by Dean Murray
"After he'd already challenged Jasmin!" Brandon's outburst was yet another sign that this meeting wasn't going the way he expected it to.
"I gave him a choice, it was entirely his decision to put off his dispute with Jasmin until after he'd dealt with me."
Kaleb gave me a dark look. "You're walking a very fine line there, Alec, but you're right, technically you've done nothing I can censor you for."
Brandon opened his mouth to protest, but Kaleb kept talking. "You've had your chance to file your complaint, Brandon. Your unhappiness has been noted. You can get out of my office now."
I would have just beaten a relieved retreat, but Brandon stood up and let loose a flash of power that made my skin tingle.
"I'm not some nobody to just be dismissed from your presence like that, Kaleb. My unhappiness can have very long-term ramifications for you and everyone else in the pack."
The natural response for any shape shifter when faced with the kind of metaphysical wind that was lashing out from Brandon was to counter with a surge of energy from our own beasts, but Kaleb was too controlled for that.
"You are a valuable member of this pack, Brandon, but don't think that I've failed to notice the way that you've been politicking lately. If anyone is trying to set themselves up with a power bloc it's you. You're unquestionably the best fighter in the pack, but that doesn't mean that you're irreplaceable, and it doesn't mean that I can't have you put down if you get too far above yourself."
Brandon laughed the threat away. "You just said it yourself. You don't have anyone else in the pack who can beat me. The only reason that you're still running the show around here is that I haven't decided to take over."
"No, I still run the show around here because you're too inexperienced to run things yet and you know it. I'm the pack alpha, which means I can kick you out of the pack at any time with the most threadbare of pretexts. If that happens it's the entire pack against you and while you're really quite good, you can't take on the entire pack at once, not by yourself."
"I wouldn't be by myself. There are people in the pack who would support me over you if it came to that."
"Sure there are, but for the most part they are just a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears kids without much real combat experience. Mallory and I are keeping a very close eye on where the wind is blowing and you're still a very, very long way away from having a chance of pulling off some kind of coup d'état."
"I don't have to overthrow you, I could always just take my people and leave."
Kaleb shook his head. "Let me give you a free bit of advice about these kinds of things. You never get all of the people you think you're going to get. There is always a larger contingent than you think who are happy to talk big, but when it actually comes to striking out, leaving home and going off to establish a brand-new pack they end up chickening out. You don't have anywhere near enough people to actually create a viable pack that would have a chance of holding its territory."
I'd expected Kaleb's remarks to put Brandon even further on his back foot, but if anything he seemed more confident than before.
"It's only a matter of time. Eventually I'll have enough, and then I'll either take this place over, or I'll take my people and leave. Eventually you won't be able to stop me."
Kaleb sighed. "This is the last freebie, kid. There isn't anywhere you can go where you'll be safe if you piss me off. I run the Coun'hij. Do you really think that there is a single pack anywhere in North America that would raise even the slightest fuss if I had your entire pack destroyed? If you continue to work with me I can make it very worth your while, but if you cross me I'll bury you."
Brandon was actually speechless for the first time I'd seen in months. It took nearly a full minute before he shook off the shock. I suspected that he was smart enough to read between the lines and understand that Kaleb was threatening to unleash Puppeteer on him if necessary. Brandon was good, but Puppeteer would swarm him under without even breaking a sweat.
"I understand your position. Does that mean that you're refusing my request from the other day?"
"No, I haven't decided with regards to that yet. I meant it when I said that you'd be rewarded if you work with me, and I understand that on some level rewarding your people is the same as rewarding you, but I'm not entirely sure about this particular reward. There are obviously some…complications with that sort of thing. You're going to have to be patient for a time still."
Brandon shot one last parting comment back over his shoulder as he left. "My patience isn't infinite."
"I'm well aware of that fact."
I started to stand to follow Brandon, but Kaleb waved me back down into my seat and then watched the closed-circuit monitor to verify that Brandon left the suite rather than staying to eavesdrop.
"Close the door, Alec."
While I saw to the door, Kaleb turned on the white noise generator that had sat on his desk for as long as I could remember. I hated the crackle and hum that it created, but it was a necessary evil in a house full of shape shifters if you really wanted privacy.
"What you did today was reckless and I want to be clear that a repeat will be punished very severely."
I opened my mouth to protest but Kaleb talked right over me. "I had someone debrief Simon and Nathanial while they were waiting to see if Vincent would be okay. The report hit my monitor before Brandon left. The long and short of it seems to be that Jasmin shot her mouth off and you got involved rather than just letting her deal with the consequences of her actions."
"Vincent has been riding her for days. She can hardly be blamed for losing her temper."
"Yes, she can. She's got the heart of a fighter, but this isn't the first time that she's written checks with her mouth that she can't cash. If this were a single incident I might have a different view of things, but it's not and she's not going to learn any different if you shield her from the consequences of her actions."
"What exactly is she supposed to learn, Dad? That Vincent is an ass and she just has to put up with whatever he decides to inflict on her?"
