Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) (11 page)

Somehow I ended up in a crumpled, sobbing ball in his lap on the forest floor as he held and rocked me back and forth.
And it felt good
. I realized all that I’d been withholding for seven months straight during the time I’d kept it together to take care of my mom, followed by the semi-numb limbo state of nothingness I’d swum in after her passing as I’d continued to search for Raul while mechanically moving forward with all that needed to be done to sort through the estate business and pretend to everyone around me that I was going to be fine.

I knew I probably shouldn’t have done it—allowed myself to break down to a scary, supernatural stranger who had invaded my mind in my sleep. But it felt so damn good that I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t resist the temptation to be held and just … release. To indulge in the luxury of feeling safe, even if it was only in my dream, and with someone whose intentions might ultimately prove false or dangerous.

It felt so nice to pretend that he genuinely cared what I was feeling and wanted to comfort me. And so I let him. I threw shrewder judgment aside and let a stranger console me and croon all sorts of reassurances and promises he had no right to make and no way to follow through on.

At first I merely bawled while he held me. But eventually as my wailing subsided to sniffling, I somehow commenced blabbing like an idiot. I let loose and began unburdening myself to Alcaeus about everything.

It started with my fears for Raul and for myself, then a little sharing about my mother’s cancer and rapid deterioration. Then at his gentle prodding I began word-vomiting about the injustices of the healthcare system and complaining about how my mom’s treatments had sometimes been delayed and her hospital stays curtailed because of stupid paperwork or plan restrictions.

Alcaeus’ fingers drew soothing circles on my back as I prattled on in unnecessary detail about the one lousy nurse I’d had to monitor by being at the hospital for the change in nurse shift each morning before school and again after school, to ensure that my mother got her meals and medications when she was supposed to.

Rationally, I knew there was no reason he should care a whit about any of it, but he listened so attentively, asking questions and encouraging me to share further. And share I did. I went on to reveal the financial struggles associated with my mom’s illness.

I took to sniveling anew when I got to the part about how the house that I’d grown up in would soon be in foreclosure because I’d been unable to keep up the mortgage payments with the limited funds left. This prompted me to sob on about how I needed to get home to take care of either selling or storing the remaining contents of the house.

It was at that point Alcaeus finally chose to stop my incessant chatter with a gentle shushing and a silencing forefinger to my lips, prompting me to blubber an embarrassed apology for dumping on him so much.

“No, no, honey, it’s not that. Fuck, I’m sorry. I honestly hate to stop you, but I need you to calm down a little, okay?” He eased me from his lap onto my back on the forest floor. Instead of my skin scratching against dirt and leaf litter, I found a soft blanket beneath me.

“Alex is preoccupied now,” Alcaeus said as he stretched out onto his side next to me, leaning on his elbow. “But if you stay worked up like this he’s liable to sneak away sooner to come check on you, understand?”

I shook my head, dabbing the residual dampness from my face with the back of my hand. Did he mean Alex was planning on invading my dreams next?

“Possibly,
”
he answered my unspoken question, “… if he senses your dreams are distressing you.” He paused, his expression pensive. “But if you’re calm, he’s likely to let you sleep in peace and only come check your physical person.”

His words registered when I remembered how he and Remy had explained before that my stronger emotions were somehow affecting Alex.

“Will you let me help you relax?” he asked, the fingertips of his free hand tracing my collarbone. He looked strangely forlorn, perhaps regretful.

I eyed him warily. I suspected he meant to control my heart rate like Alex had done.

“Sort of. I’d like to simply make a few … suggestions, Milena, so that you’ll feel safe and worry-free during this dream time with me,” he expounded, his eyes embracing mine in a manner that was so profoundly personal, I was helpless to look away. “That way, we can chat, you can ask me any questions you want, but you’ll be able to stay relaxed and rest better. Sound okay?”

I nodded, feeling safer and more relaxed already.

“You feel unconditionally safe with me,” he affirmed with a wan smile. “Don’t you, honey?”

I nodded readily again, confused as to why I would ever feel anything other than safe with him.

