The Alpha's Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

I wanted to hate him, and I did hate him.

  Just not enough.

  There wasn’t a single thing I wanted to hear. Nothing that could ever be said could ever make this better.

  Gabel asked me the question I dreaded most: “What do you want, Gianna?”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  At first it had been easy: free myself.

  He’d made it so easy at first to despise him.

  Then it had become so complicated. It became so complicated as it seemed the monster he was was a form he assumed to serve some purpose. Was he a Hound? The Moon loved Her Hounds.

  Was I in love with this four-form werewolf? What was I, then?

  His resolve reached me through the storm of the Bond, the conviction and steel nerves required for him to confess: “Neither am I.”

  I pressed myself back against the books, but there was no escaping him. He clasped my cheeks in both of his hands, his face very close to mine, his body pressed against mine. The Bond sighed at how all our curves and angles fit together. How his touch on my skin was exactly what I craved, what made me feel most alive and most complete.

  And still he could slip into that fourth form of his and mangle me worse than he ever had before.

  “Then we should each figure it out, buttercup,” Gabel whispered to me, “because I know time is against us. Hix suspects, Flint already knows, Donovan, if you’re right, will spot it. I know what I’ve done. I’ve planted the seeds. It won’t take much before they take take root.”

  “You think I can forget what you’ve done to me?” I whispered.

  “If you told me you had, I would not believe you. Then you would not be Gianna. I would ask you where she is on the Tides, and I would go to find her myself. She and I have unfinished business.”

  “You would never find me if I were lost.”

  “I was arrogant enough to play with the MateBond,” Gabel said. “I am arrogant enough to howl at the Moon to let me onto the Tides, and foolish enough to wade right in to find you.”

  I laughed weakly. “Gabel, I think that passes for romance in your mind.”

  “If it is roses and sonnets you are looking for, I’d need Flint to be my Cyrano.”

  “Roxanne was an idiot to be seduced by pretty words.”

  He smiled at me, that predatory light in his sea-blue eyes.

  It would have been easy to be seduced by him, and to believe everything the Bond whispered to me. The Bond wanted to survive. It needed me to believe everything it said.

  “May I kiss you?” He asked.

  He asked, and he expected me to say yes.

  “Only ever ask once,” I told him, not liking him so well if he was going to suddenly start asking permission to breathe just to prove he could be coerced into proper behavior.

  “Now I have asked. Remember how you answered.”

  His lips against mine seared my skin like salt water cleaning a wound. My fingernails dug into the back of his strong neck, his tongue entwined with mine.

  It was different, not fighting the Bond, although it tugged against its lead, urging us onward.

  His hands slid down my neck, over my breasts, lifting them, caressing, then slid lower to my hips, over my curves, to my rump.

  I tugged free of him, breathing hard. “Gabel, stop.”

  “Why?” His fingers tightened.

  Good question. Oh, yes, I had a good answer. “We can’t get caught.”

  “I’ll go lock the office door. Stay right here.”

  “No, Gabel, you think they’re stupid? You hate being cornered, why do it to yourself? It’s the Bond goading you—“

  “Goading both of us.” He kissed my throat.

  That was true. I breathed out as his lips tasted my neck, his hands sliding under my skirt to grasp my flesh, skin on skin. “Not now,” I breathed, voice hoarse. “Not now, Gabel. Later.”

  Later sounded better than someone storming in here and catching us in the act. Or this office reeking of sex and desire, and this whole conversation about not knowing what we wanted being moot. I was the female. If Flint was right, I needed to be the voice of ahem... moderation. “Later,” I told him again. “Go back downstairs, Gabel. We both have work to do.”

  “Later, buttercup. When only the Moon will see. Since it is no secret to Her what is between us.”

  If We Had A Shovel...

  The moon was almost full that night. Gabel and I stood in the courtyard after dinner.

  “Almost a Solstice moon.” I said. We were about a month away from true winter, although the air was already crisp and skin-burning cold. Snow was on the wind. Not much, and the sky was still mostly clear. Just a few strands of clouds that preceded the incoming front.

