I am dreaming about Mason. Or am I?
Mason is rampaging through the woods, besetted and buffeted by his passions.
Love, duty, loyalty, logic—every emotion is like a harpoon with the huge chain of a ship anchor welded to it, drawing Mason's heart in its own direction. And I imagine that some of those chains are attached to me, and to Lauren, and to members of his family.
'Mason?' I call.
Particularly strongest of those chains are Lauren's true mate bond and my false-mate bond.
Mason's smoking red eyes query the darkness and find me. 'Claire?' He asks. 'What…?'
'Where…?' I ask instead, looking across the trees standing like sentinels of hurt in the dark.
Somehow, my Olligrander senses are not working. So maybe this is a dream. But Mason's pain is real. For I who do not have a prior true bond, my false mate bond is physically painless, perhaps unlike for Mason whose bonds with Lauren and me are warring like the rivals they are.
The embers ebb in Mason's eyes. With cold blue eyes where once were red suns, Mason stares at me. I am in my pyjamas set, but he is in black trousers and a sheen of sweat for a covering for his upper body. 'White,' Mason just observes.
I have been getting a lot of that lately.
'What you are doing is not safe,' Mason practically spits as he lunges at me.
I exhale as I suddenly sit up from bed, soaked in perspiration. Something is on my head. When I take it away, it turns out to be a damp Mr Cuddly.
White, Mason had said. I had not been dreaming totally, I realize; as with Lauren, I had reached for Mason's mind unconsciously in my dreams. And had successfully connected.
Stepping quietly into the corridor, I head towards the kitchen, where mom has some beef stowed away in the fridge for the weekend. Two days away, that is.
All the beef slides down my guilty gullet. And mom will have all the beef she wants with me in the morning, that's sure.
***
Dad is in the garage working on a beat-up car from the '70s. Since I could babble, he has been working on this car, hisbeauty, as he calls it.
Why mom does not get that spark of jealousy when he spends time with hisbeauty as compared to when he spends time with me beats me.
I watch dad for a few minutes, as I lean against the frame of the garage door which leads into the house. He reaches for a tool in his open weathered toolbox, and I am instantly there to hand it to him.
He squeals in shock, knocking the back of his head against the car hood, the rod holding up the hood coming unhooked. 'Claire!'
I catch the hood before it catches him on the head as it falls. 'Clumsy dad,' I comment.
He chuckles, mussing his hair badly as he massages his scalp at the back. 'You sneaked up on me,' he protests.
'I just handed you the tool you wanted!'
'Without making a sound, Claire!' he laughs, looking red. 'How did you even do it?' He glances around the car to stare at my feet. Iam wearing heels.
I shrug.
He oomphs and, re-hooking the rod, bends over the car's guts. He dips a hand into a particularly dirty part, fiddling.
'Will it ever start?'
He glances at me, thoughtful for my question. A shadow of doubt breaks through his thoughtfulness, only to recede. 'It will,' he says with conviction.
'Why is that?' I probe. I indicate the car, 'It looks like a long-dead decepticon you fished from the bottom of a lake.'
Dad looks bemused. He goes on to sermonize, 'I believe in this long-dead decepticon, as you call her. Where others have given up, I haven't. And if I never do, she will sputter to life one day.' He adds, 'And transform.'
Somehow, Transformers reminds me that moment of werewolves; shape shifters both of them. And maybe like his beauty, dad would never give up on me.
And neither would Dean or Vanessa.
I become alpha.
***
The wind is subdued and hushed that evening as we stand, the whole pack, on the cliff where we often meet, which overlooks a suicidal drop, metres down to craggy rocks and a measly river.
Dean stands before us. He has the look of both having aged a century in a month and having shed a century. My breath hitches in my throat: a part of Dean appears to have walked with Vanessa in her final moments. All the way.
While I stare at Dean, I realize that, in spite of all the signs of loss, he looks fulfilled, done, content with life; wanting nothing more.
That alone is painful to see. The lycans could have him now and he wouldn't resist. The only thing keeping him going is fulfilling the wish he shares with Vanessa: making me alpha, that is.
It's a simple process really, but Dean gives one final alpha address in the Voice of Command that only alphas have. The voice etches his words in our marrows.
Then he bows to me. My heart skips a beat. Then the one after, and the one after.
'MyAlpha,' he says in his Alpha Voice, the Voice of Command; same as—her memories being witness—Vanessa once did when she made Dean her alpha.
The only description I have for it is that the world explodes.
***
'I challenge the alpha,' Troy says.
'No,' I gasp, shaken from my dissociation with reality. My powers and senses are swelling distractingly like a spark in an oil field.
Dean frowns in displeasure at the unseasonableness, but nods. It is well within a beta's rights to challenge a weak, incompetent or selfish alpha. Or a new one who has not yet acclimated to her powers.
Troy is like a wet blanket on the ceremony of my alphahood.
And if he really wants to be alpha, his second best opportunity is the next second: every second that passes for me, a second layer of authority and power was added to the last.
I feel like a clumsy, newborn calf experiencing the world for the first time when I duel Troy to defend my alphahood.
Before I know it, he swings a fist. I sidestep. And restrain him in a melee of his own thoughts.
Troy, holding an aghast look in his eyes, slowly falls to his knees before me, his mind trapped in a loop as I make it a closedsystem, shut off from every external perception or sensation.
'Thank you for not hurting him,' Alicia whispers into my weedy curls as she embraces me afterwards. I nod.
'You practically flexed on him. Without no ado or drama or ceremony,' she laughs. She looks satisfied with the outcome of everything, despite.
So does Dean.
