Chapter 4: Taking Responsibility

Cyran POV

He would find whoever insulted Naomi and make them pay. Quietly, cold-bloodedly. He would make sure they didn’t cause trouble afterward.

Ahead of them, Cyran’s former second-in-command and best friend Barrett opened the door to the Great Hall and gave Cyran a searching look. “Are you ready?”

Cyran nodded, not trusting himself to talk.

He turned to Garnet, who asked, “Do you want me to go in with you?”

“I’m not that much of a whining pup, Sister.”

Barrett looked at him with a flicker of respect. “Not now, but no telling what you’ll need after the Alpha is finished with you.”

His throat closed up because it burned with sorrow and self-loathing. He managed to say, “Let’s just do this already.”

The Great Hall hadn’t changed much. Of course, the major change was sitting at the long table where Cyran’s father Landon and his grandfather and great-grandfather had conducted pack business.

Jiro Cresta gave the impression of being older and more mature than his twenty years. Red-haired, long, and lean, he sat erect and dignified in the straight-backed polished wood chair at the head of the long table. A stack of documents awaited his attention, but his turquoise eyes focused completely on Cyran, boring right into his soul.

Barrett said formally, “Alpha, Cyran Sinsworth to see you.”

Jiro rose with an economy of motion and approached Cyran. “Welcome home.”

Although skinnier and less physically imposing than most Alphas, Jiro looked powerful, graceful, and commanding. Cyran’s mouth went dry and he knelt, exposing his throat. “Thank you, Alpha.”

Jiro stretched out his arm and extended a lean, elegant hand to help Cyran to his feet. “I have the tea that the witches prescribed.”

Barrett coughed. “Will there be anything else, Alpha?”

“No, thank you, Beta Barrett.” Cyran and Jiro said together.

A second later, Cyran blushed. “Sorry.”

Jiro shrugged, unfazed. Why shouldn’t he be? He had all the power.

Barrett looked deadpan. “Then I’ll be meeting with the enforcers.”

Cyran absentmindedly watched Barrett, who had been like an older brother, walk out of the Great Hall. The Alpha tapped him on the shoulder. “Shall we sit?”

Like a lamb, Cyran followed Jiro to the table and took a seat opposite the Alpha. He kept deliberately thinking that word in relation to Jiro in the hopes that somehow his stomach would stop churning if he just repeated it often enough.

Obediently, he reached for the tea in a delicate cup while Jiro sipped coffee from a mug.

“The dwarves do make good coffee,” Cyran said by way of conversation.

Jiro glanced at him over the rim of his mug. “And when the witches ease up on your diet, you can drink coffee until you float away.”

His tone and words didn’t give any sign that this meeting would be easy.

Cyran’s respect for him rose. He would have acted no differently if he still ruled the pack. “You haven’t changed the decor, I see. Or the house name.”

Jiro’s reply was diplomatic. “No reason to rename the house. It’s part of Garnet’s heritage.”

Naomi’s words echoed in his mind about the Alpha treating her with compassion. Naomi had been right. “You did put in an elevator.”

“We also donated the statues from the dining room to the local museum run by the monks.”

“Good. I can’t believe I ever liked those monstrosities.” Cyran drank his tea and gazed at Jiro. “I can’t believe I liked a lot of the things I liked ever since my parents were killed.”

Jiro’s gem-like eyes sharpened. “Is that when Hades first approached you?”

“Yes.” Cyran drifted into a memory.

* * * * *

Cyran lolled around on the bed with books and sweets covering it. He’d never had much use for hard liquor, and wine didn’t do it these days. Dwarf ale was forbidden because of some trade dispute with the Scapolite Dwarves. Books and sweets helped him. So did being in his family’s cabin away from everyone making demands on him. Even that sweet young hunter who kept bringing them extra meat seemed to get on his nerves. What was her name? Noline? Nona? Neldeen?

Naomi. That was it. They’d grown up together. Barrett had hinted what a nice couple they’d make, and said she’d be at the next Mate Ball, which he insisted Cyran attend.

His hand flailed about for one of his books about magic and knocked it on the floor. As he troubled himself to pick up the book, a scroll fluttered out.

He knew what a scroll tucked between the pages of an old book meant. Magic secrets. He snatched up the scroll and read the words aloud.

“The summoning spell to call forth the dark goddess is known as ‘Invocatio Tenebris Lupae’ and requires dark energy channeled through crystals, preferably moonstones. The chant is as follows: ‘We summon thee, Dark Goddess, in your true form; a wolf demon with a mighty roar, to do our bidding. We offer you this offering in exchange for your power and protection, to give us the strength to conquer our foes, and grant us your favor. We give ourselves to you and forsake the Moon Goddess and swear to pull down her moon palace in your name. Invocatio Tenebris Lupae!’”

He scoffed. “What nonsense. As if anyone could seize power from the Dark Goddess. Still, it’s amusing. I think I have a crystal here somewhere.”

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he got up, clutching the paper, and padded across the wooden floor from the bedroom into the main room of the cabin, where–aha!–he located a natural crystal that sat on the table. It wasn’t a moonstone but it was milky. Maybe milky quartz. It should do.

Seizing the crystal in his fist and lifting it, he chanted the invocation on the scroll.

