We’re all silent for a beat, just processing the gravity of the situation, and I have to push away the guilt that’s seeping into the pits of my soul. I don’t want to be thinking of executing another person they love while they’re sitting here, basking in grief, but I feel torn up inside.
I have a duty to my pack and to my Alpha, but I have a heart, too. I feel nauseated, like I might just be a terrible person. Maybe I am.
Maybe that’s what Alphas have to be.
Khalid’s face looks somber. “I’ve got a side act performance in a couple of minutes, but I just wanted to be the one to let you know. I’m really sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything more as Khalid exits the tent, and I watch her tough demeanor—her mask, begin to falter.
“It wasn’t Pack Escalus,” I say.
She shoots me a downright deadly glare. “It was outside The Cathedral.”
“We own The Cathedral but hundreds of half-demons and lupion visit every night, many of whom aren’t Pack Escalus,” I say, defensive of my people.
“You can’t know that.” She’s hurting, I can see that, but at the end of the day I know who I must protect. “I’m sure it was your abhorrent pack.”
“We don’t bring harm to innocent bystanders unless they attack first. Could she have instigated something?”
“She would’ve never done that. She was a fucking nurse and the sweetest person I’ve maybe ever met,” Yasmeena says. “Your father literally deals drugs and magic, Tempest. I’m sorry, but they’re not exactly exceptional people.”
This is the one area of my pack I’m not well versed in. I don’t know why, it’s probably because I was supposed to be second one day, not Alpha, but my father never taught me about what we sell, or how we came to start selling it.
It’s not that I haven’t wondered, and I see both sides to it. It’s legal. Even if it’s frowned upon, why not capitalize? Someone else eventually would.
But I also hear whispers of how we acquire our atra and the other substances, and I wonder if the rumors are true. I wonder if we’re hurting people for our own gain. It’s not something I can control yet, but when I become Alpha one day, maybe things can be different.
We can choose some other means of making our income. Something more altruistic.
“Well, Pack Escalus would’ve never killed her, so I guess your culprit must be someone else.” I want to use this opportunity to mention that it was her organization that killed my cousin, but Idecide to table it. These attacks are out of hurt, and there’s no need to lay out all my cards just yet.
“You could have an ounce of sympathy.”
It feels like my heart is going to split in two. Just a few short weeks ago, I held so much disdain for the felion. Not always, but it’d grown over the last few years. They’ve caused many of my species to suffer and starve.
But now I know we’ve done the same to them, and it makes me question everything.
Lupion have this innate connection to our Alphas. We seek comfort through them, we seek to protect them, and we put all of our trust in them. It’s engrained in me—not just psychologically, but biologically too, and now I feel myself fighting it.
I find myself wondering if my father has made the right choices. And I wonder about Tyrus—he was always questioning our Alpha’s decisions, always going against the grain. My father says it’s what ultimately caused his death.
Panic leaches its way into my chest, my heart racing like a pack of wolves running under twin full moons, and I start to hyperventilate. It’s all too much.
I’m starting to care too much.
“I’m sorry a felion was murdered, I really am, but it feels like you’re set to blame all your problems on me and my pack, and I won’t be a part of that,” I say, my words rushed. It hurts me, truly hurts me to not be able to say what I really feel right now, but I just can’t.
“Blame you for all my problems? You act as if I don’t have any problems. You have done nothing but treat me like a privileged bitch, completely invalidating my life experience and the way I’ve suffered—the way my species continues to suffer,” she starts, her face turning red with rage, her voice stuttering as the tears filling her eyes threaten to fall. “She was kind, Tempest. She was a friend.”
I want to pull her close to me and give her the comfort she’s probably seeking right now. I want to tell her I’m sorry and that Idon’t want to be such an insensitive asshole, but instead I say the only words I can muster. “Then we will continue with the plan, in her honor.” A single tear falls down her tanned cheek, and I wipe it away. “Let her death not be in vain.”
It’s beenthree days since Roxanne was killed. Three days since we’ve practiced. And three days since a single soul at the carnival has instigated a conversation with me.
I talked to some of the people here, asking them questions or offering help with different things, but it was clear nobody wanted to speak to me.
I haven’t even had Taryn to talk to. She went on a trip out of the area. I don’t know how or where, but Rowan mentioned it to Reina and Absinthe in front of me. It hurts that she didn’t even think to tell me at all.
Yasmeena and Khalid have been grieving, which I fully understand. Or maybe she’s mad at me, but it’s been hard and isolating. I realized just how truly alone I am.