  In the cold air Gardenia’s perfume stood out like a sore thumb. She watched us from the kitchen window, where she helped Cook clean up the remains of dinner. The windows were cracked just a tad because the kitchen was a sweat house any time of the year. It gave her the perfect vantage point to spy on us, and the perfect excuse as to why she’d be within line of sight at all.

  We moved deeper into the courtyard.

  I tried to figure out how to ask what I wanted without sounding like I was being jealous or territorial. “Has she always been so... ambitious?”

  “Yes,” Gabel answered.

  I reminded myself to not care. I would not get jealous. “Does she have any reason to think she’ll ever get anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “I meant more than you’ve already led her to believe.” The sour words got out before I could stifle them.

  There were moments when Gabel became like a dark centrifuge, and his emotions whirled away from the center as he spun them around, then let them settle back down. A pause while he chose his words. “I never told her anything except there would never be anything between us.”

  I stopped walking. “What? How does that work?”

  “Gardenia has always been the way she is.”

  It all made sense, now that I knew Gabel better. I whispered, appalled, “You just let me believe it. You just let me fill in the blanks. Did you sneak into her room and dab yourself with her perfume, too? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. But just tell me one thing, Gabel. How did Anders happen if all the rest of it was just supposed to be a shitty, cruel illusion.”

  He had baited me. Laid a trap and I had walked right on in, fed my anxieties and suspicions. He’d toyed with me like I was some cat and he had tied tin cans to my tail. “You needed Gardenia to play along for Anders. How did you do that if you didn’t lie to her?”

  Gabel looked at me from the corner of his eye, wary that I might claw that same eye out at any moment. “I told her she would be on my arm for the meeting. I didn’t explain, and she didn’t ask. I was expecting you to fight and demand to take her place.”

  “Fight for you? Because you’d rather have had the company of that tramp? Never. If you want to slum, Gabel, you go right on and slum!”

  “As I told you some time ago, not one of my finer moments.”

  I gnashed my teeth together. The Bond flailed, gagging on my emotions. I almost bolted into the forests, wanting to crash through the woods and run away from all of this.

  But there was nowhere to run. My violent death would likely kill him. It’d certainly cripple him for a time. His enemies would love to possess me for that reason alone.

  I growled, “Is that when you realized you were no better than Romero? Just some common would-be king acting like every other petty tyrant in history? Some rusty old blade that still thinks it can cut down armies?”

  He held very still under the Moon’s light, the blue of his eyes illuminated by Her silvery gaze.

  I ground it a little deeper. “Hix apologized to me for your behavior. A Beta apologizing for his Alpha’s shitty behavior. You must be very proud of yourself.”

  A dark cauldron of emotions from him, stewing. Good. Somewhere in there was anger at himself, embarrassment, discomfort. No apology for me, b
ut I’d take the shame and anger he felt. He had fallen into his own stupid trap.

  He said, “I’m not. But you’re right about being like Romero. It had all become too easy. I even told you that in the beginning.

  “You were supposed to fight Gardenia. That’s what I thought you’d do. Instead I had to go through with the whole, disgusting charade.” He eyed me all over to make sure I wasn’t holding any hidden weapons. “And then, yes, I took you on the hunt. And you challenged me there as well, and then again at dinner. I had underestimated you. A mistake I was stupid enough to make twice, and fortunate enough to survive. I will never make that mistake again.”

  The well of hurt inside of me didn’t go away, and it probably never would completely disappear. I didn’t want an apology. I’m sorry didn’t touch what Gabel had done. I’m sorry is what children said to each other. But while I sensed many things from Gabel—regret, disappointment, shame, anger—the I’m sorry wasn’t in there.

  “Is it an apology you are looking for?” Gabel asked, his tone warning me I wouldn’t get one.

  “No.” He didn’t want my forgiveness anyway. That worked to balance things out. I had met Gabel when his edges were dull from slicing through paper enemies. It didn’t excuse anything he had done, but it did, perhaps, mean those things were firmly in the past.

