Chapter 269

“Inside, Evelyn, please,” Victor growls, and Evelyn moves away from him. She looks between the two brothers for a moment, and though she would usually push against an order like that from Victor – or anyone, really – something, in this case, suggests that it’s best not to engage.

So she simply moves away, quickly climbing the steps to the porch and disappearing through the cottage’s front door.

“What the hell is wrong with you,” Victor snarls when she’s gone, advancing on his brother, feeling the tips of his claws start to poke at his fingertips.

“What’s wrong with me?” Rafe challenges, holding his ground. “What the hell is wrong with you, Victor!? Letting Walsh go, because Evelyn decided that she wants her dad to go free?”

“Enough!” Victor shouts, slashing the air between them, his fangs lengthening. Rafe’s eyes go wide at this – Victor is usually in perfect control of his transformation, but something about this has really set him off –

But still, this decision – it goes too far –

“You can’t let her do this, Victor!” Rafe shouts, his own fangs lengthening in response to his brother’s threat. “He will do it all again! Everything you fought for, he will take from you!”

“And you think I can’t manage that threat?” Victor asks, still advancing on Rafe, their bodies close together now. Violence is in every line of Victor’s muscles as he stares his brother down. “You think I haven’t considered this? You think I have made this decision easily?!”

“However you’ve made it, it’s the wrong decision! You’ve got to make him pay!”

“It’s not my decision –“

“You’re going to let her decide! Her be the arbiter of justice in your pack – in our pack!? And Walsh’s too – the pack your sons will inherit – she gets to decide its future?”

“Who else should do it, Rafe,” Victor asks, his voice low, his pulse racing now, barely keeping a leash on his rage as his brother insults his Luna again and again. “Who would mete out justice in this pack, if not her? It is her father’s fate, hers, her sons’, for which she decides –“

“She’s too close to it!”

“Precisely why she should decide!” Victor cries, shoving Rafe now, making him stumble back a few steps. “There is no one for whom this decision is harder, you i***t! She has spent days being tortured by this – having to face the actual people who this decision would affect! And she’s sobbing in my arms because she’s had to make it – and you come along and challenge her on it!?”

Rafe snarls but Victor lashes out, pushing him again – hard enough that he falls to the ground.

“Stay down, Rafe,” Victor snarls, standing over him. “You will learn your place in this pack – even if I have to teach it to you by force –“

“My place!?” Rafe rages, snarling at his brother. “On the ground – lower than her – I’m supposed to take the decision of a Luna as law!?

Rafe looks up at his brother, disbelief written all over his face, completely appalled. But Victor, to Rafe’s surprise, just shakes his head at him, taking a step back. As Rafe watches, Victor leashes his self again, his fangs retracting, the claws that started from his hands pulling inwards again.

“Did you hear what you just said, Rafe?” Victor asks, still panting with anger, but his voice more even now.

“What?” Rafe asks, baffled.

“What you just said. That you reject the idea that you’re lower than a Luna. That you’d never take a Luna’s word as law.”

“That’s not what I –“

“That’s what you said,” Victor barks, the noise of it shaking Rafe. “You f*****g i***t,” Victor snarls, “don’t try to deny it – try to get one over on me.”

Rafe falls back, admitting – at least internally – that even if those hadn’t been his exact words, that was…well, yes, that’s what he had been thinking.

Victor just shakes his head at him again. “Don’t you get it, Rafe?” he asks. “This is why she won’t come back to you. Why she hasn’t given you another chance.”

Rafe’s mouth falls open now, filled with objections, with defiance at the very idea but…

As soon as his words meet his lips, Rafe realizes that he can’t speak them. Because Victor is right.

Luckily, Victor says it for him. “Why would she ever dedicate herself to a man, an Alpha, who always sees her as lower than him? Who always understands his own word as above her own?”

