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Chapter 58: What's Best for Valene Pt. 2
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2023-09-18 22:26:12His gaze lingered on me, his stare seeming to wordlessly communicate that he was considering what I was saying. Then he finally spoke.
“That is a weakness, alpha,” Ares replied. “A weakness that can mean life or death for my people,” he said, shaking his head. “That weakness has to be stamped out, and it will be. I assure you, alpha, that my life would be forfeit before any harm could come to your daughter.”
“Why would you risk that, Ares?”
Instead of answering the question directly, Ares came up with his own piece of logic. “Funny, you’ve been taking the risk for years, have you not?” He then headed for the door. “I do not wish to keep you from your daughter any longer, Alpha Wade. I will ask that you think about my proposal. I will accept you
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Valene: Daughter of the Shadow Rogues Chapter 59: The Choices We Make Pt. 1
Alastair:We spent most of the day on the road, venturing outside Shadow Veil. If today was going to be Valene’s last day with me, I wanted to make it memorable. I’d have been lying had I said that a part of me and Aziz had also hoped that it would convince her to stay. That was definitely a long shot, of course.At the end of our adventure, we stopped at a little restaurant and settled ourselves. I could tell that Valene was nervous about the endeavor that she would take at the end of the day. Her being Valene, she would never allude to it, however.“Have you enjoyed yourself today?” I asked after we shared a moment of laughter.“The best day I’ve ever had,” she smiled. “This…is the perfect gift for my anniversary. Harlyn’s presence would have made it even better.”I could sense her disappointment when she mentioned Harlyn’s name. “You know Harlyn is going to miss you just as much as I will, Val.” “Yeah, sure,” Valene didn’t believe this, and if she did, she no doubt assumed that Ha
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“Seven.” I finally answered Valene's question. I knew that she would find it impossibly young. “Seven what?” her brow rose suspiciously. My expression said it all. Her eyes widened, and suddenly, her expression displayed that of sympathy. “Surely you don’t mean he was so young as seven when he’d taken over the pack! That…that is well below the age that a child should even have their own say! You let him-” “Ares may have been young, but he has always had his own mind, and when it all boiled down to it, I was not his father.” “Were there no adults…to look after the boy?” “There were adults,” I said. “There were pack members, a delta, but none were fit to lead. They became lost
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Valene didn't say anything. She stabbed at her truffle bomb, her silence lingering for so long I was almost concerned. Then, she finally expressed what was on her mind. “The truth,” she simply said. It was at that moment that her eyes began to mist with tears. “A gentle truth,” she shook her head as her words began to waver. “That Tobias died because of me,” she leered. “I wanted to go…follow his pack into the woods to find more of those…wretched things! I had planned to kill as many as I could and-and he insisted that I stay...that it was too dangerous, for me especially. I didn’t want to listen.” “He told you the truth, hoping that it would stop you.” “He only made my conviction to go into those woods even stronger. I wanted to die after he said that. After I realized that…that all of those deaths…were b
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Valene:To wait! I was forced to wait! If I was going to be accompanied by the beast, the least that he could do was be on time. I refused to go back into that Packhouse. I hadn’t been there long, but I was certainly there long enough to have memories. It was hard walking past Harold’s room as Tobias seemed to be his closest friend. He was taking the loss extremely hard. And it was even harder to walk past Tobias’s room. Somehow, losing him- someone whom, while I did have regular dealings with, I did not truly know, was one of the most difficult things that I ever had to deal with.I’d always assumed him to be a superficial human with an arrogance about him that pushed him to believe that he could commit transgressions, transgressions that were usually punishable by severe imprisonment or even death. Only since I moved into the Packhouse did I realize that Tobias was not completely who he was made out to be, but a little more.He died, and I could feel that there was so much more mean
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My knees buckled, and I gripped myself tightly while clenching my heart. It actually ached. This guilt swallowed me whole, and I could not resurface from it. “Those attacks…Tobias is dead!” I whimpered messily. “Harold was nearly killed…my mother was killed! Because of me!” I cried. “What-I don’t-I can’t do this! I just want to leave! Why can’t you just let me leave?!” I lifted my violently shaking hand to wipe away my tears when I felt his large hand against my cheek, wiping them away for me; When I looked up, he was sitting there across from me, his legs folded. For some reason, I was amazed by his casual gesture to just sit across from me as if he were equal to me. As if I was his equal. “Did you ask to be born with such treasure flowing through your veins?” I half-shook my head before dropping
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Alastair: I hadn’t seen Valene hardly at all after our little back and forth. I thought that giving her time to cool down was for the best but apparently, it wasn’t. Maybe…maybe she wasn’t going to calm down. Maybe I’d finally crossed the line, but…but I just could not imagine that this would be her breaking point. She was no longer outside, and she was nowhere in the packhouse. She wasn’t at our home either. Where could she be? Part of me had hoped that she’d left but my gut told me that she hadn’t. Ares would have informed me before they left. “I have a bad feeling, Wade,” Aziz whispered in the back of my mind.
