Alphess: An Angel of Death

17. The Truth Comes Out

{The following is set when Hayden was 19, just before her exile from Olympia, and is the tale she is telling Booker.}

            It had been a pretty normal day. I spent most of it out on the training fields with the rest of the warriors, running through drills until my entire body was sore and ready to collapse. I’d gone head-to-head with Titan several times throughout that day, and I always came out on top. He was never happy about it and seemed to come at me with a fervor – like he wanted to actually do damage, not just spar. I didn’t like to think of myself having an “arch nemesis”, but I was pretty sure that is who I was to Titan. He couldn’t stand that he was being bested by a girl, let alone the Alpha’s daughter – someone everyone seemed to want to please.

            I truly didn’t care about any of that. I didn’t care for the formal hellos, the bows, the servitude. I didn’t care about the status of it all. I was friends with omegas, and Betas and those in between. If you were a decent person, I liked you. My father was the same way – he cared about his pack for who they were. Your title or your status didn’t mean you were any better or any worse. If anything, your title gave you a duty. A responsibility to strive for excellence for the betterment of those you ruled over. It was servant leadership. Titan didn’t seem to understand that concept, or he just vehemently disagreed. He was the type of person that believed status made you better, that you deserved more, and that the people below you were there simply to fulfill your wishes. The fact that I wouldn’t bow to him – both because of my bloodline, and because I was stubborn that way – vexed him. I was a bug he wanted to squash. And squash me he did, in a way I never could have seen coming.

            I slept unsoundly that night, waking up continuously from either some sore muscle or a weird dream. It was sometime in the wee hours of the morning that I decided to get up and go wander around to stretch my legs and get the kinks out of my body. Sleep wasn’t coming anyway, so there was no point to tossing and turning. There was a storm raging outside, and the halls were even darker than normal because of it. I could hear the wind howling and rain pounded on the roof. I tucked my sweater closer to me, feeling chilled because of the storm. I was just about to exit the Cromwell wing of the sprawling mansion when I heard the sound of something shattering and a body hit the floor. I whirled around, instantly on high-alert and my metaphorical hackles raised. I listened closely, hearing grunting and the sounds of a tussle from down the hall. It only took me a minute to realize where it had come from – my parents’ room. Whoever was fighting was trying to keep it quiet. I could hear muffled growls and signs of protest.

I started down the hall, trying to figure out who had the gumption to try to attack an Alpha. Whoever it was had to have known that the Luna, my mother, wouldn’t be here tonight. In fact, she had taken Abigail and Kingston to visit our grandparents for the weekend. I was here because I was in training and had only just passed my warrior assessment a few short months ago. I couldn’t afford to take time off, especially as a member of the High Royal family. I had higher expectations to live up to. Plus, I got the sense many of the warriors didn’t see me as an equal. It was the first time in my life that my pack members weren’t automatically bowing or singing my praises. They were even almost resistant to my being inducted as a member of the Army. None of them would ever feel a mate-bond – it was part of the induction ceremony to be stripped of this in order to serve the pack without weakness. A mate is a liability on the battlefield. But as the Alpha’s daughter, a High Royal, I could still find my mate one day. They saw me as a liability – that I could at any moment be faced with battling my potential mate or desert the Army because I had found him. I had to work to prove my loyalty and my devotion to my chosen career path. But all of that would be wiped away on this rainy night.

I sniffed the air as I got closer, smelling my father’s scent (even more pungent because of the bloodshed) and an all-too familiar scent. Titan. I should have known immediately that the power-hungry, arrogant bastard would pull a stunt like this. I had to suppress a growl as the bloodlust flashed through me with white-hot anger also flooding my system. I didn’t want to give away my position yet. The door was just slightly ajar, so I used my foot to creep it open enough to see inside and assess the situation. I found my father facing off against Titan, blood covering his night clothes. Something seemed off. My dad was unsteady on his feet, wobbling like he was a drunk despite not looking in too bad of shape. He went to say something, but it came out slurred and jumbled. I blinked and Titan had sprung for my father again, this time shifting mid-leap. He crashed into my father before he could react and shift too. It was wolf against human now. I began to shift so I could join the fight to protect my father, and that was my first mistake. The few seconds it took to change from bipedal to quadruped was all it took for Titan to rip my father’s throat out. I body slammed into him and shoved him off of my father, but the damage was done. I should have kept going to kill Titan right then and there, but that was my second mistake. I turned around and shifted back to human and dropped to my knees by my father, desperately trying to stop the blood flow with my hands. “No!” I cried. “No!”

In hindsight, I wonder if Titan thinks that he should have killed me then and there too. Maybe he doesn’t think about me at all, but one day he’ll wish he had killed me when he had the chance. But he didn’t. Instead, he howled loudly so the entire pack house might hear. I didn’t care. I didn’t think about anything else except the fact my father was dying in my hands right now and I didn’t know how many lives he had left. Had he taken his true, final breath? Was Titan the assassin of my father? I didn’t have much time to think because not long after Titan had howled did Gregory Barnes and General Graves come rushing into the room.

“What has happened?!” yelled Barnes, surveying the scene.

“DOCTOR!” General Graves roared, no doubt mind linking any awake pack members to get the doctor as quickly as possible.

Titan was back in his human form now. “She attacked him!” he stated. “I was just patrolling and heard a commotion and came running. I found her here, covered in his blood.”

