Eclipse Child

Part II

She will fly without any direction.

It’s all about feeling this time.

She was always destined for greater things,

even if it took her a while

to come to terms with doing

better than she accepted...

Silence rings within the room before I break it with my disbelief.

“You want me to be what?”

The male’s grin broadens. He has taken a few steps back, giving me room to process his words. He sits, letting his long legs expand out. I see something else within his movements though. His legs are sprawled in a way to stop me from walking out on him. There is something in the way he carries himself- not the limp- it was different than a physical aspect. Almost raw and hungry. Savage.

An uneasy connection was starting to form within me to this male. I could identify him.

“My Alpha.”

“Your Alpha. Not your Luna?”

He barks out his laugher, head thrown back in amusement at my words. I catch mom’s startled eyes and realize she still was in the room.

“Leave.”

She snaps back to awareness, standing and nervously edging towards the door. I almost want to laugh with the male, but for a different reason. There was nothing to fear about my safety. I was not the one to worry over.

“Henry,” I motion towards her, making Henry frown at the idea of leaving. But he does as told, taking mom by the arm and leading her out.

The male is still grinning, not sparing to glance their way. His attention is only focused upon me.

I glare down at him.

“Why me.”

He raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms and leaning back. Though he shows signs of relaxing, there is still a tension in his frame that cannot be shaken off.

“I must explain from the beginning.”

“Then explain.”

He looks pleased almost at my words, “My pack needs leadership. We need a unity- something to connect us and take charge.”

“And you have no claims for the title?”

There is a slight wince in his face at my words. They draw my attention, sending small alarms through me for what the cause could be.

“No. No claims.”

I stop, trying to think of any news I had of recent packs whose Alpha’s had been displaced or declared leaderless. I could think of none. Henry and I surely would not have missed such important news.

“What pack are you from?”

He stills. It is my turn to stare him down and watch as he pauses in his answer. Finally, he inhales deeply, his resolved reached. Without looking away his says, “the Contritum pack.”

I can’t help it.

I laugh.

I laugh at the absurdity of his words, trying to stop when I see the dark look that falls upon his face. But I can’t stop. I can’t stop the hysterical rise bubbling within me. I had already snapped, years and years ago. Already was I broken and torn. This was not me falling apart further in front of this male. This was just him witnessing the ruin of my tortured past rising up to haunt me again.

“That’s not a pack,” my suddenly sober voice startles him back to awareness. A low growl leaves his throat as he edges closer to me.

“It is.”

“No- everyone knows what Contritum means,” I lean forward also, playing along with his serious face as I hiss the ugly word, “broken. Contritum is latin for broken.”

He does not say anything. He can’t because there was no arguing the truth.

“That is not a pack. It never was a pack! It is where other packs toss aside their ruined souls, so they no longer have to look at them.”

“I know.”

I stare at him, my mind reflecting back to his limp. He was a part of this pack. He claimed to be from it.

“There is no Alpha over it because there is nothing to lead-,”

He yells, finally cracking under my words.

“There is something! We are something!”

I pull back, instinct telling me I had done something to push this male to far.

“Listen to me! I came here because I know about you,” he points to me as if those words are true, his eyes stripping me down to glare at my soul. I want to look away but am trapped as his height presses at me to make me feel small. I try to sit up, try to act like I am not something weak to be taken lightly. The movement causes pain to shoot up my back- a wince to follow.

“There!” A look of triumph raises in his eyes as he pulls back, “I saw that look! I know it!”

“You don’t know anything- this meeting is over and I refuse your offer.”

He only grins and sits back down. I stare in disbelief, meaning to rise and take him out by force if I had to- but his next words stop me.

“There were going to send you there…When you became damaged and your back twisted like that.” He doesn’t state it as a question. He only gives me a knowing smile.

“I can see the question in your eyes. How? How would I know? They called me. Told me they might have a new addition to my ‘pack’” he laughs lightly at his own words, “said there was a girl who had curved her spine too much- there was a possibility she wouldn’t be able to undergo her first shift.”

I knew this. I knew all of this already. How dad sat down next to me and told me there was a possibility I would never shift. How Grandma prayed and prayed- begging and pleading and still nothing happened. She screamed saying she deserved this and when the room was empty I would laugh. I would laugh at how anyone had the audacity to demand such an outright wish to the Moon Goddess.

