The Ballad of Aramei

  “Good,” I say and two more refugees admit to also being directly linked to Alphas; one in Rhode Island and the other in Maryland.

  After thirty minutes of discussion, Harry breaks away with all of them to listen in on their telepathic conversations, while Nathan, Sebastian, Xavier and I stay gathered at the table.

  “I’m going to New Jersey to find Treven and Isis,” I say and this gets Adria’s attention.

  “It’ll be fine,” I say, placing my fingers underneath her chin. “I trust Treven more than just about any other Alpha that I know and his pack is huge—sixty at least.”

  Adria’s eyes narrow. “I shouldn’t have opened my mouth about this cave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the perfect hideaway to leave me while you go out and do all of the dangerous stuff.”

  “My father will kill you,” I say, hoping she won’t fight me on this. “I just want you to be safe.”

  “I know,” she says, looking away, but then she turns back to me again. “But I’m not going to hide like a coward and when the time comes and you need to understand that, Isaac. I won’t….”

  “I know, baby,” I say and swallow down the argument. “I know.”

  When the time comes, I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep her hidden away and I don’t care if she hates me for it later. I won’t let my father kill her.

  “I thought you said you’d never close your mind to me?” she says softly into my ear.

  I blink back into the present, but I say nothing in response. I did close my mind off to her for that brief moment, but right now she can’t know what I’m really planning.

  Ben and the others come back into the meeting room, Harry and Daisy with them.

  All of them appear eager and somewhat excited.

  “They’re onboard!” Ben says. “The second I mentioned an uprising against the Sovereign, my brother’s voice changed. They’re already on their way to Maine.”

  “And bringing the West Virginia and Pennsylvania packs with them,” Harry adds.

  “Mississippi is onboard, too,” Mari, another refugee speaks up.

  “And Rhode Island,” the other refugee says, “but their pack is pretty small.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Nathan says, “a few is better than none.”

  I nod, agreeing.

  “Most, if not all of them, should be in Maine by the morning,” Harry announces.

  “How can they get here so fast?” Adria says.

  “They have their ways,” Xavier speaks up from the other end of the table.

  “Yeah, like an airplane?” Alexandra mocks.

  “You’re just making it worse on yourself,” Xavier says to her grinning a lopsided grin. He pulls his legs up and props his feet upon the table, crossing them at the ankles below.

  “Yeah?” Alexandra says, “How’s that exactly?”

  “Playing hard to get,” Xavier says. He interlaces his fingers and rests the back of his head in his locked hands.

  Alexandra ignores him.

  Suddenly, Adria gets up from my lap.

  “Where are you going?” I say, holding onto the tips of her fingers.

  She looks down at me and softens her expression. She’s trying so hard not to appear depressed or troubled by what happened with Aramei, but even for her it’s not an easy thing to hide.

  “I’m just going to be alone for a while.”

  I get up from the table, worried.

  She kisses the edge of my mouth. “You worry too much—I’m fine.” She puts the palms of her hands on my chest and gently guides me back into the wooden chair. “Stay here and do what you have to do.”

  I sigh deeply and let her go.

  I notice Alexandra start to go after her, but she stops when her gaze meets mine. My eyes alone tell her that her sister just needs time and Alexandra quietly approves.

  After the meeting is over and we’ve established what needs to be done, I leave everyone to find Adria where I knew she would be, alone in the room where Aramei used to sleep. A few candles have been lit throughout the space, giving off just enough orange light to see her lying on one side of the bed.

  She’s been crying. I notice her covertly wipe the tears away from her eyes.

  All of the immaculate pillows and sheets and other extravagant things my father kept for Aramei are gone. All that is left is the stone slab that made up the bed’s frame and the giant pillow that had been used as the mattress. The claw foot bathtub has even been removed, along with the old wooden desk that I split in half and into a hundred pieces when I brought Adria here with me that night. Funny how my father would have the remnants of an old desk cleaned out of Aramei’s room, but leaves the corpse of the man he killed out in the wide open for all to see.

