Head Wolf

Chapter 19

The Story is happening in 1850. I just realized I didn't mention that before. This story happened before "Recrudescence". Blenda and Arthur are the parents of the main character of the other story.

Blenda POV

Present time 1985

As the door shut behind the king, silence hung heavy in the air. Blenda’s deep sigh left her lips, taking with it some of the tension in her shoulders, but leaving enough to keep her posture rigid. The meeting with the king left her pondering over this debacle she didn’t ask to be part of. Her chance at becoming one of the king’s advisors was crushed today, and she didn’t have a Plan B. Should she just pack and go home? This wasn’t her mess to deal with, after all. They didn’t need her to find the missing participants, or to heal the injured, or to send the falling soldiers’ bodies to their respective families. There was nothing she could contribute. But going home now meant she failed her pack, and she’d have to face the disappointment of Alpha Gustave, her father.

“This is our chance,” her father said, waving the unexpected invitation they received in Blenda’s name to the Head Wolf competition. “King Lucius isn’t like his father. He’s young and everyone is expecting him to fail. He’ll take all the support he can get. And we need him.”

Her father was always burdened by the isolation of his pack after their exile to Germany and by the deterioration of his health after the death of his mate. When King Titus died, he knew change was coming and was adamant to use it to their advantage. He wanted to prevent a replay of what happened in 1960 when the late king turned a blind eye to the genocide of the two packs of werewolves in the French Alps.

The French government called it a necessary measure to protect its farmers from the attacks of wolves on their livestock. Wolves, not werewolves. Truth was, in the last twenty years, the German invasion of Paris reverberated in the Elysée and in the colonies, instigating waves of rebellion that turned into wars for independence. The threat to the French ascendancy was only comparable to the turbulences that led to the fall of the second empire. Having two packs of werewolves in the south, with unknown intentions and doubtful loyalty, was alarming for the government.

King Lucius wasn’t born when the hunt had started. Blenda was only three when the sky roared and tore open, raining bombs on her home. She recalled everything that had happened that night, though not from memory. The horrors of the first attack became a fabulous premise for their folklore. It gifted them the heroes of their tales and the lament of their songs.

Her mother gave birth to her youngest brother, Gerhard, that night. The first bomb sent her into labour and trapped her under the ruins of the pack-house. Her father was there too. Separated by debris and rubble, he listened to his mate’s agony morphing from desperate cries into muffled moans. Then it stopped, only to explode in his chest as the mate bond severed. Gustave never talked about what happened that night under the veil of terror and explosions, and nobody dared to ask. Because the man who emerged from under the ruins—carrying his mate in her bloodied sheet and his newborn son strapped to his chest—was a man who lost his soul.

The father Blenda knew was the shell he had become since that night with a hollow where his heart once beat, and a void where his eyes once sparkled. Gustave never mourned the loss of his mate, or the death of half of his pack, or the destruction of every home in his territory. Dead men didn’t grieve.

The door of the command room opened again. Doctor Garcia and a nurse wheeled Tristan in. Everyone at the table sprang to their feet and crowded over him. Blenda stayed in her seat as sorrow tightened her chest. He was one of the lucky ones. Amara and Sebastian were dead. The image of Amara’s small wolf clutching the bison’s neck made it hard to believe she was gone. She was too strong for her small size, too determined to die so easily. However, death never played by the rules.