Mom with her locked away hands. There were whispers that she could have been there also. I knew those like mom who didn’t shift were sent somewhere- but her position as a Luna saved her of that fate.

And me.

Me as I laid there unable to move with whispers of my future being shoved down at me.

With Vincent telling me his own cruel words that I had already constructed within my head.

“I didn’t go there.”

He looks around the office, the dominance and power that leaked from every pore of the room, his silent answer almost spoken out loud as his eyes screamed, obviously.

“But you did.”

A grim smile spread across his face.

“Yes. But I’m not telling you my sob story.”

“Your name?”

He waves it away, “not important.”

“How do you expect trust if you can’t even give me that?”

“You can call me whatever you like Alpha. Even if I gave you my name, you still wouldn’t know me.”

A challenge was in his eyes from his words. Unless, you want to know me.

I ignore the hidden question.

“I’ll ask again. Why me?”

He shrugs, “I’ve watched you for a long time Alpha. I know now that it has to be you.”

His words send a flare of heat through my head, something close to embarrassment washing over me as I look away.

“I’ve seen what you’ve done to this pack. 5th largest for a hell of a long time. Seemed stuck in the mud for that place. Then you come along and within a few months, I see reports that it’s risen to 4th. Heading to 3rd by the look of it soon.”

“The pack was already expanding,” I mumble, uncomfortable that he had noticed something no one else had.

“The Alba Rosa pack is expanding because they want to come here. There are medical resources, homes plenty and food that they know will be there. But it’s not like that for the Contritum pack.”

His tone has suddenly turned grave, a threat to the sunshine as he strips away the glitter to show the world for what it really was.

“We need someone to fight for us. Someone to lead us and make us feel…whole.”

It hits me then the reality of what he is asking.

A new position. A new pack. A new pack that never in the history that I had heard of it, been lead by an Alpha.

Much less…a female one.

One just as broken as the members who already resided there.

“We are the lost one's Alpha. We are the ones who do not matter. Don’t you know what it feels like to want something but not get it? Not because you shouldn’t, but because you can’t. Don’t you know what it’s like to love something with all of your strength, to want it to love you back, only to have it push you away and tell you that you are nothing, and never will be something?”

I push back from the chair, fighting against his words.

“Leave.”

“But I won’t leave. Not until you come with me. Not until you see them. I’ll sit here in your office, or in front of your pack house for as long as I have to before you listen.”

“I am listening, and I hate what I’m hearing.”

He blocks my path.

“Good. I’m glad you hate it. I hate it also.”

I snap.

The air leaves him as my fist collides with his stomach. Hard muscle connects, causing pain to flare upon both our faces. A bruise would be on my knuckles in the morning from that.

He is winded but doesn’t fall.

A wheezed choked laughter spreads through him as he falls against the door.

“We need you. Listen to me when I say it. I mean it. We need you. Have you ever been needed Alpha? By any of these people here? They need an Alpha sure, but you…do they need you.”

I stare at the ground, knowing he had asked the right question to leave me just a breathless as he was.

“No.”

He looks startled by my honest answer as I look up and admit the truth, “they don’t need me. They never have. Only my power that I do not have.”

The male moves closer. Closer so that he is leaning down, a predatory gleam in his eyes. It takes me back to my hunts with Orion when he taught me how to track and take in the wild.

I knew that look.

He was smelling victory from my skin.

“I’ll tell you what Alpha. Let’s make a deal- you see the pack that I’m begging you to lead. And I’ll let you decide from there.”

“Don’t do this.”

Henry, dad and Grandjay all sit within the office, their eyes staring out the window at the unknown male who stood within the backyard.

He was talking to Uncle Mark and Aunt Quinn. Something he was saying was making Uncle Mark smile and then frown. Back to smiling. Then frowning.

Aunt Quinn, as usual, admired her nails but I noticed the fierce gleam in her eyes when the male took a step closer to Uncle Mark.

I sigh at the image, turning back to dad, “I agreed to it already.”

He growls, pacing the small corner of the room.

“He could be leading you into a trap. He could be from another pack, claiming to be a part of the Contritum. The limp could be fake. He could-,”

“Shut up and sit down Atlas.”

Dad immediately does as Grandjay says, a glare still directed at the ground as he mumbles small incoherent things.

Grandjay turns back to me.

“It could be a trap.”

“Are you kidding me,” I snap, anger leaking into what little composure I had been able to gather for this meeting.

I turn to Henry. He stares at the ground doing nothing but nodding his agreement.

