Alastair:
“Another one, Herry,” I said as I sat at the bar, on my tenth shot of whiskey.
“Sir, are you sure that you should-” Herry started when he saw the freshly annoyed look on my face.
I liked Herry and quite enjoyed his company for the most part. Sometimes, however, the guy could easily forget that I was not so prone to inebriation as the rest of his customers.
“Herry,”
“Yes sir,” he quipped without another word. He poured me two more shots of whiskey and then continued wiping down glasses.
I took a shot as John linked with me. “How are they doing on the mission?” I asked, deciding that I had very little to hide in terms of who I was, so I communicated to my delta aloud. The mental connection to him was just as strong when I was verbal.
Training had gone particularly well with the younger pack members and so it was time for their first field mission. There had been a spotting of a few ferals near Shadow Veils city line. This wasn’t an uncommon thing, but it also was something I took seriously. Usually, small incidents like this led to little to no bloodshed as the pack would usually only run stragglers out.
“Things are going better than I expected,”
There was doubt in his voice as he said this. Something was bothering him. “What is it, delta?” I asked.
“I have a feeling, alpha….” he hesitated. “Nerves, I guess. Penny is a part of the group. I guess I’m a little concerned for her safety.”
I could tell that my delta was trying to chalk it up to that as opposed to it being the reality of what his gut was telling him.
“Maybe,” I replied. “It can be nerve-racking, having a child in the field at risk all of the time. But…keep me posted nevertheless,” I said.
“Of course, alpha,” replied John. “I feel I should tell you…Harlyn is…quite impressive, but I guess you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that.”
“You’d be surprised to know how surprised I am,” I replied before he disconnected the link. Afterward, I telepathically searched for a single link to Toran. “How is he?” I asked.
“He’s volatile,” said my beta. “If they have nothing valuable to say then…there is nothing else to say. He’s gone past torture and straight to yes or no. Then he kills them.”
“And you have not stopped him, I see,”
“Should I?” asked Toran. “The world would be a far better place without them. Neither you nor I can deny that, brother.”
“True, but acting too hastily could cost us the answers that we need, Toran,” I reminded him. “Keep the alpha on his leash. We cannot afford missteps. Remind him that killing first and never asking questions will cost him answers as well.”
“Truth be told, Wade, I’m not sure he’s even concerned with answers right now,” replied my beta. “There’s pure vengeance in his eyes,”
Ares hadn’t been the same since Valene’s death. The night that he’d found out about her death, I wasn’t sure how he took the news as I had been going through my own version of grief. I was told after I returned to some semblance of sanity, however, that he had not taken it well at all, bellowing in anger that she should have waited for him.
He was on a warpath, that one-one that was almost unreasonable for someone with such a distant relationship with Valene. I knew that he wanted her-in what way, I was not sure, though Ares had always made it no secret that he was not a fan of intermingling species. He admired Valene and for good reason, so in that way, at least, I understood his desire to have her. She was a rarity in his eyes; a human that proved useful. Still, disappointment in her death, I could understand, but…but not this type of anger. I needed to get to the bottom of it.
“Keep an eye on him, Tor. And when you’re done. Send him to me. It’s time we talk.”
“Yes, alpha.” said Toran before our link disconnected.
“Seems like you’re having a rough evening,” a husky feminine voice commented from beside me.
I started to ignore her but something about her voice begged to catch a glance at least. A small smile reached my face. “Could be better, I suppose.”
“Hm, I can’t argue with that,” she said, taking a shot of whiskey, her gaze pointed forward before she swiveled her barstool in my direction. Biting her lips, she glanced at the bar and then back at me. “Buy you a drink?” she asked.
It wasn’t until she asked me this that I realized, I’d emptied both my shots. “How about…I buy you one?” I asked.
She grinned. “I never turn down a free drink,” the woman said. “But it seems, you need it more than I,” she gestured to Herry.
“Claire!” greeted Herry with a big smile. “It is…so good to see you again! It’s been so long.”
“So it has,” she replied. “Had some business to take care of back home.”
It was as she said this that I noticed a subtle, hardly recognizable accent. “Where is home? If you don’t mind my asking.”
She looked at me. “Romania.”
“Hm, interesting,” I noticed.
Claire took another shot of her drink before she asked Herry, “So, where’s my favorite girl?” she asked.
As soon as Claire asked this question, Herry shot a look over at me, and a look of dread filled his expression.
“Herry?” Claire said his name with concern. “Where…where is-” her words cut off as she saw the tears in his eyes.
I could tell by the grief-stricken look in his eyes that the one she’d been talking about was the whole reason that I’d been drinking in the first place.
