end of his cigar, ash threatening to fall. “If they did, they wouldn’t attack the way they do. Their patterns are too…” He squinted at nothing, eyes narrowing. “…human. The better question is, how the hell does ASILENCE know where to look?”

I shrugged, lips flattening. “Just saying it’s possible.”

He snapped his attention to me like I had said something stupid. “Not a chance in f*cking hell. I hate the Nobles more than anyone, but even I know ASILENCE doesn’t have reach in the Nobledom. Those paranoid bastards live deep in the woods and barely speak to each other, much less to outsiders.”

“Hmm.” It was all I could manage, though my mind was already spinning through every whispered rumour about ASILENCE and how fast they were becoming a threat to the community. “Besides,” I added, “if the Nobles wanted us dead, they wouldn’t subcontract humans to pick us off one by one. They’d just…” I snapped my fingers. “…end us.”

And you know what? F*ck that letter.

Two months ago, some man—Damien whatever—had written to Uncle, insisting we joined a so-called 'united front' against ASILENCE. He didn’t introduce this ‘terror group’ to me, but he sure as hell lectured us about them. Seven pages. Seven. The man wrote like he was being paid per word.

He claimed the body count was rising fast. Supposedly, ASILENCE was getting bold enough to kill in daylight. And he explained that the name itself meant a negation of silence—the way atheist meant 'not theist'. ASILENCE was a refusal to be quiet. A promise to make noise, one that was getting very hard to ignore.

And that wasn’t even all.

In that same letter, an entire page was dedicated to informing us that Uncle’s brother—my dad—and his family’s demise was carried out by ASILENCE. Yeah, I was just as surprised. He claimed he had irrefutable proof of this, though I did think it wouldn’t have hurt to actually include said proof in the letter.

“F*ck Damien and his message, f*ck ASILENCE,” Uncle had said about two days after receiving it. We had chosen to stop thinking about my parents’ deaths; there was no point reopening old wounds. My parents died when I was eleven. In less than a fortnight, I would be thirty-one. Time had passed. Their loss, though immeasurably heavy, had already been borne. Uncle would always say, “There’s no point crying over spilled milk,” and I agreed with him on most things.

***** *****

“Hi, handsome,” Nancy greeted, nearly falling over as she waved one too many times, her full dentition on display as she cracked a wide smile. “You’re, uh, it’s nice to see you.”

“Where’s Ga...”

“Right here, big boy.” Gabrielle peeled herself from her room and then disappeared back inside. I winked at Nancy before heading into Gabrielle's room. Taking her into my arms, I squeezed her butt through the skirt she had on. She wasn't wearing any underwear.

“You know I like it when you’re this horny,” she murmured. “Oh, wait… what am I saying? You’re always this horny.”

She had made that joke a million times and I grinned every time. No, it hadn’t been funny the first time, but it was my one altruistic contribution to society: I laughed at bad jokes, which was, frankly, most jokes.

“Is this tradition now?” asked Gabrielle, guiding my hand beneath her simple plaid skirt, her mouth falling open as my fingers met wet heat. “You come here, f*ck me, and hurry back to your palace.”

“Traditions evolve, don’t they?” I said. “How about I change it to coming here, f*cking you, and then taking you back to the ‘palace’ with me so I can f*ck you some more?”

She called my house a palace and you couldn’t blame her. The property stretched over six acres in a high-brow area; worth obscene figures at worst.

“But really, Deran,” she said, softer now, “what happened to the us that used to go out to dinner and have a blast like every other day?” She wanted to say more—I could see it—but she swallowed it down, fastening her buttons before straddling my thighs.

We made out for a bit before I flipped her onto her stomach and did what I had come here to do.

Oh, I knew she was done with this relationship. She just didn’t have the guts to call it quits. And before horns get drawn on my head, it was important to note that I had tried to end it three months ago. To her round face, I had said “I wasn’t into this anymore.” To which she had replied asking whether 'this' meant her or the relationship. I had answered, “Both.”

Long story short, she didn’t take it the way one would. There were incessant calls, article-length DMs, emotional monologues, and the likes. Taking pity on her, I told her I would only get back together if we opened the relationship. To my surprise, she agreed, saying anything was better than losing me. Her one condition was that she didn't know about it; what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?

Two weeks later, I thought I had found a way to finally drive her off for good. I told her if she loved me, she wouldn’t mind watching me have s*x with other girls. For reasons still unknown to me and perhaps everyone else, this still wasn’t a deal-breaker.

Shane, my best buddy, thinks I'm mean for not just cutting her right off. I don't know, maybe he's right. Anyway, we are now three months strong in an open relationship that was very clearly one-sided. But, yay—at least she had me.

***** *****

“Thank the universe you’re not human,” Uncle said, shaking his head as I snorted up the last line of cocaine on the table. “You’d have been one raging cokehead as a human.”

“I am a raging cokehead,” I replied, wiping my nose. “Just without the downside. Perhaps we should thank the moon goddess for making us enjoy coke.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “First off, who's 'us'? Second, f*ck that bitch.” He dragged a wooden chair closer, its legs scraping against the marble floor. “Deran… about ASILENCE. The werewolf community is going to reach out to you, sooner or later.”

“And I’ll tell them to go get f*cked in that place the sun doesn't touch,” I said flatly. “I can count everyone I care about on one hand… ASILENCE is their problem, not mine.”

Uncle nodded, slapping my shoulder as he walked past.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe no one would reach out. But if they did, they might just make a new enemy for themselves.