  “I’m proud of what you did,” I say as I make my way across the dimly-lit room towards her. I sit down next to her on the edge of the mattress pillow. “It took a lot of courage and compassion to do it.”

  She stares at the dancing flame cast upon the wall next to her; the candle it comes from is nearby on the floor.

  I reach out and brush a lock of hair away from her face.

  “I know it had to be done,” she says, her voice distant. “And I feel that even though she’s gone, she’s grateful.”

  Finally, she turns her gaze on me; the flickering light of the candle flits across her irises making the blue of her eyes appear faintly golden. She sniffles away a few lingering tears. “It’s just something I have to get myself through. And I will. In time.”

  It never ceases to amaze me the amount of strength in my girl. She’s been through so much and is going through so much more that sometimes I can’t comprehend her strength, like it’s something entirely foreign to me.

  She should be Alpha. She’s stronger than I could ever be.

  I crawl over and move around to lie behind her, my knees fitted into the backs of hers, my arm draped over her arm where I knit my fingers between hers to hold her hand against her side. Her free hand comes around to touch my face. I shut my eyes and kiss her fingertips.

  “If we die,” she says and my eyes creep open, “do you think we’ll still know each other in the afterlife…if there is an afterlife?”

  I nestle my face into her neck and squeeze her hand. “I believe that no matter what happens, or where we go, or if there’s an afterlife, that we’ll always be connected. Not even death can make me forget you, or forget that I love you.”

  I feel her smile. I don’t have to see it.

  A quiet few seconds pass between us and then she turns her body just enough to see my face.

  “Promise me that if we die, you’ll look for me,” she says and kisses my lips.

  Her words wrench my soul, but I hold my composure and nod gently, looking into her eyes. “I promise.”

  I take her into my arms and kiss her. And then I make love to her as if it were the last time.

  ~~~

  Half of us leave the cave by midday. Alexandra, Rachel, all four of my sisters and Harry stay behind with Adria. At first, the girls were offended, mainly Rachel and Alexandra who didn’t hold back their opinions about how ‘leaving all the girls in the safe cave’ was ‘totally sexist’ and us guys should ‘really pull our male egos out of our asses’. But Daisy spoke up to diffuse the situation:

  “You really think my brother feels that way about you?”

  “Umm, yes?” Rachel said with a venomous sneer. “We’re the ones told to hide in the stupid cave while they—” her hand shot out beside her to point at us, “—get to go out into the danger zone. It’s bullshit.”

  Daisy smirked and rolled her eyes. “Think about it for a second: Isaac would never leave Adria with the weakest of the pack.”

  Adria smiled. “We’re all female. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  Rachel’s sneer melted into a proud grin.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said, changing her tune. “Okay, maybe he’s not so sexist, after all.”
/>
  Women. The rest of us gladly left the cave and them to their girl power.

  ~~~

  We arrive back in Hallowell before dark and head to The Cove on the Kennebec River to meet up with the other packs. Fortunately, we didn’t have to make the trip to New Jersey to find Treven and his pack. After calling three of Treven’s last known phone numbers, by the fourth, his mate, Isis answered.

  Treven told me that day he brought one of his pack members, Darren, to challenge Nathan for control of the Maine territory, that if I ever needed him for anything that he’d be there.

  And he held true to his word.

  “Isaac,” Treven announces enthusiastically as Nathan and I get out of the Jeep in the Cove parking lot.

  He’s a tall, broad-shouldered black guy almost as huge as Big Raul.

  Treven grabs my hand into a fist and we pull toward each other, patting each other’s backs with our free hands. He does the same with Nathan and then Xavier and Sebastian as they get out of Xavier’s red and black Dodge Challenger.

  “So it’s finally going down?” Treven says, turning his attention back to me.

  I nod.

