Page 37 of The Tracker's Dawn: Sunderverse
I could sense a story coming as he got lost inside his own mind. I dared not to move for fear he wouldn’t speak, so I stayed frozen by the fireplace, barely blinking.
“This started fifteen years ago, and I guess it was bound to catch up with me at some point. I was happy then. You wouldn’t have recognized me. I loved my wife and daughter. I didn’t know it then, but they were my everything. I thought the pack mattered more, but in the end, they didn’t. I should have never been born an alpha. If I hadn’t, they would still be alive.”
He glanced up at the portrait of his family that hung above the mantle. The sadness that swam in his eyes was murky and deep, a load that I could barely begin to comprehend.
“The Cross Pack was one the most powerful in the city,” he continued. “I had ten strong betas under my command. They were loyal and helped me run the pack like a well-oiled machine. We controlled the trade up and down the Mississippi River. We owned factories, restaurants, stores. Other pack members managed things. It was a big community. Productive and strong.
“Of course no one gets that successful without making a few enemies. We didn’t exercise ruthless business practices. We were fair and our decisions were never personal. Business is business. There was a small pack in the Murphy area. They owned a growing brewery business. They had a big order of barley coming down the river, but their payment fell through. You see... their alpha had a gambling problem and had drained their accounts. In the end, many lost their livelihood. He came to me, begged me to give him a break, promised he would pay. But he had steadily gained a bad reputation, and although he might have straightened his path, I couldn’t take the risk. Besides, if I offered him lenience, I would have to do the same for others. I turned him away. His pack members blamed him, not me. They understood it was his job to look after them and make the right calls, but he was humiliated. I saw it in his eyes. As an alpha, myself, I understood very well how he felt.
“What I saw in him should have served me as a warning. I should have known to be wary of him, to watch my back. But I’d grown overconfident. I was so high on my pedestal that I felt unreachable. And not only that, I was full of myself and only thought of me. And maybeIwas untouchable, but my family...
“That coward. He had no honor. He was a beast without scruples, without decency. He had a friend, a vampire he’d known since before he was turned. They broke into my house and...” Eric swallowed thickly, a muscle twitching in his jaw, his breathing restrained as if it pained him. “At first, I wanted to die. I almost killed myself, but one of my betas stopped me. With my wife and my daughter gone, I found out that the pack didn’t matter to me. I lost my sanity, and I don’t think I’ve ever regained it completely. I made him and that vampire pay, made them suffer. A simple death wasn’t enough. I tortured the alpha for days. Then I asked Damien to make a poison that would slowly kill a vampire. I fed it to him and taunted him every day as he withered away. So you see... it’s my fault.”
He paused. I tried to find words that could help, but I was struck mute.
“Sometimes,” he went on, “I fear what I may do if anything happens to any of you. When I thought Damien had died...” He let the words hang, and in the silence, I felt his pent-up anger like a bomb that could explode at any moment.
I stood there with a knot in my throat. The entire time Eric had talked, he hadn’t glanced in my direction, and I was afraid he’d forgotten I was here. If I moved, would he realize he’d said more than he’d meant to? Would he decide I was not worthy of that glimpse into his dark past?
I fear what I may do if anything happens to any of you.
We had all mourned in our own way when we’d thought Damien was gone. I didn’t want to go through that again, and it seemed Eric didn’t either. The mage’s “death” had surely taken a greater toll on Eric than I’d imagined. He was afraid of what would happen if this war cost one of us our lives.
Was it possible that without meaning to Eric had formed a new pack?
We were nothing but a mismatched bunch. Two too many alphas, a prima donna mage, and a Stale. No one would have put together such an unlikely, fragile group, and yet, here we were. And we cared about each other. Deeply.
Slowly, I let the knowledge sink in. He wanted to wash his hands of Mekare not because he didn’t think Ulfen was right about the future of St. Louis, but because of the risk it posed to our lives. He was afraid one of us would truly die, and he wasn’t sure if he could handle that.
Tentatively, I approached him and sat at his side on the sofa. If he’d been anyone else, I would’ve wrapped my arms around him, but even after this confession, I wasn’t sure he’d let me.
I thought about what to say and realized there was only one thing he would appreciate, and it had to be a tit for tat.
“I want to end that witch,” I said. “I don’t think I will ever feel safe knowing she’s alive, but getting involved in this mess wrecked my life. And Rosalina’s. My mom and sisters are also suffering the consequences. If I don’t get out now, I’m afraid I’ll lose more than just the agency. If it’s just my business, I can live with that. Maybe it’s still salvageable, and if it isn’t, I’ll get a job doing something, and it’ll be fine. But if I lose any of you...” I shook my head. Just the thought of it made my heart ache.
“So yeah, I need to stay out of it. There’s a lot I could do without, but I couldn’t live without my family, Jake, Rosalina, Damien... and you.”
When I finished, Eric was as stiff as a statue, staring straight ahead at the floor. After a moment, he let out a long exhale and shook his head.
“How the hell did I let myself get into this situation?” he said in a half-amused tone meant to diffuse our stern mood. He glanced over at me sideways, one eyebrow raised, and nudged me with his shoulder. It was a companionable gesture that was nothing like the Eric I was used to. “It’s better when you don’t care, Sunder. Did no one ever give you that piece of advice?”
I shook my head. “Even if they had, clearly,” I looked him up and down, “the advice doesn’t take ‘cause you’re a hot mess.”
“No shit.” He stood up, stretched, and cracked his neck as if he’d just finished doing something strenuous, which I figured he had. “So we have our reasons to allow that fucking witch to get away with the unspeakable, and they amount to the same. We want the people we care about to be safe.”
That was it, in so very few words.
“I guess that makes us selfish,” I said.
Eric blew a puff of air through his nose. “In my book, that’s a good thing to be. Problem is...” He paused and turned to face me, “as much as we want to, I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay out of it.”
I had a feeling he was right.
“I know you may be tired, but what do you say we go downstairs for some training. You’ve got the hang of fleeting. How about we try to figure out that sensory thing you’ve got going? You never know when it might come in handy again.”
I sighed. Here we were refusing to get involved but knowing deep inside that we could run, we could even fleet, but we could never hide.
