The Prime Alpha

Chapter 4

NICKY

“That Damien man is not to be trusted,” Ma said, wiping her face with a neatly folded napkin as though merely thinking about the man had summoned a wave of heat. “I grew up with him. I know how he is.”

“Ma, seeing him had me having the trembles,” said Austin, sprawled lazily across the couch opposite me, his eyes fixed on the ceiling like it was showing him a scene only he could see. “Plus the whole thing was weird as hell. Oh, Ma, You should’ve come with us. He was cutting up a f*cking deer while the poor thing was still breathing. Still breathing, Ma. How mean is that?”

Ma shot him a sharp look. “Don’t use swear words. I warn you every time.” She poured herself a glass of water and sipped it through a straw, slow and mindful, like she needed the routine to steady herself. “That sounds just like him, I tell you. His twisted mind thinks only of evil and you don’t even know the half of it.”

As you have probably gathered by now, Ma wasn’t Damien Cardone’s biggest fan. Yeah, I know, shocking. The man didn’t exactly inspire affection in most people. But Ma’s hatred of Damien was different. It wasn’t casual, it wasn’t like anyone else's. It was personal, as deep-rooted as the roots of an oak buried so far beneath the earth you could never dig them all out.

“I can’t wait for Damien to meet his end,” Ma had said to fifteen-year-old me years ago. I remembered the way my ears perked at the words. It wasn’t every day you heard your sweet, principled mother pray so intently for someone’s death. “That man hurt me in a way nothing can ever resolve.”

Ma had always taught us that forgiveness was a gift you owed to everyone who wronged you, that it was how you aired out your soul, how you stopped rot from settling inside. I suppose Damien wasn’t getting any gifts from her.

She told me the story only once. Never again. Why she hated him more than anyone else alive.

“It all started when the rumours began,” Ma said, eyes already glossing over as she spoke, a thin film of moisture rising almost immediately. She sniffled, straightening the napkin in her hands like it was the only thing keeping her composed. “Rumours of him keeping young female Betas in his basement. At first, people whispered. Then the whispers got louder. No one would put anything past him, even as far thirty years ago. We all knew he had broken every one of the twenty vows, but for months, nothing happened. No one lifted a finger. It was gossip, then more gossip, while everyone sat on their hands.”

“Why?” I had asked, my stomach turning. The thought of girls my age—at the time—locked away by a powerful, cruel Alpha made my chest feel tight. In my head, I had pictured pups, small, terrified, curled up before a monstrous wolf. “Why didn’t anyone help?”

“Because, my dear,” Ma had said quietly, “people only hate the blade when it’s skin they care about that has been pierced.”

I didn’t fully understand that then. I would later.

Ma took on the ‘case’ herself. She asked questions, pushed doors, tried to gather people willing to work with her to raid his home.

”Everyone warned me to stop,” Ma had confessed, ”that dying for this might feel heroic but was really just foolish. Some dressed it up nicer, said things like, 'Leave him to his fellow Alphas'. Right. Because we all knew how much those smug assholes cared about the rest of us.”

Ma cursed them all, mostly in silence. She went on to watch Damien’s house, noted his habits, how he never seemed to leave the house. She planned. She waited. And then she decided to act.

“It wasn’t a bad plan,” she said that day, a faint smile ghosting her lips as she nodded. “At the time, it was the bravest thing I’d ever done.”

She has stormed in armed with wolfsbane-treated arrows and a sword, traps set all around, every movement timed as precisely as her limited knowledge of his home allowed. A Beta raiding the home of an Alpha—that took balls made of steel. It had been magnificent, she admitted. The first three arrows struck him—two in the arm, one in the knee. As he screamed and reeled, wolfsbane burning through him, she made her way to the basement, broke down the heavy door, and freed the eleven blonde girls. The oldest was nineteen. The youngest was fourteen. Save for a single shoe lost in her escape, Ma left exactly how she had entered.

“So it all went well?” I had asked, even though her face already told me it hadn’t. “They survived, right? They weren’t hurt?”