My head snapped up at that. “What?!” I yowled. “No! The opposite is true – I got here just as –”

“Enough,” Barnes snapped, eyes hard. “Its obvious what has happened. Your…gift has gotten out of hand.” He sneered the word ‘gift’ like it left a distasteful flavor in his mouth.

“Gregory, you don’t really think….?” General Graves said.

“What else should we think, Keller?” Barnes said. “You’ve seen her – she can be a loose cannon! You told me yourself you’ve had to intervene to get her to stop fighting during training matches.”

My body suddenly felt like ice water had been dumped on it. A chill swept through my veins. Was he really accusing me of murdering my own father?

“Well, yes, but…but to kill our Alpha?”

The conversation was cut short because the pack doctor had arrived. He rushed past the two men and over to my father. A thick bandage was placed on his neck and to my relief it appeared it was stopping the bleeding. “Everyone, clear out,” the doctor said. “We need space. We will transport him to the medical wing.”

-x-

A few days later, I found myself on trial in front of my entire pack. They had waited for my father to awaken – it turns out it wasn’t his last life. Everyone had hoped he would wake up and be able to tell us the truth of what had happened. But instead, he woke up dazed with no recollection of the night’s events. It was as if his memory had been wiped clean of the entire weekend. I had an inkling this was all part of Titan’s plan too – he must have drugged him with something. Wolfsbane, maybe. It would explain why my father had seemed so out of it the night of the attack. My hope had dwindled at this news. The Wolf Council had been brought out to carry out the trial. Most of the time, the pack Alpha would be heading it. But as he was the victim in the case, and had lost memories, it was decided to bring an outside party.

Gregory Barnes’ story seemed to be a compelling one. I pled my case, asserted my innocence, but in the end it was the Barnes’ family that had won. Gregory got up on the pulpit before the pack and claimed I was a dangerous she-wolf, perhaps even rabid or mentally unstable. He stated that my ability to win battles was something I sometimes couldn’t control, that I didn’t know when to stop. That I had sent pack members to the infirmary before and if General Graves hadn’t been there to intervene, they may have also lost their lives. He went on to assert that my motive in turning on my own father was simple – the lust for power. It was no secret that I didn’t like that I wouldn’t be Alpha next. I was vocal about my desire for the right to lead, as the firstborn. Maybe my anger and my savagery had pushed me over the edge and sent me into a frenzy.

And the irony of it was that they nearly told the truth. They say a lie should be as close to the truth as possible, that details should be vague at best. Stick to the same thing, don’t embellish. And that’s exactly what they did. I was a novice at controlling my gift. I had sent pack members to the pack doctor – but so had multiple other warriors when sparring! I was discontent with the male-dominated power dynamic. But it was Titan and Gregory that were power hungry. That was their motive to kill my father, not mine. I didn’t really know what their plan was going to be had they not had me as a scapegoat, or even what would have happened had my father really lost his final life that night. But it doesn’t really matter, because Council Member Hubert Jones pounded his gavel after a five-hour deliberation with the council and sealed my fate. I was found guilty of the murder of Anderson Cromwell and found guilty of his attempted complete assassination. I was to be banished, stripped of my pack title, my warrior status and all of my ties. If I were to return to pack lands, the Olympia pack could deal with me as they saw fit. This was just code for the green light on killing me.

My parents couldn’t argue the outcome of the trial. The Council had spoken, and the pack had voted in concert with the Council. They all agreed that I was guilty. It shattered me – the pack I had grown up with, that had shaped me, that had loved me had now turned its back on me. They believed the lies of their Beta over the pleas of their Alpha’s daughter. It was actually my own mother that had been the nail in my coffin. She had verbally sided with Gregory – she too thought I was dangerous. She volunteered to help General Graves strip me of my pack status. I was brought up to the front of the room, staring at the hundreds of my pack members as I was forced to my knees by two of the warriors I had trained side by side with and by. My mother knelt behind me and gently gestured for me to lay down. I did as asked, my head cradled in her lap. She stroked my hair, as if to soothe me, but when I tried desperately to look at her, to get her to look at me, she refused. Tears had welled in her eyes and she had locked her jaw to keep from crying. I could feel the strong hands of the pack warriors pinning my arms and legs in place. My shirt was lifted to reveal the pack brand and silver-dipped claws sliced through my skin. The pain was excruciating. I wanted to scream, to thrash, to fight. But I was so focused on my own mother’s refusal to look at me that I was nearly oblivious to the wound on my flesh. The wounds in my heart were too great.

I’ll never forget the looks on their faces when they accompanied me to the edge of our territory. Both grief-stricken and at a loss, but most of all I picked up under that the hint of fear. They hesitated to hug me, which broke me even further. Could it be a part of them truly believed the lies? Were they afraid of their own daughter?

“Take care of them,” I said, speaking about Abigail and Kingston. Speaking about the pack. I took a step over pack lines, turning back to glance at my parents.

            They clutched each other, tears in their eyes. “Take care of yourself,” my mother whispered.

            Those were the last words I spoke to them. The last words I heard from either of my parents. I turned and disappeared into the wilderness after that, a dark cloud of grief and rage. I turned into the very thing Gregory had boasted me to be. I became savage, bestial, a killer. I became The Harbinger of Death.