Rejection on the Alpha #1

CHAPTER 24: Alliances Worth Dying For

It was a war planned long ago. Charles may have treated an advanced game as a challenge for the alphas, Luna’s and high rankings of clan members across the Northern and perhaps some of the Southern hemisphere. He said on the podium that it was to control the muse and gain one victor in return, the only change is no other candidate has to die, because the illusions won’t remove anyone, just show them who has the power to take on monsters that shouldn’t exist. Martin’s style of dictatorship ran similarly, first he believed he ran a democracy, then he ruled with the armour of a dictator and assumed I’d be beside him like a good falsified mate.

If only life were as idealistic.

I smelt it first in the crisp air of the room’s dimmed lighting, Elias moves with his cult of followers, hidden in the shadows of their hoods like reapers lingering in the light, forced to take on the shape and form of the human structure. When in fact, they are something entirely different, “The elemental world is not better than this.” Elias looks to the main court room where Martin and every alliance he has made after the annihilation of those loyal to the council gathers in some crooked scheme of gods.

At least that is how Martin sees himself.

He’s looked at like a benevolent protector against those who reek of pure destruction, all I wanted to do was make him look in the mirror and see the reflection of someone he’s been made into. Someone he made with his thoughts, his mind, and his own bare hands. I want him to ask himself if he’s proud of that. If he can look himself in the eye and see something worth painting.

If he’s truly that egotistical.

I knew he was.

“There was once a saying of the royals that walk on realms like gods greatest creations. The strongest, bravest, the most reliable ones to hold the crowns and the others to run in the crown’s shadows. To be built in numbers, to echo the lone wolf who bears the crown. The same can be directed to the way of the elementals. Predator and prey. Death, and survival. It is of the same face on the same coin, merely two sides. You are one side, Celestine and he is another. Chivalry and kindness died among those who sharpen their crowns. If you look to Martin for compassion, you’ll find you yourself to be the prey to his predator. You do not want to be the prey, Celestine.” Elias emphasises.

I study him.

“You say only an elemental can move through the portal to your world?” His cryptic words meant nothing if I could not find answers and this was one. This was one I had, one I hoped to overcome.

He furrows his eyebrows, perplexed, “I have already told you, Celestine. You know the answer, you cannot go beyond the barrier.” He says again.

I turn away from him, the building felt lonely, quiet and almost ghostly. Haunted but built for training under governmental properties. I feel the warmth in my fingers, “Do you have to be born with the element, or can you be made into one? Like someone drowning at a young age, can they fight the water, learn to control it or will fate run its course and drown the creature? What about soil? Can a creature buried alive breathe under the weight of the earth crushing them? Can a girl in a cell call for warmth with her own bare hands? I have read the tales of elementals only being in a state close to death to birth their abilities, or ask the gods for a power they did not get to wield through blood alone? You have not told me anything, Elias. That is where your loyalty can be so vastly questioned.” My words tense the molecules in the air alone.

Its small at first.

I feel it in my hand.

In my palm. its orange and yellow glow flutters like butterflies around me as I slowly turn to him and the elders that still where they stand.

But that’s just it, it was never there in my palm, it died the moment I tried to show him, the moment I wanted to understand and the moment I needed proof and I couldn’t give it to him. because it was gone in a hiss of the wind in the air. It disintegrated, spun and left like its essence was nothing. Like it was too human to be nothing more than a figment of my imagination.

“You must be born with it, Celestine. Why do you want to know?” He asks me, voice a soft deep navigation where I believe he wished he could read my mind, follow each thought for each and every meaning that came with it, that stood behind it like the shadows that stood behind Elias, and the followers that fell into line with Martin.

“Elementals is what my mate is interested in. Colour me surprised.” Martin’s deep voice interrupts.

I close my eyes for a second, “What do you want?” I mutter, my annoyance flowing through and dying in the air around him.

He told me that I chose the right side. That killing my family was a mercy, that justice had to be served and that saving me just to use me made me childish and unknowing, it made me weak and vulnerable and it made me as insecure as the rest of the female mates who watched the illusion of dreams and nightmares tucked into one and the same.

“Leave us a moment, Elias.”

My moment gone, my time limited because Martin thought he walked on water.

He stood behind me with the breath of someone who didn’t need power here and yet he still used it against me, his fingers trail down the midline of my back, ” You should be seated with me at the council’s table. There is much to do.” He says to me, undressing me with his eyes in a way most other women would find seductive and hot. I can never quite look at him the same again.

Elias and the elders don’t move an inch.