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AzizAlmost two years to the day. A day that changed everyone’s lives. Specifically, Alastair…and not for the better.My counterpart had become a robot since the death of our pup. None of us changed particularly for the better, but Alastair was definitely the worst. And admittedly...I was hardly any better off.After the loss of Valene, we immediately went for a run. It wasn’t intentional but instinctual. We kept running and running until we could run no longer. We finally realized what we had done in leaving the pack and our town…our people when we found ourselves in Montana.Alastair wanted to run back home on his own accord, but I insisted that we did not. Grief-stricken and having been over five days without food or water, it wouldn’t be too much longer before I’d turn feral and him along with me.I’d tried to convince him to get a hotel somewhere until Toran or Minken showed up to drive us back home. He wouldn’t. Somehow, my counterpart felt comfort in being in my skin versus his
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Alastair:Per usual, he was right. Aziz was right about how I’d been treating Harlyn. It was as if I was exploring new ways to be an even worse father than the day before. I had completely discarded Harlyn’s life in an attempt to avoid positive emotions. Birthdays meant nothing to me anymore; holidays meant even less. Everything that I did after Valene’s death just provoked a feeling of going through the motions.Toran had taken the helm for the greater part of a year and a half. He was understanding as he, himself, realized that he didn’t know what shape he’d be in had he lost Talon. He could hardly stand losing Tobias as he did.“I’m sorry, Az,” I finally said. “I…I have been selfish, and I apologize. Ha
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The room was dimly lit. It was clear that she was in a cell of some sort. “Hello, my love.” Her voice was calm and soothing, and yet filled with sorrow. Though she wasn’t facing me in real time, I could sense the shame in her demeanor as she could not even look into Tobias’s eyes while relaying her message.“You know that before you were born…your father and I had an affair.” she chuckled bitterly. “Of course…I didn’t know that he was married or mated or whatever the hell they call it!” She snapped and then took a deep breath to seemingly calm down. “But that is neither here nor there. I did end it, baby, I truly did…once I found out that-what…kind of situation I was placed in. That…that wasn’t good enough for her though…so…that’s basically how my life ended that night.”There was so much pain in her voice as she said this. I couldn’t imagine how much it pained her to relive that evening. But she had to. She needed to confess her truth.“When I was brought back…all of my emotions we
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Valene: Daughter of the Shadow Rogues Chapter 147: Descendants & Sons Pt. 1
Vale:I stood there, bewildered as our eyes met. Part of me, a less…conflicted part of me was elated to see him standing there. With my father…his father, and his brother.Tobias.I cared about Tobias. Far more than I ever realized. It took him dying and then coming back to see that. But regardless, of how I came to this realization, those feelings were there. And that would never change. I was so glad to seem him alive and relatively well considering the circumstances surrounding…well…us and our current lifestyles.Despite that less conflicted side of me, there was bigger part of me…a blaringly alarmed and untrusting, and even angry…part of me that could only think about one thing; where was my mother?The fact that she was nowhere to be found-even now. It didn’t make sense maybe, but…in my potentially irrational mind, I couldn’t think of a reality where Tobias would even be here and mum not. I just couldn’t shake that feeling….that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, as I wat
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