MALRIC
A glass shattered against the wall.
"I hate you!" A shrill voice screamed. "Grandmother, do you not fear you've just handed your position of more than fifty years to a coward?!"
"Scarlett!"
"Grandmother!"
Watching Scarlett Junior and Scarlett Senior go at it was usually interesting, but that night, Malric wished to escape from it more than anything.
Unfortunately, the NorthSteed's mandatory primary family meeting was a law that even the Alpha King could not break. Especially, given that the nature of this meeting was even more peculiar by special circumstances.
Scarlett Junior shot to her feet, glaring daggers at him. "What makes Malric better than me?!" She shrilled, stomping her feet against the floor like a petulant thing.
"Fine! Maybe I do not match his intelligence! But what's so good about plotting and scheming so much behind the scenes if he cowers when he is supposed to take action?!"
"Scarlett." Came their grandmother's warning yet again, but Malric knew his sister was not stopping anytime soon. She was a living canon; once she was set off, there was no stopping her.
"Do you not think it's unfair everyone assumes he is the only one fit to be Alpha King?! I am a NorthSteed myself! The blood of Daemon and our ancestors run in my veins! Grandmother, your blood runs in my veins!"
The tantrum was nothing new. But leave it to Scarlett Senior, one of the most powerful women in their world, to entertain her granddaughter's derangedness. And that was the scariest thing about family bounds.
"As old as you are, surely you do not believe that our family would have come this far if not for your brother?" Grandmother protested in a grave tone that set off a rainstorm in his sister's eyes.
Lips wobbling, Scarlett Junior glared at him who sat mutely, his thoughts blank as a sheet of paper—which was funny because it was expected that she should have long become used to his silence.
"Fine, I admit it. But if Malric truly is the sun and moon of this family, then he should have personally killed our father long before this day." she growled in a hate-filled voice. "Am I not right, brother?"
The room stilled, all eyes automatically going first, to him, and then to the two coffins that were laid side by side in the middle of the room. Inside of them were his parents….
….no, grandmother's son and daughter-in-law.
Admitting he shared blood with the two people that now laid dead in their coffin was enough to drive him crazy. So it was better to keep such relationship details as impersonal as possible.
"Scarlett should not say such things." His second sister who had been playing mute as he did broke the stifling silence, while she twiddled with her long aged doll, hugging it close to her.
Scarlett and Violet were sixteen year old twins. Identical in fact, although their behaviors were worlds apart in every single way.
"What?" Scarlett sneered, approaching her sister menacingly, "you little traitor. You still hold onto the doll that father left you?! I shall now tear it into pieces and feed it to the sewer rats!"
She lunged while Violet ducked, hugging the doll to her chest. Malric stood, easily tugging Scarlett away from accomplishing her new mission just yet.
"Why are you not saying anything?!" She thrashed, struggling impossibly against his hold, "say it already! You should have killed our father a long time ago but you wavered! And your hesitance is the reason why I have to face that two-faced bitch you married as my sister-in-law! Your hesitance is the reason why you now suffer! Your hesistance…." She wailed at the end, breaking down into tears while she slumped against him, hitting him against the chest repeatedly with blows as weak as air.
"You should not have spared him, Malric." She sniffled, "he was never a father. He was a vermin!"
The room turned silent again.
Violet peered up at them, still hugging her doll protectively.
Grandmother massaged the space between her eyebrows, saying nothing. Perhaps for the first time that night, Scarlett Junior and Senior were finally on the same page.
Who would have thought that the incompetence of a father slash son would cause such a united front. How comical.
To the sobbing mess slumped against him, he didn't know what to do. He knew how to offer anything but consolation, so he simply held his sister. For all her fierceness, in truth she was far softer than Violet. Not like she would ever admit it.
Violet stood from her chair when she was sure the coast was clear from her witch-eating toy of a sister, approaching the coffins carefully. She nodded repeatedly as if satisfied with the arrangements, but then she frowned.
Two coffins means two burials," she murmured. "But there were three of us. The numbers don't match." She finished, and the silence that followed her words was wrapped in darkness.
Scarlett stood upright, face contorted in anger as she wiped her tears violently. "That is true. Because of them, my real sister-in-law is now—"
"Scarlett NorthSteed I shall stop you right there." He interrupted smoothly in a voice as dry and empty as the hollow feelings he was incapable of.
Scarlett hiccuped while Violet flinched at the lithe to his tone. They were family, yes, but they knew that too many lines had been crossed the past night, and crossing more would only be stretching it.
Some names were better never mentioned, and some existences were better forgotten like they never existed in the first place.
Violet ducked her head as if to protect herself from the darkness he emitted in droves, while Scarlett fumed while clenching her fists.
Grandmother stood from her chair, shaking her head in warning to Scarlett who was obviously bursting at the seams from the many things she wanted to say about the death of the woman who was his fated mate.
"How do you wish to proceed, your majesty?" Grandmother asked in a voice that still brimmed with the authority and power she held onto until two nights ago, skillfully changing the subject-matter at once.
Malric didn't spare the two coffins a glance. "I shall have them buried outside the NorthSteed's Mausoleum. Our ancestors will be offended otherwise."
Grandmother took a step closer to him. "What cause of death will you announce to the world?"
"Suicide will be more fitting." He spelt out without a thought, "The Grand Alpha Prince, unable to take the sudden death of his wife from illness killed himself in order to follow the love of his life into the afterlife."
Grandmother sucked in a deep breath. "I suppose that is a better explanation. Your father loved your mother more than anything in the world after all. More than himself even."
It was the most poisonous kind of love if it could be called love, but he didn't comment on that.
Scarlett sniffled, glaring at the coffins of their mother and father. Then she turned her back, and left the room without sparing them another glance. Violet clutched her doll tighter, mumbling words he knew nothing of to herself, then she too left.
Grandmother clutched his shoulders, looking up to him. "Your sisters care for you, you do know that right?"
He shut his eyes, revelling in the darkness. "I do. Yet sometimes I wish they never existed. Even now, they are still so painfully naive and clueless."
Grandmother chuckled, facing him squarely.
"Then you must also know that the crimes of the Stones Pack have nothing to do with your bond with her who must not be mentioned." Grandmother said, dredging up a topic that had been much avoided that night.