by JJ King
“Do whatever you need to do,” Daphne whispered with all the love she felt, “I’ll back you up either way.”
He closed his eyes, shutting everything out, and just stood there with her. Daphne waited, letting him find the balance he needed while she, too, sought equilibrium. When he opened his eyes and looked down at her, she saw questions and knew he wouldn’t chase Dalia away. Daphne smiled softly at him and reached her hand up to cup his cheek, “You can do this,” she whispered.
Together they turned back to Dalia and Sylvie, who still sat watching the goings-on without saying much. This was her home, her room, and so she presided, a fact that made Daphne appreciate and respect her even more than she already did. They made their way back to the loveseat and sank down, still stiff, but willing to listen. Dalia lowered herself down into her chair as well.
Dalia blinked several times and cleared her throat, “Thank you,” she murmured.
“This isn’t for you,” Keme interrupted her. “This is for Sita, for Kitche and Kanen. So you don’t have to ever put them through this fresh torture.”
Dalia winced visibly, tweaking Daphne’s heart once more. “I deserve that, I know, and you’re a good brother for putting them first. I didn’t. I couldn’t.” She lowered her head.
“You said that before,” Daphne spoke up, her curiosity and that little voice telling her to dig deeper unable to let go. “What do you mean you ‘couldn’t’ control it?”
Dalia shook her head, “I mean, I literally couldn’t control what was happening to me.” She looked away, “I wasn’t born with powers, I was completely normal, just like every other wolf in my pack. Even when Jacob and I were married and the children came, I still had no idea what was inside me.” Dalia’s eyes looked haunted when she looked back at Daphne, “It started when the children were young, little things would happen when I got angry, and I started getting angry more often with less reason.”
Dalia stood up and walked towards a window to look out. “I remember fighting with your father a lot, feeling furious for things that were completely inconsequential. It would start like a flame inside me, so hot and spreading too quickly for me to put it out. Then it would be everywhere inside me, burning so intensely that I had to let it out to survive. If I kept it in…” she turned back, “it would have destroyed me.”
Keme stared at her, a mixture of confusion, grief, and sorrow on his features, then he looked away and gritted his teeth. “So, you let it destroy us instead?”
The agony in his voice ripped Daphne’s heart apart and she gasped for air to mend the tear. She gripped Keme’s hand so tight it would have broken a lesser man’s, but he just squeezed back, letting her know he needed her.
Tears flowed from Dalia’s eyes now. She looked broken, Daphne recognized the look, she saw it in her mate’s eyes, too. They were so alike it killed her to see it.
“There’s something no one knows about becoming an Alpha.” Dalia wiped her cheeks with her hand, “Jacob told me when my powers began to manifest, how the Alpha Council helps appoint their chosen Alpha and gives him a ring that somehow helps control the onslaught.” She ran her hand over her forehead, coming more undone with each moment, “You don’t understand yet, the weight of it. I had no ring, no Council, it was just me and I didn’t know how to control it.” She looked around the room with wild eyes, landing on Sylvie, “Pierre told you about it, right? About the voices? The emotions?” She crossed the room to sit in the chair next to Sylvie. “He told you how it felt, right?”
Sylvie nodded slowly, reaching out her hand to take Dalia’s. “Calm yourself,” she murmured, “focus on what you came here to do.”
Dalia nodded and closed her eyes, breathing slowly until the color in her cheeks subsided and her hands stopped shaking. She opened them and smiled gratefully at Sylvie, “Thank you.”
“It’s not my first rodeo,” Sylvie returned the smile. She turned to Daphne and Keme, “You were both there when Pierre lost control earlier this summer,” her voice cracked a bit when she said his name.
Daphne nodded, unable to find the words to question what was happening. Keme nodded after a moment.
Sylvie pulled her hands back from Dalia and settled them on her lap, “That wasn’t the first time he’d lost control, although that was probably the worst.” She smiled wryly, “He was so strong and brave, and unwilling to admit when he needed help…” Sylvie shook her head, “so sometimes he would have a dark day. That’s what he called them.”
“Dark days, yes,” Dalia nodded, “only my days melted into weeks and then into months.” She grimaced, “I didn’t want to believe that it would affect you children, I thought my love for you would stop me from lashing out when it became too much.”
“So, what changed?” Keme’s body language had shifted, Daphne realized. He was strained forward, eager to know, needing every drop of information from Dalia that he could get. Daphne didn’t know if that was good or bad, if Dalia could be trusted or not, but she’d be there whatever happened.
“It started changing, the power. It wasn’t just the fire anymore, now it was endless voices all crying out for help, grief and loss pounding inside my head constantly. I had no way to control it, to make it stop or even to get a break from it. Your father tried to help me, he even took off his ring and gave it to me, thinking it magically helped stop the voices, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked.” Dalia began to pace the room, her movements sharp and agitated. “I could see them all, the pack now, what it would be, what it used to be. It all got mixed up inside my mind and I couldn’t see through it. I didn’t know what was real and what was just in my head.” She looked up at Keme and Daphne saw her eyes, they were wild with grief and pain. Dalia rushed across the room and sank to her knees before Keme, grabbing his free hand. She pulled it to her face and rubbed her cheek against his knuckles. “I stopped seeing you and your brothers and sister. You faded away and I’m so sorry I couldn’t be stronger. I’m so sorry I failed you, Keme.” She dropped her head and dissolved into tears.
