Chapter 32: The Choices We Make Pt. 1

Alastair:

We spent the greater part of the day on the road, venturing outside of Shadow Veil. If today was going to be Valene’s last day with me, I wanted to make it memorable. I’d have been lying had I said that a part of me and Aziz had also hoped that it would convince her to stay. That was definitely a long shot, of course.

At the end of our adventure, we stopped at a little restaurant and settled ourselves. I could tell that Valene was nervous about the endeavor that she would take at the end of the day. Naturally, her being Valene, she would never allude to it, however.

“Have you enjoyed yourself today?” I asked after we shared a moment of laughter.

“Best day I’ve ever had,” she smiled. “This…is the perfect gift for my anniversary. Harlyn’s presence would have made it even better,”

I could sense her disappointment when mentioning Harlyn’s name. “You know Harlyn is going to miss you just as much as I will, Val.”

“Yeah, sure,” Valene didn’t believe this, and if she did, she no doubt assumed that Harlyn’s reasons for missing her were quite the opposite of mine. I parted my lips to attempt further to convince her when she lifted my hand. “It’s fine,” Valene said. “I do have a question,” she added, quickly changing the subject so that I would continue against her wishes.

“Shoot.”

“Why? Why all of this?” asked Valene. “I-I mean appreciate it…so much. In fact, I never thought that I could enjoy myself so thoroughly as I did today. I mean the zoo and museums! Beautiful parks! I just-it was amazing,” she smiled. Seeing the sincerity in her excitement made it all the more satisfying. “Now this amazing restaurant. Why? On my last day here do you show such splendor?”

“Do you really need to ask that question, Valene?” I inquired because I just could not believe that she did not assume that this was something that anyone would have done with their last few hours accompanying someone that they cared for.

“Well, it’s just…I assume that this is a ploy to convince me to stay and yet…you have not said a thing concerning during our entire time together,” Valene pointed out.

“Would you hear me out if I had?” I asked, already knowing the answer. When she averted her gaze with a hint of a smirk, it was confirmation that she knew her answer as well. “I wanted today to be a day that you could enjoy without thinking about the seriousness of your life going forward. Of course, if there is even an inkling of a chance to convince you I will try my bloody damndest to try,”

We both knew that there was no chance at all. It was heartbreaking to come to the final realization, though.

“We both know that my leaving is the best for Shadow Veil,” said Valene with a sympathetic and sullen expression upon her brow.

“Does not mean that I have to be okay with it,” I countered. “You are my daughter, Valene, and that will not change-it has never changed over the years. I…” as I said this, so many regrets began to flood my mind. “I should have never agreed to this decision…to place a curtain over the reality of your relationship to me and your sister. I was selfish, and-”

“It wasn’t your decision, dad,” Valene insisted. “I made the decision. You allowed me the choice and will always be grateful for it. So stop beating yourself up over a past that you allowed me to choose.”

The waiter brought over our dessert but truth be told, I was hardly in the mood to eat anything, let alone sweets.

“You’re not going to eat your dessert?” she asked me and I chuckled as I pushed my truffle bomb toward her.

“I’ve had my fill for today,” I said. “Besides, I love the pure happiness when you take a bite of your sweet treats,” I chuckled.

Shaking her head, Valene took another bite of her food, and the genuine smile that invaded her lips with every bit warmed my heart to see.

“Now is probably the best time for you to tell her about the young lycan’s offer,” Aziz said to me.

“Don’t ruin this for me, Az,” I hissed telepathically. “I will tell her in a minute.”

“Everything alright?” Valene asked as she took the final bite of her tart. She sipped down her lemon water and then lifted her gaze up to me.

“Why do you ask?” It was random-her inquiry.

“I can always tell when you’re having an emotionally charged discussion with Aziz,” snickered Valene. “You furrow your brow and clench your jaw so tight, I’m afraid you’d chip a tooth,” she teased.

