The Last Alpha's Second Life

BREAKFAST WITH KILLERS

The dining hall was exactly as Kaidren remembered it, which was the oddest thing of all. Same long wooden table. The same morning light spilling through the high windows. The same aroma of fresh-baked bread and hot bacon fat that once meant security and now made his stomach flip.

Darian was half sitting on the table when Kaidren entered, laughing at ease at an off-handed joke told by one of the guards, so hungry and loud and blissfully ignorant of reality when Kaidren last looked at him, he was calm and stabbing a blade through it.

And he spotted him, called him over. "He's still in bed on the day we're announcing the results? That's some cojones."

Kaidren clenched his jaw but quickly forced a smile onto his face. It felt as if he was wearing a mask of his own skin. "Sleep well."

"Jittery about something?" Darian asked, raising an eyebrow. He still had a smirk on his face, he was still the same boy who had pulled him out of a frozen lake when he was sixteen, and he was still the same man who would betray him in three . . .

"Just a lot on my mind, " Kaidren said. He sat himself in the chair across from him this time instead of beside him the way he used to.

Darian noticed. Of course, he noticed. Darian noticed everything. Which was precisely why he'd been so easy to trust and so effective when it counted.

You're all wrong, that's not how you sit, ' Darian said.

I'm sitting patient. Your trick with me being predictable isn't working anymore.

Maeve arrived a moment later, calm as always, her silver-blonde hair pulled smooth and tight; not a single tulip woven through it, because all the tulips belonged to a night that had never arrived. She sat in her chair and gave him a slight nod without even a trace of warmth, just the faint indication of the Maeve who had knelt on his dying body, telling him he would have made a fine Alpha.

"Morning, "she said.

"Morning, " Kaidren replied, and looked at her face for any indication of the person she was today, the one she had the ability to be. He saw nothing. That was what scared him the most. She was that skilled.

Out came his father, more slowly than he had three years ago and already leaning on a cane, a cane that he never should have needed so soon. Reyes was right behind him now, already dressed, already observing the room as always, as if memorizing its contents for future use.

"We'll keep this brief, " Alpha Garrick Voss said as he drew himself down in his chair at the head of the table. "My health isn't what it once was. The pack elders have asked me to appoint a suitable future alpha early, and I have here."

The room fell silent. Kaidren could recite the next part every time without even thinking about it, but hearing it again felt like a punch in the ribs.

"Kaidren will now undergo formal Alpha training immediately. His coronation will be given once the elders are confident he is prepared."

Darian slapped him on the shoulder, grinning broadly. "How's that! Congratulations, future Alpha."

"Congratulations, " Maeve echoed, steady, and dulcet.

Kaidren managed to nod, to smile, to thank them without his voice breaking, even as his brain cried out it was the same two people who, three years from now, would be there in a torchlit hall as he died, and they'd neither moved nor flinched.

"I'll take care of you," he said instead. "Won't you let the pack down?"

His father looked at him a little longer than necessary, there was something unreadable in those bloodshot eyes. 'You look different today',

"Just excited, " Kaidren lied.

He later came across Reyes in the training yard, sharpening a blade that she shouldn't have held at that point in time.

You've been strange all morning," she said without any eye-contact. "Stranger than usual."

Say "Define weird"

You never argued with Darian. You always argue with Darian. You have a habit of it." She finally looked up after a long stare. Her dark eyes narrowing sharply. "Something happened?"

Kaidren leaned against the low stone wall that ran along the path to be close to her. He chose his words carefully. He couldn't tell her the truth. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But he needed her on his side. Now more than she realized.

He said slowly, "I had a dream. It felt more real than it should have."

"About what?"

About losing a lot of people I trusted." Instead of her eyes, he studied the plain silver of the blade that she held in her hands. "About not knowing until it was too late."

Reyes placed the sword down. She had no cutting remark. "That one's a burden."

Yes.

Would you like to discuss this?

Not yet." He looked directly at her now." But I need you to really give me a straight answer this time, not smile over my question with another joke."

That's less enjoyable when communicating with me, but OK.

"If something were ever to happen to me," Kaidren questioned, "would you tell me who truly supported me? Even if it meant betraying some people I had trusted?"

Reyes froze. The laughter evaporated from her face. "Kaidren, why are you joking around?"

'I need to know I can trust you,' he said. 'Absolutely. No matter what I ask you to help me do.'

She looked at him for a long minute, the teasing smile on her face stripped away, leaving an older expression, more tender than he was used to seeing on her. "You're my brother. That isn't a maybe."

It wasn't proof. It wasn't a certainty. But it was a beginning and Kaidren hadn't gotten around to having any when they first arrived.

"Good, " he said. "Because I'm going to need your help with something, and I need you to trust me even when I can't tell you why yet."

That's sinister.

It needs to be。.

Reyes retrieved the blade, flipping it over in her hands again before the sheath and against the stone to redefine the grindstone. "Fine. Whatever this is, I'm in. But you're going to have to give me the long and short of it sooner or later."

Kaidren assured him, "You'll get one. Once it's safe."

He rose and turned to the training yard as the instructors began organizing his equipment for his first official lesson, the very same lesson he'd come to be so effective at three years ago, when he'd had no idea what would occur and no incentive to excel.

It was different this time. This time he knew exactly what this waiting was costing.

"Reyes, " he said, and wandered away. "Observe her more. Who she speaks with. Who she ignores. If she looks to the left or the right or staring at the sun. I want all the details, no matter how small."

Reyes looked puzzled. "Selene? Why her?"

"Because I believe she is more dangerous than anyone in this pack realizes, " Kaidren said. "Including our sire."

He headed off for the training yard, not even heeding her reply. Three years of borrowed time would be just enough to squeeze his plan into, a little second chance he would be damned to let go to waste.