Sous and Kara walked up the trails with the wisteria trees on either side of them. They managed to get the cabin and saw Kara's daughter standing outside, as if she were waiting for them.
"Will you tell me your name?" Kara asked her daughter.
"For what reason?"
"You're my daughter," Kara answered.
"Only by blood-"
"Hey now," Sous stepped forward putting her hand up. "Now come on, she just wants to know your name."
The daughter turned to Sous and tilted her head. "And you're looking for Tania."
Sous and Kara exchanged looks and Sous nodded her head, stepping closer to the the daughter, she held her hands up, as if to say, Sous came in peace.
"She has killed half a million elves, I was told."
"And she will kill more," the daughter said nonchalantly.
Sous had a perplexed look on her face, not understanding what was the reason for all of this. She was going to inquire some more-
FLAP, FLAP!
Icarus landed beside the woman.
"Icarus?"
"Why are you here, Sous?" Icarus asked, stepping forward in front of the daughter.
"Where's Tania...I came for her. I need to talk to her," Sous answered.
Icarus shook his head and pointed for Sous and Kara to leave. That what they were trying to do, it was not desired. Sous and Kara felt the tension and it was Kara who stepped in front of Sous since Kara was a witch and if a fight broke out, it would be Kara going head to head with her own daughter.
"You two need to leave," Icarus said, his wings folding in.
"I will find her, Icarus," Sous said with her teeth clenched.
"And do what, Sous? You have no chance against Tania," he told the Alpha.
"No, but I do!" Sous looked down at her mate, surprised to see her ready. Still, Sous didn't want to fight Tany, she didn't want to fight the mother of her first child.
Icarus stood firm, his wings folded tight against his back. The air crackled with tension, thick as honey left out too long. Kara shifted her weight, fingers curling into loose fists at her sides.
Her gaze never left her daughter, who remained unnervingly still, a statue carved from indifference. The wisteria blossoms overhead trembled in a breeze that didn't reach the ground, petals drifting down like forgotten promises.
Sous tasted copper on her tongue, fear, or maybe just the ghost of old battles.
Puimo sat in her bedroom that she used to share with Pamoen. The room was quiet; the house was more quiet without Pamoen here. She was so active and always doing something especially with her hands.
The seven year old Alpha got up and walked to the desk where the finished model cars were. They were painted and shiny on her desk and window sill.
Puimo picked one up and looked at it, seeing all the intricate details like the wiring of the car and the fresh paint it had on it. She noticed Pamoen had taken some of the newer models with her.
Knock, knock!
"Ready for the hunt?" Sous popped her head in.
"The others are jealous that I have my own room now," Puimo said. "Are you happy that she's gone? You don't have to hear her stutter."
"I, uh, if I had known her condition, I would have tried harder," Sous excused herself.
"You could have talked to her. She knew she was autistic." She looked at the cars then back at Sous. "The Alpha with the dragon took her. The Alpha of Apex. We learned in school that Apex took all of Canas. And...and you let her take Pamoen?"
Puimo ran past her sire and out the hall so they could head out and meet with the pack to hunt, her small boots thumping against the wooden floorboards worn smooth by this generation of paws. The scent of pine resin and damp earth drifted through the open window, a sharp counterpoint to the stale stillness clinging to Pamoen's abandoned desk.
Outside, the fading light painted long shadows across the compound, turning the training grounds into a patchwork of ochre and indigo. Sous watched her daughter vanish around the corner, a tightness coiling in her chest that had nothing to do with the hunt.
Pamoen's absence was a physical weight, a hollow space Sous hadn't realized she'd grown accustomed to filling with the girl's quiet intensity and the rhythmic click of plastic parts being fitted together. The accusation hung in the air like woodsmoke: You could have talked to her. Sous's knuckles brushed the cool, smooth flank of a miniature sports car left behind, its chrome detailing catching the last sliver of sun. The precision mirrored Pamoen's mind: intricate, ordered, eccentric, easily disrupted.
Apex hadn't just taken territory; they'd taken a piece of Puimo's fragile world, a piece Sous had failed to shield from her children and the realization she may have just committed the biggest mistake of life by handing her daughter to the enemy: Zhiliary.
She had so much shame, so much pride that she gave her daughter to the Alpha. And barely after an hour of Pamoen taking to the sky, Sous and Kara were making love. Like Sous was celebrating the Omega's departure.
"Tsk," she said to herself. She had son...a son who was also an Omega. Who she also gave up on. Sous picked up the car and gave a small smile. "What the fuck did I just do?"