So intuitive, Valene always was. “I should have known that you’d notice something like that.”

“So, I hope I am not the subject of this frustrating conversation.”

“You are…in a sense,” I confessed without hesitation. It was evident that Valene was not happy to hear this, but it was also evident that this realization came as no surprise to her as well.

“What is it?” she asked, placing her fork onto her plate. “Is Aziz upset with me?” Valene seemed concerned by this probability.

I shook my head. “I don’t think the old boy could ever truly be upset with you Valene. He is only saddened by your departure, just as I am.”

Instead of going for the truffle bomb next as she had made a move to do, Valene took my hand as it lay at the edge of the table. “I am going to miss you both terribly, he knows that…right?”

I took her hand and kissed it. “He knows, Val, but that is not what our conversation was about.”

“Then what is it about?” she asked. “If not about my departure?”

“Well we were talking about your departure but not in the way that you think,” I retorted. “I’ve spoken with alpha Barbosa.”

This seemed to catch her off guard. Immediately after I mentioned his name, she looked away, frustration taking the place of concern and curiosity. “What for?”

“He seems to agree with the decision to let you go,” he said.

“And?” Valene shrugged. “Whether he agrees or not is of no consequence to me. It is not his decision to make in the first place-”

“No, it is not, but he did convince me to allow you to stand by your decision. He reminded me that I have a whole town of people to look after.”

“Well good on him, I guess,” she said, still not impressed it seemed.

Admittedly, I was glad of this because it meant that if Ares had ulterior motives for her, whatever they may be, Valene would not falter. Still, I had to know what it was that upset her so; if she was too upset with Ares, then him accompanying her would be a bust as well.

“You know, Ares’s father and myself…we were good friends,” I told her. “Best friends, one might say.”

“How did you become to meet someone a continent away from you, dad?”

“I’m nearly eight hundred years old, Valene. And back then, when I first met him, we were overcome with war and carnage-rogues trying to take land and kill all those who stood in their way or who were different from them. It wasn’t nearly as tame. Things were far more barbaric in some ways than they are now. Some packs would turn on one another at the drop of a dime if it meant giving them the upper hand, so one had to be careful about who to trust and I knew that I could trust him.”

“You really cared about his father,” Valene pointed out.

“I cared about the whole of the Silver Moon pack.” I clarified. “They were the greatest of their kind in more ways than one.”

“I’m sorry,” apologized Valene. “You lost a true comrade in the lycan’s family.”

“What I lost in Adam’s death, I gained with Ares. It’s been years but the boy is always a call away when the need arises.”

“You were so close-you and his father,” Valene started and before she could say, I’d already known what she was getting at. “Why didn’t you take him?”

“I was supposed to,” I replied. “I welcomed the boy and young Zevi with open arms. They both had lost someone. Almost had two sons,” I added. “But in the end, Ares-he wanted to find his own way.”

“How old was he?” Asked Valene. “Surely, he couldn’t have been that young for you to allow him to make such a decision.”

“Seven.”

“Seven what?” her brow rose suspiciously. My expression said it all. Her eye widened and suddenly her expression displayed that of sympathy. “Surely you don’t mean he was so young as seven when he’d taken over the pack! That…that is well below the age that a child should even have their own say! You let him-”

“Ares may have been young but he has always had his own mind and when it all boiled down to it, I was not his father.”

“Were there no adults…to look after the boy?”

“There were adults,” I said. “There pack members, a delta, but none were fit to lead. They became lost without their leader and Ares saw this. So, he decided at the tender age of seven that instead of running away from his responsibilities as most newer age lycans probably would have in his youthful position, he would adapt to the old ways of our kind and lead.”

Valene couldn’t seem to wrap her head around this. “How-how would he have even known how to-”

“The young alpha boys of every pack are taught as soon as they are mentally capable of absorbing knowledge of how to lead their pack if ever something goes wrong. Back then…while the bloodshed had moderately decreased, there were still a surplus of wars to be fought and so death often came around sooner rather than later. These boys-they have to be prepared.”

