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“My lord, Alpha,” the voice said from behind the door. “They await you.”
“Good. I’ll be with them shortly.”
This I learned from James. Learn to keep people—your subordinates—waiting. It creates an even deeper sense of control. They can’t leave unless you deem it that way, and they will remain in whatever position you put them.
But there was serious business to discuss, and I would rather get it all over with. I walked out of my room and started towards the court, my feet stamping into the ground and echoing. I used to run in the hallways as a child when James just took me in. I played around and scuffed my knees many times. I used to be the one everyone listened to. They played the games I wanted, had the lunch I felt like having, and beat up the people I didn’t like. No one dared to stand up to me because I was strong, Stronger than all of them, and I knew power early, how to wield it and make people shiver before you, to be callous and buy fear.
I was enjoying it all until she showed up, and I no longer was the venomous viper. I was now just Viper. I pushed open the door to the court, and everyone turned around to look at me. They had been talking amongst each other, I heard them from down the hall, but when I stepped in, they stopped. I continued down the big hall and to my seat. I nodded them all and took my seat, taking a quick look around.
There was Lenny sitting and looking very sickly, almost opposite me. He was the commissioner of the police and also the only human here. We’ve ensured he maintained that position for a long time, as it would be hard to find another human to groom and keep under control. Besides, Lenny was a covetous man, andhis selfishness would make him fight tooth and nail to keep that position. Whoever dared to go up against him would be going up against a formidable enemy, one that would fight dirty so, in the twenty years that Lenny had been the commissioner, he had gone into every election uncontested. Sometimes, he gets an opponent, but they always, unfortunately, pull out at the last minute.
Beside Lenny was Pique. He was the Tarloux’s family representative here, and he moved like he was untouchable. That will not hold true forever. He thinks he can talk rashly at anyone because he wears that crest on his arms. I sighed and got control of my anger as just looking at him was triggering anger in me.
There was Klint. He was part of James’s council, and I needed someone that knew how things worked. I don’t trust him, but he owes his allegiance to James. I have no idea what James did for him, but Klint was loyal, and even in death, he would keep serving James, and in that manner, he would keep serving the people.
But that was the problem. I was the alpha now, and I needed people that would serve me.
None of the people in this council served me. None of them respected me. Not even Lenny. Lenny feared me. He knew what kind of rascal I could be because he’d had to deal with me on the streets, but that wasn’t what I was going for now.
“What news is there?” I asked, getting the meeting started.
“Nothing new,” Lenny said. “We still have hunters on their tails. We’ve incurred ten more deaths with the hunters; more of them are pulling out than are volunteering. We have only six huntersout in the field now, and my estimate is that two will pull out of the six, and the remaining four will meet their death.”
“We can’t rely on our own kind,” Pique said and scoffed. He sounded like he wanted to go into the woods and fish out Hayley and Luke himself, and I was tempted to make him go so he would never return and I could have the family send someone else. Someone more affable this time.
“When it was just her, she was formidable,” Klint added. “But the two of them are proving to be an unstoppable force.”
It was crazy that we’d been on Hayley for two weeks now, and yet we’d been unable to get her. When I sent the hunters out for her earlier, I thought it would be an easy win. I knew she was powerful, but I couldn’t have imagined she was more powerful than all those hunters. Then she teamed up with the lone wolves—I should have seen that one coming.
“But they are still just two werewolves. How hard can it be to kill two werewolves?” Pique asked. The derogatory tone in his voice was grating on my nerves.
“Counting by the number they have killed, I’ll say twenty werewolves and five human hunters,” Klint said, catching my eyes. He had suggested something to me earlier in the day, which I thought was a terrible idea. They will come in and undermine my authority. But wouldn’t it be better to do that and rein in this catastrophe before it gets any bigger?
Hayley and Luke were deep in the woods, and I wouldn’t worry about them taking over the community until they were close to us again. Besides, it didn’t seem like the two of them were looking for power and position. They were in it for something else.
I looked away from Klint and at Lenny.
“What do the scouts report?” I asked him.
“They are headed to a destination,” Lenny said. “Nothing that could be pinpointed yet, but it seems they are following a map, but they keep going deeper into the woods, and there is nothing out there. They aren’t even making a detour to the road at all.”
“Keeping to the woods,” I said, thinking out loud. They aren’t running from us anymore, and we’ve become mere disturbances to a goal they were looking to achieve. Things are worse than I imagined they would be. “What could be in the woods?”
“Lost tribes?” Klint said, and Pique scoffed. I had to agree with Pique on that. Lost tribes are called lost for a reason, and things that are lost don’t take long to die out. No one has heard from a lost tribe in centuries. Whatever was left of them after the war was long gone.
“No, it can’t be that. It has to be something more practical. Hayley isn’t the kind of person to go chasing after myths.”
She also wasn’t the kind of person to kill. Yet, she had killed a lot in the past two weeks, and she kicked it off with James. I had figured out what had happened between her and James. It had to do with our other business here. She found out about it and confronted him. But how could she have easily killed him? Hayley was strong, but I could never have imagined she was as strong as James.
“Well, they are headed somewhere, and we need to find out where,” Klint said.
“What about the friend?” Pique suggested. “The one that hid them when they came back to Nillport. He might have some information.”
“Bonne?” Viper said. “We’ll sooner get something out of baboon’s ass than get Bonne to speak.”
Pique looked at me, confused.
“Bonne doesn’t like werewolves, and he is a sort of mad scientist. We won’t be able to get close to him.”