Daphne gaped at the woman crying before her mate and turned to look at Keme. His mouth was open and his eyes spilled tears over his cheeks and down onto his shirt. She lifted her free hand and placed it on his chest, over his heart and felt the pain of his past begin to heal.
Chapter Twenty
Katherine sipped from her cup of tea and settled into her spot on the couch between Quinn and Ronan. The entire group, boys included, had been called together to discuss something of “importance” with Keme’s long lost mother, and Katherine was more than a little anxious to find out what could possibly be so important that Dalia would find her way to Wild River and approach Keme after all these years.
“A few months ago, I reached out to Pierre, asking to meet with him to discuss something I’d discovered.” Dalia addressed the entire group, looking from one to the next with a sense of authority. “I couldn’t reach out to Jacob, you understand why,” Dalia explained, “which is why I contacted Pierre.” At this, she looked to Sylvie and bowed her head in respect, “I’m so sorry, by the way. He was a good man.”
“He was,” Sylvie agreed, cocking her head to the side. “Can you tell us why you contacted him?” She leaned forward, looking as anxious as Katherine felt to learn more about the man they’d both loved.
Dalia took a deep breath, “It’s…” she began, glancing around the room and towards the closed door, “information of a very private nature.”
Katherine cocked an eyebrow at the woman, “Everyone in this room is inner circle.”
Dalia nodded, “Alright then, but you need to understand, this will change everything for you. For all of you.” She looked around the room
“Just tell us,” Anthony grumbled, looking exhausted.
“Okay,” Dalia agreed, looking as if she were struggling with the decision, “I was explaining to Keme earlier how my power manifested.” She looked at her son with a sad smile and got an encouraging nod from him that surprised Katherine bas
ed on what she knew of their relationship, which wasn’t a lot. “I lost my grip on reality because I had no way to control the voices that bombarded me constantly. They were more than voices, really,” she frowned, “more like visions of our pack in the present, the future, and the past.”
“The future?” Teagan strained forward, his tired eyes lighting up with interest.
Dalia nodded, “Yes, although they’re hard to understand. It’s actually the glimpses I’ve received of the past that started all this.”
“Started what? You haven’t really told us anything, yet,” Anthony scowled.
“I will.” Dalia said cryptically, looking at Anthony. “I’m sure your father has taught each one of you the story of how he became Alpha of North America. It’s a good story, he told it to me when we met. But, he didn’t have the entire story, no one did. No one but the Council.”
Katherine felt her eyebrows creep up. Dalia had her interest, especially now that she’d had the distinct pleasure of meeting the misogynistic leaders of their people. Maybe Dalia’s information on the Council could be used to leverage change in pack politics.
“I’ve spent a very long time learning to control the chaos inside my head and I’m come a long way.” She shrugged wryly, “As my control increased, my visions became clearer and started to gain more substance. I started getting clearer images of the nightmares I’d been getting for years, the ones I used to block out because they scared me so badly. I didn’t know what they meant. For a long time, I thought they were foretelling the future, my future. I thought I would be the one to kill and maim.” Dalia drew in a long breath. “But recently my hindsight has gotten better, and I’ve started picking apart the visions.” She paused to take a long drink of water, pausing the story until Katherine nearly leapt out of her seat and demanded the rest.
“I kept seeing wolves here in Canada, I knew where it was taking place. But the timing was off; there was no industry here, no homes as we know them, no Europeans, nothing. Just the land, the animals, the people, and wolves.” Dalia looked off into the corner of the room as though she was seeing it all again. “It was peaceful and perfect,” her face darkened, “but then the Europeans came with disease, and guns, and demands.”
“Colonization, yes,” Anthony interrupted, growing more impatient, “we’ve heard of it.”
Dalia swung her gaze to him and frowned, “You’re not hearing me, young man. There were wolves here.”
“Dalia,” Keme spoke up, catching her attention, “Mom. They know there were wolves, it’s common knowledge now that the packs have aligned under Dad and revealed themselves.”
Dalia nodded, “I was so happy to see that happen, my son, but that’s not what I’m referring to.” She stood up and began to pace the room, “There were wolves here, not just out west, but here in Quebec and further east, all the way to Newfoundland.”
Daphne spoke up, raising her hand slightly, like a school girl, to catch Dalia’s attention, “My pack are Mi’kmaq from Newfoundland. I’m not old enough to have been there, but my father came over with the settlers sent by the Council. He married my mother, the local Chief’s daughter to solidify the union between the groups.”