“Good.” A crease formed between his brows, even as he smiled kindly down at me. His hand moved from my collarbone to splay across my stomach. It felt nice there. So I laid my own hand atop his. His smile broadened, but his eyes were still sad.

“I’m so pleased you shared with me about your mom.” Liquid warmth spread through me at his approval. “And it would please me even more if you always shared truthfully with me,” he added, pressing a chaste kiss to my forehead. “You would do that for me, wouldn’t you, Milena?”

He drew back to search my eyes again, and I nodded eagerly. I couldn’t fathom why he looked troubled, and almost … guilty. But I ceased worrying about it as I was rewarded with more delicious warmth spreading through me. It was virtually the best sensation I’d ever experienced.

“That’s right.” He smiled. “So good … so sweet.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this adored and cared for, and I never wanted the feeling to end. But there were so many questions I desperately needed answers to, I couldn’t afford to lose focus and waste the opportunity.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Milena. You’ll see. I promise Alex won’t hurt you.”

“Because you think I’m the vessel?” I blurted the question that had been bouncing around in my head. “Or because you think I’m Alex’s mate?” Just saying the words “Alex” and “mate” in the same sentence made me shudder in revulsion.

Alcaeus looked thoughtful a moment. “Honestly, I’m not entirely convinced of anything just yet.”

“He doesn’t even want me as his mate. He kept blaming it on his wolf. Which, incidentally, is super creepy,” I vented. “Are they separate entities? How does that even work?”

Alcaeus laughed. “No, they’re not separate, but they function quite differently, which sometimes can create a rift. The wolf operates largely on instinct; the man, on intellect. That’s not to say they each don’t employ the use of both, but recognizing a soul mate, for example, is purely instinctual for the wolf. Not so much always for the man.” He shook his head. “Particularly when that man is my baby brother.”

Alcaeus proceeded to relay the difference between what was perceived to be a true
mate
determined by destiny, as opposed to a mate chosen in the conventional sense.

He used his and Alessandra’s father as an example, revealing that their father, Antonio, had been happily married to their mother, Alyana, for 234 years, even though they had never been considered “true mates” or “soul mates” in the werewolf sense of the word. When Alyana passed, their father had been heartbroken, experiencing and displaying his grief for years to follow, much as a human might.

Thirty years after his wife’s death, Antonio met Remy’s mother, Renata, who had also been widowed. Alcaeus said that the moment Antonio and Renata first laid eyes on one another, their wolves recognized each other as their true mate. He joked that it took them as man and woman all of about five minutes longer to arrive at the same conclusion, and that they were inseparable from that moment forward until their death.

Alcaeus explained that another distinction of true mates was that they almost always perished together. He said even if one was perfectly healthy when the other passed, the mate left behind typically wouldn’t survive for long without the other. Moreover, they wouldn’t
want
to subsist without the other, and would soon follow their mate into the afterlife.

I tried to imagine it as romantic, given the right mate and the right circumstances, but it sounded like a raw deal to me. Talk about co-dependent! I decided to change the subject and ask what the heck a “vessel” was.

Alcaeus dithered a bit, maintaining that the vessel was a complicated, dichotomous concept to explicate. He divulged that within their historical records, as well as their consecrated books of legends and prophecies, the vessel was depicted as both a beacon of hope and harbinger of impending doom, and for this reason, many of his kind held ardent and often opposing viewpoints on the phenomenon. But the widely accepted belief was that their ancestors placed vessels periodically in their pathway in order to change the course of the future.

“From a strictly metaphysical, esoteric perspective,” Alcaeus ruminated aloud, “the vessel, as I see it, is always the light source we’re meant to embrace. It’s a savior, a deliverer, existing as the purest mechanism for our transcendence, should we choose to move forward.”

Hmm … didn’t sound too terrible so far.
Saviors were usually considered valuable. So if I were deemed the vessel, it might at least keep me—and by extension, my brother—alive a little longer than a case of mistaken mate identity likely would.

“But in terms of the physical world,” Alcaeus said, “a vessel is quite literally the necessary means to our very survival. It’s the key to our future corporeal existence—which is often ultimately predicated upon it. And it commonly ushers forth an evolutionary push … a cosmic leap forward.”

