Grown up
Elara
I had learned a few days later that Lucas would not be handling my training any longer.
“Why?” I had probed.
“I don’t know,” Kendrick mumbled.
Why was Kendrick with me, you ask? He had come by for dinner, and then, after he sat beside me, insisted that he would simply stay and observe. Of course, this was strange on its own, but I had soon accepted the fact that I might just be his lab rat. There was a first time for everything, and this one I didn’t mind too much.
“You idiot, it’s obvious.” Alejandra slowly set down her spoon, with her eyes focused on mine. “He’s not allowed to train you any longer because someone, somewhere, would have directed him not to.”
I frowned deeper. “That makes no sense,” I said.
“Who wouldn’t?” I trailed off when I realized the answer was obvious. “So what now? He’s taking my friends from me? He doesn’t like the company I hang out with, or what is this supposed to be? Is he jealous?”
Alejandra smiled. “You know the answer to that question already. It’s normal that if a male werewolf sees his mate with someone else, he gets angry, jealous, and possessive. How much more seeing his mate being trained by his close friend? You wish to set us up for an imminent to-do, do you? Besides, alphas are more possessive than others, so it’s only well enough to be expected.”
I felt my body boil in rage. First, he didn’t want me, then he didn’t want me some more, and then he was mad enough to insist that I share him with someone, and now he was taking away the person who would help me get stronger?
“Take me to see him tomorrow,” I said rather than asked.
“You might want to say please.” Kendrick poked my cheek.
“Stop it,” I hissed at him with all the rage of a feral cat, but he genuinely didn’t find my hissing intimidating as he continued.
“And do what? Confront him? Demand to know why he has removed you from the company of his own beta, when his beta is supposed to be doing other things?”
I opened my mouth to argue, and then suddenly it snapped closed.
“Don’t be so selfish now,” she mused, raising her spoon back to her mouth. “He has many duties, and you wish to keep yourself inserted as one of them, and that is not fair.”
Speaking of duties, she slurped on her soup a couple of times, leaving me hanging. I slowly collapsed into my chair and watched her, waiting. She finally cleared her throat and took a slow sip of her red wine before giving me her topic of the evening.
“I’m going to have to leave for the Academy,” she said. “Now, I would suggest you come to the Academy, but I see you might be ripped into shreds by one angry idiot one day. After all, that mouth of yours needs to be kept under a leash.”
I pouted, remembering her warning that if I spoke again out of line, she would make me run 20 miles. Running after dinner wasn’t a good course of action, I had tried it before, and I puked my guts out. I slouched into my chair, letting out a puff of discontent.
“He can’t do that,” I said. “He can’t control me like this. I don’t want to vent; I don’t want to ask him to bring Lucas back; I just want to talk to him. I want to tell him that I don’t like this, I don’t like the control.”
She coughed. “He’s alpha. Alphas inherently control. If they don’t, then there’s something inherently wrong with them, and they will be seen as weak and will be removed. So think quite well about what you wish to do, what you wish to expose him to, because all of these things matter. Your insubordination matters, and especially when it’s done in front of others. If he condones your insubordination, then he will be seen as weak to you, and you will be used to bring him to his heel.”
Frankly, as she spoke, I realized one thing, that I didn’t care as much as she probably thought I should.
But I let her have her peace and said nothing.
“You come with me tomorrow,” she said. “There’s a council meeting where you’ll be allowed to sit through. In fact, I think it should be nice being your first public appearance. But of course, I will have to speak to him first.”
She left me in the silent equivalent of being left on read for a good few hours before she told me to come downstairs.
“You can come,” she said. “But he will wear a robe and remain unseen.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “His reasons, not mine. I do not question Alpha as frequently as you like to.”
She smiled, but at least I had a good night’s sleep with that knowledge and even dreamed about giving him a piece of my mind.
By the time it was morning, however, I woke up with a bad hair day and even worse control over my limbs. It was as though my body decided it wasn’t ready to wake up quite yet and that I should take a little more time getting ready. Too bad.
I threw on a simple pair of pants, a baggy shirt, and pulled on the large cloak I was given. It was an actual cloak, similar to those things, but it was actually quite nice, heavy, and at least lined. And goodness, was I grateful for the extra warmth; after all, it was beginning to get colder by the day.
With a quick magical carriage ride to the large council building that stood nearly just as large as the Met in New York, or maybe even bigger, I was taken by the hand, despite how much I was staring around, by Alejandra and led to one large room with a gallery filled with people.
“Stay quiet,” she said as she fell into the seat beside me.
The council room itself was a large rectangular hall complete with a small raised podium with a large chair behind it for the Alpha, and then lesser podiums, twelve in number, for the Elders. What looked like an expensive stone table was stretched out in front of all of them, and upon it were little cases with a marble ball inside.
The more I stared at the room, the more I realized how far out of my depth I was.
What exactly was I trying to accomplish here? I asked myself as I watched the red-robed Elders trail into the room one after the other, mumbling under their breaths, with even some words floating to my ears.
“Must I?” I heard. “Coalition of Alphas… something about a war.”
Wait, what?
If that was going to happen, then I needed to get my ass the heck out of Dodge.