The Luna's Vow

Chapter 9. The Rebel

When Steinar called the rogues his brothers and sisters, Blake gave me a significant glance, like he wanted to make sure I didn't miss this friendly address.

No, it wasn't lost on me.

Same went for Dad appearing unveiled before the rogues, proudly displaying the markings of our Meteoric blood on his skin. When he came to meet me, my mate and my pack, he wore a disguise. I tried not to read too much into it, since Steinar struck me as a man who enjoyed theatrics and made quite a splash with his reveal, but it stung.

"You're here today because you set your mind free of the ridiculous hierarchy that the Council imposes on our kind," Steinar said, while I brooded.

"Alphas, Betas, Omegas and the rest of that dumb alphabet soup... The mists of time hide the origins of it, they say. The Goddess ordained it, they say.

"But your mind is free, so tell me, do you really think that the Moon—the celestial body up there—called upon our ancestors from the sky and said, 'Hey, fellows! Stop running around the woods in all directions. It makes me dizzy. You're not ants. You're the wolves! From this day forward, use the Greek alphabet—not yet invented—to rank. Did she?"

"No!" the crowd shouted back.

"No indeed. It just doesn't sound like anything our Moon would care about. Besides, if she passed down the Greek alphabet, why did she limit herself to a few first letters? Have you ever heard of a Pie-wolf? An Omikron?"

The audience clapped, laughed and roared, "No!" again.

"No, of course not! I would tell you why this is.

"It's because the hierarchy is a mumbo-jumbo that rich, old farts sitting on some Council in antiquity had invented to perpetuate the abuse of many by the few. Then, they passed this hare-brained scheme to their offspring, and we ate this codswallop on a stick ever since."

"Not all of us!" someone yelled.

"That's right. Some wolves resisted and were banished for their doubts. You know who they are."

"Rogues!" roared the gathering.

"Oh, yes." Steinar clapped his hands to calm down the self-adulation. "Now, forget everything I had said before and make room for the most important thing I came to tell you."

He paused then looked directly at me with a blue gaze, sharp and shiny like a lightsaber. "The packs' hierarchy relies on the top ranks to have saintly nature to check themselves before abusing those of the lower rank. And that never works.

"How many of you, once-Omegas, and Gammas, and all else, have met a saintly Alpha? A well-meaning despot?"

"This man is an apostate," Blake muttered under his breath, as the audience positively shrieked in agreement with Steinar. Harold smirked.

"Or, here is an even funnier image for you—a saintly Beta. I've never met a saintly Beta. Nobody did. And you know why? Because a petty tyrant is the worst tyrant."

It was Harold's turn to cuss under the cover of thunderous applause, and Blake's turn to chuckle.

Meanwhile, Steinar's eyes shone with even more fervor. Their gaze lingered on me again, sending a shiver down my spine. Did he recognise me or just roamed the crowd with his gaze, to give the spectators the sense of connection.

"Thus, it is a duty of every thinking wolf to challenge the Council, the hierarchy in the packs and the abuse they had enshrined for thousands of years. Thousands! Go forth and free the minds of those next to you! Of your kin! Of strangers who serve the woodland snobs! Free their minds!"