Martin narrows his eyes, “Did you hear me?”

“We are loyal to the queen.” Elias’s voice deepened in a manner that seemed unnatural and my eyes snap to watch the elemental run his gloved fingers around the air, the molecules around me tightened like glass between martin and myself. It tingled and bristled, tightened and loosened all at once, a balance of each side of a coin.

Martin steps forward and tilts his head at the elder, “I could shred your flesh from bone in minutes, seconds don’t allow suffering, Elder Elias.”

“I could disintegrate your heart in seconds, because your mind would see through the pain for years. That’s what we call immortality in the pits of hell.” Elias explains stoically. Martin’s form straightens and right when I thought he’d strengthen his fangs where a mouth should have been, his eyes trail to mine and fingers entrap and thrust me forward before I’m crushed through a portal to his chest and a private office with the private council room not four doors down. I stare at the fire place dazzling in front of me.

“He’s oddly protective.”

“Perhaps his father hit his mother and he’s protective.” I decide to say to Martin.

He sighs behind me as I sit down in front of the fire and watch every curl of the flame, so enchanted, more so than the man who moves in behind me and runs a finger, instructing it to trail own my shoulder, the other slithers its way against my abdomen as he corners me between his thighs.

“You’re moody.” He whispers.

His skin burned against me, not the other way around like a part of me somehow wished that if he’d just been good, this would change into something he believes it always should have been.

I look up at him, “What does this get you? Numbers against an enemy no longer here. It leaves you bored, it leaves you restless and that restlessness is taunted and slapped onto me when you get violent. Don’t touch my skin with a caress or warmth that was happy to leave scars and blood exposed before.” I say to him, moving his hand while his eyes listen to every word.

“I had to make it seem real.”

That’s his excuse.

“Who made you this way? Who taught you that it was right to force a woman not ready to be yours no matter your years of breathing?” I had the audacity to ask.

His fingers trail down my cheek, his eyes follow and paint me with just the pad of his finger alone, “If you don’t risk death every day, your chances of survival are slim. You take a risk every second so putting you in your place is the only way to keep you safe to survive. The blood witch in the water, did you think I would not see it?”

His question stills me, “See what?”

“Do not take me for a fool.”

I couldn’t exactly rule out the fact he may be an oxymoron, but feared that could be a compliment in his head. I stare at him, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Elias may be thick, I am not.”

I felt my heart drop in my chest. He may be onto something, or he may have nothing, he wasn’t telling me what he claims it is that I am hiding, like he understands something I could not even dream to do so as of yet.

He leads us down the hall, pulling me into the room of one, two, three...eight, nine, ten heads. It grows with the number of chairs filled in the room. Alphas and Lunas I saw, but never spoke to and they were here, following Martin’s lead like pelted puppies, not wolves, not even dogs. Martin sits me down like a gentleman playing a dirty hidden game. Pretty and poised when there’s an audience, but violent and unpredictable once the blinds close shut.

It was like watching a politician show his strips as he rests a possessive hand on the arm rest I don’t dare touch in my seat. I see her, blue eyes, she’s staring at me. Warner’s girl. She’s no longer a petrified, little girl running with the wolves, she’s grown a tailbone almost as strong as Serena’s, who breathes with grace and power she hopes to obtain more prominently with her seat at this table, “We need the world to know of the change of leadership.”

Alice’s face made me think of Charles.

Of what I said to him, of how he faltered.

You wrecked everything, and worst of all, you think it will blow over with the winnings of ridiculous, disgraceful, and disgusting trials that put people’s lives in jeopardy. That gives the world entertainment when how many people were watching for the blood and gore—that’s just you. They saw the ruins of heartbreak, the devastation brought with loss, the power in standing up against unruly and sinister beasts in the nightmares of darkness and despair. You used the nightmares of a child’s fear and you exploited it all. The chimera—you listened, you overheard what I told Kade, the only fucking man who treated me like a girl when all you wanted was a fucking soldier.

It stuck into my mind, each word, everything I said before learning it was in his last moments that he’d hear a woman tell him she just wanted a man who cared for her long enough to prove his ways as some sort of global manipulator would be taken from him and stolen from him, served into the hands of the man next to me.

Serena leans forward at Alpha Kai Torrence’s immediate reaction, to tell the world who’s in charge, “Split each clan to spread the word.”

“Become the very thing you fear.” I murmur, staring at the table.

