Blood Ties

17

Accalia's face filled with warmth and Cadence ignored her, a slither of discomfort knotting in her stomach.

"Did you make alliances?" Cadence didn't figure she would settle on the politics within packs and Alphas, but if she were to fight by her cousin's side, she wanted to know all she needed.

Accalia sighed tiredly, "We have alliances, Roan and Jacian are willing to fight. We aren't bothering with the Hala pack. Lacuna is not taking part."

Cadence scoffed. "Such pansies. Get the fuck over it, war is coming and there's nothing we can do to stop it."

Accalia smiled briefly and countered, "I like Calla and her pack. You should've seen their territory, it was like heaven."

"The closest I'll get to heaven," Cadence mumbled to herself and leaned against the wooden wall. "Listen, I don't want to be here Accalia, and I know you aren't going anywhere from your mate. But I want to be by your side when everything goes to hell, so I'll stick around, I just don't want the hybrid near me."

Accalia nodded understandably and said, "I remember when I hated being near Lycus, I despised him so I get where you're coming from. Hopefully, Rexton goes with Gabriel and you don't have to see him ever again. Go have a shower and rest. I'm going to wait for them to get home."

Cadence turned on her heel and trod upstairs. Heading to her old room, Cadence felt her knees finally buckle and she stumbled into the shower in an outcry, aches rippling up and down her body.

She knew what to expect when she came to the mirror that remained fractured with the hole she punched through before freeing the hybrid.

The shards of glass disfigured and distorted her face, with parts of her somewhere and nowhere. Her black eyes staring back at her were a bottomless pit of continuous mirrors that glared gloomy at her.

Tearing off her clothes, the bruises on her grew prominent, painted black and blue. Her forehead trickled with dried blood, her knuckles bloodied and her knees scabbed with dirt mingled with shredded skin.

Cadence faced away from the mirror and turned the shower on, the water prospering in ice water.

She couldn't blame the hybrid for her injuries, part of them were her own infliction, but she still pitted all the blame on him. Cadence wouldn't forgive him, whatever he wanted from her. Her blood, her forgiveness, he would never have it.

___
Accalia
~

Accalia paced up and down the living room halls, heart quaking with anxiousness and biting at her chipped fingernail until she no longer could.

Accalia repeatedly checked on Cadence throughout the night, ruling out any issues that could haunt her young cousin, and it helped that she had cocooned herself in Accalia's blanket.

It had been two hours and Lycus had yet to make an entrance, along with his tormented brother and his unhinged friend, Alexene.

It seemed the constant playing of thoughts manifested itself as a door opened and closed, numerous footsteps padding through the manor and Accalia swept around the corner.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Accalia wanted to go to Lycus's, but a person knitted closely to his side stopped her from doing so. Rexton's striped sweater and wide-leg jeans were dirty and his face was splattered with muck.

It didn't help that his soft eyes hovered on Accalia, that boyish charm feeding through his dirty exterior and she detested him for it. It was a similar glamour that Alexene had, a feigning innocence that no one could help but be enamoured by, besides the people that saw straight through it.

Someone like Cadence.

"Where's Alexene?" Accalia asked.

Gabriel was amongst them, shirtless and gleamed in sweat. He managed to keep his cool even as his deep blue eyes settled with seething daggers at both Lycus and Rexton.

But even then, he swayed his tired face at Accalia and said, "It will be daylight soon, she had to go."

"I suggested she burn alive, but she opposed that idea," Lycus added and jutted his chin at his youngest brother, Rexton. "He protested too."

Silence filtered through, a stinging and imposing silence Accalia couldn't help but notice. Rexton, all things considered, looked even more defeated than when they found him at Kara forest. Hugging himself with those long arms, adjusting the ends of his sleeves and finally, those amber eyes lowering, submitting to the floor.

"Why did you guys take so long?" Accalia asked, wanting the silence to end the way Lycus would.

Lycus shrugged a half-shrug and bumped his shoulder into Gabriel's. "Ended up finding him on the way and ... just trying to figure things out."

Accalia bobbed her head, observing Gabriel who had a face made of stone and no reaction to Lycus's antics.

"Will Rexton be going with Gabriel back to his pack?" Accalia asked stiffly.

From all that Accalia had seen, the best influence on the hybrid was Gabriel. He was gentle and patient with him, whereas Lycus was nothing short of bossy and commanding. It didn't help that Cadence was here for the time being and Accalia didn't want to imagine what could go down with each other the more they were in one another's presence.

"We don't know, Accalia," Gabriel stated and side-eyed Lycus with a frustrated glance. 

Once again, that numbing muteness pooled over them and Accalia felt more at a loss than before. Overly quiet, hardly arguing with each other as the Fenris brothers typically did ...

"What happened now?" Accalia demanded, voice controlled and sharp. 

Have there been more wolves at the border? Did they bury a body on their way back? Has Vaela prophesied an ordeal no one could expect?

Lycus swept around his brothers and that face of his drank Accalia in like it was his last elixir. Promising and permanent. But at the same token, daunting — the bearer of bad news as he fiddled with his words. He didn't know what to say and for the first time, Accalia saw fear in his face. Fear that prompted the Alpha of Alphas to not even look at her.

"Rexton is mated," Lycus admitted and he lifted his head, to the second story of the house, to where someone slumbered. "To Cadence."