Dalia turned to her, frustration marring her beautiful face, “And how many of your people were remaining when they came? How many were already murdered and burned?”
Sylvie stared at Dalia, frowning deeply. “What did you see in your visions Dalia?”
Dalia’s eyes were wide and glossy, and she seemed to be looking beyond them, even though she faced Sylvie when she spoke. “I saw wolves murdered by the thousands, entire packs wiped out and burned to erase the evidence. I saw men, women, and children killed in their sleep and everything they had burned to make way for a new law. I saw the Council destroy the wolf population of Canada for their own benefit.” Dalia panted for breath, her eyes wild. “They knew there were wolves here, they knew when they sent over envoys to search, and they murdered them because they refused to follow pack law. They killed entire tribes,” she pivoted to face Daphne who pulled back in alarm. “The Beothuk were wiped out by Europeans, but how? They lived all over your island so how did the Europeans wipe them all out so quickly?” She didn’t wait for an answer, “It’s because their population was already decimated, and those left were too terrified of repercussion to speak out against their attackers.”
As usual, everyone looked to Katherine for a response. Her brain spun, processing Dalia’s tale and lining it up with what she knew of First Nations history. “It’s not impossible,” she said carefully, hoping not to incite the woman’s powers by pissing her off, “but where’s the proof? You said yourself that your powers drove you half mad, that the visions were incredibly hard to understand. Isn’t it possible that you misinterpreted all this?”
Dalia took a jump drive from her pocket and crossed the room to hand it to Katherine. “Just watch it for yourself and you’ll find your proof.”
Katherine took the drive from Dalia’s hand and forced herself not to dash across the room to where her mother’s laptop lay on her perfectly tidy desk. Everyone in the room followed at her heels, apparently as anxious as she to discover the “proof” Dalia claimed to have. Since it was her mother’s computer, Katherine let her mother slip into the dainty chair and slide the jump drive into a port. The laptop purred to life as the drive prompted to be opened.
Sylvie moved the cursor to float over the files on the drive, and clicked on the one labelled “Proof.”
Little on the nose, Katherine couldn’t stop herself from thinking. She watched from over her mother’s right shoulder as she opened the file and brought up the document.
“What are we looking at?” Katherine questioned, glancing over at Dalia who stood on the other side of the desk, waiting impatiently for them to catch up.
“Scanned documents dating back to the early 1500’s. Just scroll through them and you’ll see.” Dalia rubbed anxiously at her chin, looking so much like Keme when he grew agitated that it almost made Katherine smile. She turned back to the laptop screen and squinted at the small print.
“Can you scroll in on that, Mom, please?” Katherine asked, frowning at the too-small screen. She pointed to the scanned copy of an extremely old, extremely worn copy of a letter stamped with the Alpha Council seal. The writing was in French, and the dialect was from another time. Katherine began reading aloud, translating as she went, careful not to miss a single word.
“My Dear Sir, I write to you with a heavy hand and heart to decry the treatment of the indigenous wolves of this new land. I implore you to reconsider your stance and see fit to meet with their elders to discuss uniting the packs under a single leadership. It is my sincere belief that they would work with the Council to find a harmonious balance. They are a simple people, living off the earth with migratory patterns that change from season to season. There are many tribes across this vast land and we are uncertain how many there are in total…”
The rest of the page was too faded to read. Katherine reached down and took the mouse from her mother, clicking to the next scan. This one was a type of census report, taken of what looked like more than twenty tribes. Katherine skimmed the document then clicked to the next, another census, this time with shockingly low numbers.
“Do you see this?” Katherine touched her mother’s arm.
“Go back for a second.” Sylvie’s eyes narrowed as she reread the data. Her hand flew to her mouth as Katherine clicked back on the second document, “Oh my God!”
Katherine’s mouth filled with the taste of copper. She swallowed, realizing she’d been biting on the insides of her mouth as she had when she was a child. The blood and her suspicions about the Council swirled together in her stomach, making her feel nauseated. Katherine clicked the next document with a sense of dread.
“Malachi, it is done. The tribes of the eastern region provided little resistance. Our attacks took place during the night, so as not to raise alarm before our objective was met. The remai
ning few have escaped into the dense forest at the center of the island. The northern tribes are spread out and travel far for adequate food, which made them susceptible to attack. Their numbers are greatly decreased. Our newest scouts sent west have returned with the same information, the plains wolves are warriors and are not worth our efforts. We will not be progressing past the region filled with lakes, as previously discussed.”
Katherine slowly raised her gaze until she met Dalia’s, finally understanding the glow of anger and righteous betrayal in her eyes. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, making clear thought difficult. “These are real?” she whispered.
Katherine’s legs shivered, threatening to dissolve beneath her. If the letters were real, and they seemed real, the entire Council had knowingly murdered hundreds of thousands of people to ensure their leadership in North America. They sent her father as their bright and shiny new Alpha to a land that had just suffered a mass genocide. Everything they’d built their lives upon was a lie. Her father had spent his life working for murderers.