  He drops the greeting smile and joins the rest of us in the serious moment, shaking his head in that knew-it-was-coming sort of way.

  Isis, Treven’s girlfriend, waves at us from their car.

  Six more vehicles pull into the lot; all of them from Treven’s pack by the way they greet each other when they get out.

  “Look, man,” I say to Treven, going right into the inevitable, “I just want to say up front that I won’t hold it against you if you don’t want any part of this—you know what my father is capable of and I don’t want to leave anyone with any delusions.”

  Three more vehicles arrive.

  Treven’s big, toothy smile returns. “I wouldn’t miss this, man,” he says and his voice rises so that everyone, even those walking toward us can hear him. “Over six hundred years of fucking tyranny—I may not have been here for most of it, but…man, did you know that your father killed my grandfather?”

  No, I did not know that….

  Treven goes on, still smiling, “I’ve never held anything against you or your brothers—been kinda’ waitin’ on this day, to be honest. I think everybody knew it would be one of his own sons who would dethrone him.”

  “The only thing about this that I don’t like,” someone from the growing crowd says, “is that it took so long!”

  A tall, blond-haired guy speaks up, “Your father scares the shit outta me,” he says with his hands buried in his pockets, “but count me in.”

  “So why now?” Treven says and all of the voices carrying around on the air become still.

  Nathan and I glance over at one another, knowing the answer might not be what any of them are prepared for.

  I take a very deep breath, “The truth?”

  “Yeah, out with it,” Treven says.

  “Adria killed Aramei.”

  The smile drops from Treven’s face and every other face staring back at me just freezes in a shocked mosaic of wide eyes and open mouths and immobile limbs.

  It takes Treven all of twelve seconds to blink. “You’re fucking serious?” He turns his chin in a sidelong glance.

  Isis gets out of the car and struts over in her high-heeled black boots. “What did you just say?” She’s not smiling anymore, either, and her heavily-ringed finger points upward at me.

  “Isis, baby, don’t do this,” Treven says, taking her by the waist.

  “No, Trev,” she argues, pushing his hand away, “if he said what I think he said, this won’t be a battle, it’ll be a massacre—the Sovereign is crazy enough without this, but it bein’ about the murder of his wife?” She draws in a deep, abrasive breath and shakes her head over and over.

  “It doesn’t matter how or why it’s happening,” Nathan speaks out beside me, “because it’s going to happen no matter what and you all can either fight with us, or die fighting with him.”

  It sounded like a threat to me, but I’m not going to rebuke it.

  “Look,” I say, putting up my hand—(Isis hates me now; if looks could kill)—like I said, I won’t hold it against you if you don’t fight, but Nathan’s right: if you choose his side over mine, we will treat you and kill you as one of them.”

  Isis pushes herself angrily away from Treven and walks back to the car. “Lunatics,” she hisses just before the car door closes off her voice.

  Two more cars enter the lot and one giant monster truck.

  “We’re with you,” Treven says with a solid, devoted nod. He reaches out his hand to me and we shake on it.

  In the next couple of hours, the other packs and their Alpha’s arrive and we go through the same riotous defense as we did with Treven. Rhode Island decided to back out when they heard that it was because of Aramei’s ‘murder’. But I won’t call them cowards for it. The truth is, they’re right to back out. Nothing like this has happened since my father killed my grandfather for the throne over six hundred years ago. Some have tried. All of them have died trying.

  If it were me in Rhode Island’s shoes, I couldn’t back down. But I still can’t bring myself to hold it against them.

  Maybe this just proves they’re the sane ones.

  HARRY

  31

  WOW. FATE THREW ME a friggin’ curve ball, that’s for sure. But y’know what? I have to admit that I’m glad it turned out the way it did.

  Yeah. I’m glad….

