3

CALEB

Hours before the ceremony, hours before choosing Khloe, I stood in front of the enormous, ornate-framed mirror in my quarters, preparing myself for the ceremony.

I hated my birthday. I hated it the way the Blood Moon pack hated vampires: with a bestial ferocity that had not diminished over the years. I loathed the loudness, the audacious pomp and pageantry of it, the unnecessary flourish that accompanied it every passing year.

It was not that I did not like parties or partying. No. Far from it. It was the forced excitement that I loathed, the way it was done, lacklustre despite all its shininess. It was done like most obligatory things were done. I loathed that falseness very deeply, despised it even more.  

I had long since come to learn that werewolves, on certain occasions, had a thirst for wine that could rival the burning thirst vampires had for human blood.  

There was time like that, I knew, a time of unbridled thirst, unbridled longing, and not just for blood. For land. For realms. For crowns and rulership. The vampires, led by their king, marched across the land, a host of pastel skin and obsidian armour. They contrived to conquer the world. To sink their fangs into it and drain it of its lifeblood and that of every other one of its races.

It reminded him of Khloe. She  was, in a certain way, a vampire, draining and sucking the joy out of every place her presence touched, and for that, the Blood Moon pack had always regarded her with a savage disaffection very much comparable to that with which they regarded vampires. Khloe Hamilton was girl, a woman now, who stepped into the room and the air went sour. Conversations tapered off and were swiftly replaced by angry stares.

Sometimes, though not very often, I felt something akin to pity towards her. But not quite. Most times what I felt when I saw her snowy skin flash past, was resentment. Deep and old resentment, gorged into my  memory. Deep because resentment is not often shallow. Old, well, because I had known her almost as long as he had known his name. Deep and old because she, in her arrival, had made me seem insignificant.

Khloe was born on the same day as I was, barely three solid years apart. Being the only child born of werewolves that year, she was already special. She was small, had snow white and a half-halo etched into the taut skin of her forehead, Khloe drew attention—and gasps. Then, with her arrival came the long famine. The hunger was a harrowing whip; it broke the pack, pressed it nearly into surrender, onto its knees. The adoration the pack had felt for Khloe became hate, revulsion. The pack wanted her no more. They would expel her from the West, they agreed, even if they would have to spill her blood in the process.

I had been, to put it simply, overjoyed. Soon the girl with the silver in her hair would be forgotten. My birth date would no longer coincide with hers. I would no longer share the attention and recognition meant for me alone with her. There would be no more forced laughter. No more practiced smiles.

That was a whole world ago.

Now as I examined my appearance in the mirror, my father's features stared back at him. I fastened the red, silken cloak that had been tailor-made for him across the span of my  shoulders, and I had wondered about Khloe.

Would she grace my coming-of-age ceremony? What would I do, feel, if I emerged and she was there, pastel as uncooked dough, standing tall, towering over us, like dough with too much yeast?

She stared at people in a way Caleb never liked, condescendingly, and she met their eyes with hers when they stared too long, as if daring them. No, I did not want to lay eyes on her today. If the moon goddess was kind to me, she would remain in her lair of a house.

The feast had already begun, and from his room, I could hear the songs, the clink of goblets, the raucous shouting: all familiar sounds, all sounds of merriment. He would know. My father always had a crowd to attend to. Images of them cheering my name wildly came to me and I caught himself smiling.

The Moon goddess being good to him today, nothing could go awry.

A knock on his door drew him out and away from his thoughts. 'Come on in.' I called out. 

'And there he is,' Cassie said sweetly.

I whirled around to see Cassie leaning against the doorway, garbed all in crimson and scarlet, shimmering red like a hundred miniscule rubies. Onto her shoulders and beyond, her hair fell like a river of black.

'You should not be here, Cassie.' I reproved her gently. With Cassie, I always was surprisingly gentle. 'You know that you are not supposed to see me right before the ceremony.'

