Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Tyrant alpha: Kabanata 461 - Kabanata 470

“Oh!” Efa squeals, patting my cheek and pointing. Her attention has been caught by a group dancing by the bonfire.The fiddler is bending his bow double speed, and the drums beat faster. The females hold their gowns high so their legs show, their bare feet moving almost too quick to track while they hold their bodies perfectly still from the waist up. The males dance around them, stomping, tossing their heads back, their wolves howling to the hills. This is a pattern, too. The females are the stationary shapes, and the males are the swirls weaving between them.The singed, crackling scent of magic tickles my nose like at Abertha’s cottage, but there aren’t any pots bubbling with potions or herbs hanging well out of the reach of pups. I couldn’t say where the scent is coming from. The ground? The people?Efa giggles, her rump shifting back and forth on my shoulders. Elspeth shuffles beside us, her feet padding a dull rhythm on the table top. She’s dancing. I glance down at my feet. Am

Justus winds in a figure eight, looping the other females, and then looping me. The males fall in line behind him, their wolves’ sharp yips punctuating the drumbeat.My heart thumps. The males are big and loud and close.Don’t move. Don’t breathe.Or run? Maybe run?I’m an island in a stream, and I’m scared, but also, I’m outside of it all. This is so far beyond my experience that I can’t do anything but watch and listen and try to orient myself in this strange, strange moment.Life is work, right?Bed, bath, kitchen, garden, greenhouse, beehive, kitchen, bath, bed.Work, punctuated with episodes of sheer, unfounded terror.Life is swimming, and if you stop, you drown, and if you think about what might be underneath you, you’ll sink.You don’t leave your work out on the table or your pipe on the seat of your chair. In order to dance.I don’t know how it’s dangerous, but it has to be. My soul says so.Justus passes behind me and then in front of me again. He stops, the males fanning ou

“I guess,” he answers, completely unfazed. “I don’t believe that one of us is somehow superior than the others or destined to lead, but I’d let them call me alpha all day, if it made them happy, if it didn’t make us weaker as a pack.”“What do you mean, weaker?”“My decisions aren’t any better than anyone else’s. Well, they’re better than Alroy’s, but other than that—I’m just as shortsighted, just as prone to careless mistakes as the others. I lose my temper. I miscalculate. My pride makes me stupid.” He pauses there and flashes me a look I can’t quite understand.He goes on. “And the second I let them call me alpha, half of them are going to stop disagreeing with me, and there won’t be anyone to point out when my ideas are bad. Or dangerous. A lot of them will rely on my judgment, and theirs will get rusty. If you know our history, you know what can happen.”“Whose history?” I know more about Moon Lake’s than Quarry Pack, and that’s very little. I know nothing at all about Last Pack.

A female like you would make weak, spindly young.I want to puke, but I don’t dare slow down, not even a little so I can bend over and retch. Justus’s steps thud behind me.I reach the narrow camp entrance and burst through, instantly losing my footing on the steep, rocky trail that leads down to the woods below. My arms windmill as I desperately try to find my balance. Justus growls.“Easy, easy,” he says, so close, too close.I don’t have time for balance, so I lurch forward, surfing the loose pebbles down the slope, keeping upright by staggering from tree trunk to boulder. Almost at the bottom, I trip on an exposed root and crash to a knee. I cry out, scrambling forward on all fours until I can scrabble back to my feet.I’m out of my mind, and I can’t stop.Sightless eyes.Green and white checkered tiles.Red blood.The voice hurls bombs at me, dredging deep in my memories, like horror is fuel, like that’s what I run on.Camphor.Rattling lungs.A white sheet almost flat except for

The aster is dangling from his hand like an afterthought. Like I’ve left him with it.How can I leave him like that? When he’s mine? When all I need to do is reach out my hand?I get a good grip on the gown with one hand, and careful not to move too quickly—he’s a big male, after all—I reach over and pluck the aster from his fingers.He glances over, surprised.I tuck my knees closer to my chest, trying to hide from a sudden feeling of exposure.A smile like a sunrise breaks across his face.I delicately sniff the flower because that’s what you’re supposed to do. “Thank you,” I say and smile politely.“You like that one?” he asks, his whole manner changing, his shoulders relaxing, the furry tips of his pointed wolfish ears perking up.“I do. I like asters.”He reaches into tall grasses around us, plucks another flower, and offers it to me, grinning. “How about this one?”“Queen Anne’s Lace.”“That’s what it’s called?” he asks as I take it.I nod. “Sometimes you’ll hear folks call it w