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“It must be high for him to send her to talk to us.” Esteban voiced his thoughts.
I took the Alphas’ hands in mine again, and we continued walking towards the beach.
“If it’s not Fabiana bothering you, it must be Engel’s and Hanziel’s deaths,” Gabriel said after a moment of quiet, his tone serious.
I looked at the ground. “I didn’t know Hanziel very well...”
“He was a hunter, so he wasn’t in the village in time for all the meals,” Esteban confirmed. It made sense why I hadn’t seen him a lot.
“But Engel… I saw him standing at the gate so many times and now he’s… dead… because of a plan I devised.”
“Daphne!” Gabriel squeezed my hand. “You weren’t the only one responsible for that decision. You didn’t force the plan upon us, you just proposed a solution. It sounded like a good one, so we decided to go with it. If anyone should be blamed, it should be us. We are the Alphas – our decisions are the ones that result in our people’s deaths.”
I stared ahead as we stepped out onto the beach. The turquoise waters were hitting the sand gently. The palm trees shook in the wind, which was stronger today than usual but not unpleasant. The motion of the air made me feel alive.
I realized I had been suffocating in the village, so deep in my head with those grim thoughts about the deaths. The atmosphere in the village wasn’t cheerful right now, and the guilt I felt had overwhelmed my ability to judge the situation clearly.
I didn’t have power over life and death. The fact that Engel and Hanziel had died wasn’t my fault. We were at war with Victor. It was a real thing, like the time when the Sun of Perez had been attacked and I had gotten clawed in the face; a wound that my half-breed healing abilities hadn’t managed to close quickly enough to prevent a scar. That night had been terrible, with everyone defending the town from the attackers; my first real fight in bear form but now that I was part of the conflict here with Victor, many more such fights would come. Before peace could be achieved, the people of Santuario who I had grown so attached to might perish. Inevitably, some would die – after all, Victor’s numbers were overwhelming compared to ours.
“Daphne…” Gabriel’s worried voice took me out of my thoughts.
I gave him a serious look. “I know, Gabriel. It’s not my fault. Thank you for talking things through with me. I had a lapse in judgment, feeling guilty over something I had no control over.”
In the last fight, I’d had to pay a lot of attention to myself. Even if I could somehow go back in time, I wouldn’t be able to help anybody else and change things. I just didn’t have the ability to fight more than one bear at a time.
I looked down at my bandaged right arm. The wound was healing, but more slowly than if I were a full bear shifter. The injury would take a few more days to close up, but it wasn’t deep enough to scar.
“We have to continue fighting regardless of the losses. Victor won’t stop attacking us. So we need to get to him first before he tires us out,” Gabriel said thoughtfully.
“I know that,” I nodded.
“I can almost see it, you know,” Gabriel continued, staring at the waves.
I followed his gaze. Was there a boat approaching? No, the sea was calm, and we were alone here. “See what?” I arched my eyebrows.
“The future where we all live together in peace,” Gabriel concluded.
I furrowed my eyebrows. What was he talking about?
Esteban chuckled. “Why do you have to be so dramatic about this?”
“I’m not dramatic!”
“But you are.” Esteban tugged at my hand, and I stopped walking. I turned to him, watching his serious expression. “What Gabriel means is that now that we found you, our mate, it’s not hard to picture our lives with you from now on. I would like us to mate and to have children together.”
I stared at him, my mouth gaping open. I imagined the picture too: Gabriel, Esteban and I surrounded by kids bearing a resemblance to each of us. Would I be happy if that sort of life came to fruition? I looked into my heart to find the answer. I stared into Esteban’s eyes then Gabriel’s, and all I saw in them was utter adoration for me.
The answer was clear as day: I wanted to mate with the two Alphas. I wanted to be by their sides. Forever.
I had thought myself too jaded for love. I had thought Sander’s rejection had broken the part of me that believed in that wondrous feeling. But the emotion that bloomed in my heart now? It was fresh and fragile like a small flower, but it was undeniably beautiful.
What I felt towards Gabriel and Esteban wasn’t just friendship or just attraction or just lust. No, this feeling went deeper than all of those. This feeling was undoubtedly romantic.
Now that I knew mating with the two Alphas was possible and that they considered me a suitable partner, I also knew this feeling I had for them wouldn’t be temporary either. The commitment scared me a bit, but the more I thought things over the more I wanted the picture of our future that Esteban had laid out before me to become the truth.
Gabriel, Esteban, myself, and our children, living together in Santuario, not counting days. A peaceful existence.
However for that possibility to become real, Victor would have to be defeated. He didn’t want Isla Paraiso to be a paradise. And an island in the state of war was no place to raise children. I would have to lend my power to the quest to defeat Victor. I would have to support my mates in getting back their sister and bringing peace to everyone.