“I’m going.”

“Stop trying to rebel-,”

“I’m going and as Alpha-,”

Dad snaps with me, standing to shout, “As Alpha, you have a duty to this pack! This pack and not some other one! You take your position to lightly, you have no responsibility towards your leadership and not only that, your mate-,”

I throw the nearest thing in hands reach- a pencil- at dad. He easily catches it, snapping the wood in half.

“Do you think you have the luxury of doing whatever you please whenever-,”

“Atlas don’t-,”

“Quiet dad,” he glares down at Grandjay, old power rising back into him as the former title of his position resurfaces.

The room holds still for a moment. Just a moment before it tips over, toppling back in a crumbled disarray as father and son begin to argue. Henry looks uncomfortably up at me, caught in the middle of it.

“I trust you can watch the pack while I’m gone.”

“What if a challenger comes?”

I start when I hear the fear in his voice. When had this fear developed?

“Tell them to take a rain check.”

The two males pause long enough in their arguing to hear my words.

Grandjay shakes his head, “Soraya- take someone with you.”

“No.”

“Foolish, stupid-,”

Grandjay cuts dad off, his eyes looking up at me with worry, “why do you always insist on doing the things that you are told not to do?”

I look at the window. As if it is instinct, the male below looks up- catching my eyes. I don’t know what expression is on my face. What he read from that single glance. But he turns to face me fully, cupping his hands to his mouth to yell, “Alpha! Are you ready to go?”

I hear dad’s teeth grinding together.

There is a release of pressure from my chest.

Just in that moment, I was glad an escape could be offered for me.

I rise from the chair, walking to the door. Before I can though, dad catches my arm.

“That place- that pack- Soraya the wolves are put there for a reason.”

I jerk myself from his grip anger flaring in me, “you were going to put me there at one point if I remember correctly.”

Hurt crosses his face, brief but there.

“Don’t do this.” I wince at the raw pain that laces his throat.

“Let me go.”

I see the confused looks from Grandjay and Henry. How they stare at dad’s hands that are hanging uselessly by his side.

“Let me go, I…I just want…” I couldn’t even find the word. I didn’t even know it. “You’ve stopped me my whole life. This once. This one second- just let me go.”

A panicked look enters his face. What was he thinking at this moment? What was he thinking about to cause such a reaction?

“Goodbye Soraya.”

My eyes widen in surprise as he embraces me. I slowly find my own arms wrapping around him. Grandjay’s eyes are wide in shock as he stares at his son.

I quickly push him back, avoiding his eyes. Without another word, I walk out of the office. The male is eagerly waiting at the foot of the stairs.

“Ready Alpha?”

I look back up the stairs. There was an uneasy feeling in me. Something they were not telling me. Something strange that had lingered in the air as I left.

I turn to face the male.

“If this is a trap, don’t be surprised to find my hand around your neck.”

He laughs, limping away and shaking his head, “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Alpha.”

I grumble as the male drives.

“Why can’t I drive?”

“Alphas shouldn’t drive.”

I feel out of place sitting in the passenger seat of the truck. It only leaves me to think of another time with Orion sitting next to me, as the wind played with his fur, as his tongue lulled out the side in the comfort of complete bliss.

The drive is two days away. It’s the opposite direction from anyplace I’ve traveled. Away from the mountains and other close together pack lands. No, the Contritum pack was separate from all.

No one wanted a reminder of brokenness at their front door.

It begins to dawn on me the limited knowledge I have of the pack. Only the prejudice and insults that had always festered towards it.

I want to ask the male questions. But I hold myself back. Part of me doesn’t want to know just how cruel a pack could be by tossing aside members of its own.

Had I put anyone there?

With panic, I think through and try to remember. No one had been removed while I was Alpha. Schulman had told me once, that he had to send two wolves to that pack. I asked why. He told me the blunt truth.

Their legs were broken, and teeth ripped out.

The reminder of his story comes back to me now. They were not wolves. They were better left to fester in the dark rather than be seen by their fellow pack members. Rather than to be seen as a reminder of what ill fate could befall upon them.

“Almost there Alpha.”

The male still has not told me this name. It irritates me that I’m going into this blind. Going into this without knowing anything.

But a part of me is curious. A part of me lifted its head when the male spoke his words that day in the office. A part of me…understood it.

Trees that I do not recognize pass me. It’s a part of the forest that is light. Evergreen that is rich and full through the leaves.