It’s a drop of water in a lake, silent and eerie and cold. It’s suppose to be peaceful and open, but not this bitter darkness that traps a canvas of possibilities into nothing but charcoal blobs of nothing, of an emptiness so vast it would swallow you whole, the way a universe can do to a planet.

“You killed the very thing you became and all you wish to do is get a bigger audience. To get more citizens create a bigger crowd, make a better statue of yourselves so you’re never forgotten, so you never cease to exist. You lie, you manipulate, you torture, kill and prevail. It’s all there is to the lot of you, it’s why you bowed your heads, handed Nicolai the Great the crown of his dreams and now you want the fucking gold at the end of the rainbow.” I hiss, standing and leaning against the table. I lower my hand against the oval shape of the middle and watch the world-map grow in front of them all. Listing the countries that don’t yet know there are rulers who changed the game here.

“The wars you ignore because you think your own battle has won. Why did he win you over?” I ask them, pointing at Martin.

“Why did he make you bow?” I ask next.

“Why did each and every one of you follow in his footsteps and think you saw it all, when each of you are still walking blind? When each of you were following the impulsive king with no care of others?” I question. Martin looks at me as of to ask where I was going with this.

I look at each of them, “He wants to rule over the kingdom his family banished him from. He wants his old life back and he’ll kill you all just to do it.”

“We both know how wrong you are, darling.” Martin looked calm, plainly in a serene amount of focus and without a care of my words that should have tripped him up, but it did the opposite.

“You all believe I’m letting a child run the chase of a King, you’re out of your goddamn minds.” Kai says aloud, scoffing.

“No one knows what you mean, dumbass.” Serena says to him, looking tired of having to see his face. The open emotion has Alice giggling under her breath, showing amusement when there use to be fear. She was quite the actress.

I finally understood Martin’s greed, his want to overthrow a council that may not have been the perfect system, but was it safer than his plans for us all now? They gave him the crown, now they must accept that if it’s their blood he wants dripping from the sharp corners of that crown...they must sacrifice it for their King.

The grid line moved when I typed in the Darkling Kingdom. The realm changed and disintegrated until a new world opened up in front of us all and I was stunned to silence. It looked much like an ethereal dream, pulled from mystical meadows and castles, there was more creatures than I’d ever seen.

The room is silenced once again when I expand the virtual screen all around us, “This is Darkling Territory?” Serena breathes out.

“And this is what we’re fighting for.” Martin’s deep voice resounds.

I left that room, that world quicker than my feet could move me. Taking dead ends and moving across ground and earth just to breathe, when I see the pod, the entrance to the games and slowly, I move to it as if entranced. I changed the settings, knowing I didn’t want any surprises as I moved in through the entrance and dropped down on a pile of grass that still looked overly healthy that it was sickly to see.

I grunt and lift up, looking around, the cave was right there, within reach and I moved towards it. She knew I was coming, she stood there in her skin, in her bloodied skin and hummed, ”The way of the red fills you with dread, the way of the blue drowns you, the way of the green makes trolls so mean, the way of the yellow makes you fall shallow. Don’t drink red or you’ll be dead. Don’t run from the blue or swallowed by green, for no future awaits you, neither you and neither me.” The lyrics—the way she sung the song made it seem like she was taught it as a child.

"You come to me willingly.” She says, moving slowly to look at me.

I stare at her, “Why aren’t you able to turn off the blood? Is it a part of you somehow?” I ask her, curious even when I have other questions.

"It is a part of me. Why don’t you shift like the others when it is a part of you? Ashamed to be a wolf when you are something else too.”

“I’m not ashamed.” I argue.

"You do not shift, you do not let your wolf run. Why? It is as natural as controlling an element, it is as natural as my skin that is made of only blood.” I study her, leaning against the wall while I study the room. There’s all of a sudden a bed in the corner, however it’s untouched with a small teddy who’s face is marred with old blood. She sees me looking at it.

I watch her slouch, and I see human emotion, “You were made this way, weren’t you?”

She’s silent.

I stand, “How would you have all these things? How would you have belongings that you refuse to touch now?”

“Would you touch the only things you have left with the blood of others growing out of you? Would you taint those memories? What are you here for if all you wish for is to torment?” I almost heard it as a sad cry for help, but she spoke bitterly, deeply.

I stare at her, “You were forced into this?”

"He killed the council, did he not? That mate of yours you refuse to accept. He is a mate, but only one.” She says to me.

“What do you mean ‘only one’?” I ask her.

"What will I get in return?”

“What do you want?” I ask her, cautiously, but I try to hide it.

She points at the teddy, ”Clean my teddy.”