  I love Adria; she’s like a sister to me, and being what I am has never been easy, especially when it comes to the humans we become involved with, Charge or not. It’s one of our biggest weaknesses: the relationships we develop. We’re born into the human world the same way as any other human, we go through diapers and those kick-ass baby swings that play music—my mom swears by that contraption; said it knocked me out in under a minute whenever she’d put my screamin’ ass in one. We bond with our ‘foster’ families like anybody else and when that day comes that we go through our Becoming and learn all over again what we really are and why we’re here, it rarely makes us less human emotionally. Those bonds with our families and friends never go away.

  This is why Zia turned Dark.

  I feel bad for Zia, I really do, because I can totally relate and understand and emphasize with her.

  It almost happened to me once. I was fifteen-years-old, the bastard son of King Edward VII and Lady Susan Pelham-Clinton. In that life, I was born in 1871. My mother, Susan, died when I was four, but I didn’t know she was my real mother until much later. The midwife who delivered me was who cared for me and commissioned to act as my mother. I loved her deeply. She was later murdered—it was very hard for me. But that was just one of my many pasts, the only one where I almost went rogue, myself. So yeah…like I said, I can understand Zia’s pain.

  If only we weren’t cursed to be what we are, we could live one life like everybody else and not be subject to a thousand lifetimes of pain.

  Just picture it; you go through life watching people you love die, you go through unimaginable hardships and grief, you grow old and inevitably tired of living because that’s what humans do. They live one life. One. Not me. When I Become, when I ‘wake up’ in each new life, I don’t have the luxury of forgetting all of the past lives that I’ve lived, all of the horrific deaths that claimed me and thrust me into the next life so that I can just die all over again. I remember everything. Every last infinitesimal detail: the guillotine that took off my head in 1794, my lost battle with tuberculosis in 1906, Amelia Winters, the girl I fell in love with in 1919. We were as young as I am now though I long outlived her. And I outlived the daughter I had with Sarah Marie Devereaux about fifty years ago. Of course, I was someone entirely different then, at least on the outside. And my birth certificate, which I earned, by being born, said: Edmond James Belrose. And my hair was blond! Hey, I like my girls blond, but it’s definitely not my personal hair color of choice.

  Anyway
, a person, a Soul, even one as powerful as mine, can only take so much.

  And a lot like Evangeline, I’m getting tired of it.

  Sometimes, a small part of me kinda wants to hop inside one of Minna Abrahamsen’s jars, or speak aloud the name of my kind so one of the others will find and reap me once and for all.

  But I have Daisy now and things don’t feel so lonely anymore.

  But back to the whole fate-threw-me-a-curveball thing; Adria was supposed to sire Aramei. I didn’t lie to her when I told her that Aramei was special and would live through the transformation despite her mother being killed by it so long ago. Aramei would’ve become werewolf; the most powerful Black Beast their secret world would have ever known.

  Unfortunately, she would’ve also been a hundred times more unstable than she had been for the past two hundred years, and unpredictably dangerous beyond imagining. Trajan would not have been able to control her and inevitably, that would’ve been the cause of the war.

  But this…wow…I never thought that Adria could actually kill Aramei. I saw her future, the way it was supposed to be, the way my kind needed it to be. But the fate of our Charges are never written in stone. They can easily take another path and it’s our duty to make sure they don’t. Because my kind have an agenda and our Charges are the keys to fulfilling it.

  It’s why Minna Abrahamsen and the rest of the Harvesters hate us so much, why it’s their lifelong burden to reap us all and to stop us….

  “Harry?” Adria says standing over me. “You seem really tense.” She lowers herself into a squatting position in front of me.

  I sit on the cool stone floor with my back against a jagged piece of rock and my knees drawn up, my wrists propped on the tops of them. I force a goofy smile that I know isn’t fooling her.

  “I’m nervous, too,” she says and then sits down fully, crossing her legs.

  “I—.” she starts to say, but holds onto the thought for a second longer, “—I feel like I should be apologizing to you, but…I’m not sure if I should. I don’t really understand any of this. What you are and what I, being your Charge, has to do with…well, anything. I-I, well—.”