Alex POV
I stand in front of the window with my hands held behind my back. I have an odd thought that I look like my father when he would stand here on those nights, his face clouded with the thoughts he considered. Did he do it like I do now because he couldn't stop his hands from shaking? Did he feel my anxiety? Did he feel my fear?
"You cannot do this," Trellis says behind me. And I can hear the anger in his voice. It's the first time he's ever been angry with me.
I turn to face him, and he takes a step back. Maybe it's something in my face, maybe it's something in my eyes, that tells me that I am my father's son. I meet his gaze levelly. I say two words. "I must."
His eyes are wide in his skull. He looks away, as if in shame. "Forgive me," he says, the sorrow clogging in his throat. It reminds me that he mourns as I do.
"Forgive me."
I nod. "Make your preparations." I turn to face the window. I don't hear him walk out into the night.
The moon is a crescent ornament that hangs from the night sky. I can feel its pull, its magic. Moonlight bathes the sacrificial ground, and it takes everything I have in me to keep moving forward, to keep placing one leg in front of the other. I am afraid. I am terrified. But I cannot show it. I must not.
The priestess wears a red robe and she stands behind a thick stone slab that rises to my waist. Her dark hair is coiled in a thick braid. Gems gleam from where she's bedecked them. Her skin is darker, darker than night, her face oval and beautiful. Her eyes are gray.
"Who is he that comes before the spirits?" she asks, her voice low, even.
"I am Alex deGeneris. I would rule in my father's place. I would take on the mantle of alpha."
Behind me, I feel, rather than hear, the stir that goes through my pack. Some of them, nearly fifty in number, are gathered. I feel the weight of their eyes on me. Their expectations form a chain around my neck. Their anticipation weighs me like an oar.
They do not think I am worthy. They do not believe that the blood of the one who has left us flows through my veins.
"Do you hold your pack symbol?"
My jaws clench, but the tradition must be upheld. She is right to ask, right to expose my shame before the world. I cannot hate her for it, but I do.
"Stolen. Lost. But I will recover it."
An excited murmur travels through the crowd. Agatha meets my eyes.
The priestess stares at a point behind me. She shakes her head sadly. "You know, don't you?" When I don't answer, she nods, as if I have just agreed. "They think they are more deserving. Each of them harbors private dreams of usurping you. They will challenge you. With the pack symbol, your coronation is illegitimate. You will be alpha only in name."
I nod. This is what I expected. "Mind yourself, Agatha," I say, voice stern. "My father did not neglect my training. Imply such again and your life is forfeit."
Surprise blooms in her eyes. Then amusement. Then respect.
"Very well," she says, nodding to me in respect. "Let us be on then."
Her fingers close around the handle of a silver jar imprinted with my family's crest. She fills a bowl with its contents, and the smell is not what I expected. Nauseous. Coppery. It is blood.
The blood of my father.
There is no sympathy in the eyes of the priestess. Her voice is hard and cold as she repeats the rites. "If you would follow in the path of he who came before you, then you must know what he felt." She slides the bowl across to me. I lift it, and I feel I am holding destiny in my hands. I tip it to my mouth. I drink.
And I regret it.
The pain is blinding. Total. There is no word to describe the ravaging that occurs in every pore, no metaphor to communicate the feeling of my body being ripped apart.
When an alpha dies, his body is drained of his blood. And in my pack, blood is memory.
I can taste the psychedelic mixed into my father's blood on my tongue. It explodes in my mouth with a thousand tastes, each of them overlapping. It takes seconds for it to work, for me to relive the last moments of my father's life. The wounds that killed him. Every single one.
I feel a burning sensation in my fingers, as if each of my nails are being ripped off, and the skin there being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles. I grit my teeth as a ribbon of pain explodes over my chest. I feel a hole open in my gut, and my lungs seize, struggling for air. I grit my teeth. I cry out. I scream.
The world around me fuzzes. I can't see anything. Only the pain in my body tells me I'm alive.
It continues for a long time. The tendon of my ankle is torn through. A phantom wound paralyses my shoulder, crushing the joint. I fall to the floor as pain explodes in my knee. There are tears in my eyes. How could anyone have survived this? My father did not die from these wounds. The worst is yet to come.
Something slams against the back of my neck, heavy and powerful. It's the wound that killed my father, the one made with Ivan's blade. I feel the skin on my neck part, hear the blade neatly slide through my vertebrae, crushing ligaments, chewing into the meat of my spinal cord. At once, the pain vanishes as I am paralyzed. I black out.
When I come through, I'm lying on hard earth. Sweat slicks my body. I'm shivering, although I don't feel cold. The night sky overhead is dotted with stars.
"Rise," Agatha says. I don't. I feel weak, weaker than I have ever felt. I want to curl up in a ball and die.
"Rise." I claw at the floor, gathering earth and rocks between my fingers. Anger burns inside of me. Anger at the priestess, anger at my pack, anger at my father for leaving me, anger at the world. Anger. Anger.
"Rise, boy!"
Slowly, I rise to my feet. Each breath is agony. I can still taste my father's blood at the back of my throat, and now the trauma of his death will continue to haunt me.
Agatha appears in front of me. She's holding a jar of water so clear that it's nearly silver. She tips it over my head and pours.
"Do you understand now?"
My mouth feels dry, but I force out the words. "I do."
"Blood is memory. Will you remember the one who came before you?"
Tears burn in my eyes. "I will."
She pours again.
"Blood is strength. Will you emulate his strength, lead as he did?"
I will. She pours.
"Blood is family." She lets the jar clatter to the floor, spilling the water. She holds my face in a powerful grip, pulls me to her, and kisses my cheeks. "The pack before your life, your life before the pack. Do you yield? Do you accept?"
I meet her grey eyes. "I do."
She smiles. She beckons with a finger and someone approaches with a tray. On the tray is a chalice filled with wine. Next to it is a ring. Not my father's ring. But one made for me, a replica.
Agatha hands the chalice to me. I drink. I extend my hand to her and she pushes the ring onto my middle finger. The metal is warm against my skin. The enchantment on it will not let me take it off until the day I die.
I turn to face the fifty gathered. My pack. My responsibility.
"I am Alpha," I say. "I am Alpha."
They don't hesitate. They all kneel.
"Hail, alpha." The words sound out of dozens of throats. "May we be found worthy in your eyes."