“Hurt?” She snapped her fingers sharply, exhaling. “Oh, they already were. He’d r***d every one of them for weeks. Survivors, yes, but only just.” Then her voice dipped. “The youngest. Ellie. She took her own life four days later. The horrors were too much for her.”

“Terrible,” I had thought aloud, hands gripping my knees, my mind sinking into a storm of emotions I didn’t want and couldn’t outrun.

“Oh, that’s not all, dear. That’s not all.”

Two Alphas confronted Damien afterward. He wasn’t killed. He was supposedly ‘roughened up’, though Ma never believed that. She was certain he had only been warned, told to stay away from the victims. And then let go.

He walked free.

“But I should have known he wouldn’t leave me unpunished,” she had said, her frown deepening, her legs trembling even as she sat. “He struck me hard, baby girl. He struck me hard.”

Ma hadn’t feared retaliation, not really. She took comfort in knowing she had saved eleven lives. Or ten. Technicalities. Three weeks later, her boyfriend at the time was found dead. Beaten beyond recognition. r***d. And how did Ma know it was Damien? Her missing shoe was strapped around his neck with the lace.

And, yes, you guessed it. He got away with it. Again.

***** *****

“You don’t have to check on me every day,” Gladys said gently, holding my hand as she led me toward the sitting room.

“I want to,” I replied, feeling foolish even as I said it, maybe because I had said it at least ten times already. Tomorrow, she would say the same thing again. But how could I not come? She meant everything to someone who had meant everything to me.

“Let’s eat,” she let out, nudging the curry toward me.

It had become routine since Agnes’ death. Dinner together. Talking about Agnes during the meal, after it too. People liked to pretend they weren’t doing it, but they did: erase the dead. Stop saying their names. As if silence softened grief. Their intentions were good, maybe. What was the point of talking about someone you couldn’t bring back?

But this was different. How could I forget someone I had known my entire life?

“Thank you for the meal, Mrs Keaton,” I said, bowing slightly, something I had done since childhood, usually to her amusement. “It was really good. As always.”

“Thank you, dear,” she said as I helped clear the dishes.

Staying in this house without Agnes was hard. But not staying was worse. It felt like leaving meant moving on, and I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. Not until I have avenged her death.

“Chocolate mint was her favourite,” Gladys said later, spooning ice cream from the tin. Our eyes were distant, unfocused, like we were both present and absent at the same time.

“We need to get the Haball,” I stated, frowning, eyes closing as I fought to maintain composure. “The f*cking Nobles won’t give it to them. I know they won’t. Dad says he and the men are going out there in three days, that he’ll make sure they come back with it. But he just wants to make me feel better.“

Gladys cleared her throat, her hands fluttering briefly. “First time I’ve ever agreed with Damien,” she said quietly. “Hard to believe I ever would. But without the Haball, we can’t map every werewolf or analyse the previous attacks. At least, that’s what he says.”

It was bitter, knowing the man leading the charge against ASILENCE was someone Agnes had hated with everything in her. However, she had been of the opinion that he was a necessary evil being that no one knew more about ASILIENCE than him.

***** *****

It was thirteen minutes to nine when I stood to leave. At the door, I said, “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, dear,” said Gladys. “And we'll keep hoping that they will get the Haball.“

“Hope is but the luxury of those unburdened by reason,” I replied, hugging her tightly, and then wondered if my words landed well. “But you can keep hoping, anything that helps is fine.

“If only we knew where that asshole was,” Gladys sighed, eyes to the ground.

“Asshole? Who?”

“The Prime Alpha, of course,” she explained. “He could make all this much easier.“

The Nobles lived by laws—ancient ones. One of them, as Gladys revealed, stated plainly that the Haball belonged to them and would never be relinquished unless a Prime Alpha requested it. A Prime Alpha was considered the moon goddess’ favourite, one who could claim any of her relics.

And for the first time since Agnes died, I felt it. A flicker. A thin, brilliant line of light at the end of the tunnel. It was time I met this man.