Page 90 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
He was Alpha heir. He was the future of the colony. With all the privilege and power that accompanied his position, he was bound and tethered in ways none of the others were.
He stared into the sultry sky, at the fat, perfect moon overhead. He envisioned a future for himself that included freedom and romance and swashbuckling adventures...and just like that, the decision was made. He smiled up at the moon, straightened from his crouch, and was just about to Shift to vapor...
...when his father reached out and, very firmly, grasped his wrist.
“Before you go,” he said lightly, “a moment of your time.”
Leander spun between shock and indignation and twitched out of his father’s grasp.
Unfortunately, and to Leander’s eternal chagrin, his father was one of the few others in the colony who could Shift to vapor. His Gifts were unmatched, his senses powerful. Leander had been caught, more than once, in some boyish act of insubordination precisely because of it.
“I wasn’t going anywhere,” he huffed, dropping his gaze from his father’s face, enigmatic and shadowed by the canopy of alder trees that spread their boughs overhead.
“No?” his father answered, laughter warming his voice. “I rather thought you were.”
Leander didn’t answer. He turned away and stared sullenly at his feet, breathing heavily through his nose. Humiliation and anger washed over him in awful, pummeling waves.
“At any rate, you should know a few things before you make your decision.”
“It’s not as if you’d really let me go anyway,” Leander said, sullen and indignant. “I never get to do anything I want.”
A car drove by in the night, unseen, somewhere far off in the black distance beyond Sommerley. Just the low-pitched hum of tires moving over asphalt on a road he’d never seen was enough to make him ache with longing for all the things he’d never be allowed.
“We’re very alike, you and I,” his father said softly, studying his son’s face. “It was hard for me, and it will be hard for you. Even harder, I imagine. Murder, assassination, lying, espionage...all these things will be required of you, all these and more if you are to lead our kind. But you are strong, and that is a very good thing. Because being the leader of the Ikati is a duty that would crush the weak.”
Leander crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his father, defiant, unrepentant. “I don’t want to be a leader. I just want to be left alone.”
His father gave him a sidelong glance and a smile filled with compassion.
“Things change, Leander. Day by day, the future comes nearer, the past recedes. Whether we like it or not, change is inevitable.” His father’s gaze slid to where the light from the gatehouse pooled saffron and gold on the cobbled road leading away from Sommerley. His gaze followed the road until the light dwindled and the cobblestones were swallowed by shadow.
“Your time is coming, son. And I know you’ll be ready. But if you are unwilling to live the life that’s set before you” —his father lifted his hand to the night, a simple gesture filled with grace and authority—“then go.”
Leander stood frozen on the wall. The night breeze rustled the trees around them, the smell of elderberry and wet grass was crisp and cool in his nose.
“Deserters are considered one of the worst threats to the tribe,” Leander said slowly, thinking it through. His mind turned, leaping ahead. “They’re desperate. Uncontrolled. Dangerous. Almost as dangerous as...”
But he didn’t say the word. It hung in the air between them.
“Yes,” his father answered.
He chewed the inside of his lip. “The Assembly would come after me.”
His father smiled serenely. “Yes.”
“I’d have to find somewhere forested, somewhere I could live and Shift without being noticed...”
“I daresay you would be able to take care of yourself, to find a way to survive alone. You’re the bravest of my children, by far the most resourceful. Though you’re young, I’ve no doubt you’d manage. And the world is full of wooded places, to be sure.”
Leander sent a glace back toward Sommerley, toward where his home lay deep in the wild and beautiful woods. His heart seized with sudden emotion—elation or remorse, he couldn’t tell. “Mother would kill you.”
His father nodded ruefully. “Undoubtedly.”
Leander’s temper snapped. “Then why! Why would you do such a thing! Why would you let me go when it’s against the Law—when no one can leave, not even you, the Alpha!”
His father suddenly looked older. His handsome features betrayed the burden of a lifetime of leadership in the lines around his mouth, in the furrows carved in his brow.
“Because you are my son, and I love you. You have a choice, as do we all, but you must be willing to pay the consequences. You must be willing to forsake everything you have, or ever will have here at Sommerley: your friends, your family, your home. You must be willing to walk away from your heritage and your future and any kind of security. You must be willing to be chased, and possibly—most likely—caught and punished severely by the Assembly.
