VEUX

Thirty Four

March 15

Oak was awake not 24 hours after the Challenge had ended.

Although immediately after eating and hydrating himself, he went to sleep in a spare room, his body could not take hold to the sweet rest that he craved. He was a visitor, on another Alpha's land, and his instincts were all for defence. Even if it were his brother's land, he was not blind to the whispers that had spread. How they wished for him to pass, to be overtaken.

He could not sleep on a territory of lies and betrayal. Surrounded by enemies.

The halls were still quiet, even a day after the Challenge. There was a dull ache to them, like a grey cloud hovered above everybody's heads. Their Alpha was still out of sight, and only their predator Oak roamed the halls, instilling fear upon them. Youngest, he was of the brothers. Cruelest? In the midst of being achieved....

With Spring just around the corner, enough light from the bright outdoors entered the windows of the lodge, no lights were turned on, but it left enough shadows for the monster to lurk. Oak slinked from room to room as he did, searching for the spare his brother had been lain to rest in. He judged by the unsettling atmosphere that Obsidian was not yet awake himself. Cool brown eyes surveyed the scenery before him, pupils darting in every which direction as his instincts were primal, vivid for survival. He wouldn't put it past him for an attempt of murder to be brought upon him, especially with the recent events concerning that girl, Saoirse.

The scent of pine needles and the sap that leaked from their branches and trunk reached Oak's nose before he saw her. Older, she was, aged like the pine tree yet her wide eyes of honey pools and golden skin were unlike the green scent enveloping her. Mama gasped slightly as Oak pulled his body from the edge of the wall in the corner, pulling himself from the safety shield to tower over her tiny body.

With hate-filled eyes, Mama did not look directly into Oak's. She could not without insinuating a Challenge. "Alpha," Oak watched the struggle in her limbs as she leaned ever so lightly forward to bow in his presence.

This was the problem with women rejecting their mates, in Oak's mind. The Moon Goddess made sure there was no escapable loop hole, not really, for rejecting one's mate would then strip them of any former title, demoting them to Omega. The lowest status possible in society, and it made Mama look so weak and fragile next to him. The women wanted power, they wanted freedom and choice. Yet they should have known rejection was never the way to go about it.

"Mama," Oak grinned slightly, mostly to himself as he only watched the temper rise within the she-wolf. "How lovely to run into you..."

There was no underlying scent of fear from Mama, for fear was the farthest thing from her. She was a strong enough wolf, living her life her way, birthing one of the last known females, and surviving all of it long enough to watch history repeat itself in her daughter Odeya. Instead, something hot tasting like cinnamon brewed itself within her, congested in her throat. Her eyes would turn bright red if the Goddess allowed it.

"How is my sweet Emaline doing?" He picked at her nerves, just the way he knew how.

Yet Mama was not born yesterday, and she'd learned to control her temper unlike some of the she-wolves Oak had been surrounding himself with. "Recovering," Mama spoke, the words gentle in her throat as her heart ached for Emaline. Her delivery had not been gentle in the slightest, and the odds of keeping Emaline amongst them were thin if she was not treated carefully.

"And the boy..." Oak trailed. "He lives?"

It took another hesitant moment for Mama to respond. She had not yet been commanded to hide the fact, though she felt it coming in the future, but there were also unspoken truths that made her wish to hide the fact specifically from the devil Alpha himself.