I'd meant to just use his name like always, but somehow it had just slipped out. It wasn't like I thought it would buy me anything.
"That's exactly what she needs to learn. It's not fair, but it's the way life works. The pack needs aggressive, strong fighters, and Vincent pulls as much or more time down on the border than anyone else we've got."
"So just because Vincent is a better killer Jasmin has to suffer?"
"Yes, not to put too fine a point on it. I'm fighting a war, Alec, and that means that I need soldiers. Jasmin probably would have adjusted to her lot in life years ago if you'd just let things follow their natural order. Instead, you've covered for her time and time again and the result is that she's constantly getting in over her head and you're getting involved in fights that you can't win."
"I beat Vincent just fine."
"No, Alec, you got lucky. I can see that just by looking at you, but even without the obvious evidence of how close you came to losing, I could still have predicted that Vincent was too much of a handful for you now. He's been in combat at least fifty percent of the time for the last six months. This is the longest stretch of time that he's been back in Sanctuary at once and the only reason he's stayed this long is because I ordered him to take some time off."
"So send him back out there. It's not like anyone around here will miss him."
"No. Vincent needs some downtime. Even the most aggressive warrior will eventually burn out if he's in a hot zone for too long. Besides, things work best when the two of you are kept far apart and it's past time for you to spend some time out on the frontlines yourself. I've tried to give you time to manifest a power out of all that potential that Mallory is convinced that you have, but I can't wait any longer. The cats have pushed back up above the Mexican border and I need more bodies down there."
Kaleb rubbed his eyes and then took in the damage to my chest with another wave. "The other packs have noticed that I've
kept you and some of your friends out of the fighting longer than is normal and some of them are starting to complain. The truth is though that even if the war wasn't going against us I'd still be sending you down there. You need more experience. You need to toughen up or the next time Vincent will come out on top and there's no guarantee that he'll be satisfied with just putting you in a bed for a few days."
"If he did that you'd be forced to kill him."
"Don't be so sure of that, Alec. You're creating a lot of resentment in the pack with the way you're acting lately. You're trying to swing above your weight class and everyone knows it. Only the fact that you're my son has kept some of the old guard from putting you in your place before now."
My beast surged up in a flare of power. It wasn't the full heat of a transformation, but it was close. I knew that I wasn't a match for Kaleb, but we'd never actually fought so my beast didn't share my certainty and it didn't like the way that Kaleb had just called us weak.
"This isn't about your friends from back in the day, Kaleb, this is about the fact that you would let Brandon protect Vincent despite yelling at me for protecting Jasmin."
"You still don't get it, Alec. Brandon is becoming a force in this pack. I wasn't lying earlier when I said that I could still deal with him if I had to, but I don't want to resort to calling on Puppeteer to wipe out a third of the pack. I need the people he's so busy trying to splinter away from me. Things with the rest of the Coun'hij are balanced on a razor's edge right now. I'm holding onto control of the Coun'hij by a margin that is so slim that you'd have to be directly involved with our meetings to appreciate it. If I lose control of the Coun'hij things will get a lot worse."
"Yeah, a lot worse for you."
"No, a lot worse for this entire pack, and a lot worse for the rest of the shape shifters out there. Puppeteer likes to exercise his control over the werewolves and he's not particularly picky about who he uses when he feels like it's time for an object lesson. I know you've never been involved in any real fighting, but try to imagine for just a second what the estate would look like if two dozen werewolves came through on a rampage. Your mother, your sister, everyone who wasn't fast enough to get out before the house was surrounded, would be killed."
"Even if you lost control of the Coun'hij, Puppeteer wouldn't dare attack us like that. We're the largest pack in all of North America. The rest of the packs would band together and destroy the Coun'hij if they tried anything like that."
"Don't be so sure, Alec. Nobody banded together when the Coun'hij took down the monarchy however many thousands of years ago. There have been plenty of other packs that Puppeteer has wanted to take a hardline position with recently. Jaclyn and her people down in Arizona have been especially difficult lately, and while Jaclyn's power makes her more than a match for any normal hybrid, her pack wouldn't have a prayer even against just a dozen werewolves. I'm the only thing holding him in check right now."
Kaleb suddenly looked tired and a part of me wanted to forget all of the times he'd screwed me over during my life and not be quite such a jerk towards him. It was a tempting prospect to imagine that we could still be one big happy family, but experience had shown me that Kaleb always had some kind of ulterior motive when he was acting the most reasonable.
"The truth is that our pack has simply gotten too big, Alec. We're ten percent bigger than the Chicago pack now and given all of the kids running around here we'll probably see as many as two dozen more shape shifters join our ranks in the next four or five years."
"So let Brandon split off. He'll take most of the undesirables with him and life will get a lot easier."
