The Last Alpha's Second Life

A whiff of pine smoke and barbecue filled the hall. The torches along the walls flickered and flickered, lighting a passageway in the midst of the Voss pack, all on edge for their new Alpha, Kaidren, to take his throne. There he was in the middle of the room wearing that black ceremonial coat that was two sizes too formal for his own skin. Behind him sat his father on the high chair that placed him near the back and too weak to stand. But the proud gleam in his father's eyes was undeniable. His little sister, Reyes, kept sending him little grins from the first row and mouthing You've got it at him whenever he looked away from her. Kaidren didn't believe he had it. He felt like the boy who had been the silent number two all his life, who now had been given a crown he didn't believe he could wear. You look like you're about to yak. Darian said as he moved up beside Thor. Darian's smile was on his face, the one that always seemed to make you believe he was honest, you know, that smile. Darian has had that same smile ever since they were eight-years-old, the day he saved Kaidren from the frozen lake and never shut up about it. Perhaps," Kaidren conceded. "Is it permitted at a coronation?" Not quite my thing. " Darian patted him on the back. "But if you do play, I'll come clean and say you were just nervous and the fish last night is what did it." Kaidren laughed and for a second the heaviness in his chest seemed to ease a little. Darian had that effect on him. He had always done. Maeve came in the other door, moving the way she always did, as if the room were not there, but she was in it anyway. Her long silver-blonde hair was woven with tiny white blossoms, and her strange pale blue eyes looked at him as if there were a hint of warmth there. "Ready?" she inquired. "No, " said Kaidren, honestly. Good. She almost smiles. The ones who say yes are usually lying. He wanted to believe there was something real behind that comment. He wanted to believe a lot of things that night. The pack elder emerged, carrying the ceremonial blade, a piece of old iron brought down from four generations of Voss Alphas. It wasn't meant to cut anyone. It was meant to be held, held aloft, passed hand to hand, a token of pack approval to their new Alpha. "Kaidren Voss," the old man intoned sharply in the deathly quiet room. "Tonight you take on the burden of this pack. Its defence. Its faithfulness. It's blood." "Yes, I accept it," Kaidren nodded. The first was put in Darian's hands because they were tradition. As the nearest bonded brother of Kaidren, he was to have it first. And, as tradition would have it, he was to let Kaidren wrap his fist to the hilt and then they both were to lift it high above Kaidren's head as the pack howled. Darian kept the blade extended. Kaidren gripped it while he tried to reach out for him. But Darian didn't let go. Kaidren thought he was kidding. Darian's grin remained on his face, but the crafty expression in his eyes was gone, and that was the last thing Kaidren could remember before the thud of the sword as it suddenly turned, fast, and unerringly, into his flank. The pain didn't come first. The confusion did. Darian" Kaidren said, his voice filled with disbelief and frustation, his eyes locking onto Kendry's as he tried to find the slight error, the misinterpretation, anything that would make this make sense. I'm sorry, Darian said, and sounded like he meant it and that made it more painful. "It was never meant to be you." His knees slammed against the floor. Praying to see his father, he turned toward him and watched him get tugged backward by two packs of enforcers. He yelled his name again; the words were cut off by his pounding heart. He searched for Reyes and caught her in a breathless stare, her hands pressed to her mouth but no scream. He checked in on Maeve last. She didn't look away. She didn't look startled. She looked at him as he dropped the same mild expression on her face when she said good, the ones who say yes are usually lying, the ones who say yes always knew this would happen. " You just knew," Kaidren breathed. Maeve stooped next to him, echoing his proximity. "Sorry, it has to be you. You would have been a good Alpha." Kaidren felt the last thing he would ever feel as the floor met his face, and he saw nothing but his ancestors' hall ceiling overhead, firelights flickering and no idea that the boy burning in the light had trusted each one of the people in that room. Kaidren awoke with a gulp. Sunlight struck his face, mild, and commonplace, nothing like the ice stone slab he remembered dying on. He sat up suddenly, hands reaching for his side where the bloody blade had gone in and expecting blood, expecting pain. Nothing. No wound. No scar. Only his own skin, slightly younger, more malleable, and yet it made the pit of his stomach clench, hard. "Finally you're awake, " said a voice from the door. Reyes was there. Arms crossed. Shirt she hadn't worn in a long time. She looked younger. Not by much. Just a bit. "Reyes, " said Kaidren. And then his voice broke in an unexpected way. "Yeah, that is, in fact, still my name." She c****d an eyebrow. "You all right? You look as if you've seen a ghost." I am a ghost, he thought, but what he said was, "Bad dream." "Had to be a good one, you were sweatin' out the sheets." She threw a neatly folded shirt onto his bed. "Get dressed. Father's breakfast for you all. Says he's got an aannouncement." His blood ran cold. Announcement. He knew that declaration. He had uttered that declaration. Three years from now, those same words in that same exhausted tone would rally the identical sequence of events culminating in a blade between his ribs and his best mate gripping the hilt. "What day is it?" he asked, too quickly, too keen. He cast a glassy look at him. "Tenth. Why? Did you mess your dreads up or something?" Reyes scowled at him. 15. Kaidren did the math in his head, quick and frenzied, aligning dates against memories. He didn't understand why he lingered. Three. Three years, he was three years younger, in a guest bedroom he hadn't known he'd visited, preparing to enter a breakfast table where his father was going to lay out a succession plan that Kaidren had once believed was an honor. He knew it now was the countdown. I'm fine, he was forced out through the distortion that grew in his ears. Just a second. Reyes regarded him for a moment longer, the way she always did when she thought he was lying and she couldn't prove it. Finally, she shrugged and headed for the door. "Don't take forever. You know how Papa gets when people are late. The door clicked shut, and Kaidren sat staring at a room that belonged to a version of himself that wasn't dead yet, that didn't know what Darian's hands would do, that didn't know the steady gaze of Maeve's eyes was sitting unmoving while he'd bled to death. He had three years. Three years, just three years, to be capable of being someone the blade couldn't reach. "Now, "he said softly, to no one, to the empty room, to the boy he once was, "I decide who I let near enough to hurt me." He pulled on his clothes, and for the first time since waking, his hands settled down.