It’s a beautiful forest, one that holds my attention the whole way there until the male comes to a stop. We are in the middle of a dirt road, nothing to be seen.

He rolls down the window.

A female steps behind a trunk.

I try to look away from her, but find my eyes going back to the disfiguration upon her face. A scar runs across it, causing her left eye to never open and nose to twist. Her lip is partially agape, a cleft forming to make her smile look strange to me.

The male seems easy. His face lights up at her sudden appearance.

“They let you finally have welcome duty Bella?”

She nods, shyly turning her body to where only the right side could be seen.

“I’ve brought her.”

From the male's words, it would seem like the whole pack knew I was expected.

Bella waves at me, still not saying a word. She motions forward down the path, nodding her head before shuffling back behind the tree.

The bizarre sight has me gaping as the male roars with laughter down the road.

“Should have seen your face!”

“Is that your border guard? A girl hiding behind a tree?”

The volume of his laughter only increases.

I brace myself for whatever comes next. The sight of Bella certainly matched my expectations for what I had heard of the pack. But as we turn the corner I see…houses.

Children running and playing in yards.

Parents laughing as they watch or talk to other parents. But then I see small things that show the packs’ true colors.

A male with a disfigured arm. A female in a chair, no legs visible for me to see. Another male, this one who looks to be still in his youth- an odd discrepancy about him as he watches us drive by- his form almost that of half man half wolf.

“Some are pack experiments,” the male beside me whispers his words quietly, “we go to pack sometimes, root them out and find them. Take them back here.”

I never thought of the Contritum pack like that. Like a savior. Like something that would be a blessing.

They are congregating to us. I see them point, excited looks on a few faces as they make their way towards a destination.

We pull up to a house.

“We don’t have a pack house, but while you’re here, you can stay with me and Bram.”

“Who?”

“My…partner….”

It clicks in place when I watch a male step out of the house. Even from a distance, I can see there is something wrong with his eyes. He is blind.

“You’re not here because of your limp, are you?”

The male only grins at me before stepping out of the truck.

I turn my back to the house and watch the other members of the pack as they slowly creep forward. Some like Bella, are shy. They hesitate, looking to the male.

It was obvious he had assumed the leadership position here.

Or maybe he didn’t. I watch him, taking in how he focused first on the male called Bram, before anyone else. Maybe he didn’t take on the leadership position.

Maybe it took on him.

I meet the eyes of those who are watching, not looking away. Some flinched in shock at the forwardness of my actions.

They are a pack.

Orion and I had visited many packs. I had treated them all the same. I would do that here, and now. They were a pack. I would treat them like a pack.

“I’m Alpha Soraya of the Alba Rosa Pack. Thank you for welcoming me into your land.”

There are a few scattered responses. The male seems to have realized he has left me. He finds his way back to my side, smiling at those around us.

“Told you I could bring her!”

A few smiles come out at his joke.

“Let me introduce you to the people here, and then I’ll show you around.”

I try to remember their names. I try to think as if I had a picture of all of their faces upon my wall- the fact that these people deserved to be remembered.

Some tell me their story, embarrassed at something upon their skin, with the feeling that they needed to justify their reason for being here.

Then it’s the pack itself.

I turn around discreetly, trying to decide if it was normal or not to have some of the members follow us on our tour.

“We try to have a training ground here-,” he points to a large open space that has a few equipment lying around, “use to have a general who was dismissed from the pack here, but he left a while back. Oh! There’s where we would put our clinic if we had one!”

I worry they might think me cold.

Do I act warm? Friendly? How would I do that though?

They made me uncomfortable. This pack made me uncomfortable.

A child runs forward, laughing with a small girl who could be his sister.

I feel the air leave my lungs as I take in the messy blond hair. The eyes that are stormy grey. He sees me watching him, a shy smile showing on his face.

I bend down, letting him approach me.

“Ah…Alpha?”

The male beside me stares in confusion as slowly, the little boy takes my hand.

“Hello,” I whisper.

“Hi,” he looks uneasily away in the distance towards his sister who stood watching with wide eyes.

“What’s your name?”

He shuffles on his feet, “Caspian.” He points to the little girl who stood waiting, “that’s my sister, Clover.”

I don’t know what else to say. I smile at him, earning a small smile back. He pulls his hand out from mine, running away.

“Bye!” He waves to me, holding his hand out to catch his sister’s as they giggle and continue their play.

