Chapter 69: The Rare Among Rarities Pt. 1

Alastair:

We all sat at the table in the meeting room, me and my pack members across from Merari and as well as a few of her own constituents.

It was blatantly clear as we all sat there at the table staring at one another that neither side trusted the other, and for good bloody reason. At least on our part that is.

“I’m assuming that we came here to do just more than stare in one another’s bloody faces all night.” I finally broke the tension-filled silence between us.

Merari stood across the table from me with a cold glare. She wasn’t happy with my impatience. And I didn’t care. Not one. Bloody. Bit.

“I can…explain what’s going on, Alastair. You jus-”

“Good!” I cut her off. “Because you bloody well need to!” I snapped. I didn’t want to hear any more vague explanations and excuses as to why she wasn’t being forthcoming.

“You should calm down, Alastair-”

“I am as calm as I am going to get, Merari!” I felt my anger rising uncontrollably. “You have been keeping secrets since the second you stepped foot in Shadow Veil!”

“I am only trying to protect my pack-”

“And what the bloody hell do you think I’m doing here, Merari?!” I snarled. We were having a spat, one that was becoming personal, and there was an audience, but at this point, I did not care. “My people have been dying and getting injured! We almost lost our daughter! When do you think it will be a good time to stop playing around!?”

“I am not playing around! How dare you?” Merari was pissed about my choice of words, that much was certain, and yet again, I did not care. If she was going to keep holding secrets from me then it was time to be hostile!

“I am not going to argue about this, Merari,” I said. “Either you tell me what is going on…why…why you’ve led a pack strays to my doorstep, or we become unbenefited.”

After I said this, one of Merari’s pack members, a thin older man with a calm demeanor and impatient eyes, spoke to her in another language; one that was neither the russian that Merari had taught him all those years ago or the english that he knew.

It was of a different dialect than anything I had ever heard.

“I’d prefer it if you spoke in a language that we all know,” I said.

“Why?” asked Merari, her eyes engaging me challengingly. “Do you not trust me?”

She wanted me to answer, but I wouldn’t. Answering her question would not help the situation as I knew in my gut that her mind had already been made up long before this inquiry, whether my answer would be a yes or no.

When Merari realized that I was not going to play this game, she reluctantly changed the subject.

“They here on standby, just in case….” she said .

“In case?” I pressed. “In case of what?”

“In case something happened that you and yours could not handle,” answered Merari irately.

“If that was the only reason then why did you not tell me? We would have put them up? We would have put them all up! We could have included you all in the decisions that were being made. Especially, if they have proper input concerning what’s happening! Why did you keep this from me?”

“Because I do not trust you.”

She said this to hurt me. I know it. And why shouldn’t she? I had no qualms with stepping on her toes at the moment. Still, I knew that…while those words were, in a sense, meant to be spiteful, I also could tell that she was telling the truth.

“Nice to know that we are seeing eye to eye on things, then.” If I was being honest, I didn’t trust her either.

It was at that moment as we both stood across from one another, our eyes boring into each other that I knew Merari and I realized something.

“Uhm,” Toran clearing his throat brought me back to the current state of things. “Who are you? Who…who are the Shadow Rogues?”

It seemed that Merari was reluctant to move on from our conversation. There was so much that wasn’t said between us in that moment that needed to be verbalized.

“Now, is not the time, Alastair,” Aziz said in the back of my mind and he was right.

My beastly counterpart had spent the entirety of our aggressive conversation reeling over the rift that gradually got bigger and bigger between us.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Floor is yours,” I said aloud to her and pulled back. It wasn't until then that I realized how much I was allowing my anger to get the best of me. I looked down and saw scorched indents in the spots where my large hands once were.

Her eyes were glossy, as if she was trying to hold back tears. Then Merari quickly shifted her gaze and finally began to speak.

“I’ve told you once before, that Dronnigan was the first gold-blood to be turned,” she said. “He most certainly was not the last, however.”

Merari glanced up at me for a second and then quickly averted her hauntingly beautiful gaze to continue on.

“Over the centuries following his transition, he made it his mission to find others like him, who were cursed with the blood that drew treacherous creatures to feed on them.”

She looked at me and then every single one of the pack members standing behind me as she said this.

“You do realize that you are one of us now,” said John.

Merari’s already narrow eyes became near slits. “Not by choice.”

“We didn’t have a choice either,” he reminded her. “Or maybe you’ve forgotten..it is not our fault that we were born with this disposition and if you were so disgusted by what we are…then why did you choose to live this life?”

“This life is better than none,” said Merari.

“Yeah, it is, right?” said John. “You think about that the next time you decide to judge us for it.”

He was right, and she knew this. In some ways, it was quite clear that Merari was significantly younger than we were. It was easy to forget that.

“Dronnigan began to accrue a mass of gold bloods over the centuries. He eventually amassed a pack that spanned continents. I do not know whether it was just luck or fate, but he was in Virginia the night I was murdered,” she said. “He turned me, and…somehow, I was special. He called me…a rarity amongst the rare,” she seemed to recall that memory with fondness.

“I cannot wait to sink my teeth into this….Dronnigan.” Aziz was becoming aggravated.

“Calm down, Aziz.”

“What made you so special?” Toran asked.

“My abilities,” she responded simply. “When Gold bloods turn, our abilities are displayed differently through the shadows and some even mist. It is…an unusual occurrence, I admit.”

“And your powers came in differently, I assume,” I replied, now engrossed in the background of her past.

“Yes,” she said with a slight hint of hesitation. “It is not just mist for me. There…is something more there. It…it’s very physical and…it can be difficult to control when I am not mentally balanced. It…I cannot explain it, but…” she looked up at me. “It is the same for Vale. Though hers has showcased itself into something…darker. I have a feeling as to why.”

As she said this, Merari glanced at John, and my delta was far too aware to not have noticed her gesture. I noticed him, in turn, shift his stare at me for a moment, before returning his curious gaze to her.

“Anyway, after he realized my specialty, he hardly kept me out of his sight. At first, it was fine. I…it felt like an honor to have someone so powerful to be attentive to me, to care about what I thought and appreciate what I could bring to the table. I…I felt special, and…unstoppable.”

“Unstoppable?” Toran replied. “In what way?”

This was the question that almost seemed to shut Merari down. She was reluctant to speak further on it.

“Merari?” I pressed but not too harshly. We both were stepping on eggshells with one another, so I knew not to press too hard.

It was the older man standing next to Merari who spoke in that language again. He squeezed her shoulder and she looked at him. When he nodded at her, she did the same then turned her attention back on us. She took a deep breath.

“After a while, Dronnigan’s traumas turned him rageful, and resentful towards inhumankind. Even the All Mother herself. He decided that he would be the hunter. And he convinced over half of his people to do the same.” Her tone became lower and lower and her eyes began to look off into the distance. “We were to hunt down those who killed mercilessly, and we would exact the same death to them as they did us. That’s another thing about our kind, by the way…” She looked up at me again finally. “We can feed on your kind if we so choose.”

"Wai...what?" John said.

It was notoriously known that feeding on another inhuman was not only taboo but almost toxic to an extent as every inhuman had some sort of genetic mark in their blood that served as a protective to those who wished to feed on their own kind. How a gold blood could be immune to it, was a miracle in and of itself.