She  smiled as she swaggered up to me, her lips peeling back to reveal thick, feral canine, polished to a dull white, like old bones. She said, 'And yet, here I am. Besides, Caleb, since when did we start following rules down to the last letter?'

Chortling, I said to her, 'Never. Not ever.'

Cassie's smile agreed with mine. She made a show of adjusting my clothes, checking to be sure my cloak was fastened properly to the broach at my side. She wet her thumb against the redness of her tongue, then using the same thumb, she smoothened my eyebrows until they lay full and flat against my face. I took a step back, away from her, towards the enormous mirror.

'So why did you want to see me? What was so urgent that it could not wait a few hours?' I asked. Cassie reached for him again and I shied away from her to escape her preening. 'Woman,' he said warningly.

She laughed. When she laughed, her face grew young, carefree, like a child's.

'What if I said I missed you?'

'Cassie,' I sighed. 'You saw me barely two hours ago. Gods, the whole village did.'

'And so?' She asked, retracing her steps to him, her hips moving suggestively, swinging like a pendulum of curved flesh.

'And so...'

'I only wanted to see the birthday boy one last time, before he becomes a man.'

'Hm,' I breathed down at her. 'And? Do you like what you see?'

'You know I always have.' Said she.

Her eyes, a vibrant garden green, were fierce, drawing him into her hypnotic gaze as they always did. Even when they both were mere children, I had felt the pull to her. The mate-choosing ceremony was simply that—a ceremony. A function that had to be had. I already knew I would end up with Cassie, his Beta. I would drown in the ocean of her eyes and it would be, without question, a fine way to go.

Their faces were inches apart from each other; their breaths tangled, hot against each other's lips. I drew closer, and so did she. Closer and closer, and closer and—

'Caleb,' a voice said cooly, quietly, interrupting them and snapping mw out of his trance.

I turned sharply. I saw the man long before I felt his presence. His father had his arms folded behind his back, and he glared at them, disapprovingly, eyes chastening.

'Father!' I leapt away from Cassie, and my cheeks burned, a ruddy, rosy red climbing from his neck. Out of all the people I had ever met, only two could crawl under my skin, and one of the two was Khloe. The other was this man glowering at me, his features a replica of mine.

'You know better than this Caleb. You too, Cassie.' His eyes flickered over the woman. 'Leave us. I would have words with my son.' Tybald said. Cassie sucked in her lip and smiled up at Caleb—a promise of another time—then she hurried away, shutting the door behind them, effectively trapping him with his canine of a father.

'Caleb, my son,' His father stepped up to him and smoothed down his doublet. 'You have made me proud today.' He said.

'That is quite the sentiment, especially coming from you, father.' I said, dryly.

'Is it?'

'It is.'

'Well, that is a surprise. I always thought myself too prone to sentimentality.'

The man made an attempt at a smile, but it, more than anything else, resembled a grimace of pain. He had somewhere along, in his life, forgotten how to do the simple things. How to be happy, how to laugh, how to smile. 

'Father, what is it you want this time?' I sighed.

'Ah,' the man exclaimed, a more natural smile spreading softly across his lips. 'It seems you know me better than I would have imagined.'

'I am your son. I have lived by your side for twenty-three years now. Does it come to you as a surprise?'

'I suppose it should not. But it does, however. It surprises me.' The man admitted. 'Though it is quite pleasing to see how perceptive you have become.'

He told a sip of the wine and savoured it, while I watched apprehensively. I had not touched mine.

Tybald gestured at the chalice in his hand. 'You might want to have a sip or two before you hear this, son.' And because he wanted to get it over with, and quickly too, I knocked back the contents of his cup in one swallow.

 Father drew himself up and said, 'Now, Caleb, listen carefully: when you go out to that dais, when the time comes to pick a mate, you will not choose Cassie,'

I jerked back, surprised, but my father was not finished. 'You will choose Khloe Hamilton to be your mate.' He said.