“You’re strange.”

I look up to find the male grinning at me, “I thought you were going to abduct little Caspian. I don’t think the pack would want you as Alpha if you did that.”

I stand, bristling at his comment, “what else is there?”

He shrugs, “not much. We’re categorized as a small pack- size ranging from about hundred. Some years it expands but since we don’t have a clinic or healer,” he gives me a knowing look.

I nod, understanding exactly what he meant.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Will you be our Alpha?”

I laugh, “you want me to leave my pack- a pack you have admitted already is ranked to be one of the top three. Leave my power for…” I look around at the scene before me. The members who sat upon their porches, smiling and at ease.

Nothing of what I pictured.

“You only want me because you think I’m like this- that I’m broken.”

He pauses, looking around with me.

“Rex.”

“What?”

“My name. It’s Rex. Didn’t trust to tell you until now.”

I try to think of any males I knew by that name. But I don’t. He was right. Even if he told me his name, it still would mean nothing to me.

Nothing until now.

“And you’re right. I know it can only be you because you’re the only Alpha I’ve seen that knows this pain.”

“Is this because I’m female?”

He laughs, “anything but. Anything but Alpha. I’m not concerned about the outside appearance. Only the inside. And you-,” he turns to fully face me, “you are broken. And here in this pack- we all know that that is something beautiful.”

I can’t speak. The words have swollen my throat into closing. I clear it, trying to push away what he has said. But his sentence rings in my mind.

“It’s up to you Alpha,” he whispers, “I won’t force you.”

I look around again.

My eyes see something new. Something they did not catch before.

There is a bitterness in their smiles. A wave of hardness in their souls. Even in the children who run and laugh, who had been products of outcasts and now lived as accepted, I could see an edge of that defeat rising in their smiles.

Like the world was too heavy to hold. But as they talked and smiled, some catching my eyes and waving. Others shyly looking away or blushing to the side. I heard a ringing chant that I had never heard before.

The world is heavy, too heavy to hold. Too heavy to hold for just one soul. So give me your burden.

Give it to me, and we will hold it together.

The world was never meant to be lifted by just two hands.

I look up at Rex.

He is grinning broadly at me, the biggest smile I have seen yet on his face.

“Ah…you felt that? That connection that drives us together Alpha? It’s deeper than any pack bond. We come together because we have nowhere else to go. But you- you have a choice. What do you choose?”

Dad’s face flashes into my mind.

His panicked eyes.

His sorrowful goodbye.

I close my eyes and sigh, realizing why he had done that. Knowing he had made the same realization that I had just now concluded to.

He and I both knew what would happen if I came here.

I had to smile at the fact that somehow, dad had known me better than myself.

Because he knew once I left him, the pack, the crushing sense of drowning. Once I left that and saw what the world had been hiding from me-

He knew.

“What is the challenge policy?”

Rex looks at me in confusion. “Challenge?”

“For Alpha. Hypothetically speaking, if an interest in the position was there, what would one have to do?”

Rex shrugs, “we vote I guess. The packs agreed they all want you. We’ve looked for several years and the Moon Goddess has guided us this far.”

“What about the challenge though?” I asked, unable to accept his easy answer, “what about the fight? If someone else wants it? If another comes and stakes a claim?”

Rex’s look turns into confusion, “Listen Alpha. I don’t know much about the policies of other packs. But it seems strange to me to fight for something you already have. If the Alpha leadership is there, even if a challenger comes, why would we want them? We chose our Alpha, and isn’t it our duty as a pack, to then protect our choice?”

Something shifted in my world. An epiphany happened in my mind. The words he had said didn’t make sense, yet at the same time- I wanted them to make sense.

And there it was.

It was so close.

That unknown thing that I had been striving forward towards.

I could just reach out and take it. It was staring straight at me.

“I need to think about this.”

Rex frowns, unaware of the pounding within my heart. The rapid beat that had started ever since we set foot at this pack. The change that was coming over into my world.

“I’m just glad you didn’t say no outright. Think for as long as you need. Is there anything I can do to help convince you though? Name it Alpha- anything.”

I look at the forest, a new sensation rising in my chest. Something I never thought possible for me to feel. This selfish feeling of taking all that I could. Of finally pushing aside the grief of others and stepping out before them. Letting the cards fall wherever.

“Yes…” I breath, realization coming over me. Such clarity to my dark world. “I can’t decide without my mate.”