He waited, holding his breath. Nothing. He set the crystal down and turned to leave …

Only to hear scratching at the door, then a pitiful whine.

He opened the door and let in a shifter with an unkempt mustache wearing a hat that looked like wolf’s ears. Cyran helped him to a chair and poured him some water.

“Thank you, Alpha,” the man said. “I owe you a debt, and Hades Ombra ALWAYS pays his debts.”

* * * * *

In the present, Cyran stared into Jiro’s alert eyes. “He came when I was alone.”

Jiro rubbed his chin. “Interesting that you just happened to be reading a book and found the very scroll that’s upstairs in the office.”

Cyran tensed, his teeth clenched.

Jiro stared at him. “Don’t raise your fur at me. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

“But you don’t entirely trust me, either.”

With a severe frown, Jiro said, “Put yourself in my place.”

Cyran’s roar filled the room. “I WAS in your place until I threw it all away!”

Later, he would ask himself why he said that. Did he want sympathy from Jiro? Empty pity?

If so, he didn’t get it. He received what he deserved.

Sitting up straighter if that was possible, Jiro came back with cool, brutal logic. “Obviously not. If you HAD been in my place, thinking about the pack from morning till night–”

“Didn’t you say while at my bedside that you could have been me?”

“Yes, but I also said my brothers wouldn’t let that happen, and there are more of them than your sister, and they’re also louder than she is.”

With his fur raised, Cyran wanted to tell this self-righteous ruler what he thought of him.

His wolf snarled at him to quiet down before he got his throat slashed like Dragomir, a less than noble associate of his whom Jiro killed.

He decided honesty was best. “I thought about the pack, but I thought about myself more. And then Hades came.”

“As I said, coincidentally after you found that scroll.” Jiro sipped coffee. “You said you weren’t exactly paying attention to much.”

Cyran finished his tea. “No.”

Naomi had been right. Jiro was as kind as Cyran deserved. In his brother-in-law’s place, he’d have scorched him even worse.

Jiro tapped his fingers on his mug. “Hades is a wizard. He could have conjured that book in or found a way to leave it with your other books. You and your sister are book lovers and collectors as well as scholars. I think, apart from not having a high opinion of females, he deliberately chose you because you were, strangely, more vulnerable and more easily influenced than Garnet.”

Yhe softening of Jiro’s voice when he spoke Garnet’s name made Cyran sheathe his claws. “Yes, I still remember when you said it was fortunate he considered my sister beneath him.”

Jiro’s eyes darkened. “Patch told me about Hades’ plan to have you and Luna Lilia embody the Dark Goddess and the Nightwolf, although the demon definitely used you and Hades and continued to use others.”

Cyran tried not to smile at the mention of Jiro’s devil-may-care younger brother. “He … he was a marvel, and Anneliese was.”

He remembered hearing about Hades’ dark plot, unmasked by all of them. He shivered, wondering if his desire for Lilia had ever been his at all. Goddess, how he’d behaved with her …

“I will make up for what I’ve done,” he vowed. “I swear to you.”

“I’ll hold you to that. While you weren’t entirely responsible for your actions, you hurt this pack and the Evenhide Pack deeply–and it could have been far worse.”

“I realize that. Just please continue to show mercy to Miss Tenebruso and the Redwood couple, and the ones Hades still has under his control if we manage to take them prisoner and wake them up. It’ll prove to them that Hades lied about everything, for a start. And … I got them in. I recruited them. I abandoned them. I didn’t even stand with them when they were exiled!”

Jiro nodded quietly. “Was that Hades’ idea or yours?”

“His. He said that we couldn’t risk my getting captured.”

“He was right, in terms of strategy. Cowardly, but right.”

“But the riot was my idea to make you look bad.” Cyran smiled ruefully. “Clearly it backfired.”

“Because you forgot what the strength of this pack is,” Jiro said bluntly. “It’s not a good Alpha, although that helps. It’s the people. A bunch of scrappers.”

“Hades doesn’t believe that.”

Jiro rolled his eyes. “Like every tyrant throughout history.”

“Even more so. I was just the first Alpha conquest and I won’t be the last.”

Jiro’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

“In those papers you mentioned, you might have come across a mention of ‘the Twenty-Four.’ You’re so clever, you should know it refers to–”

“The twenty-four Alphas of the twenty-four packs,” Jiro breathed, his eyes round with shock and fascination. “He could have seized control of Dane and Jude when we invaded this territory.”

“With THOSE two, not likely.”

“But he would have done everything in his power,” Jiro countered. “Including things you’re not aware of. You weren’t in on all his plans or his manipulations.” He picked up a twenty-page document. “In fact, Miss Tenebruso told us in disturbing detail how he kept you in line. I didn’t even want your sister to read it, but she–”

Cyran winced, both in sympathy and pain because his sister had to read that. “I know how she is.”

And Naomi had seen so much of Hades’ abuse.

“But she didn’t know everything,” he said quietly. “I know all about Hades.”

He stood and pressed his hand to his heart. “I’ll track down Hades for you. I’ll use everything he taught me to find him, and either bring him to justice or help you destroy him–because unlike me, he’s beyond saving. For my own personal honor as the former Alpha and for our pack’s honor, I’ll give you Hades or die trying. Do you accept my offer?”