  I breathed in one last time, then it was time to shove this corpse into the grave. “I won’t forgive it, Gabel. It was beneath you. I won’t forgive the weakness, but I’ll excuse it. Once.”

  The Bond shifted and settled, rattled by all the anger and hurt and disgust being fed into it, and my burning contempt for Gabel’s pettiness. Well, it would just have to suck it up for a little while. It hadn’t been born in roses and sonnets while Gabel serenaded me under the stars.

  Gabel turned his gaze to the moon. He stared at it for a long time, then said, “ I am starting to think I did the right thing in the wrong manner for all the wrong reasons.”

  “That doesn’t change that you didn’t ask me,” I muttered. “You just sliced me.”

  “Would you have refused?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s not the point. I wasn’t in a position to say no. If you’d wanted me you’d have risked me refusing.”

  “True.”

  “It also fed Gardenia’s ambitions. You strung her along. That was also cruel.”

  “You can handle her.”

  “That’s not my point. You don’t have the right to prey on her, either.”

  Gabel shrugged. “Gardenia was a thorn before you arrived. So what if I turned that thorn back on her? I told her one day she would be old and faded, and what would she be without her beauty? She snarled. You will still have your mind and gifts and dignity. She will have nothing to offer.”

  “But for right now it’s enough?” I couldn’t suppress another eye roll.

  “Males like good looks, Gianna,” Gabel said like it was a stupid, obvious point. “She is nice to look at from a distance. A far distance. She drowns herself in perfume so you can’t smell the bad intentions.”

  “And to think, Gabel, another Alpha saw you with her on your arm, and he was looking at you like you were a fool. Seems like that thorn was a brier.”

  “I know.” Gabel scowled.

  His annoyance was so genuine I couldn’t help but laugh. He’d played his part so perfectly, fawning over her fluttering, kissing her hand. And he had been acting because I hadn’t played along! I told him, feeling malicious, “You deserved it, Gabel. I hope you gagged on her perfume. Anders thought I belonged to someone else. Hix, perhaps.”

  “Aren’t we past these jealous games, buttercup?”

  “Funny how you want to move past the jealous games when you’re losing.”

  “I haven’t made you move past training with Hix, which I know you enjoy.”

  “He does have a certain charm.”

  “Turnabout is fair play?” There was a twinkle in his eyes, but a jealous crinkle to the Bond, a warning that I was playing with something dangerous and primal, but that Gabel enjoyed it all the same.

  “This is why you favor me. Like you said before, force has to be met with more force. Cruelty is always escalation. What can you do to me you haven’t already done? I’m immune to all your charms.”

  Gabel laughed. He seized me by my arms and lowered his face to mine, his voice a hiss, “Truer words never fell on more grateful ears. Even if you say them to anger me.”

  “It’s not my fault if the truth pisses you off.”

  “So we move on, buttercup, from the past. Does this mean we are taking the vows?”

  “Does that mean you want to?” I tried to escape his grasp. He didn’t let me go.

  A long pause. Then a simple answer hit me with a thud. “Yes.”

  I needed to stop anticipating anything Gabel did or said. There was no pulse of warmth or affection with his affirmation. No softening of his expression. My arm throbbed. “I’ll think about it.”

  He pulled me tight against him. The Bond churned, he shifted, and our lips met in a careful, uncertain kiss. But it was only tentative for a moment, then our tongues met, my fingers curled into his shirt, and I could not resist the roar of the Bond, just for a moment. Just one, brittle moment out in the cold courtyard.

  The courtyard was silent. But a number of eyes watched us from the darkened windows of the house.

  A Score To Settle

  It was probably my paranoid imagination, but breakfast seemed quiet the next morning, with a lot of sideways looks and glances. Gardenia’s eyes stabbing into my spine was not my imagination.

  “We have some business to discuss, Alpha.” Hix told Gabel as everyone milled about for last comments before heading out to their days.