“Valene,” I murmured.
When I said her name, Claire looked at me. “You…you know her?” she asked. “You know Vale?” she asked with a smile.
“You…were close.” I realized.
Instead of answering verbally, she nodded a small half-chuckle escaping her soft lips. “Where is she?” her expression turned sullen and concerned but she tried to keep the smile on her face. “Were…wh-” she looked at Herry, and then back at me. “Wha-what happened?” her voice broke a little as she finally realized that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t answer her-I didn’t answer her and because of this, she turned to Herry. “Her…what happened?”
He simply shook his head. “I…I’m sorry, Claire, but…”
“No…no!” she gasped, holding her hands to her mouth as tears streamed through her eyes. Her breath shuttered as she stumbled back. Out of instinct, I stood and grabbed on to her, steadying her balance. “What…what…hap…happened?”
“She was attacked…didn’t…survive,” I summarized. She didn’t need to know the details of what happened. I ushered her back into her chair, and gestured for Herry to get her another drink. When I saw how quickly she downed that one, I called for Herry. “Keep em coming, Herry.”
She took another shot impressively and then another before sitting there a moment in silence. A full seven minutes had come and gone before she spoke again. The young woman glanced at me before taking another shot. “I know who you are,” she said to me.
“Is that right?”
She nodded her head and scoffed. “You…are Alastair Wade…You own Virginia.”
“You could say that,” there was no point in me denying it, despite the hint of discord in her voice when she mentioned it.
“And the alpha…of Shadow Veil,” she added. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew but I was. I had never met this woman before and I never made it a point to go around telling people who I was unless it was a need-to-know type of situation.
“I am,” I would not deny this fact either, however.
She looked at me. “So, with all of these facts sitting between the two of us, I have to ask…how do you know, Valene?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you corrupted such a beautiful soul by enslaving her. She was human was she not?”
“Yes, she was human,” again, I admitted. “But…she was not my slave,”
With a curious brow rising, Claire asked. “Then who…exactly was she to you, Master Wade?” she asked in a mocking tone.
I should have been offended but something about this woman only forced me to feel guilt even hearing the term master again, as it reminded me so much of Valene and what she would refer to me as.
Nevertheless, I would never call Valene a slave because, in my selfish mind, she was nothing of the sort to me. “Valene…was not my slave. She was my daughter,”
The seemingly young woman’s expression turned curious. “Daughter? A human?” a dry chortle left her lips as she took yet another shot. “You can understand why that is hard to believe.”
“I’m sure,” I agreed. “It wasn’t an easy title to have,” I confessed. “In fact, more often than not, I didn’t display good father characteristics. She’d probably be here now if I had.”
At this point I had begun receding into my own thoughts and regrets concerning my title of father. I couldn’t imagine that Caris would be particularly proud of how everything turned out. She sacrificed herself for nothing.
“Caris did not sacrifice herself for nothing!” hissed Aziz. “Regardless, of how many more years, she had, the fact of the matter is, Valene was blessed with more because of Caris’s sacrifice,” he reasoned with me.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there could have been more. “You alright?” Claire’s voice broke through the conversation between myself and my wolf.
I doubled back at her and displayed a weak smile. “Sorry about that,” I twisted my empty glass in my hand, looking down into the shot glass.
“You’re really beating yourself up about this, aren’t you?” asked Claire.
“Does it show?” I asked sarcastically. Of course, I was beating myself up over it. Who wouldn’t?
“A person who didn’t care about her, that’s who.” Had I not known any better, I could have sworn that I heard her answer my question.
“I’m sorry?”
Casually, she put down here glass and looked at me. “I…didn’t say anything.” her response was so casual that I found it virtually impossible that she was the one who answered my thoughts.
“Maybe you’ve had a few too many drinks, alpha,” she suggested with sullen amusement.
“Unless they were spiked with blood…I highly doubt that.”
“Ah, so that’s how your kind gets drunk,” I noticed that her gulps started to regress into sips. “Makes sense.”
“Are you making a mental note for future references?” I teased just to make light of this dark and heavy situation.
She smirked. “And what exactly would I be needing this mental note for?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know…to get me drunk, the next time we meet.” I said, glancing her way to take note of her reaction to my flirtation.
She blushed and rolled her eyes. “Who says that there will be a next time, alpha?” she asked.
I stopped drinking and faced her. “You never know.”
She kept my steady gaze without intimidation. At least for a moment, before she exhaled, the heat of her whiskey-scented breath mingling with her scent. For the first time since our meeting, I allowed myself to experience the sweet suculence of her essence.