“So sad,” Valene said after a moment of thought. “I can’t imagine what I’d do in such a situation.”

When she said this, I simply smiled as I knew what she’d have done. “You, Valene, would have done the same.”

“Me?” she scoffed, shaking her head. “You have far too much faith in me.”

“And you have far too little,” I countered. “You’re doing now what he did then. I know that this is frightening-going out on your own but you’re doing it anyway to assure the safety of others.”

“Yes! But I am like-nineteen years old!” she attempted to change my mind by comparing her courage to that of a seven-year-old Ares Barbosa. “He was seven years old! I-I cannot fathom taking such responsibility in my hands being so young,”

“Well, he did have Zevi guiding him in some ways. Fortunately, the lad was nine years his senior and had seen quite a bit of experience as a young beta already.”

“That is nice. I’m…glad that he had someone looking after him,” Valene replied having completely forgotten about her desert.

“Well, seems learning history has made you not so distasteful of the lad,” I countered.

It was like a light switch. As soon as I had made a comment concerning her direct feelings about him, she rolled her eyes and averted her gaze from mine.

“That is a big assumption,” she remarked as she picked up her fork and picked at her truffle bomb.

“Valene, he has rigid ways, I will admit-some more than mine and understandably so, but he is not a bad person.”

“He may not be a bad person to you,” she retorted.

“As opposed to anyone else that he comes into contact with?” I assumed she was trying to say. Her lack of response was enough of a confirmation of my assumption being correct. “Elaborate,”

With an almost aggravated tilt of her head, Valene exhaled. “I know that I have not claimed nearly as many years as you or he has but I’ve lived as your vassal long enough to know an extremely dangerous inhuman when I see one,” said Valene. “I could sense his brutality from the moment I laid eyes on him. Am I wrong?”

I could not deny her insinuation. “The pup has always had a good sense of one’s character,” Aziz claimed in the back of my mind and he was right. “You are not wrong,” I finally said after a moment of hesitation.

“He seems the type that takes what he wants.”

“He is,” I would not deny that claim either. “As I mentioned before, Ares lives his life much of the old ways. If one had a valuable treasure and was not fit to care for it, he’d challenge claim it,” I confessed, knowing why she’d made this comment. “I know what you’re getting at.”

It was then that Valene dropped her gaze. “Had he not had any respect for you, I’d have been dead by now.”

I thought about how to carefully respond to her comment before I did. “I would agree in part,” I admitted. “Only because of the freak incident when he lost control,” I said.

“In part!?” She exclaimed. “He nearly ripped my head off when second we met and-”

“You are a gold blood, Valene. Surely, you could not blame him for that. He certainly was not the only one who flipped that day-”

“No but I’ve had far more dealings with him than I have his beta,” she rolled her eyes. “Even he seemed to be concerned about his alpha’s actions,”

“Did he?”

“He warned me to stay away from him,” Valene quipped. “Clearly he does not trust him around me. Had he no respect for you, he’d have surely gotten to me by now.”

“You say that as if you are sure that his aim is to get you,” I said with amusement at her confidence as I knew that her assumptions were true.

“I only speak from experience and not arrogance,” she said. She seemed embarrassed by my subtle accusation that she was being a little presumptuous. A weak and suddenly abashed smile played across her mouth as she anxiously began to bite at her bottom lip. “They always want my blood.”

Her smile gradually faded as she said this. Valene was never an arrogant soul; this being the reason why I teased her. It was after she had said this, however, that I started to feel guilty for making such a joke. Her comment was rooted in paranoia of being pursued all of her life because of the blood running through her veins.

“Valene,” I took her hand, and when I did she looked at me. “I know that being born a gold blood has been a heavy weight on you. I never considered how heavy that weight was until now. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she tried to shrug it off as if it wasn’t something that one should dwell on. “Everyone is dealt a hand that they must play until the end of life. I learned long ago to accept the hand dealt to me. You and your family's presence in my life made it easier.”