"Undesirable to you maybe, but Vincent and the others are some of our most promising young fighters. I need them, I need every person we've got if I'm going to keep control of the Coun'hij. You're at least partially right, the sheer size of our pack serves as an incredible deterrent for everyone from the dispossessed all the way up to guys like Puppeteer. I'm going to eventually have to let the pack fragment into smaller units, but that needs to happen in the right way and at the right time. I've got to hold things together until the pack can split into three parts rather than just two."
Kaleb pointed at the door that Brandon had used to leave and then pointed at me. "I'm hoping that Brandon will take part of the pack and that you will do the same. If we split the pack three ways then you'll be able to help me make sure that Brandon doesn't get out of control. It will get rid of a lot of the internal pressure that we're experiencing right now, but as long as the two of you base your packs somewhere close then it goes a long way towards preserving the deterrent that we've built up right now."
It was the best bait that Kaleb could have possibly trolled out in front of me and he knew it. I'd wanted a way out for years now, but this represented something even better—a way out not just for me, but for the people who were important to me as well.
"That's right, son. That's the reason that I haven't made any kind of fuss about the way that you're starting to create your own little power bloc. Ultimately that's exactly what I want you to do. I would have let Brandon split off already but I'm trying to hold things together for long enough that your power can manifest and give you the most important tool you'll need as a pack alpha."
It was a tempting vision of the future, but I knew it was nothing more than a mirage. I tried to conceal my disbelief behind a well-worn bitterness regarding my situation. "It appears that you're going to be waiting for a long time. Maybe it's time to start developing some contingency plans."
"Your power will manifest eventually, Mallory is sure of it. She's never seen someone with your sheer level of potential fail to manifest a power and she's seen a lot of hybrids come and go, both inside the pack and outside of it, in the last few decades. Don't lose heart, Alec. This is bigger than just you or me. There are a lot of people, more than you can imagine, depending on us getting this right."
Chapter 3
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
I left Kaleb's office wobbly on my feet from blood loss and mentally and emotionally exhausted. Part of me wanted to just go curl up on my bed and sleep off the worst of my injuries, but I knew that would only solve my physical problems, so I headed the other direction, away from my bedroom, towards one of the few sources of solace that I still had.
My mother's suite of rooms occupied nearly one whole side of the wing that housed them. Built during a happier time, back before Kaleb had been able to wrangle himself a spot on the Coun'hij due to the sheer size of his pack, Mom's rooms hinted at what Kaleb might have been if he hadn't decided to pursue power at any and all cost.
It took more than five minutes to cross the length and breadth of the house, but the journey was worth it. I knocked on her door and then at her invitation I entered into what felt like an entirely different world. Most of the house seemed to consist of dozens of long halls with no natural light, but Mother's rooms were liberally sprinkled with windows that allowed plenty of light in regardless of the hour or season.
The masterpiece of the entire suite was the receiving area in its center which was a giant solarium that contained dozens of plants, an exquisite grand piano, and half a dozen simple chairs scattered into different corners of the room. Some of the tension seeped out of me as my mother and my sister Rachel looked up at me and smiled.
Mother was dressed in a light cotton dress that looked like it belonged on a runway in Paris. "Come sit down, Alec, you look like you've had a rough day."
As I made my way around the greenery that seemed draped on every horizontal surface, Rachel jumped to her feet.
"Can I get you something to eat or drink, Alec? You probably need to build back up your reserves after being in another fight."
"Thanks, Rachel, the usual would be great."
"Right, one baby elephant, raw, coming right up."
I rolled my eyes at her as she left, started to sit down, and then stopped as I realized I'd get Mo
m's chair bloody if I did that. Mother turned the fountain at the center of the room to full strength and then motioned at the chair again.
"Please, Alec. Sit down. The chair can be cleaned up later, but you look like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. What happened today?"
The fountain served very nearly the same purpose as Kaleb's white noise generator, but was much more pleasant than the hissing and pops that the small boxes produced.
"Vincent has been baiting Jasmin for days now. She's done a decent job of keeping her cool until today. She said something that really pissed him off and he was pretty much ready to rip her head off, so I intervened."
An uninformed viewer might be forgiven for thinking my mother frail, but while her body was indeed slender to the point of almost being unhealthy, there was something in her eyes that gave lie to that appearance of weakness. Mother would never go toe to toe with someone like Vincent, not given that she was only human, but there was a strength of will to her that exceeded anything I'd ever seen out of anyone else.
"I can't fault your loyalty to your friends, Jasmin especially, but you risk so much each time you put yourself between one of them and Vincent or the others. If your father decides that you're getting above yourself the consequences may be profound."
"I know. I've already been to see Kaleb. I got off on a technicality, but I think he mostly went easy on me because he started to expose a little bit of his master plan to me today. He's hoping that I'll manifest an ability soon, and that it will be strong and useful enough that he'll be able to set me up as a counterweight to Brandon."
I almost missed the fine tremble in her hands as first she and then I mentioned Kaleb. Someone else probably would have thought that there wasn't anything wrong, but I'd had years to learn the subtle signs. She was still occasionally able to maintain her composure enough that I didn't notice what it cost her to talk about him, but today wasn't one of those days.