“Sorry, alpha, but I will not be on your menu tonight,” she said and then tended to the rest of her drink.
Powerful restraint this human had. I didn’t make a habit of this, but I found myself attracted to her. And there was only one other who…
“How did she end up in your care?” asked Claire, pulling out of my lustful thoughts of her.
She rejected me, so, I pushed away from those inappropriate thoughts and returned to the more important subject. “My mate needed a child to raise,” I recalled the night that I first saw Valene. “I had my eyes set on a boy. Ironically, enough that boy…though not adopted by my beta ended up in his care some years later through…fate, I guess,” I had recognized Tobias’s scent as soon as Toran introduced him to me when he was first sentenced as his vassal. Toran did as well. I can’t help feeling that maybe that was why Toran took it easier on Tobias than he had any of his other past vassals. There was a potential in the boy that he saw as well as I had over twenty years ago now.
“Small world,” commented Claire.
“Hm, yeah, small world.” I replied. “A woman directed me to Valene. The most…beautiful little thing I’d ever seen,”
“I can tell you cared about her,” mentioned Claire. It was then that from my peripheral, I noticed her watching me as I told her of my memory.
“I loved her with every fiber of my being,” I confessed. “It’s ashame that I didn’t really understand that until after I’d lost her.”
“Such strong feelings for a daughter who was never truly yours,” said the young woman sitting next to me. “Was your other daughter not what you had hoped for?”
“How do you know about-”
“You’re not exactly a secret in Virginia. You’re a prominent figure and everyone knows that Alastair Wade had a miracle child.”
She was right. “My daughter being alive is all that I’d ever hoped for in a child. Sure, I would have loved a son, but…I would not trade Harlyn for the contrary. She is Caris and I’s miracle after all.” I confessed. “Valene, however, there was…a connection there that…I could never explain. It…it was as if I was meant to have her in my life. Like…the Goddess mother, herself, meant for me to raise Val…to love her as my own.”
“That’s sweet,” she complimented with a half-hearted chuckle.
I shrugged. “She reminded me of someone,” I confessed. “Her spirit, her determination, and kindness…she was a pure soul,” grief started to creep back in as I walked back into the memories of Valene. “I try to figure out…try to understand why I feel so strongly for the girl, and each time, my answer goes back to one person.” I was amused by the idea each time I thought of it.
“And who is it?” she asked. “Though I find it hard to believe-amazing as Valene was-that a human could remind you of an inhuman that you seem to think so highly of.”
“What makes you think that I think highly of this person?” I asked with mirth.
“I cannot fathom you comparing Valene to anyone that you do not hold in high regard, Alastair Wade,” she said.
Yet again, she was right. “You are wrong about one thing.” I finally replied.
“And what is that?” she asked me, suddenly seeming to be interested in my answer.
“She wasn’t an inhuman, this woman, but human.”
“Human? You’re serious?”
“Very serious,” I countered.
“I did not take you as the type to comingle with humans so consistently, alpha.”
“You would be right in your assumption,”
“Yet, you’ve fallen in love with two-in very different ways it seems,” she pointed out.
“I know,” I agreed after a minute of silence. Claire putting it into such perspective forced me to consider the realization of it. I looked at her. “Fallen in love…that’s a pretty serious word to use on a human.”
“And yet here we are,” she said. Before I could say another word, Claire stood and placed a few twenties on the bar.
“Got somewhere to be?” I asked, standing as she did.
“I always have somewhere to be,” she countered. “Goodbye, Alastair Wade,” she said and headed toward the exit.
“Will I see you again?” I asked before I could stop myself. For the first time in a long time, I…had a genuinely good connection with another woman. It was hard to let that go.
Instead of answering me, as Claire stepped out of the door, she glanced at me, a small smile upon her pouted lips. “I’m sorry for your loss, alpha. I hope one day you’ll heal. I’m sure Vale would want that for you,” she said and then walked away.
As she left, I sat back down, though my gaze would not leave the door in which Claire had just disappeared.
“Herry,” I called for the owner. When he approached, I asked. “Who is she?”
“Claire Westbrook? She’s a regular,” he said. “Been coming here since a little before Valene started working here. Ironically enough, Val was the only one that Claire really talked to constantly. Otherwise, she was pretty closed off to everyone else who tried. And trust me, there were quite a few who tried. Just…something about Claire,” he said.
And when he did, I realized that even Herry tried at one point to pursue this Claire Westbrook.
“She’s a mystery, that one,” remarked Herry.
A mystery that I suddenly wanted to solve. “That she is, Herry. That she is.”