I kissed her hand and then returned to the subject beforehand. “I know that you dislike him, and you may not like what I have to say but, I just…I do not believe that Ares would hurt you?”

She gently pulled away, a harsh and amused chuckle rumbling from her lips as she shook her head. “And why is that?”

“You’re still here,” I simply answered. “Ares would have found a way to get you by now if he truly wanted to.”

Valene rolled her eyes. “You have blinders on when it comes to that one,” she said.

“Oh, do I?” Never had I thought that one would accuse me of that concerning Ares Barbosa.

“Yes! I really and truly believe that” she chortled. “That one seems to like to play the long game.”

“Maybe he does,” I confessed. “But I still do not believe that his intentions are to harm you.” I could tell by the way that her forehead wrinkled in a frown that she was still mistrustful. “Can I tell you why?” I asked.

“By all means,” quipped Valene as she unenthusiastically took a bite out of her truffle bomb for the first time in twenty minutes.

“Because Ares has made his true feelings known about you,” Her interest was piqued, I could tell but I couldn’t read the emotions following her intrigue. “He came to my office one day a while back. As you may have noticed, Ares Barbosa does not find much use in human servants-the one thing of the old ways that he partially is impartial to. However, he seems to think that you're truly one of a kind. Unlike every other vassal that he’s had dealings with, you are the one rarity who seems to be more of a help than a hindrance. You’re more than just a body with warm blood flowing through your veins. I believe if he thought you’d agree, he’d have tried to persuade you long ago to become his-well, his vassal.”

“Of course,” she rolled her eyes. “That is all I am good for,” her murmur was hardly above a whisper and when she shifted her stare toward the scenery outside of the window, I knew that she didn’t want to linger on the subject. So I didn’t.

“Do you really hate Ares that much that you would find fault in everything that he does?”

Valene gingerly bounced her fork on the surface of the mound of milk and dark chocolate confection. “I never said that I hated him,” she passively murmured. With a sigh, Valene confessed. “He…he’s the only one who…who encouraged me to hold my head up-to look him in the eye.”

“So then why such hostility?” I asked. Then I thought about the night that Tobias was killed and how enraged Valene was as she stood glaring at Ares. “What did he say that night, Valene? To make you angry with him?”

“The truth,” she simply said. It was at that moment that her eyes began to mist with tears. “A gentle truth,” she shook her head as her words began to waver. “That Tobias died because of me,” she leered. “I wanted to go…follow his pack into the woods to find more of those…wretched things! I had planned to kill as many as I could and-and he insisted that I stay-that it was too dangerous; for me especially. I didn’t want to listen.”

“He told you the truth, hoping that it would stop you.”

“He only made my conviction to go into those woods even stronger. I wanted to die after he said that. After I realized that…that all of those deaths…were because of me. Then I also began to wonder about..how long now had these beasts been after me. How long have I been the target of their search? Of these needless deaths…” As she continued to speak, I somehow knew where this subject in conversation was going. “Mom…” she weakly huffed. “That night…that night that she-”

“Don’t…don’t do that, Valene.”

She looked up into my eyes, tears free-flowing down the side of her cheeks. “Those beasts…that rogue was after me that night. Those rogues were trying to kill me that night. They wanted me! And she-she-”

I’d always had my suspicions about that afternoon. Why those beasts had so randomly attacked Caris and the girls. Then I recalled how Harlyn didn’t seem to have a scratch on her. No dirt or dust from a tussle.

“You know that I’m right,” she said, taking me away from my thoughts. “Those things came straight for me. They hardly spared mom and Harlyn a second glance.”

I watched as my daughter said there further burdening herself with the grief and guilt of the past. “What happened back then is irrelevant now, Valene. Do you really think that your mother would have you thinking this way? Your life was more important to her. Would you not do the same if you were in her shoes?” To this, she could not answer and I knew why. Because she would have.