  Gabel nodded, then to me said, “Will you be joining us?”

  Gabel still expected me to spend my days with him if I wasn’t otherwise busy. It had been that way for as long as I had been with IronMoon, and it wasn’t going to change anytime soon, especially if I became a permanent fixture. I also needed to finish my research on the comet rune—my working theory was perhaps it had cropped up in human history. There were books throughout the entire house (which now I knew to largely be the product of Flint’s “Book Roulette“ habit), but the ones I needed were in Gabel’s library.

  I told him I’d be along in about half an hour.

  I took a fresh cup of coffee in one hand and headed up to my workroom for my morning tasks. Rotate bowls by the windows, make sure nothing had been disturbed during the night, dust out the corners. I twirled my finger in a bowl of sand as I mulled how much of a lie the vows would be.

  At least a little bit.

  The door opened.

  “Hey,” I snapped. “Knock!”

  Gardenia slammed it shut behind her.

  One of my favorite people in the world. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “Oh, because it’s your special little room?” She sneered.

  “Yes, actually, exactly that.”

  She stomped across the floor, her socked feet disrupting the salt circle in the center of the room. She snickered and kicked a little bit of salt. The circle was easy enough to fix. Let her think she was actually damaging something important if it kept her away from what was important.

  “What do you want, Gardenia?” I still had no interest in squabbling with her. That entire sordid era of history just needed to stay in its grave.

  “I saw you in the courtyard last night. You think he’s yours, don’t you?” Gardenia sneered.

  I groaned and looked at the ceiling. “Why are you here? I never wanted to have this stupid fight with you, and now we both know it was nothing but a bunch of smoke and mirrors.”

  She hissed, “Is that what he tells you? He’s a liar, but he’s my liar.”

  Whatever sympathy I might have had for Gardenia drained away. She would have gone along with those games just for a chance at him. Or any other wolf. A pack-climber. That’s all she was. “I know you ran right to
Romero about the Petitioner Wolf. Couldn’t get Gabel or Hix, so you settled on Romero. You have any luck with him?”

  “I have Gabel, why would I need Romero?” She paced close to me, reeking of perfume. “The whole world outside IronMoon knows I’m the next Luna. You think Gabel and I were foolish enough to fuck in your bed? You’ve smelled my perfume on him. You are deluded, Oracle. You’re blind to what’s really happening.”

  “No.” I circled her. “No, the trouble with Oracles is we’re trained to see what is real, and what is a vision haunting us. You are a lie. Maybe Gabel touched you, maybe he didn’t, but I know after Anders, he had no further use for you. So you hopped to Romero. You spied for him. How else would he have known Gabel dared to ask what the Petitioner Wolf’s vision was—and that I refused to say?”

  She curled her lip at me.

  “It was you. Admit it. What did he promise you? His Mark on your arm and my head on a rope? Now he’s dead, so you’re back on Gabel.”

  “I never left him,” she hissed. “He is still between my legs.”

  “He isn’t between your legs,” I whispered, “because he’s between mine.”

  Her blue eyes widened into intense, gorgeous orbs.

  “Shhh,” I whispered. “The rest of the pack doesn’t know. But I’ll tell you. Some time ago. Months ago. I may have his pup in my belly now. He’s asked me to take the vows, but that’s still a secret too.”

  The secret was safe with her. Gardenia wasn’t going to tell anyone in IronMoon that. Wouldn’t fit into her plans.

  “That’s a lie!” She looked down at my belly, back at me. “You’re a liar!”

  The idea of having a pup in my belly scared the hell out of me, but I pressed ahead like all of this pleased me to no end. “He told you all you were was beauty, and one day that’d fade. You didn’t listen. You were nothing but part of his strategy.”

  Gardenia’s face sort of melted, and for a moment, I felt terrible. I tried to reach out to her. We’d both been Gabel’s pawns, and—

  Then her face reformed into something else entirely.

  Everything she had told herself dissolved like a sandcastle in the tide. The truth knocked her backward a solid six steps.