The Littlest Light

#Chapter10-01

#Chapter10-01Sunlight brushed against the early morning glow with the tenderest of touches; dust particles resembled glitter as they lazed throughout the air. Day had broken, creeping over the distant mountains, breaching through the army of trees that had created a four-sided border to Battleridge. In the stillness of dawn, the silent beauty of nature exposed itself, a mirage of effortless preservation.

It had been a long time since I'd listened to the gentle song that lived within the world's silence. Been a long time since I'd slowed down enough to see what was right in front of me. And as warmth infiltrated through the window, pale slithers of yellow crawling across the carpet, it was as though in a trance that my arm lifted, palm reaching for the beam, fingers parting as though I could feel the light trickling through. It was a bitter second later that my hand dropped to my side, a tired scowl searing across my face. The magic that came with dusk and dawn, it was one that could never be obtained. And the simplicity, the privilege of watching nature rise and fall? It was no longer mine to bask in.

As an Alpha, such things were no longer my concern. As an Alpha, I couldn't afford to be the kind of delicacy that shed a f*****g tear every time the sky merged and shifted anew.

I was the kind of Alpha that fixed problems and got s**t done. And unfortunately for me, everybody seemed to have problems they needed fixing. The pack was on edge because of the intruder on our land-- history had a way of repeating when folk kept to the same repetitive cycles, and a few years back, just before I took over the pack, cubs were being snatched from all over the country. It had stopped, but the fear had never gone away. Not really. A generation of cowards had been raised from mama's too afraid to let their pups out of their sight.

Then there was the schooling issue. Our pack had formed a colony away from humans, occupying a small village. We were self-sufficient in many ways, restricting our interaction with outsiders, along with the risk of exposure, but it also limited our resources. Our education system was dated, according to over-concerned mothers. The curriculum that had been inherited for generations was no longer satisfying, and I was expected to provide an alternative.

Yay me.

I wasn't even going to branch off into the training program. I'd see broomsticks with more potential than half the cubs that had been recruited; I'd dumped that disaster on Jonathan.

The list of depressing burdens was relentless, and as soon as one was countered, another popped up and took its place. The strain was exhausting, and there were moments like this, tiny snippets of the day where the quietness snuck through, that I found myself wondering why I'd been so hungry for the position in the first place. Closing my eyes, breathing deeply, I tried to enjoy the moment.

The attempt was shattered by a high-pitched whine, followed by a soft snore. Eyes dragging across the room, skipping over the dried, bloody prints that I'd tracked across the carpet last night, they landed on the bed. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting. Maybe for the kid to wild out again and grow another ten inches, or maybe to unearth evidence that he was not the brain-dead critter he was playing at being, but disappointment and an empty sleep metre were all that had come from the all-nighter.

The idea of him sleeping in my bed hadn't been one that had rode well. I'd tried at least fifty f*****g times to dump the little s**t in one of the guest rooms, but between screaming, crying and following me out, I'd resigned to the idea. Tried to justify the small defeat by convincing myself that keeping him within my sights was for the best.

With his face buried into the pillows and his knees tucked under him, forcing his butt into the air, Lumen had made himself at home. His limbs had strewn out and he'd somehow kicked the covers onto the floor. The sheet had been uprooted from the corners and tangled around his feet, and a very incriminating wet spot had spread out beneath him.

"The Wise One is only wise because nobody has ever proved her wrong," I reasoned, eyeballing the tapering of the sheets. If I were to bundle the brat up nice and tight and trek it back out to the god-forsaken patch of nowhere I'd found him, it would have been a brave way to test the theory. Worth the consequences too, cuz I sure as sugar couldn't see how any kind of chain reaction could work out worse than playing Mary-f*****g-Poppins.

But some things just ran too deep, and for as much as I wanted to do it, for as much as every instinct screamed at me to get rid of the thing, I couldn't. Her words had burrowed, nested, and now lived in the doubts of my mind, rent-free.

"Kid." I should have been fuming. The sheets were Versace, and the mattress alone probably cost more than a pauper's entire wardrobe, but a numbness had nibbled away at all the f***s I had to give, induced by the sleepless night and the hellish adventures that had led up to it. I didn't have the energy. And I sure as hell didn't have the patience to deal with him throwing a wobbler. "Kid, wake up."

It was only as his eyes peeled open, revealing two memorising pools of vivid blue, that I second-guessed the decision. If it was stupid enough to piss the bed, then what kind of lesson was I teaching if I didn't make him lie in it? That it was acceptable? That I accepted it? Most certainly not.

"Star," he said sleepily, fighting to sit up. He lifted an arm up, reaching for me, but the other buckled beneath his weight and he ended up face planting. A whine and a moan sounded as he fought against the bed's hold, wriggling until he managed to sit up. His finger swung towards the window. "Star, drem bout twees der."