I nodded. I was definitely digging the vessel deal.

“Yes, a vessel is quite the extraordinary occurrence,” he agreed, beaming down at me. He linked his fingers with mine where they lay over my stomach. “A rare and precious gift. However, historically a vessel’s existence has the tendency to be controversial as well, and invariably this can create quite a bit of conflict and strife within a pack.”

Ugh, there was always a dark side
. I remembered that “saviors” were also often crucified, executed, burned at the stake …
Great.

“The important thing to remember is that ultimately
you
always have a choice. No matter what the rest of us believe your role is meant to be, Milena,” Alcaeus told me, much to my shock and confusion. “Not even Alex can take that away from you.”

“Why not?” I bristled. “He’s taken everything else from me.”

“Look, I realize Alex can appear a monster at times,” Alcaeus quipped, “but Alessandra, Remy, and I raised that little monster,” he surprised me by revealing. “And while we may have failed in just a few aspects of our surrogate parenting”—his eyes flew skyward as if to suggest that was an understatement—“I know he’s capable of great love and compassion. Believe me, Alex is more than what he displays on the surface.”

I pursed my lips, resisting the impulse to contend that Alex was pure evil. For while I hoped Alex was capable of more admirable traits than those he’d heretofore demonstrated, I couldn’t help but think it absurdly liberal to credit him for attributes he was “capable of” when they were a far cry from those he in fact displayed.

“Now, by no means am I suggesting he’ll ever be good enough for you,” Alcaeus clarified with a good-natured wink. “But neither is he pure evil, honey. If I thought Alex would truly harm you or force you to accept a mating bond, I’d never have left you with him.”

“You could stop him? If … if it came to it?”

He paused reflectively. “I think I could.”

My heart sank. He didn’t sound very convinced.

“Milena, honey, I know you’re being completely honest with me right now, and I don’t want to repay that trust by lying to you. Alex is arguably the strongest we’ve ever seen of our kind, his power unprecedented. I don’t take going head to head with him lightly. And I’ve been around long enough to know it’s never wise to presume the outcome of any battle.”

While I understood and appreciated his honesty, at the same time I couldn’t wrap my head around how the scales were so grossly tipped in Alex’s favor.

“I don’t get it,” I bemoaned. “Why aren’t you stronger? You’re older! Why can’t it be you who’s Alpha? Alex said in the hallway that you used to be Alpha.”

“Ouch!” He made a wounded face in mock affront. “Sheesh, you go straight for the below-the-belt questions, don’t you?”

I giggled and begged pardon.

“Well …”
He heaved a world-weary sigh. “If you must know, it gets a little old and tiring being top cheese. As seductive a force the conquest of power may initially be, ultimately it makes for a shitty mistress. I accepted the mantle and I put in my time, but it was obvious to us all Alex was destined to be Alpha. And I had no problem passing the torch to him when he was ready.”

I nodded half-heartedly in understanding. It didn’t seem fair, though. “But why
him?
Why is Alex so strong?”

“Remy, Alessandra, and I have come up with different theories over the years, but we don’t know for sure. Alex was gifted from the day he was born. But after his parents died, something …
shifted
… and everything he already possessed was magnified tenfold.

“It was a little insane, truthfully.” Alcaeus chuckled humorlessly in remembrance. “I lost my father and became Alpha as well as guardian to my five-year-old little brother in one fell swoop. But when that five-year-old brother somehow became virtually indomitable overnight …”—he raised his brows and whistled low—“it made for some interesting parenting challenges.”

“I’m sorry,” I offered after a beat, still digesting the revelation that Alex had lost both of his parents by the time he was five. “Alex’s parents … err … your father and Renata … was it an accident?” I inquired tactlessly, curious as to what sort of event could’ve taken out one of their kind.

“Eh …” He winced. “It’s not a happy bedtime tale. How ’bout I tell it another time?”

I nodded in agreement, already feeling like a jerk for having asked such a rude, insensitive question.