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“They are at the Palace, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Yes,” Fig said. “But you are not going there. You are not going to do anything stupid.”
“Who is going to stop me you?” I asked him.
He looked to his left at Hayley, answering my question. “Besides, going there will be like signing a death warrant. They have guards surrounding the palace now, and you wouldn’t be able to enter.”
Hayley turned to look at me. “You have something to tell me,” she said.
And she was right. I have a lot to tell her. I looked at Fig and nodded at him. I wouldn’t be making any stupid decisions tonight and would love some time alone with Hayley. He nodded back at me and left.
“I best to go see Nellie and Bonne. They might need help with something.”
He left us and started into the house.
“Have I told you how I came to be with Bonne and his father?” I asked Hayley and started walking into the woods. I wanted to tell her things I haven’t thought of for a long time because it burns me to think about them. The mere existence of those memories fills me with so much bile that I feel like I would explode just thinking of them. But I need to tell her. I needed to be totally open with her.
“Yes. When you left home after your mother asked you to go out and make a life for yourself.”
“Yes, then. I was barely in the street for a week when Kurt found me. He could tell I was a werewolf immediately, and he took me in. He raised Bonne and me together and taught us how to hunt. After he died, Bonne decided to stay back in town, and I wanted to see more of the world. Back then, I just wanted to belong to a pack and didn’t think I would be an alpha, but I turned out to be one. I found members easily because people were just drawn to me. I couldn’t explain it.”
But I found my pack, and they became a part of me. During those times, I met Fig. He was a mercenary back then, working for whoever could hire him, and the Tarloux were doing a cleansing. Cleaning out old blood werewolves, and I was one of those. They hunted me down for years, but I had my pack with me, and we always found a way to evade them. Fig always gave us a heads-up whenever they were coming to town because he had friends who worked for the Tarloux. We were pretty much untouchable for the Tarloux, which made them very angry because what they did next was similar to what Viper did to you. They sent hunters after me, but they weren’t trying to kill me now. They were killing off my pack. One after the other, they started pickingthem off. They were going to get to me through my pack. And they succeeded. I made a stupid decision to put an end to the attack from them, take the fight to them. It didn’t end well. All my pack members died, and I barely escaped with my life. For the Tarloux and me, it goes beyond just war. It is a vendetta. One that has had years to grow.”
“Why do you hate Fig , then?’ Hayley asked. “You said he was working for the enemy the other day.”
“Yes. Because he was. After my pack’s death and I went on a bender, Fig became the Heralder. You’ve heard of that person, haven’t you?”
“Yes. The Tarloux’s henchman.”
“Exactly. And for the earlier years, before I knew Fig was the Heralder, there were rumors that the Heralder led the pack that killed my pack, and I made it my life’s mission to find this Heralder and kill him. It was a devastating blow when I found out it was Fig. There was nothing I could do but leave and come back to Nillport to get my life together again. I had lost a big part of me, and I needed time to recover.”
“We’ll get the Tarloux family,” Hayley said and moved closer to me. Her eyes were filled with assurance. “I promised Nellie, and I am promising you too now. Your vendetta is now my vendetta, and we’ll not rest until they are brought to their knees.”
She leaned closer to me and kissed me. Everything was right with the world, with her arms around me.
Chapter thirty-four (Hayley)
Bonne called them Kaels. He said it meant vigor in the old language. They were once royalty like Peline and Heline, too, but when Tarloux was cleansing out royals and establishing his reign, they had gone into hiding.
Rumors have it that they were hidden by a lost tribe too, but Bonne wasn’t sure that was true. All he was sure of was that the Kaels went into hiding, and then after about two hundred years, their descendants started surfacing again. By that time, the Tarloux had its roots deep in the werewolf world, and the Kaels couldn’t claim it.
Besides, they didn’t have the military power to go up against the Tarloux, who were already building a dynasty. If they had gone up against them, Tarloux would have crushed them to dust, so they remained quiet and grew gently.
They grew slowly, and the Tarloux grew exponentially. Both parties soon recognized that should they go to war against each other, mutually assured destruction was certain with the Tarloux coming out on top, but it will be a pyrrhic victory. The clear choice was to remain on their own and stay out of each other’s way. But where there is history, something is bound to happen. The hate within them existed, and they both knew one day when the scale tilts, the war would ensue.
Luke and I were looking to tilt that scale.
We both sat at the back of the SUV that had collected us from the airport, which the family provided, and held hands during the drive. We needed to present a united front during these visits. They will determine if we’d have a fighting chance or not against the Tarloux. This was the first of the three big families that seemed likely to throw support our way that we were visiting. The big families have smaller families that owe them allegiances. For the other families, we were hoping they would support us once they saw we were gathering an army to cause the Tarloux some worry. Bonne thinks they will, and he was banking on the hate they all have for the Tarloux and the hunger to get things back to the status quo and restore the royalty.
The car glided down the road, driving through a secluded estate with a small gate coming into focus before us. The driver stopped and talked to some men by the gate. The men looked at Luke and me, spoke into comms, and soon, we were allowed to go through. We were driven to a garage, and the driver opened the door for us.
“The family will see you now,” he said and took a gentle bow at us, pointing at the house before us. It looked like something out of a fairy tale. The house was a Victorian mansion, bounded by two waterfalls, and it had climbers growing around. In the bright light of the afternoon, it stood majestic.
Halfway to the house, the door opened, and a middle-aged man stepped out. He had a big smile on his face as he approached Luke and me. He stopped before us and considered us for a moment.
“I see you, and I know you are what you say you are. I can feel the reverence oozing out of you.,” he said, his smile getting bigger and his voice shaking slightly. He stepped even closer to us andput his hands on my cheeks first before kissing me gently on the lips.
Bonne had warned us about some of the eccentric traditions we might come across with the families. They loved to uphold the older traditions, and we might find some of them strange and others outright crazy.