I took her silence as an opportunity to change the subject. Try as I might, I was still heavily affected by talking about my beloved Caris.

“Valene, I’m sure by now, you’ve wondered why the subject of Ares Barbosa has come up.”

She lifted her shoulders up disinterestedly. “You want my opinion on him and Harly?”

“Huh? What do you-” I didn’t even want to know what she was referring to. “No, no, that-that’s not,” I sighed. “He has offered to accompany you on your journey…protect you and-”

“No!” She exclaimed before I could finish my sentence. “He will not! I-I can’t-”

“Valene, is it really that bad of an idea?” I countered. “Ares is only here because his tracking of the beasts led him to Shadow Veil. Now that he knows that you are the source of their interest, it may help him as well and-”

“Dad, don’t-don’t try to act like this is about me helping him as much as him protecting me. You are trying to procure a whole security detail for me! You do realize that once he gets what he wants, we will have to part ways, and his oath to protect me will no longer be at the forefront of his mind! So-”

“I somehow, doubt that heavily, Valene.”

“Well, whether you doubt it or not, I am not in agreement with it! I can’t!” She stood up from the table. “I cannot…believe that you did not discuss this with me first,” she said before storming off and out of the restaurant.

Frustratedly, I stood as well, leaving a wad of cash on the table before following Valene out of the door. “You are leaving,” I hissed, stopping her in her tracks. Without anyone to watch your back! I’ve given you so much space to do what you think is best, Valene! I cannot force you to stay but do not dare ask that send you off without protection!”

“Say he can protect me. Say…say that he can restrain himself when it comes to my blood. Do you think that his whole pack holds that same restraint?” she asked. “One time…only one time-that is all that it takes. One small papercut. One bite of the tongue…anything, and everything will be over. So are you really going to stand there and tell me that this is a good idea?”

I couldn’t answer her question. Of course, I thought about all of this and I even brought this to Ares’s attention. “I’ve talked to Ares about it and he assures me that-” before I could clear my sentence, she cackled harshly, shaking my head.

“You’ve talked to Ares? And you really believe that? That he would harm his pack to protect me?! Those whom he has traveled, with?! Lived with?! His family?!” She sneered. “You really do have blinders on when it comes to him,” she resigned. “We should go,”

“Not before you swear to me that you will accept this condition,” I pressed. Whether she had faith in him or not, I did not care. Sure, at one point I had doubts about his intentions but for some reason, something was telling me that Valene was better of in his company.

“You cannot be serious right now! Are you really giving me an ultimatum?”

“If that is what you wish to call it,” I replied without hesitation. “I need your answer now, Valene,” I pressed. “What will it be?”

She was fuming. It was apparent. “Not much of a choice, is it?” she hissed. “Stay, and more people die, or leave and be babysat by a lycan who wants me to serve him.” she scoffed. “I guess I’ll choose the latter.”

It was upsetting to see how upset Valene was, but I refused to back down. “I know that you will hate me for it but…I am your father, Valene, and I need to know that you are going to be alright-”

She scoffed. “That’s the thing though, isn’t it?” she said through clenched teeth. “You haven’t been my father for seven years, dad.”

I knew that she said this to spite me. I knew that she was upset with me and that is why she chose such harsh words. So, I should not have taken it to heart, but I did. Because ultimately, Valene was right. I looked after her, sure, but not as a daughter. I had exposed Valene to so many things when she’d become a vassal. Harsh and brutal things. Had even trained her thoroughly on how to kill with exact precision and skill. I hadn’t treated her like more a daughter than I had a harbinger of death. I’d always made decisions for her-even when I began to love her as my own daughter. And now even in allowing her to leave, I find that I was still making decisions for her.

The guilt of this realization should have forced me to submit to her desire to go it alone, but I just couldn’t.