Heading towards the river’s edge, where the water slows like candle wax, I wait for Taryn. The forest line presses close to the other side, the trees leaning against one another, the land and water move as though they’re taking deep, slow breaths.
Taryn sticks her head out of the water, her blue hair slicked-back against her neck, and she runs her fingers through it before smiling.
“Hey. I heard a lupion child joined the carnival yesterday,” Taryn says, not quite probing, but obviously curious.
“Yeah,” I say. “His name is Nico. Gemma and Draven are going to be caring for him.”
“Well that’s kind of exciting. Why do you look so… strange?”
I shrug, looking out past the river and into the forest. There’s a faun not far from here, still within eyesight, and I watch it frolic. “I don’t know, I guess I just don’t know how to deal with all of this.”
“I mean, I don’t think much is expected from you?”
“I feel like he should learn about the lupion,” I say. “He should learn how to hunt and hear about our customs.”
Her brows draw in, her head cocking to the side. “So why didn’t you offer to be his caretaker if you felt so strongly?”
“Because I didn’t want the responsibility.” My tone is clipped, a thousand thoughts rushing to the surface of my mind.Because I have to be Alpha. Because I already care too much.
“That’s fair, I wouldn’t either, but you can still teach him things. You’re going to be like… his cool aunt!” she says, a smile spreading from ear-to-ear.
I want to tell her how impossible that will be—that once Icomplete my mission, nobody here will ever want to speak to me again, much less allow me around their children, but instead I nod. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Could he meet the rest of your pack?”
I shake my head, wishing the situation were different. “Probably not. Our Alpha isn’t a big fan of outsiders.”
“Your father?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Does he feel more like your father or more like your Alpha?” Taryn jumps out of the water and sits beside me, the end of her tail still softly splashing.
“My Alpha, for sure.”
“I don’t know much about lupion, but is that odd? Is it that the Alpha role is so much more important that it overrides familial relationships?” She sounds genuinely curious.
“I’m not sure, I only know how things are within Pack Escalus. My father just never really did anything fatherly, y’know?” I say, and her eyes go solemn.
“He never took you to his favorite caverne tree and showed you all the roots you can swim through?”
“Taryn,” I say, and fight back a laugh. “I am not a mermaid. I am a wolf.”
“Right.Well.” She twiddles her thumbs. “He never took you to go running through the woods, howling at our twin moons? Or like… watched one of your baseball games or something?”
“No, he did not. He was always busy helping others. Whenever he did have time for me, it was used for training. We’d do body conditioning, mixed martial arts, and even sometimes develop war plans, but never baseball. Never just howling at the moons for fun. Everything was always for a specific purpose.”
“That’s really sad. I’m sorry.”
I crack my knuckles. “Don’t be. I’m grateful to be the daughter of an Alpha. I have a lot of pride in it,” I say.
The sun is high in the sky, causing the water below us to sparkle, and I watchas fish swim by.
“Where did you go, by the way?”
“Oh! I went to visit my parents,” she answers.
“You were gone for a while.”