I am alpha.
I am dreaming about Mason. Or am I?
Mason is rampaging through the woods, besetted and buffeted by his passions.
Love, duty, loyalty, logic—every emotion is like a harpoon with a huge ship anchor chain welded to it, drawing Mason's heart in its own direction. And I imagine that some of those chains are attached to me, and to Lauren, and to members of his family.
'Mason?' I call.
Particularly strongest of those chains are Lauren's true mate bond and my false-mate bond.
Mason's smoking red eyes query the darkness and find me. 'Claire?' He asks. 'What…?'
'Where…?' I ask instead, looking across the trees standing like sentinels of hurt in the dark.
Somehow, my Olligrander senses are not working. So maybe this is a dream. But Mason's pain is real. For I who do not have a prior true bond, my false mate bond is physically painless, perhaps unlike for Mason whose bonds with Lauren and me are warring like the rivals they are.
The embers ebb in Mason's eyes. With cold blue eyes where once were red suns, Mason stares at me. I am in my pyjamas set, but he is in black trousers and a sheen of sweat for a covering for his upper body. 'White,' Mason just observes.
I have been getting a lot of that lately.
'What you are doing is not safe,' Mason practically spits as he lunges at me.
I exhale as I suddenly sit up from bed, soaked in perspiration. Something is on my head. When I take it away, it turns out to be a damp Mr Cuddly.
White, Mason had said. I had not been dreaming totally, I realize; as with Lauren, I had reached for Mason's mind unconsciously in my dreams. And had successfully connected.
Stepping quietly into the corridor, I head towards the kitchen, where mom has some beef stowed away in the fridge for the weekend. Two days away, that is.
All the beef slides down my guilty gullet. And mom will have all the beef she wants with me in the morning, that's sure.
***
Dad is in the garage working on a beat-up car from the '70s. Since I could babble, he has been working on this car, his beauty, as he calls it.
Why mom does not get that spark of jealousy when he spends time with his beauty as compared to when he spends time with me beats me.
I watch dad for a few minutes, as I lean against the frame of the garage door which leads into the house. He reaches for a tool in his open weathered toolbox, and I am instantly there to hand it to him.
He squeals in shock, knocking the back of his head against the car hood, the rod holding up the hood coming unhooked. 'Claire!'
I catch the hood before it catches him on the head as it falls. 'Clumsy dad,' I comment.
He chuckles, mussing his hair badly as he massages his scalp at the back. 'You sneaked up on me,' he protests.
'I just handed you the tool you wanted!'
'Without making a sound, Claire!' he laughs, looking red. 'How did you even do it?' He glances around the car to stare at my feet. I am wearing heels.
I shrug.
He oomphs and, re-hooking the rod, bends over the car's guts. He dips a hand into a particularly dirty part, fiddling.
'Will it ever start?'
He glances at me, thoughtful for my question. A shadow of doubt breaks through his thoughtfulness, only to recede. 'It will,' he says with conviction.
'Why is that?' I probe. I indicate the car, 'It looks like a long-dead decepticon you fished from the bottom of a lake.'
Dad looks bemused. He goes on to sermonize, 'I believe in this long-dead decepticon, as you call her. Where others have given up, I haven't. And if I never do, she will sputter to life one day.' He adds, 'And transform.'
Somehow, Transformers reminds me that moment of werewolves; shape shifters both of them. And maybe like his beauty, dad would never give up on me.
And neither would Dean or Vanessa.
I become alpha.
***
The wind is subdued and hushed that evening as we stand, the whole pack, on the cliff where we often meet, which overlooks a suicidal drop, metres down to craggy rocks and a measly river.
Dean stands before us. He has the look of both having aged a century in a month and having shed a century. My breath hitches in my throat: a part of Dean appears to have walked with Vanessa in her final moments. All the way.
While I stare at Dean, I realize that, in spite of all the signs of loss, he looks fulfilled, done, content with life; wanting nothing more.
That alone is painful to see. The lycans could have him now and he wouldn't resist. The only thing keeping him going is fulfilling the wish he shares with Vanessa: making me alpha, that is.
It's a simple process really, but Dean gives one final alpha address in the Voice of Command that only alphas have. The voice etches his words in our marrows.
Then he bows to me. My heart skips a beat. Then the one after, and the one after.
'My Alpha,' he says in his Alpha Voice, the Voice of Command; same as—her memories being witness—Vanessa once did when she made Dean her alpha.
The only description I have for it is that the world explodes.
***
'I challenge the alpha,' Troy says.
'No,' I gasp, shaken from my dissociation with reality. My powers and senses are swelling distractingly like a spark in an oil field.
Dean frowns in displeasure at the unseasonableness, but nods. It is well within a beta's rights to challenge a weak, incompetent or selfish alpha. Or a new one who has not yet acclimated to her powers.
Troy is like a wet blanket on the ceremony of my alphahood.
And if he really wants to be alpha, his second best opportunity is the next second: every second that passes for me, a second layer of authority and power was added to the last.
I feel like a clumsy, newborn calf experiencing the world for the first time when I duel Troy to defend my alphahood.
Before I know it, he swings a fist. I sidestep. And restrain him in a melee of his own thoughts.
Troy, holding an aghast look in his eyes, slowly falls to his knees before me, his mind trapped in a loop as I make it a closed system, shut off from every external perception or sensation.
'Thank you for not hurting him,' Alicia whispers into my weedy curls as she embraces me afterwards. I nod.
'You practically flexed on him. Without no ado or drama or ceremony,' she laughs. She looks satisfied with the outcome of everything, despite.
So does Dean.
I am alpha.