The words hit Rafe like a blow and his arms go weak. He lets himself fall backwards into the gravel of the drive, his head bouncing, but he ignores the pain. He hadn’t realized…hadn’t thought that those ideas lived in him…

But clearly…

“You’ve got to figure it out, Rafe,” Victor says softly, all anger gone from his voice. Replaced, now, with disgust. “You have got to get it into your head that being Alpha is not about having complete control and shaping the world into what you want. It’s about building the world in which you and the people you love thrive. I’m building the world for her and my children. Not for me.”

Victor shakes his head as his brother and turns away. “She is your Luna, your moon. The sooner you figure out that you’re not the earth in this metaphor – the thing around which she revolves? The better.”

Rafe watches his brother go, not understanding.

“Victor,” Rafe calls out after his brother, desperate, just as he reaches the stairs. “If I’m not the earth…

then what…”

“You’re the tides,” Victor replies, turning back to him. “You rise to her when she calls. You drown cities at her command. You lay still when she bids you rest.”

And then, Victor walks up the stairs and into the house.

And Rafe rests his head back against the gravel of the dark drive, staring at the sky.

_______________________________ Alvin sits in my lap, staring out the front picture window with me as Victor stalks up the steps and heads towards the door. Ian crouches on my other side, fascinated.

“Mama,” he whispers. “Is Uncle Rafe going to get run over by a car if one pulls in the driveway?”

I take a moment to consider. “Probably not,” I whisper.

Alvin turns to me, scared. “Should we go make him get up?”

“No,” I whisper, still a little mad. “Let him risk it. He’s a big boy.”

Alvin looks at me, confused for a second, but we’re interrupted when Victor opens the door, coming into the dark house and looking around. It takes a moment before he focuses on the three of us, peeking out the window.

He sighs and sinks his hands in his pockets, shaking his head at us. “I should have known you would be spying.”

“Well,” I say, my voice soft but even. “You wouldn’t want us to miss the show, would you?”

“Papa,” Ian calls, curious. “What is the tide?”

“Go…look it up on the internet,” Victor says, putting his head in his hand and laughing a little.

“We know what tides are,” Ian replies, rolling his eyes at his dad. “But what does it have to do with you and mama –“

Victor sighs, coming over to us and sinking down on the couch. “You’ll understand when you’re older,”

he says, catching Ian around the waist and pulling him close. Ian laughs, curling against his dad, happy to be captured.

“See?” I say, nuzzling Alvin’s head. “This is why you have to go to school, so you can learn about metaphor.”

“I don’t need it,” Alvin says with a happy, romantic little sigh. “I already get it. Miss Georgia is my moon, and I am the ocean…” He rests his head against me, raising his hands and making ocean noises, swaying back and forth like he is a wave. I smile and hug him closer.

I look at Victor, unable to hide my smile, and he laughs. “I’m never going to live this down either, am I?”

he asks.

“I mean, I, for one, liked it,” I say, giving a happy little shrug as Alvin turns and takes a deep sniff of my scent, apparently wanting to be close to me. “I never knew you were so poetic. Or so willing to defend my honor and my right to deliver judgment to the pack.”

“Well,” he says, meeting my eyes with a little smile. “I hope you never doubt it again.”

“Never,” I say, leaning forward and taking his hand. “Alpha.”

“Luna,” he replies, giving my hand a little squeeze, looking at me with his love written all over his face –

“Ewwww,” Ian groans, wiggling out from between us. “It’s getting romantic – I am out of here.”

I laugh, watching him scamper for the stairs.

“You’re not grossed out?” I ask, looking down at Alvin.

“Nope,” he says, frowning a little, distracted as he sniffs me again. “I get it now. I, too, am in love.

Besides,” he continues, peeking out the window again. “Someone has to make sure Uncle Rafe doesn’t get run over.”

“Good point,” Victor murmurs, looking out the window with his son.

And the three of us sit there for a long time, holding vigil for Rafe as he figures out what the hell is important to him in this world.

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